Happy New Year! 

Loren and I celebrated New Year’s Eve with Loren’s Mom and sister, enjoying a dear friend’s eggplant parmesan recipe, then ringing in the new year with the New York time zone as the Warrior’s post-game interviews came to a close. We finished off our evening together by eating 12 grapes – one for each second after “midnight” that is a Spanish tradition.

 

Then back at our AirBnB we enjoyed eating 12 more grapes each with some of the other guests at the house,

and, I stayed up with them to watch the ball drop at Califoraia’s actual time of midnight.

Loren and I then also celebrated New Year’s Day with Loren’s Mom and sister, enjoying Bubbly Moscato and burritos. Loren’s Mom talked about taking down their Christmas decorations and I suggested they could wait until January 6th for Little Christmas. And, she then told me the story that her mother had grown up with in Italy of La Befana, the witch who rides a broom and bestows candy and small gifts to children’s waiting shoes…

We also had the sad news this week that a friend’s sister was taken off life support after she had been in a coma for a week, and she died at the end of the year. This is our friend’s solace from a sign he saw where she had been cared for…

Then Loren and I were in San Jose for another yard work afternoon at our house. We first enjoyed a breakfast with some of our special friends… 

then we spent several hours pruning the flowering pear tree had and retraining the jasmine vines over the car port.

We finished off our week visiting with a couple of friends, where we were reminded of the batch of elderberry wine that we had made together with them and another couple of friends nearly 30 years ago! The bottle only had a little dust on it, but it was put back in storage for some time in the future…

This week we wish you Happy Epiphany! Merry Little Christmas! And, may La Befana appear with some small gifts and candy for you!