I’ve been in California now for about a week and I think I have only seen the sun one time. It’s been dark, gray, gloomy, and cold. I guess that’s not a surprise. The good old Northern California weather is always like this when I come home for Christmas.

When I come home for Christmas, I always spend a lot of time with my family. On Christmas Eve, my whole family got together at my cousin, Jason, and his wife, Trina’s house. My Dad, his wife, Chris, and all my siblings were there. My Grandpa, his wife, Lonnie, my Grandma, and all my aunts, uncles, and cousins were there too. We ate lots of good food, opened presents, and did a lot of laughing.

By my unofficial count, there were 30 of us. Last year, there were only 29 of us, but we have a new addition. My cousin, Michelle, and her husband Josh, just had welcomed a new baby boy on December 16. They named him Jaxson. My camera battery went dead before I could get a good picture of him. I did get one of all the girl cousins in my family. I think there’s a similar one in my blog from two years ago.

My sister, Kim, lives in Long Beach and she drove up north and has been here all week, too. Some of her friends who live up here are crab fisherman. They were nice enough to share with us so Kim brought home two live crab one day. We had a hard time dropping them in the boiling water as you are supposed to do with fresh crab.

We really didn’t want to so we got a good laugh out of trying to make pets out them first. We were trying to feed them but they didn’t really like that. It gave us a good laugh and I got some funny pictures. Unfortunately, Kim is going back to Long Beach tonight.

I go back to Michigan on Monday. There’s lots going on here, as always. I don’t have a whole lot of time to be on my computer but I thought I would check in. I’ll have more on Monday. Maybe I’ll write another one from the airplane.