Fire trucks are pretty cool.

Continuing with my rule of three...

First: The Klinger family Christmas party was this weekend, and this time we had a special visitor. No, not Santa, but a shiny, red sleigh of a different sort - a fire truck! My late-cousin Ann's husband (who so graciously hosted all of us this year) is a volunteer fireman with his town's fire department and he was able to get one of the fire trucks to stop by the house. What pleasure this brought to the kids (those young but also old, like me). Look at the face on my cousin Jeremy! You'd think we were all four again, living out our greatest fantasies. I bet these kids will have great fun telling their friends at school/daycare on Monday that they spent some time on a firetruck. I guarantee you one of those kids will want to be a fireman for the next week, at least until the excitement wears off.

Second: Christmas is officially put away at our house (though I thought about leaving the tree like this until next year, just for fun): It's always a sad affair for me to wave goodbye to the holidays for another year. The season is so short, and I feel like just when I start to get into my Christmas groove it's all over. We only listened to a couple of Christmas records, and only saw a few (really bad) Lifetime holiday movies. No Rudolph or Frosty, no Christmas Story or A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott. I'm not ready to start thinking about spring and about all the outdoor projects I have lined up. I was hoping to hibernate in my house smelling the pine candles burning and basking in the glow of the white tree just a little bit longer. Ah well. At least it was a good holiday season; I really can't complain. We had fun and stayed healthy (unlike poor Summer Sweater and Mr. Summer Sweater - how awful!), so no repining* for me.

Third: I'm getting better at navigating a Mac and today I figured out how to directly upload photos from iPhoto to flickr. To see some of my recent uploads, go to my flicker photostream; you'll see all kinds of goodies from Marieke and Curt's wedding, and also a few of the cats. This one might be my new favorite photo of Sasha: Besides the fact that she looks like a squishy ball of queenly cuteness sitting on top of that husband pillow, she's doing something that Wyatt used to do. This further reinforces the notion that she's picking up some of Wyatt's habits, so it's less like he's actually gone and more like he's just transformed a bit into a sassy, fat thing. But before I get too sentimental about all of this, let me remind myself that Sasha is picking up more of Wyatt's bad habits than his good ones, which means that I may have to start trying to give that sassy, fat thing away again. Anyone want a cat?

* That's a shout-out to you, Stinks! You're teaching me well.