Granny had gotten out the Tangoes set of tangrams that I had bought for Pop many years ago.
Tony and I and Matt and Mike tried to solve a few of them.
And because I realize there were no people in the photos from the last post:
Mike (in green) and Matt unwrapping a present
Dad and Jean checking out the wine Tony and I gave them
Rob excited to see that he's unwrapped a telescope
Tony and M&M at the Green Olive. We all went there for breakfast on Monday morning. So it was an official Souf Jersey visit.
The next weekend, we had two parties for New Year's. Because we had invited people fairly late, we decided to have guests over on both the 30th and the 31st, in case they'd already made plans for New Year's Eve.
John R. and his girlfriend Keiko stayed with us Thursday night. We went to dinner at Slice.
The next evening, before our first party, we had the Schultieses over for dinner. Tony made stir-fried chicken for Bob, Abbe, and me and stir-fried shrimp for Zane, Jen, and himself. I made a salad for a starter. And for dessert, flourless peanut butter cookies that I'll definitely make again. I made Tony three of them without chocolate chips and the rest with chips for those of us who can eat chocolate that may contain traces of dairy product.
Zane and Jen. Behind them, you can see part of the row of dwarf Alberta spruces we had a landscape designer plant behind the greenhouse so that we could have some lit-up (but otherwise unadorned) Christmas trees. That's all we've asked Amber to do for now, but this spring, with her guidance, we're going to start growing some more plants and get some furniture out on the deck so we can really enjoy the space in warmer weather.
Abbe and me
And my dinner
Mark M. and José and Andy were our only party guests later that night after John and Keiko took the train to hang out with John's friend John G. in Jersey. It turned out that most of our friends were still available to come to our party the next night, Saturday night. I fell down on the picture-taking front, so I don't have any new photos of MJ&A from that Friday night. We had lots of fun, chatting mostly about the theater and other forms of pop culture.
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