The Christmas season started with the SAP holiday party at the SF Design Center. The party was held in a 4 story open courtyard with a burlesque band on the floor 1, gambling on floor 4, and drinks and food in between.
Adam made a trip home from New York for the holidays. Rachel was with her family on the East Coast, but contributed a wonderful ornament to add to the Nichols tree.
Decorating the tree at the Nichols pad with eggnog and Christmas music... what a tradition. The tree loosened up so much over the coming days that most of the ornaments fell off!
That night we headed to a holiday cocktail party at Jesse and Eileen's in Berkeley. Once again we outlasted all of the wild-and-crazy Hass business school folks and shut down the party with Grace and Alonzo.
Mom and Jim came into town on Friday... To celebrate Mom's birthday, we took her to SupperClub, an "uber-hip" dining club featuring performance art, brought to us straight from Amsterdam. The first performance was the highlight-- "uber-flexible" acrobats performing to the pulsing beats of the DJ.
We ate dinner while reclining in huge beds laid out around the performance space.
This was the night we told Mom that we were expecting... she doesn't look like a grandma, does she?
There was a Victorian theme to the night-- here Ryan contributes a branch to a human Christmas tree. Very strange.
We spent the night at the Hills in Oakland, and recovered the next morning through a rousing game of badminton with Eddie and Nate in the backyard. The younger brothers vanquished the older brothers in hand-to-hand combat. Here, Ryan is about to whiff a put-away shot.
Frisbee in a local park: Nate runs through the muddy field to make an amazing diving catch.
See Adam, we have fall colors on the West Coast too.... and you get to enjoy them in late December while wearing shorts!
Christmas Eve Family photo: Eddie, Ryan, Kathy, Nate, Bob, Susan, Jim, Eunice, and Adam on the Hill's back porch.
The expecting parents with Grandma Susan and Uncle Adam. Craziness!
The highlight of Christmas Eve at the Hills is a 30 person white elephant with all of Kathy's family. Here Joanna (Kathy's mother) becomes the proud recipient of a walking, talking minature bull that charges across the table to the chants of "hey, hey, hey, Toro!" Beleive it or not, el Toro was later stolen by Bob and then by Adam, making it one of the more contested gifts of the evening.
Nate's musical talent's were another highlight of the evening: we started by singing christmas carols and Green Day by the piano downstairs, and later got a little guitar performance upstairs once the crowds had gone home.
Christmas morning: just what we'd always wanted-- a rolling cooler to hold our frosty cold Kern's nectar! Was this Santa's work, or the work of the new head of Kerns, Uncle Bob?
Have yourself an absurdist little Christmas: A photo of Bob opening a calendar of Bob opening a calendar of...
The next stop, later on Christmas morning: a brief but very special visit with Valerie, Melody, Jennifer, and David at San Fransisco Airport. They happened to have a 2 hour layover on their way to Tawain, so we stopped by to wish them a Merry Christmas. This was their longest trip with the little girls-- and it got off to a rough start when Melody got a nosebleed before boarding in Dallas!
Are you ready to have a little cousin, Valerie and Melody?
Bye-bye, Melody... there's now way you'll get lost tagged as carry-on!
The final stop of Christmas day was the Nichols pad. Abby was the most enthusiastic present opener by far, and ended up flinging her gift across the room, breaking a wine glass.
Adam in his dapper new hat.
Ryan in his dapper new scarf / sweater / belt combo.
Uncle Tom with one of Nancy's new paintings.
Dad gets teary-eyed over a mini-version of Abby... just wait till he gets a grandkid!
Merry Christmas everyone!
