Josh’s actual Birth Day.  (Not really, this is a few days later… after the blizzard of ‘78 was over and Josh & Judi could go home.)  So this is George, Big Brother Thadd & Josh:

Baby Josh & the Fam:

Here Josh says, “I am 4!”  (I wanted to put a pic with Shan in!  Jackie & Grandma & Grandpa Mates are helping to celebrate the big FOUR.)

Here Josh says, “I am 4 (x 8)!”  Ha.

Becky got this awesome Celtics green tee for Josh!

And now Josh won’t be so cold with these great gifts from Mom & Dad!

And these South Africa guidebooks will be so useful! Thanks again Mom & Dad!

Watch out Dave!  Josh is going to beat you in shuffleboard now!  (Thanks Mom & Dad Allen!)

Manhattan is thrilled for Josh’s birthday.

As is Magellan.

Thanks again for the gifts and cards and phone calls and texts and Facebook wall posts.  It was a great birthday.  We finished it off playing Josh’s new Wii game (the shuffleboard and darts are our new favorites!), and cooking a great dinner that was made even better thanks to a Christmas gift from Shan – Argentinian wine, carted across the globe in her backpack!  A great way to celebrate 32 years.

An excerpt from Letter from Birmingham Jail (April 16, 1963)

“… time is neutral.  It can be used either destructively or constructively.  I am coming to feel that the people of ill-will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will.  We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.  We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability.  It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.  Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.  Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the social rock of human dignity.”

You have been my favorite sports player of all sports since I went to my first baseball game. A little ballerina who played no “real sports”, my love of all things football, basketball, baseball and sometimes soccer began, and still begin, with you. I still own a scrapbook that I made of all the best newspaper articles written about you during my Jr. High & High School years. I hung a poster of you (your scary mug staring out over your mitt) in my room next to pictures of ballerinas in arabesque and my point shoes. You were my sports hero for your fastball and your size and your heart. I loved your genuine apologies while you rushed to the batter’s box when you would hit a guy – arms reaching out to him in apology after you hit him with a crazy, wild, Randy Johnson fastball that you couldn’t yet control.

I fell out of touch with baseball after I moved to San Diego for college (no Dave Niehaus on the radio there!), only going to the inter-league game to watch you hit (amazingly awkward!) when you were still a Mariner. Yet, I was heartbroken when you left the Mariners for the Astros, but I decided that I must now follow the Astros’ stats (though I had never heard of them prior, really), and then the Diamondbacks. By then I was heading to start grad school in Boston, living just across the Charles river  from Fenway. I could hear Sweet Caroline from my window. My first week in Boston, I went to a Red Sox game (against the Mariners!) and once again my love of baseball was ignited.

You broke my heart again when you shot down any talk of playing for Boston, saying the only way you would ever play in Fenway was wearing pinstripes! By now I hated the Yankees with the best of them. So much so that for the 2001 Diamondbacks/Yankees World Series I drove down to Manhattan to watch Game 7 in the NYC bars just to root against the Yankees and root for you! My friend and I had to change to a new bar every inning so we didn’t make too many enemies. It was amazing! My sports hero fighting my most despised team! I just knew you would come in to close like you did for the Mariners winning the ALDS final game in 1995 against the Yankees! It was magical for this little girl. Even when you did end up in pinstripes for awhile there, I logically plotted a way to root for you – as long as you weren’t playing the Sox. Thank you, Big Unit, for opening my eyes to the wondrous world of sports. I have loved following you and your accomplishments as my sports awareness has expanded from my little girl world. My most treasured, childhood sports memories will always be of the Kingdome – you pitching to Dan Wilson, with Edgar, Buhner, Junior there and Lou having a conniption. Thank you for everything, Randy.

Always your fan,

Jeannette

We had amazing fun with a Macaroni & Cheese taste off (Jeannette still likes her own best, but Josh was swayed by Gary’s supreme levels of cheese content!), Pinochle game, old school Frogger video gaming and then waking up with Mama Judi’s Overnight Coffeecake!  After all that the four of us headed out for a suburban adventure to watch Avatar: An IMAX 3D Experience.  We loved it!!  It was a great way to celebrate a great 2009 and usher in 2010!  Happy New Year!  (Pictures to come when Gary gets them to us! – PICTURES HERE NOW)

We have had a very Merry Christmas and hope you have too!  Spending this Christmas just the two of us was both a bit lonely without our families and also exciting for us.

This morning we woke up early in order to open a couple gifts before services so we could wear new Christmas clothes to church, and then we headed over to Trinity Church.  It was a beautiful service with a great sermon.  We really enjoy it there.

After church we hightailed it home to continue our tradition-making.  We popped a French Bread Casserole in the oven that Jeannette had prepped last night and then exchanged gifts over Skype with the Allen side of the Fiallen family.  We had such a great time getting to see Jan, Dave, Becky, Grandpa, Uncle Bob, GrandDad and Grandma!  Skyping really helped us to be able to feel like we had a little piece of our back home family out here.

We want to mention that we got the French Bread Casserole recipe from a roommate of Jeannette’s from college from Junior year.  And it was so so SO good – the calories can attest to that!  It is going on our Christmas morning traditions for sure.  If you are so inclined, looking for a goody to bake for a special morning breakfast treat you should check out the recipe here on her blog:  eat at allie’s.

In the afternoon we watched the Celtics WIN (86-77) in Orlando, even without Pierce.   It was so much better than last year’s abomination Christmas Day game against the Lakers.

AND we got a Wii and games for Christmas (Thanks Moms and Dads!!!!) so we’ve been playing that all night!  We love Super Mario Bros. Wii and are already getting into Madden 10.

For dinner, we cooked the traditional Fiallen Green Bean Casserole, with a great Mustard-Maple Pork Loin (using thyme from our still-growing-like-crazy herb garden).  It was really good Christmas dinner!

All in all, a great Christmas! We made some great memories and will treasure our first solo, married couple Christmas as a special one.

We hope your Christmas was as blessed as ours!

I’m going to sign off with the Blessing from church today:

UPDATE Here is a picture of the Skyping session from the West coast perspective!

This was our first Christmas holiday not spent with our families.  We’ve missed our families dearly and been conscious of not having them nearby.  As a part of keeping our spirits up, we have been really deliberate with thinking about our first Christmas doing our own married couple thing, getting to start our own traditions.  So while we are missing all our family and friends back in the Midwest and Northwest and San Francisco, we are enjoying our first solo married couple Christmas too.

We began our tradition-making with Josh wrapping his last minute gifts that arrived today while we drank Starry Nights and watched White Christmas.  We also opened presents with our Fiala half of the Fiallen family over Skype!  George, Judi, Shannon and Thadd are in California for Christmas.  It was great to be able to see their faces and exchange gifts with them “in person” even though we couldn’t be there with them.

More pictures of our Tree and our Skyping follow the jump!