Christmas in Eugene Pictures

When my sister and I get together for the holidays we put together a jigsaw puzzle.  This is our latest effort and it was really tough.  Look at all those white flowers and green trees.  We actually gave up and went to bed with about 30 pieces left that all looked alike, so my sister finished it and sent this picture while we were on our way up I-5.

As I've mentioned before my sister and I love to cook together and it was a real treat to put together the Christmas Eve dinner.  We decided this year that instead of oiling the roast we would rub it all over with butter.  Everything is better with butter, right??  Then we doused it with Worcestershire Sauce and rubbed it down with Montreal Steak Seasoning.

We roasted it in a hot oven for 20 minutes, then turned it down to 325.  Everything was going great until the neighbor from across the street arrived with a whole slew of micro beers from the Willamette Valley for a tasting party.

Somehow I only captured his back end as he was telling us about the different beers but you can see the two men holding dogs - the Bradster with Pici and my sister's ex holding her dog, Rosie.  I don't know why I find that funny.  Anyway - one thing led to another and before you knew it our roast was well done.

Darn that neighbor and his good beer but the roast turned out delicious anyway.  Luckily there wasn't anyone there who wasn't happy without rare meat, or even medium meat, for that matter.

This is my brother Mikey.  The older he gets the more he looks like our dad.  He and his wife, Robin, live in Roseburg and they are raising their pretty little granddaughter, Miley.

It was hard to get all the grand kids together and sitting still.  This is my best effort.  Christmas is much more fun with kids around and these kids were having a fabulous time.

The Bradster was playing Scrabble with the kids at one time.  I don't know what this game is but I do know that they beat him at everything.  I did notice that he was allowing some very strange sounding words that I've never heard before when they were playing Scrabble.  That might have had something to do with it.