2025 Happy Holidays

2025 was an exciting year for all of us - here are some pictures from the Holidays.

From Amy (Parlin) Feldman: The Feldman family four (plus Calvin are together in California, celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas this year! Sage is home from for the holidays during her sophomore at UCLA and Miles is a freshman at Berkeley High. These pictures show the three youngest among us with our Christmas tree, Nana's thumbprint cookies, which Miles made from one of the family recipes Peter posted, Keith and Amy wrapping up the Christmas Eve fondue, and the amazing inflatable menorah our friends brought over for a latke party. Missing everyone we are not with this year, and sending lots of love and light!

From Nicole, Tristan, Kellan, Jamie, Angie and Chris Parlin:

From Hyla (Smith) Skudder: Here's two from me and Chris in Ohio. It was just the two of us this year - first year with none of the kids. And since we are the only live music in our small rural church, we couldn't travel to gather with any other family. So a strange Christmas for us here. But we had a relaxing day with a pancake brunch, a nice long nap, and we were invited to share Christmas dinner with our pastor and his wife at his parents house, and that was a very nice gathering. And tomorrow we are hosting two good widow friends from our church at our house for a "Boxing Day" lunch (one of the women is from England and Australia, where Boxing Day is a big thing!) and to watch a wonderful version of the Nutcracker ballet on TV afterwards. So we will still have had several wonderful "gatherings" this holiday. And the Christmas Eve candlelight service in our little church was full and lovely.

From Heather (Smith) Xie: We had a very different kind of Christmas this year. People would ask me “So what are you doing for Christmas?” And I would laugh and say “Working!” I never realized how incredibly busy this season is for pastors. Xie Yong and Sawyer were working, too, as Mainland China doesn’t celebrate Christmas and almost all of their work is there now. And Renni is in London. But Sawyer brought us a huge gorgeous delicious panettone— Xie Yong’s favorite sweet bread—and we celebrated Christmas Eve dinner together. 

The annual Christmas Zoom call:

From Peter Sanborn: We spent Christmas in Vero Beach Florida with Victoria's mother. This year we got spectacular weather - sunny and up into the 80s! It never really feels like Christmas here weather-wise but we're not going to complain.

From Joan Parlin:

From Scott Turner:

From Bonnie Sanborn:

And finally...some beautiful winter scenes of Lake George from Tim Parlin: