Monday night was spent having a lovely dinner and exchanging gifts with Grandad and Meemaw. I'm especially excited about the handmade pincushion that Meemaw embroidered for me - now I don't have to use the arm of the couch! :)
Tuesday consisted of a leisurely breakfast at La Madeleine, a tour of Central Market, and an hour or two spent wandering around http://www.halfpricebooks.com/001.html. Later that night my dad fired up the grill and we had (another!) big family meal with all the out-of-town relatives. Pork loin, yellow squash, and peaches - all cooked to perfection over the grill with olive oil, salt and pepper. Top the evening off with coffee, three flavors of gelato, and excellent company, and you have a lovely evening.
Wednesday was supposed to be my day to fly home, but, given the trouble we had getting to Dallas, I decided to stay a few extra days until Friday morning. With all this additional time, we did what any self-respecting, tech-savvy family would do after Christmas.. we headed to the Apple store! By the end of the day, we had helped my mom become the proud owner of "screamin'" new Powermac G5 with dual 2.0 Ghz processors, a 19" flat panel monitor, and the new Adobe Creative Suite. Jealousy, thy name is Apple.
In all fairness, my mom is one of the few people I know who can, without argument, justify the purchase of such an amazing system. I spent most of Thursday working with her in the studio, installing software, configuring network setups, and moving over hundreds of her archived photoshop files. Even before my flight on Friday morning, she was up and putting her new workhorse to use, doing rough sketches for another project. I can't wait to see how much more she can do now that her computer doesn't crash twice a day. :)
I flew back to DC on Friday morning, tired but happy. It was yet another awesome holiday for me, even more so because I got to share it with two families in two parts of the country! And even with all that time off, I still had a three-day weekend to relax at home and recover from all that excitement!