Christmas 2020, Such As It Is

2020, y'all.  Whew.  What can we say that hasn't already been made into a meme by someone else?  2020 has been "interesting" for everyone.  It's certainly been a roller coaster ride for us.  Let's get the worst out of the way:  in the first 2 months of 2020 we said goodbye to our beloved Rowdy 

then my most-loved blue-eyed Boo

and finally our best elf ever, Cheek

It wasn't the best time for the Beagle family.  

2020 didn't get much better for a while, but we did somehow manage to buy a house and quit our jobs and move to Oregon.  There were a lot of ups and downs but we are very happy here.   We now have a beautiful money pit historical house to restore and we are loving the rain and cold weather, yay!  The inside of the house is torn up but we did work some Christmas magic on the outside that makes us very happy: 

Still, we thought this Christmas email would be a bit sparse this year, featuring only our remaining two heroes, Jackson and Crash.  We enlisted them to do their best.  Crash's best was pretty lackluster this year.  He wore the sweater....

and he wore the hat....

but it wasn't his best work, for sure.  

Jackson has always been great at channeling murderous anger tempered with angelic cuteness, and this year was no exception.  I was so excited about the walking Christmas tree!

But I couldn't get it to walk.  It did this instead: 

So we moved on to the most exciting new costume this year, the Abominable Snowman Bearing Gift costume.  Yeah, just the title alone hints at the joy this costume brings, right?  JOY, I say. 

Hey Jack:  Are you feeling the joy?  

You're not?  Okay, let's add the hat....

Adding the hat with googly-eyes was the final straw for Jack.  I don't think any of you blame him, do you?  

And then there was this.  Just this.

And until a few days ago, that would have been the end of the email, and it would have been fine.  Just fine.  Probably better than most of you expected for 2020.  But then, last weekend, THIS happened!

Introducing Luca!  He is almost 6 months old, trapped feral from a colony in Salem, Oregon.  Even though he's only been here a week, he took right to the Christmas tradition with a definite kitten twist.  We may not have managed to get more than a hat to stay on him, but we sure had fun trying!   

We could have stopped there, but then we just had to try a few more.  Cuteness alert!

The line between "costume" and "toy" has obviously blurred quite a bit by now...  

I was going to finish by saying something about lessons in life but everything sounded like a bad line from a Hallmark Christmas movie so I'll shut up now.  We'll finish with a glamour pose and wish for a healthy and prosperous 2021!  We really miss our California friends but we welcome the new faces in our lives so much.  Merry Christmas, everyone!!