Oregon, year two: Waiting for the snow. We had 2 awesome snowstorms earlier this year, and while we probably won't have a white Christmas, we're looking very good for a snowy Boxing Day! We love the snow. This photo is from earlier in the year:
No new additions to the Beagle family, but the Beagle house is gaining an addition.
We are waist-deep in adding on to the back of the house and the entire existing house is stacked with unlabeled boxes. Luckily we were able to find some new accessories (Robyn discovered Dollar Store!) so the pets can still rock the season for the Beagle tradition. Life up here has new challenges - as we were taking some of these photos, unbeknownst to us our basement was filling up with several inches of water - but overall we are settling in well and loving our new life up here. The pizza oven is firing Robyn's signature pies, installed under feline supervision of course.
We had custom windows made for the living room and Jackson posed with them pre-install, the photo of which was chosen for December 2022 for the Restore Oregon calendar!
We've made some wonderful friends and so has Crash. He spent Thanksgiving learning new tricks with his buddies:
Of course, the flip side of all that fun is earning your keep and Crash paid his dues by sporting ALL the sparkly green things with astounding polish:
We also lit him up while visiting local spots last week. It may not look like much but the crowd was pleased.
Crash has been our social ambassador to this town and we are very lucky to have him - he's way better at meeting people than we are! He'll be 9 in the spring and is slowing down but still takes his duty as Official Greeter of all humans very seriously.
At home, we have our fluffy angels to keep us company. Jackson is still doing well! He turned 14 in October and we are almost 5 years past the cancer diagnosis which was supposed to end his life. We know every day with him is a small miracle and we are so grateful to have all this time with him. That said, his days of starring in the Christmas email may be past... We tried, we really did, to get him in the holiday spirit. But the fluffy-britches star of so many holidays simply did not show up this year. We tried the new antlers:
And we even put a VERY festive hat on him, but there was no joy from him this year.
Luckily, we have Oookie, our newer shining star. Technically his name is still Luca but around here, names evolve. Oookie had HUGE paws to fill, taking over for Cheek and Boo and now picking up the slack for Jackson, but he does seem to be rising to the occasion. First we had to get him into some Christmas jammies and fire up the favorite toy:
Oh no, could this be a sleepy Oookie in jammies?
Next we tried the new Christmas tree cape and "Woe, woe is me" turned into naptime again...
We brooded on the lights:
And then we tried to pose him with these adorable little elf feet and a blingy tree and a feather boa (did we mention Dollar Store??) and what started out cute quickly turned ugly...
Suffice to say, thank goodness no actual elves were used during this filming!! Order was restored long enough for one more shot before we hid the feathers:
This yearly Christmas card is about the pets, not us, but we do want to say how much we miss our friends and family back in California and especially our First Friday tradition... but also how grateful we are for the wonderful friends we are making here in Oregon, and how happy we are that you are now sharing this holiday tradition with us. The world is going to Hell in a handbasket, but we are glad we have like-minded company in our little basket!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Love,
Dan & Robyn
