Christmas 2021 - Waiting for snow.

 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 tried the lights:

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

   

   

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!!