Dinner was at the Leah (Lenin’s sister) & Jeff’s and ALL the Del Castillo’s were there plus me and Justin. Presents were piled everywhere!

Jeff made the best-ever prime rib using the sous vide method followed by some smoking and searing on the Egg.


Sorting and distributing the gifts takes quite while. Carson thought every gift tag that started with a C belonged to him which meant he had a huge pile .. for a while.

I told myself not to open the jigsaw puzzle box, but I did. Then I couldn’t leave it alone. I even forgot to eat sometimes (that’s a miracle). Every spare minute, I was looking for a piece to fit in. The minutes became an hour, then an afternoon, then …

four days went by and I was done! 1000 pieces. Then a little panic set in – what Christmas tasks have I ignored and must get done in the next 3 days?

.. my brother Doug was killed in a car accident. What a tragic event for my family. Doug had just finished his first football season at the University of Utah and came home for Christmas. The first night home, he went to a basketball tournament with a friend and was killed when a car ran a stop sign and spun Doug’s little sports car into an oncoming car. He was gone. The tragedy was compounded 8 days later when a woman came to the door to tell my parents that her daughter had a baby that night. She claimed Doug was the father. After a lot of fact-gathering and investigation, my parents decided Doug probably wasn’t the father.

This past Thanksgiving, I received this comment (in the profile section of this blog) which needed approval before it could be posted:

My parents were right! And I’m glad Doug Harrison found his true family.

Ade had a few friends over for dinner tonight.

Linda, Joan, me, Sandi, Ade