Our annual funny-face Olive Garden dinner

Tom's mother and brother finally arrived in Seattle from California after a weather-related travel nightmare that lasted days -- including, unfortunately, Christmas Eve in an airport hotel and Christmas day in an airport terminal.

We celebrated Christmas late, but as Tom reminded us, Christmas is a season, not necessarily a particular day. Since Nana and Craig come to visit every year at this time, we've developed a few traditions, among them our annual family dinner at Olive Garden. (Another is our annual Sauerbraten dinner -- which will be on New Years Day this year, but which we're already beginning to cook tonight. Stand by!)

Of course I was snapping photos throughout the evening and when I reviewed them I thought, 'Dang, none of these turned out very well.'

But attitude is everything, right?

The pictures themselves might not be anything special -- but they're special in their, uh-hum... "specialness."

Here's a rare photo: Elisabeth and Aleks together. Until recently, they really weren't all that close. But in the last year or so, they've become really good friends.

This is Peter and his Uncle Craig, Tom's brother. Craig looks like his normal, pleasant self, but Peter... Geeeeze! Like a lot of guys, Peter just freezes when you point a camera at him and ask him to smile. Actually, he doesn't simply freeze; he goes oddly in the opposite direction and gets a look on his face that makes you wonder if you should call the authorities!

Just for balance, and to show you that Peter is anything but weird or scary, here's a picture taken of him earlier in the day when he went skiing at Mt. Baker:

See? Totally harmless!

Still not convinced? OK, fine!

I told you. Perfectly angelic. Be still, my maternal heart!

OK, so what's the next picture in the batch? I really have no idea. Well, lookie here!

No comment. (Is he holding his fork like a pitch fork, or is that just my imagination?!)

Elisabeth is Nana's first grandchild and the two of them have a special relationship. Nana has lots interesting stories to tell about her past. I'm trying to convince her to start a blog, but alas...! (Not really.)

Then Tom took the camera, stood up and pointed it down at me as I sipped my wine. If I were 25 years younger, I'd make this my Facebook profile shot simply because of the weird angle (because you know, all cool Facebook profile photos are shot from weird angles):

Then we handed the camera to the waitress and she took this shot of all of us, to document our 2008 Annual Olive Garden Post-Christmas Family Dinner. A good time was most definitely had by all us funny-faces!

Our next annual tradition will be our Family Sauerbraten Dinner on New Years Day. I'm positively salivating already!