It was Christmas week and we weren't celebrating, so we recorded what we did including the long wait in the traffic jam and the continuing progress of the penny project. We also recorded the New Year's Eve gathering and the results of Suzanne's knitting binge.

The pennies were one of the central themes of this holiday season. We had lots of them and were sorting them first by decade and then by year. Images such as these represent our progress and are meant to show the different distributions of pennies from different sources. In capsule summary, Sovereign Bank on Nassau Street (image to follow) gave the worst pennies. They had lots of Canadian pennies and their rolls often had only 49 pennies. Fleet Bank on Nassau Street did an honorable job -- many fewer Canadian pennies, no rolls were short and the pennies had a respectable, if boring, distribution. The PNC Bank I went to with DrLen was the most interesting of all. Some of the rolls were just shiny new pennies. But, others came with character. You could read the person's account number on the side of the roll and feel like they were sharing a part of their life with you.

In the days before Xmas, I made the mistake of journeying out to Sam's Club and getting caught in an horrendous traffic jam. Fortunately, Jane was with me at the time and reminded me that I had the camera and so could record what it was that I was seeing inside the car and out and around the lot. If you had been here with us, these were the scenes you would have seen from my vantage point

until this sign told us to follow this truck home so that we could see the pennies once more and feel like our life was OK.

Xmas eve, The Gespass'es from Pittsburgh came to visit and we lit a fire though we could not interest them in the penny project

Then it was back to Princeton life and Andy came by to help Sarah find something in the refrigirator as Rosie, Kaylen and Jane admired Kaylen's new cell phone that lights up but is not immune to other problems as we would later learn in many excursions. The next day, Suzanne came home so we recorded the snowfall before Ben and I headed out to PJ's where the menu was as always and Ben's burger looked as good as my buttermilks for a fine meal that made him quite happy so that we could march on and see Sarah and her gang at the toy store.

On Friday, as the girls sat on the couch Melissa came to visit and chat though Ben thought there was too much chatting and too many people sitting around to even admire my feet as the conversation continued and Kaylen arrived so that I made this sandwich for Ben and once fueled up, he went back to his playing and didn't seem to mind the conversation as we made our way to Melissa's cookies and Jane and Kaylen finished their games. Melissa posed for the obligatory photos then with Josephine and Suzanne as Kaylen and Jane got ready to go on our excursion which began (as do all good excursions) at the gas pump. Driving further on, we ran into Matt and Ned playing hoops in a photo that brought forth Ned's Dad as a fan of this sight. After making our way to the video store we followed this truck on our fresh tank of gas and admired the bumper sticker as we went into the phone store and brought the broken phone to this gentleman who could fix one but not the other.

We followed this car home where Willa one twin Martha and Jane were waiting for us as Martha drank her tea and the other twin emerged to her mother's delight as the orange peals accumulated. Before their departure we caught another picture and one of Jane before noticing Willa's Bling Bling shirt and going back to the penny sorting project where the towers were getting too big for stability even as we moved new distributions into the ever extending chain of pennies we had sorted. We should have known that Suzanne's arrival home gathering of the garbage can and to the amazement of Ben cleaning of her car would not bode well for the towers some of which collapsed leaving this mess to be cleaned up and resorted with these displaced pennies into the big histogram.

The next thing we knew, it was New Year's Eve. The Kramer brought the champagne and we added the hors de ouveres to Sarah's amusement as Suzanne tried on her scarf and let the fabric be admired. Next course came as the chili and peanut sauce got ready fro the chili (vegetarian, of course) to find some light and get warm enough to take it's place with the other foods as the presents waited for the appropriate moment and more food

seemed to appear so that we could admire the poster that Claire gave Sarah for Hannukah.

Suzanne continued to model scarves as did Sarah and then the Justs arrived and felt the scarves until Lizzie warmed the new year by trying one on.