One of the remarkable, and remarkably frustrating, things about Amazon.com is how there doesn't seem to be any phone numbers posted.  For a company that size, doing that much business, surely it's got phone numbers?

Yes it does, AAMOF, and here they are, compliments of another blogger:

US Customer Service
Phone toll-free in the US and Canada: (800) 201-7575
Phone from outside the US and Canada: (206) 346-2992 or (206)-266-2992
Another direct line: (206) 266-2335

Snail mail to customer service
Amazon.com, Inc.
Customer Service
PO Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226

Canadian Customer Service
Phone 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time, 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Pacific: (877)-586-3230

Corporate Offices, Seattle
(206) 622-2335

Tonight was the Ivy family Christmas gathering over at Kirstin and Matt's house, where we opened presents with Alex, Beth and Hannah, thanks to modern technology, then enjoyed lasagna, salad and cheesecake.  The first gift to be opened was by our lovely hostess, from her husband:

It's a very fancy wine bottle opener.  Kirstin was quite pleased.  ;^)

Here's the tree before the kids got after it:

Don and Dmitry, waiting for the wireless connection to come on:

Jessica and Jason:

Bryson loved the appetizers:

Once the projector got set up, here came the kids, doing what kids do when such an opportunity presents itself:

Finally, though....there he was!

Everyone was delighted to see Alex, Beth and Hannah:

When Bethie gets into opening gifts, she really gets into it:

Next was Benjamin:

The image was fine on the wall, but one could also look at the computer:

I love this picture of darling Benjamin showing Alex and Beth one of his presents:

After dinner, Benjamin and Jonathan played some hard-fought Memory:

It was a grand Christmas.  Which was made even grander when Alex and Beth announced the impending arrival of grandchild #7!  

And that was the best gift of all.  

Why do I call them the Jingle Bell Brigade?  Because they burst spontaneously into song (and to think people say musicals aren't true to life!), singing "Jingle Bells" over and over and over and..... 

Here they began singing "Silent Night" only fizzled out due to having forgotten the words; I picked up the slack, for Meredith - over on the far left - was signing it:

When I think how many crafty things I'd prepared for them to do, I could just scream.  The only one they were really interested in was the faux-gingerbread house activity, generously provided by Elaine, and the main thing they liked about it was the glitter glue pens I provided.  Hadn't actually planned upon them using those on the houses, but immediately small hands reached for them.

After working on the houses and singing, they chose to adjourn to the living room to play and hang out.  Memory is always a popular past-time with this crew:

I gathered them together for a group photo, which they agreed to cooperate with so long as they were allowed to pull one of these:

Here's the real photo, duded up a trifle:

Heartwarming times! 

Here's a link to a video from yesterday's annual Tuba Christmas concert.

Maybe Alex'll be able to play in it again next year!

Elf yourself!

HT: Kelly, aka: Badgermum 

And I'm pretty sure I survived it. 

Not positive, mind....the jury's still out....but still, fairly confidant. 

The gala occasion - such as it was - began yesterday, when Jessica dropped Brianna off about 1:45.  She taught me to play the dreidel game (which is a darn good game, too...no wonder it's stayed popular all these years), and I taught her how to spin a top.

Amazing how kids today cannot manage a simple task such as spinning a top (which is all a dreidel is, of course).  Being the geezerette I am it gave me no trouble at all, and I set it merrily spinning on the dining room table time after time.  After a fair amount of practice Brianna finally began to get the hang of it.

About 4 p.m. Bethany showed up, having been to the Children's Museum for a party:



Should have seen me trying to get that paint off in the bathtub later.  After getting the girls to bed, Alex called to see about working on the webcam for Sunday evening, so they were permitted to get back up to say hello to their uncle:







Last night we were using Yahoo! Messenger as the webcam program and except for disconnecting every minute or so it worked pretty well.  Not smooth, but still...we managed.  Got to see precious Hannah and Beth, too!  

At 10 a.m. Elaine dropped Meredith off, and away we went to University Village (or whatever it's called).  First stop was the Barnes and Noble:



While Meredith searched for a present for Margaret, I spotted the other two settled down to take advantage of their surroundings:




After the book store we stopped into to poke around The Pottery Barn, then Williams-Sonoma and The Gap.  What the girls most enjoyed, though, was just being together on a gorgeous day:



After this we went to have lunch - courtesy of Elaine, thanks so much, E-B! - at Café Express, where it was baked potatoes all around:



On Saturday is the second part of the Christmas activities, when the above plus two of their siblings (Margaret and Benjamin) will come over for a bit for a Christmas craft party.  Guess I'd better really get to work deciding what they'll do, exactly. 

He found this at Crossroads:

Philip Jenkins in his book, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South, writes,

"Two bishops were participating in a Bible study, one an African
Anglican, the other a U. S. Episcopalian. As the hours went by, tempers
frayed as the African expressed his confidence in the clear words of
scripture, while the American stressed the need to interpret the Bible
in the light of modern scholarship and contemporary mores. Eventually,
the African bishop asked in exasperation,

If you don't believe the scripture, why did you bring it to us in the first place?