HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND MERRY CHRISTMAS. Lita and I are leaving for San Miguel de Allende, Mexico where we will spend Christmas. Here are a few photos from past Christmas days at my family home in Anacortes, Washington.

Left to right: me, mother and my sister Phyllis about 1943

My Italian grandfather Nicola Luvera with me. I got a tool set for Christmas that year and he is showing me how to use some of the tools. Circa 1941

The ultimate gift. A cowboy outfit with a cap gun to go with it. What could be better then that for a Christmas gift?

This isn’t a Christmas picture, but it shows Lita in front of her family’s Gateway Resort, about 1957, at the entrance to Mount Raineer where she grew up as a child. The totem poles in the background are authentic. The place featured log cabins and a restaurant with food her mother Elizabeth (Betty) Barnett cooked. The whole family was involved, Hollis, her brother and her sisters Barbara and Monica. Her father, Hollis was the manager the person people like to stop to talk with.