Christmas at Jessica and Gordon's (NY, NY, Dec 1979)

We visited Jessica and Gordon in their apartment in Murray Hill.


My parents came with us.



Note the little upright piano (it was a Baldwin Spinet), before Gordon and Jessica gave it to us.





I guess this is when I scored the blue bathrobe I'm seen in elsewhere in this blog.

Christmas 1979 - Part 2 of 2 (Darien, CT, Dec 1979)

I'm just deducing from Davey's age and haircut that this first picture is Christmas 1979. Both our kids were a little leery of this Santa thing when he was in the flesh. And they hadn't even seen Bad Santa.



This has to be Dan. He would have been a little over 3 months old at Christmas, 1979, and that's when this tree is from.

Christmas 1979 - Part 1 of 2 (Darien, CT, Dec 1979)

The Christmases in Darien, where we lived from Summer 1979 to Summer 1983, are a little hard to sort out, but I think I have them figured correctly (careful inspection of tree and ornament placement, etc.).

Our house in Darien was broken into not long after we moved in, and our TVs (and a few other things) were stolen. You can see a small b&w TV, that I think had been decommissioned, on the TV stand, replacing the color TV that we inherited from Elizabeth's grandmother when she died a few years before.





The first appearance of the red cardinal tree-topper!

Christmas 1978 - Part 3 of 3 (Teaneck, NJ, Dec 1978)

Note the similarity of the first picture to the baking picture from Christmas 1976. Different haircut, though. And a different TV.

Turkey before...

...turkey after. Paul, with his surgical experience, usually got saddled with the carving, which he was way better at than anyone else.

One more shot of the loot.




I posted this picture before (on Mother's Day), but this is where it came from. See that front door? You can see that there's a storm door with a glass panel behind it. Once, carrying Davey in the car seat in front of me on our way to the car, I walked right into that panel as if it weren't there, shattering glass violently in all directions. Good thing he was in a car seat. (Yes, some of us used car seats even then.)

Christmas 1976 - Part 2 of 2 (Teaneck, NJ, Dec 1976)

Jessica and Betty.


And Jessica's not-yet husband, Gordon, who I believe we met that day. I recall that we had given them very careful directions about how to get to our house by public transportation (it was just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan, where they lived). But they showed up in a hired car, and the driver lurked outside for the hours of their visit. We were duly impressed! (Elizabeth says Jessica was very embarrassed.)


With Sarah and Calico.

Jessica and Gordon (NY, NY, about 1980)

Elizabeth's mother, Jessica, and her husband Gordon, in their Murray Hill apartment.