A visit with Santa

The River School had its Christmas pageant Thursday night and Santa was there! Our friend Matt Poole (WeiWei's dad) was the official photographer for the event and snapped this of the girls.

The rest of the evening is something of a blur puncuated by the memory of young Luke, stepping to the front of the stage to perform his solo, only to projectile vomit about 15 feet (I am NOT kidding) across the room. It really got bad when several of the other kids, upon seeing this, began to gag themselves, in sympathy. They don't put THAT in the parenting manual, my friends.

Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season!

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Now if only it wasn't 71 degrees outside! Where the heck is that snow anyway? There's just something wrong with stepping out in flip flops ten days before Christmas.

If you saw a pig fly by your window recently it might be because I relented and let Vince and the girls put up the Christmas tree early. Generally I'm a stickler for waiting until the Sunday before Christmas but this year I couldn't take the noise and told them to go ahead. As a result we've had a fully loaded tree up for a whole week (and, as I knew would happen, the novelty has worn off already for the younger members of the household).

At any rate, they're still enthralled with the Advent Calendar, which in an improbably heathen twist, contains a note from Santa every day. Yes folks, that whirring noise you hear is my sainted mother spinning in her urn at the thought of a lovely Christian tradition being co-opted by the pagans. JiaJia refers to the notes as "fortunes" since her total experience at finding something unexpected inside something else is based on fortune cookies. I guess I need to expand her educational horizons a bit.

Today I start my annual cookie baking marathon, which has greatly increased in scope this year. I have to go to the office on Wednesday to deliver 17 (!) bags of cookies to various coworkers. I'm afraid I set a precedent over the summer when I started baking for our weekly executive briefings because now I can't go to the office in Virginia without being collared by various and sundry people (including the big boss) wanting to know if I've brought goodies with me. Not that I mind, of course, since I'd rather be baking than doing just about anything else.

Speaking of which, I've finally got my other blog going again so come visit me there if you'd like - http://www.myburntofferings.blogspot.com/. Its still under construction as far as its appearance but I'm excited because I've been invited to link to a large food community on the web. In other food related news, my friend the Sneaky Chef (otherwise known as Missy Chase Lapine), is using a quote from me in her new book. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm livin' the dream...

We're planning a quiet but merry Christmas here at the Wolfe Den. Hope yours is equally wonderful!