Sanguine

Christmas eve was wonderful. We went over to the Smith's for their annual dinner party. I think Steph's husband, Phillip, is her new best friend. (See photo, where they were outside with a Coleman lantern discovering "trees".)

Afterward we popped over to see Steve, who was alone at home, and Ro ran about, fascinated by the last-minute-strewn-about Christmas wrapping and attempting to commandeer an entire bag of stick-on bows. We stopped her, telling her they were Marissa's, but I said, "I bet, if Marissa was here, she'd let you have ONE. So I will let you have ONE because I know Marissa likes you." So I gave her a blue one, and because stick-on bows are vaguely star shaped, Ro kept insisting it was a "'TAR!" - And then I showed her that they were sticky, and she spent the next twenty minutes saying "'TICKY 'TAR! 'TICKY 'TAR!"




So Christmas went well, toned down, pajamas until after five PM, just the way it ought to be. Ro woke up to her piano and a basket of toys which consisted of all that wooden food leftover from her birthday from Alyssa & Cairenn, (which she's finally learned to respect and not chew on,) a copy of Where the Wild Things Are from Grandma Lettie, her baby in its sling from me, new crayons and paints and a little drawstring bag with a kit for endangered species finger puppets inside. And then after all of that was a great big box of things from Nana and Papa, the majority of which was books and wonderful art supplies, both of which are always welcome, of course.


Ro was immediately drawn to the piano, which is what I expected, and we enjoyed several empassioned Beethoven-esque Sonatas over the course of the day. Myself, I got Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope on audiobook from Steve, a new pair of sunglasses and a black sweater from myself, and a box of home-made rose dark chocolate truffles and a book of poetry from the Indie music scene from Sasha and Marissa.




I gave Zack his present early- he was equally thrilled and annoyed by his Pancake Puff Pan (he's been obsessed with this thing for months.) Reason for the annoyance? I insisted at ONCE that he get up and make us breakfast with it! So we had cinnamon pancake puffs and maple bacon and good-good Sumatra coffee for breakfast and then we lazed around all day, watching The Matrix (Zack's gift-to-the-house this year was the entire Matrix franchise on Blu-Ray) and Christmas shows on Create while Ro played with her toys.

Steve and Jared were both there for dinner. I made an Alton Brown ham, which involves, amazingly, Dr. Pepper, brown mustard and crushed gingersnap cookies. I made huge beautiful sweet potatoes with maple sour cream, there were pumpernickel rolls with honey butter, crispy wonton potstickers stuffed with cashews, golden raisins and cranberries which had been cooked in apple liquor, fresh green beans roasted in lemon and garlic (...which were bitter because my garlic was older than I thought,) and lemon-vinegar-buttery brussels sprouts (...which were bitter... because they were bitter.)


There were all sorts of brownies and cookies floating around for dessert, and more people started turning up after dinner. We all- though I needed coercing as I was exhausted- watched the Muppet Christmas Carol and enjoyed a quiet evening gathered around the TV with some wine and egg nog. I admit that I miss my family very much at this time of the year, but with all these good friends I have to fill my house up with, I suppose it's a lot easier to cope with the idea of being "alone" ... because I'm not. =)

It was, all in all, a very cozy, intimate and just plain nice Christmas.