The Christmas Spirit

As most of you know, this Christmas didn't promise to be all that wonderful and I was sort of dreading the holidays -- all that forced joviality and focus on churning out seasonal wonderfulness. It seemed no matter how "frugal" the project, it entailed running to the store and buying something and we choose our expenses very carefully these days.

This year at some point I realized that our spirit was about the only thing we could always afford to ... um ... decorate. So that has been our focus.

I say this because Heir 2, having read my blog, came to me and said he felt readers were getting the wrong idea about the atmosphere around here. Because, in spite of the constant disasters that have been cropping up on a regular basis*, we're really a pretty jolly bunch for the most part.

Lately the focus has been on cookie baking and, fortunately, Heir 2 and Caisee have been on hand to help out in the decorating department. I'm afraid by the time it comes to the decorative cookies, the most I can muster in the way of artistic design amounts to shaking one color on every cookie.




We've been having pretty regular game nights, even on weekdays. Heir 2 and I love board games. Dirtman and Heir 1 -- too much focus required. So I made it a contingency that no one was allowed to eat Christmas cookies unless they play a game. Somehow this helped Dirtman's focus. Heir 1 -- not so much. But he's near by in the living room (this is a small house -- everywhere is near by) and pops in now and again and I even deign to give him a cookie.


And we attended Heir 2's Christmas ("Holiday") concert.

Guess which one is Heir 2...
Yeah, that's him with the Santa hat.
A true Linguini, through and through

*Today's disaster du jour is that Heir 1 hit a deer -- with his vehicle, I mean. He's fine. The deer? Not so much. His truck? Driveable...sigh.