I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season, and for those of you so inclined, I hope today was as blessed and merry a Christmas as ours was.

For the first time, we hosted the festivities at our house, celebrating with my wife's family and breaking out the good china and family-heirloom silver. The food was perfect: my turkey and gravy were just right and my wife made some incredible chocolate-chocolate chip mini-Bundt cakes with hot fudge sauce and raspberries for dessert. (For big occasions, I'm the chef; she's the baker). The kids behaved well, and we played games most of the afternoon.

Best surprise present? My wife proving to me that she reads this blog. (She got me Lileks' Interior Desecrations and the complete Buck Rogers in the 25th Century series on DVD).

Feliz Navidad, y'all.

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My wife and I went to a "Holiday" dinner with a group of my clients tonight, leaving the kids at home with a babysitter.

When I got home, I found that my second son had left something for me on the kitchen table:

In case you can't see it clearly, the note reads: "Try to fix. Don't throw away." I got a big smile out of this, since it reflects such a simple, childlike faith that I can fix anything. Too bad that's not the case...

Posted by: JohnL at 11:03 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Like Michele (and unlike Reactionary Scrooge Robert), I like adding some color to my Christmas light displays:

I finally settled on this format last year, when I measured the lengths of the sidewalk borders, went to the local Elliott's Hardware store, and cut a custom length of C-9 socket cord. I then got a few boxes of red, green, and white C-9 bulbs, some sturdy metal stakes, and a few hours of labor later, my sidewalks were done. This year, it took about 2 hours to do everything -- the Yaupon trees are strung with basic small mixed lights (white and red or red and green) and I have everything run to switched outlets, so I can turn them on or off with the flick of a switch in the house.

I like Rob, so I think I'll get him a really nice Christmas present this year. What do you think about this? Maybe this, too?

Posted by: JohnL at 09:19 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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