Christmas Highlights

Once again, we were lucky to have the kids home for Christmas. I definitely hadn't been in the shopping mood, but the spirit was still there. At the last minute I did some quick hunting, with mixed results, but I did have a few items. When Debra and her Jonathan came over and Thomas woke up, I pulled out my santa's sack,a big red bag I'd acquired a few years earlier and handed out my gifts. "Because reducing my carbon footprint is so important to me," I claimed with a straight face, "I've elected to do without wrapping paper." That got a chuckle, and no one seemed too upset with having the store boxes unadorned with instantly shredded paper.

I got a few items; more than I'd hoped for, which was nothing in particular. Jonathan, who had given me a toy robot spider last year, gave me a Star Wars toy, "The Force Trainer". It's a simple brain-wave detector that you use to raise and lower a ball in a wind column. It's cute and several of us had fun sitting silently in the chair and making the ball move as desired by just thinking the right way. Since there's no real instruction other than to "concentrate", it has a little learning curve.

Debra got another popular gift, a "Spinmarshmallow". It's a motorized fork to spin a marshmallow as you hold it over the glowing coals in the fireplace. It did a nice job producing evenly browned, toasted treats. It was also a great excuse to sit up close to the warm fire on a cold day.

We had a nice ham for dinner, with enough people to fill the chairs, and three dogs begging under the table. The talk was recipes and memories of previous years. Not a harsh word all day.

And I still have a whole pumpkin pie left. I wish you all have as wonderful a Christmas.