Really wonderful day… Just the four of us here. Diane and I did scoot out in the morning for an early morning grocery run…

But then we basically hung around the house the entire day.

I call it wrap day because we wrapped presents, we made spring roll wit rice wrappers and we listened to really bad rap Christmas music… All in a single day.

Early afternoon the four of us took a hike down by the river sure with the dogs… We wanted to see what it happened after the flood. It was a thin skin of ice everywhere… It was like glass to walk through it. We had a lot of fun playing with it

We visited the neighbors horse

We had both Sam lanterns burning all day… Kind of a Christmas time tradition for us

Another Christmas time tradition is that we decorate a tree in the woods for the animals… There’s a bunch of or baked goods drying with string of tight on. I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years

For dinner we decided to do spring rolls… Diane had a bunch of the rice paper wraps somewhere in the house are we all set to work

We also chose to sample Gabe sake that he brewed back in June. It’s been sitting there aging ever cents. It was…… Drinkable. Actually pretty good… It really strong.

15-year-old chai new just What was going on.. As we sat down to dinner she went out and picked out her stocking off of the stairs As she does every year to see what was inside… Too early for that yet girl !

Around nine we all climbed in the car and drove up to the catamount trail. We hiked up to the same tree we always decorate and through 84 different string that food bits onto the tree. Will come back in a couple of weeks and clean up the string. It’s always all gone by then . It was a cool crisp night 19° and a full moon… Just enough snow to make it beautiful.

We had Sambuca, chocolate peppermint milk and some lebkuchen from my friend Colja in Germany

As a final treat for the day… Diane found the book we used to read when the kids were very young about decorating the tree in the woods… I’m not sure it was the thing that inspired us but we were always read it when the boys were little. We read it for old time sake and looked at the pictures… I could’ve recited it

OK… Time for bed. Tomorrow we’re gonna do our Christmas because Max has to go back on the 25th

Time for my long winters nap

Night All , night Sam

– me

Beautifully slow day today. I finished up a A few things and prep for Xmas… And just hang around the house. It was raining like crazy over night and we woke up to a near flood.

few

Just before eight Diane and I went to Stone corral to meet up with the boys. Red hot Juba Was playing in the place was packed. We actually had to wait to get in because they were at capacity. Red hat you but is a family favorite and our friend Erick… Who is all of the boys English teacher… Plays lead guitar… The other guys are teachers too. Just about the whole town was there so it was really fun catching up with everybody

We all came home and all fell asleep on the couch… Luckily I woke up soon enough to blog and head up to bed

More tomorrow

Night all, nights Sam.

-me

Another spontaneous party at the house. This one in honor of the solstice. It’s the longest night .. and also one of the warmest. It was 55 degrees when I came up to bed? That’s what it’s like in the summer!

As the party began, gabe gave me this great Christmas sweatshirt. It’s a chemis-tree . An Xmas tree made out of the elements. It’s wonderfully geeky !

Another great surprise is our friends COLIN dropped by with his new ambulance! He just naught it off IV UVM rescue . It’s actually the one he trained in as an EMT. He’s gonna drive it down to Houston where he and brother billy are gonna make it into the Jambulance . A mobile emergency music art car

Nice night with lots of friends and lots of pizza !

Time for bed. I have to make best use of this longest night !

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

Only 4 hours of sleep last night due to a mix of work and recreational programming. For someone used to perpetual sleep deprivation I was pretty knakered

max showed up around 10 so we’re all together 🙂

I was hoping to take today off but I ended up being on calls from 9-5 .

Downstairs I could smell something yummy cooking . Our oven is out of comm until tomorrow so Diane had to get creative for Xmas cookies. She had her pizelle press out. She made pizelles just like her grandmother from Italy used to make.

Then she made stroopwaffles by sticking two pizelles together with Carmel .

Finally she wrapped the hot pizelles around metal forms and made canollis. She filled them with ricotta and whipped cream

Yum !

Late night we went to silo RAS for holiday sushi

We came home and finished decorating the tree . As always we used sam’s Red Bull cans and the garlands we made from them to finish it off. It’s nice to have his stuff around us

Ok time for sleep. More tomorrow

Nite all, nite Sam

-me