O Tenenbaum!

(continuing on catching you up on our holiday season - in reverse chronology)

We meant to get ourselves a Christmas tree on the 11th, so we'd have it for a nice long while to pretty up the house. But, when that day came along, we were greeted with an onslaught of what the weathermen euphemistically refer to as "wintry mix": rain, sleet, snow all shifting back and forth. Hardly a nice day for tramping across a tree farm, Brynna in tow, trying to find the right tree to saw down and throw onto the car. Plus, it now is dark by around 4 pm, so trying to find one in the light of day during the ensuing week was impossible.

Which brought us to the 18th. Not quite as late as, say, Christmas Eve, but still a little sad. We were stymied in our attempts to find a cut-your-own tree farm. We had good luck last year, but it simply was not to be this time. Either because it was late in the season, or because the economics weren't worth it, or because they just were taking a break, we couldn't find a cut-your-own place nearer than an hour away that still had trees.

So, we ended up much closer to home: at the YMCA of all places, choosing from their pre-cut Balsams trucked in from Colebrook, NH (i.e., the north hinterlands). I actually have few qualms about pre-cut trees: I myself sold them as a Boy Scout for years and years. And we found quite a nice one, actually.

Seeing as Brynna is unlikely to ever be a Boy Scout herself, I guess it'll be up to me to teach her the proper way to tie a bowline (and fifteen other useful knots).

Brynna was also enthusiastic this year about helping to decorate the tree - particularly with her own hand-made decorations.

Snow Dog

We have a whole slew of blog posts to catch you up on, dear reader. And you might think that the Christmas holiday would be a perfect time to do that. I can make no promises that our lives will becomes less crazed enough in the coming weeks to get everything out to you, but we do have a few regarding Christmas. And, just because, we'll start at the present moment and work our way back.

We're currently in Connecticut with Hilary's folks. We were supposed to be back in New Hampshire by now. But, as with much of the East Coast, we got snowed in last night. An enforced, Act of God extension to the weekend isn't so terrible, particularly when it includes grandparents to watch after Brynna while Hilary and I get a much-needed lie-in.

And although Jasper might shy away from the door at first, he genuinely, truly, unabashedly loves the snow.

Merry Christmas

(image credits: Holly)

Ball Crawl

Were you to walk into our living room right now, or anytime in the last few months, you would see a cuboidal, fabric-walled tent sitting between our living and dining rooms. Look a little closer, and you would (or at least, any parent in this day and age would) be able to pick out the fuzzy red profile of Elmo from Sesame Street. And, if you were there at just the right time, you might hear some satisfied giggles and thumping feet coming from inside. This is Brynna's miniature ball crawl - a Christmas gift from her grandparents.


Brynna's favorite activity in here is to be hoisted in through the portal in the roof, then dance around inside while someone shakes the everloving out of the tent - causing a small blizzard of red, blue, and yellow plastic balls. Like a rodeo, the real measure of this activity is how long she can keep her feet before falling down. Eight seconds is pretty good. Second favorite is to have someone hold her by the ankles upside-down and get lowered in, head first, and pluck balls out like some sort of crane. That one is limited largely by the upper body strength of whoever's doing the lifting. I can manage about five lifts before my shoulders start to tremble. Her third favorite is to pass one or more balls out through the several port holes in one wall, then have a ball returned - first in this hole, no in this hole, this one, over here, now this one, etc. After five or six teases I usually let her have it, because I want her to keep enjoying her self.

My favorite activity? Shaking the tent makes Brynna's hair stand on end!

Pasta Followup

Thanks to some helpful commenters on this recent post, and a little improvisation, we had another successful go at the pasta-making Sunday evening.


This rack, believe it or not, used to sit in our microwave. I was generally under the belief that nothing metal belongs in a microwave, but this rack definitely belongs to it. I could delve into how the spacing and length of the bars probably makes it have very little resonance at 2.4 GHz, and thus picks up very little microwave energy, but I would quickly exhaust my expertise in the subject. Actually, I think I just did it right there.

This rack was just used for staging purposes, not drying. It would hold about half a batch's worth of noodles at a go - as much as I would try to boil at a time. Being able to keep them reasonably separated this way out in the open meant that they stayed quite separate in the water.

One thing this image doesn't show is the use of a spatula's wooden handle to help in transferring. As a pasta noodles came out of the machine, I'd drape them in half over the handle rather than my hand. The handle fits quite easily between the bars of the rack, you see, so laying the noodles out was pretty neat and easy. It also worked in reverse: I could lift the noodles back off the rack using the handle and use it to deposit them in the water.

All this makes me think of building a special-purpose pasta rack, strange a project as that might seem. I kinda like the notion of one similar to the metal rack - two arms with crossbars on which to drape the pasta - but would probably also have legs to make it freestanding. What would distinguish this as a pasta rack would be that the wooden dowels could be lifted in and out of the rack for easier loading and unloading. Pull an empty dowel from the rack, let the pasta drape over it as it comes off the machine, and set it on the rack to sit or dry, then later reverse those steps to deposit it into the water or storage container. Then again, some quick searching around reveals this design, which is pretty clever and could be done in an afternoon with some dowels, a drill, and some PVC pipe. Probably I could get the job done for less than the $25-$60 that comparable products would cost.

A Christmas Gathering

So, last week I decided that we should get our tree over the weekend...Sunday, to be exact, since I was on call Saturday. And then I thought that it would be fun to invite my fellow residents and their families over for a tree-trimming party.

Which is how we found ourselves zooming off toward the Christmas tree farm, half an hour away, exactly one hour and twenty minutes before the start of said party. Oops! May have cut things just a little too close there.

Despite being in a rush, it was a beautiful drive. It snowed on Saturday night, and the trees were still decorated with a layer of white frosting. We went through a state forest and up, up, up to the peak of a hill with spectacular views of the surrounding terrain. Then we jumped out of the car, strapped Brynna into her carrier, and set off into the fields with...oh...just about fifteen minutes to find the perfect tree!

There was a collection of already-cut trees leaning against a fence, and one of the farm workers told us that since we were looking for a 7 or 8-footer, we'd probably have more luck with one of those. But we hadn't driven all that way to pick up an already-cut tree, even if that would be a bit faster! So we took our saw and headed down the hill in the snow. The worker was right...there were many small trees, and many very tall trees, but not much in our ideal range.

So we huffed our way back up the hill, feeling very pressed for time, and resigned ourselves to taking one of the pre-cut trees. Then, just as we crested the hill, we realized that there was quite an attractive tree growing right next to the path! We circled it several times, squinting at it from various angles, before deciding that it was indeed a winner.



Alex the mountain man:


I was so impressed...I got all set to help Alex drag the tree up to the car, and he just picked it up and wandered off!


While Alex and a couple of the farm guys got the tree onto the roof of the car, Brynna and I took a look at the available wreaths. We settled on two basic ones, added two big red bows from another pile, and then we all buckled ourselves back into the car and zoomed back down the mountain, racing the clock so as not to be late for our own party!

Luckily, no one showed up at 4:30, as we arrived home at 4:34. Brynna and I went into the house to do some final tidying up (known in other cultures as "moving piles of stuff into rooms that are not going to be holding guests") while Alex wrangled the tree into the stand out on the porch. We did put our first guests to work chopping up veggies, and the hot cider wasn't quite hot until a few more folks had arrived, but no one seemed to mind.

Since I had only given people a few days' notice, we had no idea how many guests we would have. I originally scattered our food, with some in the kitchen and some in the living room. However, we turned out to have a large kiddie turnout, so the living room floor became the center of the action!


It was such a delight to watch all the kids playing together! Brynna was actually the second youngest, and she did a great job. She shared all her toys, including her wooden blocks...though she did run over and sit on her little ladybug chair a few times when it seemed like one of the other little girls had some interest in it.

And, yes, that is Jasper in the middle of the action! We could hardly believe our eyes. We were sure that we'd eventually have to put him upstairs, but after a little initial barking and lots of hiding under the table, he ventured out to explore the world of toddler-and-dog-level-food, and ended up quite happily receiving pats from the guests, particularly the kids. Never in a million years, even last Christmas, would I have thought that Jasper would be brave enough to do that!

With the help of some extra hands, we also got the tree decorated! We have a mixture of white lights and colored lights, because that's what I could find in the boxes. We put all the soft and unbreakable ornaments at the bottom, and Brynna has been having a blast playing with them.


All in all, a lovely time. We're looking forward to our first New Hampshire Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Sorry if the image is a bit blurry - not sure why. Merry Christmas, everybody! After seeing everybody in Vieques, it's just Hilary and I for Christmas. Jasper's back, too, back from doggie camp.

We woke up today have waffles for breakfast (it's not quite like my dad's cinnamon rolls, but it'll do in a pinch). We've been snacking on cookies we've gotten as gifts since then. This evening, we're having a repeat of Thanksgiving dinner: tofurkey, green bean casserole, stuffing, squash with wild rice, and apple pie!