Whit and Jim: Through Christmas, with Tutu and Papa

On Sunday, December 22, Jim worked really hard to get our lights up.

He also decided to make a new cookie recipe he found in one of his Sunset magazines. He has a lot of confidence in the kitchen and took some liberties. Instead of rolling the dough into a log, refrigerating it, and then slicing and baking it, he refrigerated the whole bowl of dough. It became rock-hard, and breaking bits off to form traditional dough balls was a real task that for some reason fell to me. The cookies baked up flat as pancakes. Then Jim decided to pile them on top of one another on a plate straight out of the oven rather than let them cool on a rack, so they all stuck together in a single mass. We began calling it a "loaf."

While presentation was lacking, the loaf tasted fine, and it got eaten. After lunch the next day, it looked like this:

And then it was gone.

Pod tried to resist, but Jim sucked him into the giant puzzle. The first night, Pod tried to pretend he wasn't really doing it, so he never sat down. He just stood and bent and made his back hurt bad. Finally he gave in, took a seat, and spent many hours like this:

Meanwhile Tutu worked by flashlight on one she'd been doing with Wren (with really, really tiny pieces).

We played Dominoes. The girls got so into it that they continued the next day, and Bear couldn't tear herself away for tooth brushing.

I wanted to do gingerbread houses with Tutu but was too lazy to build our own as Tutu does. We grabbed three kits from Costco instead. Tutu and I had a heck of a time putting them together and getting them to stay up. It was rather hilarious. We did manage to end up with three upright houses, though, so that was a big win.

Wren turned Elvis on and began dancing with Ever's school photo. Her moves changed when I found her and started videotaping, but this still gives an idea. Sorry about my laugh.

Tutu did Christmas crafting with the girls, which they loved.

I made a white chocolate lemon cheesecake for the third time. The first time I made it, the crust looked a little funny, but it was absolutely amazing. The second time I made it, I undercooked it a little, so the cheesecake wasn't as firm as I wanted it to be. This time, I kept cooking it and cooking it, on account of the fear of underbaking, and it turned out so hideously brown and cracked and ugly. It still tasted OK, but seriously - since when is cheesecake so hard? I always thought it was easy, but apparently I am now incapable.

Christmas Eve we sang Christmas carols and read The Happy Prince (so wonderful to have Tutu here to read it!). We had already read the Bible passages about Jesus's birth during the week, thanks to the Come, Follow Me program, so we didn't reread that on Christmas Eve.

We had a modest Christmas as far as gifts go. Nothing huge. No trampoline or anything to put together until 2:00 A.M., so that was nice. We went down to start the festivities around 7:00 A.M.

Waffles are always a highlight. Can't beat Nutella Belgians.

We went for a walk / golf ball hunt after lunch. We ran into the Subrebosts, who were heading out for the same purpose with friends of theirs (Rafi's friend, Alexander, and his dad).

Because he loves the girls, Jim tried to get into the water to find balls in there. He quickly discovered it got deep immediately, and his attempt was unsuccessful.

It was a lovely afternoon.

Some people looked harder than others. Pod was all in. We discovered a new talent of his. He went way into the brush and went home with a lot of golf balls.