This, That, And The Other Thing

Okay, I'm beginning to think that it is my big frying pan that is making all my dinners look Pinterest-y lately:

Croatian chicken, or some such thing

Who knew that was all it took?

We did a surprising thing today. I mean, it may not seem surprising to most people, it being December and all, that we bought a Christmas tree. But, you see, we rarely buy a tree before the 19th or 20th of December, for a bunch of reasons. One, I have my whole I'm-not-worrying-about-Christmas-until-a-week-before routine. And usually there's Chanukah to take care of first, you know.

But somehow, this year, we got all wild and crazy and Larry and Theo and Susie went out and picked up a tree at Home Depot today.

No lights, yet - the branches need to relax first.

It's a nice one, I think. Of course, this means I have an entire 2 extra weeks to worry about its burning the house down, so I'm not sure we'll repeat this next year.

Christmas knitting is proceeding apace. I'm working on a delicious cowl right now, in a delicious shade of orange. Then there are fingerless mitts that I had half done before I realized they were too big for Rachel - those will have to be restarted one of these days. Another couple of pairs of mitts are done, minus the thumbs. A couple of hats have been promised, but they are merely figments of my imagination at this point.

Actually, the knitting isn't exactly proceeding apace, now that I think about it.

Anna came back from her overseas sojourn (over a year working in Israel) this past Sunday. Of course, she's leaving at the end of the month for ANOTHER overseas sojourn (Tunisia, this time - that girl gets around), so we're just trying to enjoy her while we can. I'm pretty sure she's already sick of us, but she's putting up a good front. She even baked us banana bread the other morning, which for some reason got me all choked up. I mean, not literally - it was very good banana bread. But it made me think of all the times I had baked for her and her siblings, and wow, here she was baking for me, and okay, I'm just a little maudlin in my encroaching old age, all right?

Susie's been busy making ornaments:

Crayons and a hair dryer - that's the secret.

We were both surprised this project worked, because she got the idea from Pinterest and, well, our house is where Pinterest goes to die, quite frankly. But, hey, these look pretty good, IMO.

Last week Larry and I took Susie to see the annual free dress rehearsal of A Christmas Carol. Susie and I have gone the past 3 years, but this was the first time Larry could make it, too. It still feels weird to be going somewhere with 2 parents plus only one child, after all these years of dragging a bunch of kids with us, but we're getting used to the fact that Susie has, for all intents and purposes, become an only child.

We stopped at the potato chip factory on the way down, and bought way too many potato chips (as is our wont), but we dropped some of them off with Brian (whose college is near the factory), so that's okay. He needs to keep up his strength for finals, right? Of course.

Unlike moi - I really shouldn't be eating these things. Having 4 pounds of potato chips sitting in my kitchen may not be the wisest way to kick off Christmas-cookie season, come to think of it...