Christmas Weekend

A Christmas pile.

Favorite Christmas message.

Christmas = short sleeves and playing in the backyard.

BAH! handling skills

'HAT!'

Clem only slept an hour before we headed over to the Browns' for dinner. We were expecting a clem-amity or clem-tastrophy or clem-pocalypse.

Here Luke is wearing his new t-shirt with Hitchens' razor: What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

(Josie's always in a good mood).

But Clem did great. Helping make the gravy.

Rick's famous arugula (picked from the garden hours before)-turnip-pine nut-clementine salad.

note to Mom: hearts and pines!

Eating only mashed potatoes. And gingersnaps. And raspberries.

Carolyn and Doris gave us homegrown grapefruit and Meyer lemons with the leaves attached aren't you jealoussssssssssss?

Working off Xmas dinner with planks.

Remembered this Utility Canvas quilt I bought on serious sale on sundancecatalog.com and brought it out of the linen closet. The dark blue exactly matches Josie's eyes.

This blanket is sturdy and cute and now I'm looking over all the beautiful patterns... Never mind, forget I mentioned anything about it because this is going to be my new go-to gift ... Who doesn't need a meant-to-get-dirty still-cute blanket for their car or house?

The shadow of the phone - this is how this kid lives her life

Weekend cooking projects: baked apricot French toast (apricots make me think of my mom the birthday girl) and shakshuka and buffalo drumsticks with charred romaine from Sheet Pan Suppers; triple chocolate cookies; pork tenderloin with storebought cranberry pomegranate jalapeno sauce. I ran two miles on Saturday so it evens out.

I put Clem in her high chair sans tray and had her dump the ingredients in the mixing bowl for these cookies. I'm trying to do more hands-on activities, though she would have preferred hands-in, hands-to-mouth, hands-to-hair baking. Meanwhile, Josie smiled from her perch in the bumbo.

Media: Amazon's Transparent, Jenny Lewis (I listened to her album Rabbit Fur Coat a lot when it came out and I thought deeply about where I was then, where I am now, and how much I miss my friend Amanda), Elliott Smith (ugh, depressing), Steely Dan (not a Dan fan), 2/3 of Boyhood until we got to the part where teenagers were talking about Life and there's nothing more annoying than a teenager talking about Life; The Trip to Italy (hilarious).

Sunday night - date night! We finally went to a Spurs game. We ate jalapeno grilled cheeses and shared a Coors Light and laughed a lot and Los Spurs won. Perfecto!

Faux fur vest, por supuesto.

 Hope you had a wonderful holiday!