i love christmas

happy new year, everyone!

we had a really wonderful, really relaxed christmas in our new house with my sister and her partner visiting for a week from san francisco. we barely left the house the entire week apart from an afternoon of sledding (very fun, i laughed so hard i peed my pants) and a meal out at our local indian restaurant. mostly, we watched a ton of movies (we had bad-movie-marathon) and ate huge numbers of ritter sport chocolate bars (dark chocolate with hazelnut is my favorite but i'll eat any of them).

Nile seemed to really enjoy his first christmas experience, particulary the mess of wrapping paper and ribbon spread across the living room after we'd opened presents. he spent hours rolling around in it and trying to eat it. he got really spoiled with tons of cute new outfits from the aunties and a set of baby sign language dvds. having a baby makes christmas seem so much more fun and meaningful somehow.

i cooked a walnut loaf for christmas dinner (we're vegetarians and i was growing tired of Tofurkey every holiday meal, so i thought i'd experiment). i served it with carmelized onion gravy (a yummy moosewood recipe) and all the trimmings and it was pretty tasty.

i was so excited by the spirit of christmas that we even unearthed the ice cream maker, which has been gathering dust in the basement since i bought it on sale at william sonoma 2 years ago, and made homemade ginger ice cream. we served it with pumpkin pie, it was delicious!

a good time was had by all.

happy new year!
may 2006 be full of happy babies and happy families.