Saturday, Dec. 26, 2009 - 8:49 a.m.

Of course, once they arrived and all that could be done had been done, it was very nice. J convinced his mother to remove most of the decorations she had brought for us, which she agreed to gracefully. The only fails were that the roast beef, despite being only 3 lbs and in the crockpot on low for 8 hours, wasn't cooked in time for dinner. And J doesn't care for ham, so he didn't get meat at dinner. Also, the glaze sort of slid off the ham into a pool at the bottom, rather than becoming brown and crusty in situ. Don't understand what happened there. But other than that, not too bad. The buche de noel (the mighty buche!) turned out yummy, and looked nice. I am told that the eggnog cheesecake tart was also tasty.

The exchanging of gifts involved way too many things for me (especially since I didn't really get much of anything for anyone this year; I'm lame like that). I feel kinda bad about that. I'll make up for it next year. Not that I want to start doing quantity again-- I resist that! But seriously, one or two well-chosen items per person is entirely in order.

Anyway, all in all a very nice day. Today, when the family comes over we will commence to assembling cribs and arranging furniture in the room for the new kid. Christmas eve highlight: J located and downloaded for me one of my favorite novelty songs ever, Yogi Jorgensen's "Who hid the halibut?". Awesome!

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