Anna Skamarakas

It is December 31, 2005 at approximately 7:45 PM.  We have done all of our Happy New Year snacking, and everyone is stuffed full.  Eilis is bouncing off the walls, waiting for it to be midnight so she can pop her confetti and streamers and make all the noise she wants.  I think we may tell her at 9 or 10 that it’s midnight and let her have her fun so the rest of us can go to sleep.  There is no midnight party for those of us that may be up at 1 or 2 AM with the baby.

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Going into the whole holiday season in a really bad mood and feeling rather depressed, I was not optimistic going into Christmas Eve.  I still had presents to wrap, I still hadn’t gotten the house ready for our Christmas company, and I wasn’t sure how Jim and the family would get along - or even if Jim would decide to go or stay home. 

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We host a Christmas party each year, and every year, I forget what was a hit food wise and what wasn’t.  This is  a run down of what we had to eat, what we should not have had to eat, and what we might want to add next year. (more…)

So my kids are very used to the Christmas television classics - Rudolph, Drummer Boy, and Frosty.  They’ve seen different versions, but we stay pretty faithful to the ones everyone knows.  Frosty has his song - you all know it - and in the song somewhere, they sing “Thumpity Thump Thump, Thumpity Thump Thump”.  It’s Eilis’ favorite part, because she has her father’s knack for remembering song lyrics - meaning, she doesn’t know many, so when you get a line like Thumpity Thump Thump, it’s hard to screw it up. 

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