Well, Ama has come and gone. We chained her to the kitchen, and the results were quite impressive.

Miles of rich roll and thumbprint cookies.

We had so much fun together. Ama and I were chaperones for Callum's class trip to the Nutcracker. The last time I'd been to the Nutcracker was when Ama chaperoned my class trip. She was here for the school holiday program (and let me just say, much improved over last year. really.) and general Christmas-y stuff. The cookies were key.

So we had a mini Christmas last night (two! Christmases!). And opened some presents.

The girls helped.

Violet really helped.

Callum's favorite gift from Ama was a robe. He's been wanting one for ages, even before Harry Potter and dress robes and class robes and Quiddich robes. He loved his robe. Wore it all eveing (stripping down into jammies right in the living room), slept under it and only took it off when the neighborhood boys wanted to go out and play.

Some Tintin of his own rounded out the night. Not too shabby. It's cold, cold here today. So Neel started a fire for us, with clear and grave concerns about our ability to tend it. My mom has this ginormous fireplace in her house, and she has a fair hand with a fire. I'll have to get her method sometime. But I'm not doing too badly here.

And now what's left is the clean up and gearing up for Alfie. He comes tomorrow and there is laundry to be done, beds to be made, surfaces to be cleared...gifts to be wrapped! And all I want to do is knit or research lavish and expensive knitting projects. I love winter break.