Overheard

"Oh man," Ida says, "Dad, you're growing a beard?  You already looked too much like Prince Caspian."

Whoa

A glimpse of the festivities.  Santa was left this note, and ate the cookie.

I'm sure he was charmed by this Friendly face, which he no doubt remembers from the seventies:

The grandparents were indisposed and so we could not open presents until NINE.  Fortunately, that famous Canadian Yukon Cornelius bought us some time.

LIW, eat your heart out.

Extremely warm Christmas in The Garden State.

Who bought them a make-up kit?

Holiday Preparations, Anticipations

Hello!

Blogger is being very uncooperative with videos these days; probably because it's a free service and is tired of giving so much away (all they get is access to our personal information, lives, etc).  Because of this I cannot post video of the girls playing holiday songs on their pianos, nor excerpts of an eviscerating holiday performance provided to their grandparents.  Stills from the latter, here:

This is where we are:

That's a drawing by this perpetrator:

We went up to Brooklyn!

Saw some cousins.  That's a DKV photo-bomb, too.  

Nutcracker preparations were INTENSE!

We had the best seats in the house--first row of the mezzanine!

No one fell out!

Many wanted this young lady to dance the role of the princess!

Lots of driving up and down the eastern coast.  No signals, lots of honking.

All navigated by this angel:

Did a little early present opening.  This bro absolutely DID want this "Ostrich Pillow."

Hummingbird Headstone

A hummingbird died.  It was just resting there on its back, on a little table outside our back window.  Why?  The girls carried her (?) around for quite some time and then eventually got their little trowels and buried her.