Exhale

Hey world - hope you all had a great holiday. Our fam certainly did - hosting a crowd on Christmas Eve, then bouncing from home to home, dropping off and picking up gifts and devouring food at every stop, balancing drive times and napping schedules, packing and emptying and packing and emptying the car, hugging hello and hugging goodbye, thanking profusely, eating and drinking and eating and drinking, sleeping briefly... repeat for three days.

There was turkey and lasagna and chowder and lobster and more turkey and chocolate and beer and coffee and wine and squares, and probably more that I am forgetting. The important thing is that I didn't have to cook any of it. To me, this Christmas tasted like a soft whole wheat dinner roll drenched in hot lobster and cream, and washed down with a cold beer from a tall glass. Mmmm.

It was fun. It was tiring. And now we're almost back to normal - save for my puffy belly, a dying and decorated tree in the corner of our living room, and Lydia's sprawling Santa haul crowding into the kitchen.

Visuals: our week looked something like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/muiseam/sets/72157623076659464/. Apologies if you didn't make the set - blame my incompetence with a camera flash and my apparently unrealistic expectations and standards.