FA-LA-LA-LA-LA

We had a party on Saturday night and we have been eating our way through the leftovers ever since.  Tonight I realized I could use the five remaining potatoes and one of the four remaining boxes of vegetable broth and an old onion to make a convincing potato soup.  And also that meant we could use up the bag of salad and some of the leftover tomatoes.  Since I had to go to the store anyway, I bought a package of chicken sausage to go along with it because leftovers from Wigilia are very starch heavy and I thought that might be why we all felt like ass.  The kids charged right through that pot of soup and all of the sausages and then turned on Ryan's plate (he is much nicer than me) and then swarmed the pantry like a Biblical plague of locusts.  All told we also used up a big box of tomato soup, half a loaf of bread, some peanut butter, and every cracker that wasn't nailed down.  I will not make soup on a swimming day again, no matter how proud I am of my home economic skills. Tomorrow I'm straight up making a party size Stouffer's lasagna out of a box and slamming it onto the table with a handful of forks.

As an aside, posting is slow because the Flickr app on my phone literally ONLY WORKS FOR RYAN, so if I want to upload pictures by myself I have to email them to myself one by one, download them onto my laptop, and then upload them. Ryan can use the app like a normal person (because?? I do not know) and I find the injustice of this situation RAGE-inducing.

In (literal) magical special holiday news, Friday we dressed the children as tiny Magi and sent them into the night to pay homage to my friend, her husband, and their new baby, who were dressed as the Holy Family.  This is a favorite family tradition that we have been doing since a two month old Wes played Baby Jesus in 2008. That was also the year Charley (2, dressed as a shepherd) stole the show by wandering to the front of the "stage," standing directly in front of a spotlight, and staring blankly into the audience for the entire thing.





As always, they wanted to try all the parts.





Then Saturday I was up early to badger the family through cleaning the house while I cooked literally all day long. We had fifty people over Saturday night, half of them children, for a feast of pierogies, soup, and fruit, with a little bit of salmon and a big pile of mac and cheese (for the kids, secretly for the adults). Ryan once again manned the pierogi cooking station.



He also made this--stunning--charcuterie board which I cannot stop talking about because I am so very impressed with the fact that I provided him with a big pile of rando ingredients and a cursory Google image search and he made this happen.



We capped off the evening with a carol sing-a-long led by my friend Jimmy on guitar. It was honestly just the best you guys. I just sat there thinking about how lucky I am to have all these people in my life willing to sing together in my living room after eating a meatless Christmas feast. I could not stop smiling the whole time and well into the next day #dork, which was a little inappropriate when I kept snickering whenever I remembered something from the night before as I was sitting in the contemplative chapel service at church, which is very dark and quiet. Get ready, everyone else I know, we're doing this again in June for my birthday, except with German food.



I turned my grades in on Monday morning after rowing, which means this not so good semester is OVER. I'm relieved and also at loose ends because I'm used to having more to DO. Today I took a nap and did four loads of laundry watching a movie on Netflix about divorce that stars Kylo Ren. Then I got super bored and hungry and went to a coffee shop for some breakfast tacos and to spend a couple of hours fretting about a research project from this summer I'm supposed to present a poster on in a month. I've eaten like ten pounds of peppermint bark and a tin of Christmas cookies from a neighbor. If the kids don't get off school and stay home to provide some accountability I will likely never shower or eat a non-dessert food ever again.