Santa Claus is coming to town...

On the 23rd, I went to a class at the Om Collective at night - it was a really lovely class, very multigenerational and full of laughter. After class Ben and I spent the evening just the two of us, with a delicious homemade asparagus and guryere tart and some scotch :) Then we watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince until we fell asleep...

In the morning, we had our very own Christmas morning before the madness of two days of family descended upon us. We made hot cocoa, opened presents and finished the movie. Ben gave me a lovely cloth and bracelet from his summer in Ghana and I gave him a J. Crew sweater and a Gryffindor scarf. Harry Potter nerds forever :)

After we'd finished opening gifts and washed a few dishes, we drove up to my parents house for spritz cookies! My dad is doing amazingly well with his new hip - zooming around without even a walker! So impressive. Also impressive was how quickly Ben picked up the subtle nuances of the Spritz cookie press. That thing can be awfully tempermental and he was very good at it.

Then, we drove down to St. Paul for the annual Christmas eve choir marathon. We sing two services on the 24th - one at 5:30 and one at 10:30. Our drive to church quickly became an adventure when Ben's tire got a flat on the way in to town! We stopped at a gas station to fill it with air, but the air pump was broken, so we patched it with a can of foam and drove to church. While I sang at the 5:30 service, Ben was driving around St. Paul, trying to find someone who would change his tire. Unfortunately, Christmas Eve is not the time to need a new tire. But, the foam tire held up pretty well and we made it to the restuarant to meet my parents and sister for dinner.

Dinner at The Lexington is a family tradition - mostly because it's one of the only places that's actually open on the 24th. I love eating there because they always make it look so Christmasy... and it's close enough to church so I can get there and back in time to rehearse for the second service, which is usually more of a concert than a service (this year we sang Vivaldi's Gloria)FINALLY after the second service (which was waaay too long... too much sermonizing...) we made it home by about 12:45, took some pictures in front of the tree which quickly deteriorated into goofiness, and then went to sleep.

Coming up... Christmas day!!!