‘Bout got them holidays licked for another year!  I think I can, I think I can…  Ah, we’ve had a rather good time of it actually.  Very busy though, as evidenced by my lack of attention to my updates.  In case you couldn’t guess what we’ve been doing with our time, we celebrated Christmas.  Sort of the same as the majority of the rest of the world, duh.

It all kind of ran together, but I’ll skim the highlights.  For it our pre-Christmas Friday, we went over to a friend’s house and made tamales.  Festive!  I guess they do it every year, but we missed out last year for whatever reason.  Apparently I should have watched some youtube videos prior to going, my tamale skills were roundly ridiculed.  Hey, they don’t have to be pretty, people.  It’s some meat in a pile of dough, it all tastes the same.  Sheesh.  After that, at Doni’s design, we went out Christmas caroling.  Hmmm.  I was skeptical of the plan at best, sounded like a good way to get shot.  In fact, I had already devised my perfect way out, by declaring that I would only go if his 16 year old son would go.  What are the odds of THAT?  Backfire, he went, and even pretended to enjoy it.  It was a fun time after all, and we didn’t get shot.  Most people seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.  And, some didn’t.  You can’t please everybody all the time, as they say.

Christmas Eve we stayed home for a quiet evening.  Still stinging from my merciless taunting at the tamale festival, I resolved to hone my skills.  So, I dug some leftover brisket out of the freezer and went to rolling again.  (After watching countless youtube clips, of course.)  I can say with conviction that this batch turned out significantly better.  I’m not really sure what we’re going to do with 3 dozen brisket tamales, but that’s an issue for another day.

For Christmas day we got up early-ish and had a nice little celebration.  We opened our presents from our families, and worked in some good facetime chats too.  We had festive video chats with both our families, and later in the afternoon we heard from Johan also, our friend in Sweden.  After that we headed back over to the scene of the previous tamale crime, and enjoyed another big Christmas.  They’re nice enough to let us weasel in on their family Christmas;  We even participated in the gift exchange.  ** Edit:  Wait a minute…  The facetime calls were the day after Christmas I believe.  Geez, it’s all a big blur.  I’m not retyping the paragraph, close enough.

For a post-holiday wind down, we headed out wine tasting with some friends in nearby Sutter Creek.  (That’s what triggered my razor-sharp memory…  We went wine tasting right after wrapping up the video chats.)  We hadn’t been to this area before, so it was a nice little exploration trip.  It was quite the quaint downtown.  Actually, I was surprised to learn it was even older than our old Brookside haunts, by quite a bit actually.  Good times, and I believe a bit easier of a drive than Amador;  We’ll have to get back there soon.