Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve is packed full of traditions:

The annual Christmas Eve dinner at Nanna and Grandpa's house, complete with ham, rolls, parsley potatoes and pistachio salad.

After dinner it's into costumes and the Nativity play:

The wise men present their gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Big Boy #1 showed off his newly acquired guitar playing skills in his rendition of Silent Night.

My mother-in-law will be so happy to see this one, Diamond playing We Three Kings of Orient Are.

Big Boy #2 as Samuel the Laminite:

Aunt Ginger came through (yet again!) with a clever way of doing our annual pajama hunt. This year? Bingo!

All changed and ready to go:

Then it's one of my favorite parts of the evening; driving home and looking at all the lights - while keeping an eye out for Rudolph's nose.

Home, setting out Santa's cookies and milk, prayer and finally bed. Now we just need to figure out how to get them to fall asleep before midnight!

Santa Baby

Santa came to Diamond's work party this year.

The Caboose was thrilled to see the Big Man. I just love how his whole face lit up when Santa came in the room. Ahh, the magic of Christmas!


The Caboose was a tricky kid this year. Every time anyone would ask him what he wanted Santa to bring him, he would come up with something different: Batman car, Batman helicopter, Transformers, ambulance, trucks, etc.


BB#2 isn't too sure about the whole Santa thing. He did notice that the man we ate dinner with and Santa sure seemed to sound alike. He wasn't fooled.

Good thing Diamond is still a believer!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like

CHRISTMAS! Big Boy #1 has more Christmas spirit than about anyone. If you're not sure, just check out his bedroom:

*****Late in November I won Last Caller of the Day on the radio by telling the story of how I ran into a self-propelled lawn mower careening across the street. My prize? Four tickets to Blossoms of Light at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

It was absolutely beautiful. A great night that we were able to spend together as a family.

*****Every year we have friends over to make sugar cookies.

It's so fabulous to have the crew from the old neighborhood over to help us celebrate!

Yup, it must be Christmastime!

Hired!

Back in February Diamond saw a part-time sociology instructor position that had opened up at the local community college. It sounded like the dream job for me, so I put in a resume and waited.

In April I got an email saying that they would be interviewing in the next month or so. Then I didn't hear from them again.

Until last Friday. I saw the caller-ID come up and thought "No. It couldn't be." The department chair was calling to see if I would still be interesting in the adjunct sociology position. "Um, YES!"

So today I went in to interview. To be honest, it wasn't much of an interview at all. It was more like "Here's your textbook, here's your classroom, here's HR."

I GOT THE JOB!!!

I start the middle of January and I'll be teaching three sections of Sociology 101. My schedule couldn't be more ideal. I teach just two mornings a week. Meanwhile the Caboose has preschool those same days. I'll be finished up in time for afternoon carpool. How perfect is THAT?

This truly couldn't be better. My favorite class, a perfect schedule, great timing. Yeah!!!

You can just start calling me Professor Ganelle ;)