Negative on the giardia, just a regular stomach bug and it’s almost over.

But still, we were going to fly to my nephew’s wedding tomorrow but there is no way we’re risking spreading that germ.

Southwest has the most customer-friendly policies out there, and the end result is that the day started off in profound disappointment and gradually, email by email, morphed into one of oh I can’t wait! And I’ll not only get to meet the bride after all, but see people dear to me that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Good times coming, definitely.

Happy New Year!

Beaver’s Disease–what the Alaskans call it (I learned something new this week.)

Giardia–what my microbiologist daughter calls it.

And in a moment of supreme irony, since none of us saw this coming when we were talking about it…

A possibility–what the doctor called it today (“Have you been up in the mountains?” Yes) as she wrote out the lab order.

Parker exploring Grampa’s spinner toy over the weekend. A fellow enthusiast!

Today was our last day with the happy couple, the other faraway kids having already flown home.

It’s so quiet.

Alright, so, one little boy’s favorite rock needs to go in the mail back to him, stat. Are there any small boxes we didn’t recycle already? And that long-de-glued niddy noddy that I always had to put the one piece back on the top and that was always a pain for the first few yards of winding hanks of yarn on because it wanted to flip off–thankfully, the little boys discovered the thing and that piece is nowhere to be seen and gosh darn, I’ll just have to buy a new one! So sad. Not.

There was another great joy that took place this weekend that I haven’t mentioned till now.

There were airplanes today, lost luggage, and now we just have the last two for a few more days.

Michelle drove John to the airport for us while the four of us took off after lunch for the coast.

He (I forgot to ask permission to say his name) had never seen the redwoods before. We hiked through Memorial Park a bit through the towering ancient trees, having the place nearly to ourselves in the cold.

They went a little ahead down to the creek, where he splashed his hand in California water and pulled the one piece of manmade this-does-not-belong-here out to let the water be freed of it.

We followed the signs along the trail in search of the park’s tallest redwood: there, up ahead, thirty-nine feet around, 225 feet tall and 1600 years old, solid and sturdy and lasting through storms and lightnings and fires, steady through every blessing and every stress of life.

It seemed the perfect place to take a newly-engaged couple’s photo.

There was a name on the bench with a fresh soft yellow rose by it. Should that family ever see this photo, please know that we bowed our heads a moment at your loss and moved the rose back to its rightful place at that center spot afterwards. It bore silent testimony that love is simply who we are and what we have.

From there we took him to see the ocean as we get to see it, warning him that no, it’s not warm, not at all. Again, he touched it and made it a part of himself too now.

He is so good to our daughter and they are so happy and we are so happy. We get to have him in our family! So. Much. Joy.

Yesterday, Parker wanted to go out to see his apple tree. His daddy explained that we have winter up here and what that meant but he wanted to see, and being ever ready to share the joy of my backyard orchard, especially with a grandchild, I went outside with him to inspect how the Fuji was doing.

It did still have a very few leaves left clinging. The other deciduous trees were bare now but one. So we talked about all the fruits and each in their season and all that was fine with him for it to be that way, he wasn’t disappointed like his father had been a little afraid he would be–he was simply learning new things. Winter bare, not from a book but in person. The leaves fall. Spring will come back when it’s time.

There was actually some fruit and greenery over to the left but he knew what those were and they didn’t interest him.

Today seemed like the right day to ask him: “Would you like to pick a lemon?”

His face lit up. “And make lemonade?!”

Me, grinning back: “And make lemonade.”

The Meyer happily had a few right in his reach. I mentioned it had thorns and to watch out for them and he was fine. He walked around the back of a peach (the Tropic Snow) to get to–oh wait, he liked that one next to it even better. It only just now hits me that I had said a lemon, so a single lemon was all he expected or took. Unlike sharing apple slices around the room, this was just going to be between him and me.

It took some pulling and a bit of branch coming with it because the lemon tree wasn’t entirely ready to let it go yet–but this early, they’re closer to pure lemons and less orangey. He skipped a little happy dance all the way back inside to the kitchen in great anticipation.

I found a cup-size strainer and showed him, bringing it down to his eye level again and again, how it caught the seeds and let the juice run through. See? More seeds on this other half of the fruit, too.

I added some water and sugar. Don’t skimp. He’s only just turned five. I poured half the lemonade into a second cup for me, tasted it, and added more sugar to his cup. Mine was sweet enough and very watered down and his definitely sweet and with great enthusiasm he pronounced it wonderful.

Meantime, Hudson was the ever-cheerful, outgoing little boy he always is even when he’s tired. Always ready to laugh. Always willing to wait his turn when I pay attention to his sister a moment. He’s an amazing little two-year-old.

As I sat on the floor, Maddy crawled up to me, patted me on the leg to get my attention, and held out a hand expectantly in clear expectation that I would blow on it. I did. She grinned. A few minutes later she stood up with her mommy holding onto her hands, let Kim let go, and instead of plopping right back down to safety or the highly tentative shifting of her weight onto the next foot forward she actually took two solid steps on her own coming towards me, falling down finally on the third. So close.

And given the sudden wail of frustration out of her that took us by surprise, I think she suddenly realized that she actually wanted to walk. That this was going to happen even if it meant giving up the comfort and safety and speed of the crawl. She needed this.

Soon, little one, so very soon.

Our friends’ range that was supposed to have been replaced was still broken, no oven, no stove, with the new one lost in the shipping mess out there somewhere. We cooked dinner here and brought it there and shared our kids (theirs had grown up with ours) and a marvelous Christmas meal together. I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.

Then off to our aunt’s house in the redwoods for dessert and so that that part of the family could see the kids–with our grandkids and their parents showing up there straight from the airport.

Maddy was sick but I got a grin out of her: I blew noisily on her hand or her foot in term, asking her which one she wanted next. She would say what to her was a word and hold one or the other out and she loved that she was communicating with me and getting to choose what I would do while she happily anticipated it. Bbbtttph!

I pointed to their daddy and said to Hudson, “That’s my little boy.”

He was surprised. In the clearest speech I’ve ever heard from him yet he asked, “He is? Really?!”

Thought I’d gotten that concept down with him previously but I guess not. We made up for it though.

And Parker was already taller than when we saw him almost two months ago.

And their cousin Emmie? She’s three, and I pointed out, That’s my little girl, and my little boy, and my little girl, and my little boy, since three of them were completely new to her. She too had to stop a moment to grok the concept, and she looked at me quizzically, so I said, “They got bigger. Did you ever get bigger?”

She has a baby brother and that was suddenly a question she decided not to answer and she twirled away and played with someone else as I grinned.

Wishing a Merry and blessed Christmas day and holiday to all.

And the new Stars Wars movie? The six of us who got to go together definitely approve. (The rest of them arrive tomorrow.)

The bird feeder was empty and there were no finches nor chickadees trying to get at that one last seed or two nor doves picking up the toss-outs below. I opened the slider, Corning two-cup glass measure in hand, to go scoop and refill. (Metal mini-trash cans are good for keeping the raccoons out–they’ve tried but they have never succeeded.)

The Cooper’s hawk sauntered away, if anything elegantly airborne can be so described, and I went oh oops sorry didn’t see you behind the orange tree there as I went back inside.

No problem. He people-watched awhile, shaking off a bit against the drizzle, preening.

Then he flew half way across my yard to where the sun could be on rather than behind him, showing off every bit of chestnut, white, grays, and those bright yellow feet, well-fluffed above as if there had been no rain.

Here inside, more presents are wrapped and ready, the guest bedrooms are cleared and vacuumed, and the–oh wait, the electric spinning wheel is still in baby-grab range. Right on it.

What I really wanted was beautiful musical cookies to offer the piano tuner, who came today, but the whole thing was just too new and uncertain. I needed a little more proof of concept first.

But I did show off the rolling pin itself and he thought it was as cool as I did.

So after that bit of procrastination, here’s how it went this evening.

The cold dough was very hard, so Richard rolled it out for me between two sheets of parchment paper. A shout-out here to Joanne, whose wax-paper-layers tip was exactly the memory of my mother’s pie baking I’d been trying to think of. Parchment works even better.

We quickly found we needed just the slightest sifting of flour onto the pin, not any more than that, and so I got out the small citrus-seed strainer (or at least that’s what that thing has always been to me.) Shake a little on, shake the excess off, roll the flattened dough with the embossed pin. Lift the cut cookies out with a very flat spatula, re-roll out the rest while those are baking, repeat. And here you have your before baking and after.

I had a toothbrush still new in the package and it was perfect for getting any small bits out afterwards. There were surprisingly few to have to worry about, but still, it was a highly useful tool. Richard’s first try was a flat-edged toothpick and it was too bulky in the tight spots.

The star cookie cutter cut off too much of the musical patterns. You know what this means. I ended up searching Williams-Sonoma, Amazon, Wilton, Ateco (new to me) and Sur La Table looking for cookie cutters in the shapes of the ones the rolling pin vendor used, hoping I can find who makes some and who sells them in easy driving distance.

What, order? And have to wait to make more?

So in between wrestling the ladder inside, setting up the overhead greenery-with-bells, cleaning the rug, wrestling the tree and ornament boxes back into the garage, getting the guest bathroom toilet to work that we’d simply turned the water off to to stop its leaking (yeah we paid that plumber $150. It lasted two days) and various laundry and cleaning, finally, this got done, too. I used the Russian rolling pin vendor’s second of two recipes (because there’s still no cream cheese here), weighing my sugar, flour and butter on what I think of as my yarn scale to get the right amounts.

Into the fridge. Tomorrow we roll with it.

(Really? You wired that to turn off in the garage? Why? Yes he did, and now a remote is on order to turn it off via his cellphone. It’s all geeks to me. But that does keep the control and plug for the bells out of baby reach.)

I don’t need to eat any cookies. I do need to bake cookies, though, clearly.

I’ve never signed for a package from St. Petersburg, Russia before–there’s some novelty right there. Then it made sense that if we’re going to bake with it, pre-Christmas would be the most likely time so we decided to open the box. (Ed. to add Tuesday, in retrospect it may have been the package for Richard that was the one needing the signing.)

The rolling middle part is 8″ long–it’s not huge, but then, I have one that is nothing but huge and weighs a ton and this is a nice change.

I’m suddenly wondering: some of the vendors offer custom designs of your choice. I’m picturing that moment when you first pick up a lace shawl when it’s done blocking, swing it around your shoulders and feel like it’s the prettiest thing you ever made–could you make cookies embossed to match that lace?

Okay, though, wait, one step at a time here.

I know you have to refrigerate the dough and I know you have to flour the pin and I know you have to try to keep the cookies from being drowned in that flour; I’ve never even seen much less used a laser-engraved rolling pin before so the rest is all a great big unknown. Hopefully not for long and hopefully not with a steep learning curve, and all helpful hints are welcome (please!) Would powdered sugar instead of flour work to keep the dough from sticking to the pin? Cocoa?

It came with its creator’s favorite recipe. They have cream cheese in Russia? Is it anything like ours? If you’ve ever had fresh cream cheese it’s a bit different from our standard Philadelphia-type. (And I don’t have any of either at hand–yet.)

I think we’re going to have fun with this.

It was a very good day filled with friends and family and food and love (thank you for that dinner, Michelle!) and I suddenly realized with a start that it’s nearly 11:00 and we’re done here.

Leftover creme brûlée, macaroons, and homemade cranberry coffee cake brought to the door still warm from the oven (thank you, Phyllis!) for breakfasts to come.

So what do you want for your birthday dinner? they asked me, trying to plan Saturday’s grocery trip(s).

You know, I could muse on that all day. What would make the most perfect grouping of foods you could hope for? Within reasonable preparation? (I think turducken is right out, as is anything alcohol for us.)

Anybody got any favorite dish ideas to share or point to? An unadorned, perfect Comice pear: that would be a great start.

Cotton and polyester glide right on by. Add spandex in, though, and the fabric is as grabby as a tired hungry toddler.

Which is how when I got up from the couch my skirt wrapped around one leg and did the rubber-band catch-and-sproing thing and pulled me right over. My head didn’t hit the floor, just my wrist, but it got a good jolt and it sure let me know it.

Dinner? Man, food just did not sound good. I told him he needed to eat and he said *you* need to eat.

Treading very. very. carefully right now. The amazing thing was saying the prayer on the food, somehow turning our attention to G_d for a moment and away from all that and as we got to the amen I felt like, okay, I can handle this now. We’re in His hands. It’s okay.

Who knew a simple thank you for our food and please bless it could be so powerful. But that’s how it felt.

(Edited to add in the morning, after the first three comments came in: I had just finished reading something when I got up. So I guess the moral of the story is, she who lifts by the close, dives by the clothes. And thank you, everybody. Still breathing.)

Note the distinct lack of ornaments at the-baby’s-standing-up-now height.

A friend of Michelle’s works at Balsam Hill, a maker of highly realistic, exceedingly easy to set up fake Christmas trees, which is how we heard about them. If you ever see a Christmas tree in the background on a TV show, it’s probably one of theirs. They have a warehouse about a half hour north of us that’s open to the public a few times a year and today was one of those days.

Allergies forced a fake tree on us years ago and after fifteen Christmases it was sad, broken-limbed, a total bear to wrestle the heavy, prickly pieces together and it offered very little reward for bothering to do so. The kids finally rebelled and told us flat-out they’d rather we didn’t set up any tree than that we put that thing up again. It looked that bad.

Balsam Hill’s? The hardest part was opening the boxes. Stack, stack, stack, stack, put on the top piece, connect the lights (doing the stacking so their ends are all on the same side), done. Floof out a little if you want. They have some that just you roll out after being stored upside down, flip over with a foot pedal, voila, but we wanted a Scotch pine that didn’t have that feature. Bought it on sale in October (there’s another sale through Monday) and for the first time in my life couldn’t wait to start setting up the Christmas decorations as early as possible because I knew how good this one was going to look and how very long we had waited to be able to say that.

And then, allergies and all, we bought a cheap real wreath at Costco (it stays outside, right?) because the Balsam Hill ones, even at half price, having shot our wad and glad we don’t have to spend that again for a few decades–but I knew which one I wished I had.

Michelle wanted me to see their bird ornaments. I was curious simply to see what this place was like in real life.

I had no intention of spending a dime.

Hah.

Let’s just say floor samples are a wonderful thing. We got the wreath I had so admired for half off the half off and she found a little tree. Four feet tall, came in a pot as if it were growing out of it. Turns out it was a proof-of-concept that didn’t quite make it into production, or rather, clearly, it did, but the production came to include gold grape clusters and gold long leaves and gold holly leaves and gold long needles mixed in with the pine cones and green needles that are a mixture of short and long-and-brushy. Hers has some new-growth-type tips the production model doesn’t. Hers was a floor model that didn’t even work as a floor model and with the branches squished up and not-yet-floofed, nobody else had beaten her to it. But it was absolutely beautiful. Their photos don’t do justice.

Neither her tree nor our wreath came with the box or handling gloves or 3-year warranties that they mail such things with.

But hey. The production version of her tree is listed at $219. Despite some effort they just could not get the lights to work; they shrugged and went eh, and gave it to her for all of $15.

Holy cow.

And then they loved how thrilled she and we were.

She was happy, we were happy, and re the wreath, now, um, we didn’t need the Costco one.

We got home and I called a friend: Do you have, do you want…?

Off to the hardware store. Cheap plastic that tried too hard or a nice-looking, simple, sturdy metal over-the-door wreath hanger, $4, either one. Not a hard decision.

All of which is why I am so very tired (oh and did I mention we stopped by our favorite bakery while we were in Burlingame? And ran a couple of other errands, too?) Such a long day.

And everybody came away happy. It was worth every minute.