Family Tales: A Merry Birthsmas, etc.
Up early this morning to meet mes parents and some dear family friends for a lovely breakfast at the Longfellow Grill. The Pirate and I split a crabcake benedict, and several of us split the Banana Waffle - yum! The Vampire was gifted with a huge bag of assorted cereals - our family friends are connected through their son to a famous cereal manufacturer. When one has a teenaged son, a connection that gifts with Fast Consumables is a valuable commodity.
After stuffing ourselves shamelessly, we followed my folks up to Stacy Tree Farm, the place where we have hunted down and slain our Christmas trees every year since our Vampire was born. They not only provide lovely trees at a reasonable price and free hot apple cider, but also on certain days they provide a free horse-drawn hay ride, driven by Santa (who gives out candy canes), and a petting zoo that includes animals both domestic and exotic (various chickens, bunnies, goats, sheep, llamas, a reindeer and, on at least one occasion, a camel).
After a protracted struggle with twine and the largest white pine we've met at the farm - there is still serious debate going on here about whether even our 10-and-some foot ceilings are going to be adequate to the task - and a long ride home enlivened by a tape of Dave Barry reading his own works, we arrived chez us in time for the Pirate to happily settle in for a love-fest with his Vikes. The Birthday Boy could not have had a better prezzie than to see his team win.
After the game we were off to my folks' house for the traditional tree-trimming. We had a lovely dinner (antelope roast is good!) followed by birthday carrot cake and tea. and then got the tree trimmed handily. My mom was able to stand up on occasion in order to hang her particularly treasured ornaments in the traditional spots that only she knows, and to direct the rest of the trimming from her wheelchair, so she was reasonably happy with the result. The only bit of the tradition we missed was our annual viewing of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" - the cartoon version narrated by Boris Karloff, not the frenetic live action version perpetrated a few years back - accompanied by the traditional mulled apple cider and popcorn.
We are promised that we will at least see the show tomorrow, when we are scheduled to spend our first day of Christmas Cookie making with my mom. Tomorrow we make Russian Teacakes and make the dough for the mincemeat cookies; if we have time we may make the Spritz cookies.
Tomorrow is also the Vampire's first day of the run of the musical he's in at Upstage! Musical Theater Workshop: "The Real Story of Little Red Riding Hood" . He is, of course, the Wolf. We're sure he and the rest of the cast will do brilliantly, of course. More importantly, they're having loads of fun. Upstage! is a wonderful program - I'm sure you'll hear more from me on the subject at a later date.
I don't have any pics of the production at the moment, so we'll have to make do with pics of the Vampire as Scrooge in last winter's Theatrix production of "The Christmas Carol" - just click on the link, there. If you are fascinated with all things Vampire and/or Theatrix, you can also see a younger version of Himself on the Theatrix website's 'Past Productions' pages, cheerfully lurking under the large red hat in the pic of the Fringe Festival cast for Alice. Mad Hatter, of course! He can also be found in the pics of their production of "The Curious Savage".
He was The Fox in their production of "The Little Prince", but somehow managed to avoid having pics taken - he was actually *shy* that year!
He's certainly cured of that particular trait now...
After stuffing ourselves shamelessly, we followed my folks up to Stacy Tree Farm, the place where we have hunted down and slain our Christmas trees every year since our Vampire was born. They not only provide lovely trees at a reasonable price and free hot apple cider, but also on certain days they provide a free horse-drawn hay ride, driven by Santa (who gives out candy canes), and a petting zoo that includes animals both domestic and exotic (various chickens, bunnies, goats, sheep, llamas, a reindeer and, on at least one occasion, a camel).
After a protracted struggle with twine and the largest white pine we've met at the farm - there is still serious debate going on here about whether even our 10-and-some foot ceilings are going to be adequate to the task - and a long ride home enlivened by a tape of Dave Barry reading his own works, we arrived chez us in time for the Pirate to happily settle in for a love-fest with his Vikes. The Birthday Boy could not have had a better prezzie than to see his team win.
After the game we were off to my folks' house for the traditional tree-trimming. We had a lovely dinner (antelope roast is good!) followed by birthday carrot cake and tea. and then got the tree trimmed handily. My mom was able to stand up on occasion in order to hang her particularly treasured ornaments in the traditional spots that only she knows, and to direct the rest of the trimming from her wheelchair, so she was reasonably happy with the result. The only bit of the tradition we missed was our annual viewing of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" - the cartoon version narrated by Boris Karloff, not the frenetic live action version perpetrated a few years back - accompanied by the traditional mulled apple cider and popcorn.
We are promised that we will at least see the show tomorrow, when we are scheduled to spend our first day of Christmas Cookie making with my mom. Tomorrow we make Russian Teacakes and make the dough for the mincemeat cookies; if we have time we may make the Spritz cookies.
Tomorrow is also the Vampire's first day of the run of the musical he's in at Upstage! Musical Theater Workshop: "The Real Story of Little Red Riding Hood" . He is, of course, the Wolf. We're sure he and the rest of the cast will do brilliantly, of course. More importantly, they're having loads of fun. Upstage! is a wonderful program - I'm sure you'll hear more from me on the subject at a later date.
I don't have any pics of the production at the moment, so we'll have to make do with pics of the Vampire as Scrooge in last winter's Theatrix production of "The Christmas Carol" - just click on the link, there. If you are fascinated with all things Vampire and/or Theatrix, you can also see a younger version of Himself on the Theatrix website's 'Past Productions' pages, cheerfully lurking under the large red hat in the pic of the Fringe Festival cast for Alice. Mad Hatter, of course! He can also be found in the pics of their production of "The Curious Savage".
He was The Fox in their production of "The Little Prince", but somehow managed to avoid having pics taken - he was actually *shy* that year!
He's certainly cured of that particular trait now...
posted by Eileen at 8:23 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home