Christmas, Redux

Christmas, Redux took place at the Howley’s on Christmas Day.  The dogs were sequestered and we retired to the Christmas room where Poppi discovered that the CD player contained the music he had loaded the previous year.  There were several breaks in tradition including the absence of Mannheim Steamroller and no children’s breakfast. Olivia, Lindsay, and Phoebe managed to fill the silence with some intense percussive playing on the Melissa and Doug piano.   The Mo and Dave remedied the second infraction by making ‘pigs in a blanket’ with two mustard options.  Very yummy.  Thinking that there was no way Phoebe would nap,  I hadn’t brought a computer and when she managed to nod off I found myself with some actual downtime, enough to watch the Celtics lose the first game of the season.  The Boffas returned for the excellent turkey feast. Above:  Tootsie demonstrates how to make a vegetable taste as if it had not spent the last 500 million years desperately evolving away from being edible while Lindsay shuns her preparations and eats a fern raw.Above:  Phoebe and the Ladies make tea with Megan.  While I found myself tiring quickly of pretend drinking, I decided that this practice has some merit as I am now a good six years into a pretend career.     Below:  Showdown in the kitchen between “Benson”, Tyrone, and Bugs.  Of course, if that were a real puppy, he would no longer have eyeballs.