Last night was a lot of fun. We got to meet Claude, who seems like a really nice guy, and we got to visit with Jen and Brett and Berta also, which was great. I think William really had a great time playing with Jen. After supper, we opened the remaining Christmas presents, and then had a quick little poker tournament. I suggested that we play Crazy Pineapple, which was a lot of fun (especially once my trip queens beat Brett’s trip 5’s and Darren’s 6 high) I caught some lucky river cards to beat Berta, but I’m pretty sure she played better poker than me (other than the two calls after I hit my miracle rivers - one was a gutshot draw, and the other was a full house draw when my two pair were smaller than Berta’s two pair heading to the river) It was fun anyway.

William was running around like a maniac, Julia was hanging out with the coffee table and whoever would sit by her. She really seems to like Deb. We set up William’s drums last night, and he had a blast playing with them. The cymbal might have to have a mysterious accident though. William got all kinds of great puzzles and books, and a cool Mr. Potato Head anniversary edition (it looks like a real potato) He was so excited after he opened his first present that he forgot to hand out the rest of them. It was honestly a bit of a blur, and I don’t know half of what William got, or who from. Next year will be interesting when he gets his name put into the gift exchange draw instead of getting gifts from everyone - whoever gets his name will have a much easier time than the rest of us usually do. (As William said: “I like toys”)

We actually managed to keep his stocking fairly candy-free this year, which was tough. Erin’s uncle Santa got him a big tube of Tootsie Rolls, which caused a bit of a problem until we gave 90% of them away when he wasn’t looking. I think the presents are what William was looking forward to, but the spending time with family is what he enjoyed the most about the holiday. At one point last night, he was running laps in the house on his stick-horse, with a train of three dogs following close behind. We stayed out a little too late, which meant that he didn’t want to go, and was cranky when we finally got home. Fortunately he fell asleep fairly easily once we got him in his PJ’s.

I finally got around to wading through my email today - it had been nearly a week, and with automated emails and spam and mailing lists, I think I had around 1000 waiting for me to sift through. It would have been fairly easy if I had time to download them into my mail client, but instead I was sifting through them by hand in the webmail interface. I did it fairly quickly, so if you emailed me in the last week, there’s a good chance I mistook it for spam and deleted it (I did get an email from Trent with a cool video in it, but I think that was the only one actually directed to me by an individual)

And it’s time for the long weekend. I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and I hope you’ll all have a safe and happy New Years Eve/Day (and what the heck, the rest of the year too.)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Hey Kids! I’m flame-retardant!” - Krusty The Clown doll