The Run-up to Christmas

If last weekend was as gentle as a soft snowfall, this weekend was a frenzied flurry of activity! We rushed home from work on Friday night to get gussied up and head to the Gambills for dinner with them and the Kings before heading downtown to see A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theatre. Tilly made some delicious vegetable lasagne, and we brought dessert--fresh ginger cake with caramelized pears, a recipe I discovered in Molly Wizenberg's book A Homemade Life, which I read over Thanksgiving. It was definitely a team effort to get it all put together in time, and it was a rousing success. Yay.

The play was just wonderful. This was our third time to see the Christmas ghost story at Ford's Theatre, and I tell you, nothing puts you in the mood for Christmas like Dickens. The play was peppered with Christmas carols, and when we walked out I was fully expecting snow and English jollyness. Instead it was just bitingly cold, but we were warm and joyful inside.

Saturday morning the girls from Book Club came over for Christmas tea and brunch. Book Club has possibly been my favorite thing about 2009. I love-surrounded-by-hearts it. This month we read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which I adored.

And in case we hadn't spent enough time together, our Sunday school class had our Christmas party on Sunday night. Last year's party was so much fun that I basically decided to recreate it--we had a soup bar (I ate, like, four bowls of soup, mmm) and played Loaded Questions. Tasty and hilarious. We seriously like the people in our Sunday school class. I can't believe it took me eight years here to discover them.

And now Christmas is a week and a half away. More importantly, it is only a few days until we head to Idaho. I keep thinking there is another week in here somewhere, and I am constantly surprised when I realize that at this time next week we will be buried in snow at the cabin. Until then, I am frantically writing constituent mail and making never ending edits to my now 34-page term paper (which is finally due on Thursday, or I might go a wee bit crazy) and trying to get the Christmas cards out before New Year's (or, more accurately, Jason has been forced to take over the whole production). So tired. Ah, Christmastime. God bless us, every one.