None of the celebrities I live with want their picture taken so I’ve had to take some mental snapshots. This is what I want to remember:
– Playing Truth Bombs on Christmas Eve and laughing, laughing, laughing.
– Watching White Christmas and realizing that my favorite scenes are also the girls’ favorites. Nostalgia osmosis.
– the hour I forced the girls to scrub baseboards and in protest they started singing “Do you hear the people sing” at the top of their lungs (both getting ready to audition for Les Miz high school musical)
– the way I love being the last one up in the quiet, still glow of the Christmas tree.
– John and I up early with our coffee waiting for sleeping teens to surface
– the fact the I am the only person in this house who likes the 70s cheese ball I always make, so therefore I make a double recipe. I have a LOT of blue cheese ball if you are in the neighborhood.
– the look on Alice’s face when she opened a present I especially loved giving (thank you universe for this one)
– the moment I confessed to Margaret that I wasn’t sure if I’d already given her a present on her birthday (tickets to see Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speak in March, and no, I had not already given them to her. Man, it’s been a long season).
– this age old interaction: John setting up his new turn table and speakers. Me: make sure you read the reviews, there’s a switch in the back you have to flip for it to work.” John: “it doesn’t work.” Me: flips switch. Speakers: music. Current tally of wife vs husband on technical issues: 2,378,876: (something in single digits). Brief triumphant gloating.
– A family Dr. Who marathon, catching up on the new season we’ve been too busy to watch.
– Lying on the couch reading Sally Field’s biography looking across at Margaret reading Michelle Obama’s biography.
– the unparalleled Christmas Day nap.
– Alice immediately drawing a purple and gold countryside village with her new colored pencils.
– Lily’s unbridled excitement at receiving a perfume named after her (“Lily of the Beach”) and the number of times she made me smell her wrist.
– that magical moment when the Pogue’s Fairytale of New York came on our new speakers and I cranked it hoping to wake up John upstairs who almost immediately started singing as loud as he could, continued all the way down the stairs and treated us to a stirring rendition of one of his favorite songs. Lily’s responding horror at the lyrics “this is a Christmas song?!”
So many moments. A fairly modest , quiet Christmas at home. Little of the carnage and thrill of younger kids but a trove of moments to look around and realize that THIS is as good as it gets. So in lieu of photos, here are my mental Polaroids. Merry Christmas.

Posting with a single photo of Margaret’s new guitar strap because this quote seems to sum up the day, and us at this moment in time really well. This is us – funny messy difficult tired cranky laughing singing aka THE BEST.