MOUNTAIN PULSE: Christmas Eve 2013...the year without a Santa Claus

We got our wish this year!....to host Christmas day diner at our house for friends. So we spent a big part of our Christmas Eve baking, smoking, and cooking for our feasts for both nights! We were really hoping to take a break and go ski in town but the temperature on the trails was well below zero. Not a comfortable environment to ski in, especially for Willa. While she can keep right up with Miles and I on a moderately fast ski now, if we are really hauling ass for a killer workout and training.....or just to keep warm at 10 below, she would be left behind. But 2000 ft up at our house it was 7 above so we opted for another show shoe across the valley. Is was nice to get outside in the brisk cold after being in the house steamy hot from cooking all day. There have been no big winds or warm temps to whisk away the snow from the trees to leave them bare for quite sometime now. Everything has been covered in either thick snow or hore frost. And it catches the winter low light colors so beautifully. Truly a wonderland. I hope it lasts! I'm slowly phasing out some of our old Holiday decorations for new updated ones. I really like a more wintery Scandinavian color scheme. The soft grey-based arctic blues and purples that one sees outside this time of year. I really like pagan symbology of the holidays, non-traditional natural Christmas trees, holly and berries, lots of candle light, and majestic reindeer stags-I have a nice collection of stags started....

Our house smelled like HEAVEN from morning to bedtime. While Miles baked spent-grain bread and pie crusts, I worked on my pie filling, cranberry chutney, and oyster stuffing. After our snowshoe we got busy with the rest of Christmas eve dinner...king crab, green bean casserole, and mashed taters. Everything tasted incredible.....IN-CRED-I-BLE. I actually ate so much I had NO room for pie. That just does.not.happen.

Every year on Christmas Eve we each get a new pair of jammie bottoms and a family game. We donned our jammies and heavy coats to take a walk around the neighborhood. The stars where booming to the north-Saturn big and bright- and I was lamenting the fact that our telescope had been broken years before and now that we have this great new room with huge windows, wouldn't it be awesome to look at the stars from the warm inside? Foreshadowing! We followed up our walk with a viewing of Holiday Inn. DAMN Fred Astaire could DANCE!

Of course our holidays have been lacking without Dylan, but this was also the first year that we have had no Santa believin' kids in the house. It was great when Dylan no longer believed(Actually, we had to break the news when she was 11!) because she could then join in the Santa Shenanigans of wrapping and setting up her little sister's presents. But with Willa no longer believing...that's it. No more Santa. SOB!!!!!!!! A few weeks ago, as Willa and I where decorating the tree, she paused and asked, "Are you Santa?" Taken aback, I went right into goof mode. Eyes wide and mouth agape I responded with, "OMG!!! WHAT are you TALKING about. Is the Devil in ye, Child?!?!?!?!" She just looked at me deadpan. "Mommy....TRUTHFULLY."
UUUGGHHH!!!! She played the TRUTH card!!! I looked to Miles in the kitchen for help...I could see him watching us out of the corner of his eye. Damn! DAMN, damn! "Hunny! Willa thinks WE'RE Santa!"
"Mommy..........."
Oh, all right....SHIT. There goes the magic. The sneaking around late-night, putting Santa prezzies under the tree....the delight the next morning when she wakes up and walks into a candle lit room with soft Christmas music playing.....a pile of new presents under the tree(HOW does Santa get down such a skinny chimney?!)....a rockingchair and stool with cookie crumbs and half full glass of milk on it pulled up by the fire....

Damn kids and their "logic".

No Dylan...no Santa...those where tough things to wrastle with this year....but we still had a wonderful, wonderful time.....
And I didn't hesitate to boast, "And, ya know, ALL those presents from Santa were from ME and DADDY!!! Aren't we the most AWESOME parents?!?!?!?!

A FABULOUS 17 year old cab... we bought 4 after enjoying some on one of our first "fancy" dates!

THANKS, Dad!!!!!

Something kinda wonderful: I had been yearning to hear Handel's Messiah and looked through my dad's collection a couple of times to see if he had it(I had inherited his whole collection of hundreds of classical music CDs that I store in a couple of huge "notebook" disk holders) with no luck. So on Christmas Eve I researched some highly revered versions of Messiah online and decoded to buy The Academy of Ancient Music-Christopher Hogwood conducting version on iTunes. When I went to purchase, something kept preventing the sale from going through. I was feeling pretty irritated at that point! I was really wanting to hear this version now! It was hard to believe my dad didn't have Messiah in his collection, so I went back downstairs to look one last time. I picked up the heavy leather CD book, put it on my lap and it fell open right to a Handel's Messiah CD. Not only was there suddenly a disk right there alphabetically where it should be...but it was THE very same Academy of Ancient Music-Christopher Hogwood version I had just tried to purchase!!! Crazy!!!! My arm hairs were on end! I put the CD in right before dinner....and it was magnificent. For the first time since my father died, I felt like he was there with us. A warm, comforting, loving feeling of the highest form of my DAD.