Christmas is pretty much my favorite holiday ever. And as far as I'm concerned, it starts the minute Thanksgiving is over and finishes at Epiphany. I get SO EXCITED the day after Thanksgiving because that means it's socially acceptable to be all Christmasy. And so out come the candles, and the incense for my little smoker-guy from Germany, and of course the real apple cider that I have to scour the damn city for every year. (Curse you, Southern California! Gimme my cider!)
So Christmas this year! We started pretty early with a visit to Disneyland before our SoCal annual passes got blocked out, because I wanted to see Disney at the holidays. They had some sort of choir/orchestra concert right at the front of the park, where they were holding candles and singing Christmas carols, and it was absolutely beautiful. And we saw Fantasmic, which I had never seen before, and that was cool. No fireworks though; too much wind. Disneyland really is so much better at night-- short lines, vastly fewer kids, and the outdoor rides become awesome, particularly Jungle Cruise, Big Thunder Mountain, and California Screamin', on which you should always ask to ride in front.
Then two weeks later Debby threw her Geeky Holiday Bash of Doom, which was mostly really a dinner party where we invited all our geeky friends and played Apples to Apples. For five hours. It was excellent fun! Alex cooked a turkey and lots of other traditional holiday foods, and we crammed a baker's dozen of us into Debby and Dan's kitchen, and we had a grand time. I baked a gingerbread house and a gingerbread Borg cube, but there was not tremendous interest in decorating them.
jawajames did a marvelous job with the interior decoration of the house, but then of course we put the roof on. Debby took some pictures but has not posted them (poke, poke). Oooh, and
sirrogue made to-die-for eggnog cheesecake.
And that is all for now. My mind is too frazzled to deal with posting Christmas tree pictures.