This holiday has been a…

This holiday has been a blur of minding children and seeing friends. I don't think I can even remember it all at this point. Let's try:

• sometime Thursday or Friday, I think, but maybe Wednesday or Saturday, Cliff came by -- it was lovely to catch up

• Jed has been visiting a fair bit most days, hooray, including keeping me company writing at Los Gatos Coffee Roasting yesterday when I FINISHED MY BOOK!

• on Friday evening, we went to the Benjamins' for their usual Xmas Eve shindig -- great food (always the same, aah, tradition!), nice to see everyone again, even if I still get their names a bit mixed up

• Sunday morning was Anand's baptism. It makes the grandparents / godparents happy, and we're happy to take any blessing for our kids, even if Kev and I aren't actually religious. Anand's an Episcopal now. His sister is Catholic. Hopefully there won't be denominational battles in their future.

• the rest is pretty blurry, except for last night

Sunday evening, Susan Lee incredibly graciously opened up her Los Gatos house on very short notice (GORGEOUS -- I wish my sister could see it, as I think she'd really like Susan's modern decorating style) so I could invite friends over. Heather came down with her family, Dan and Nadya came down with their kids, (two hour round-trip drive for both of those sets), Kam came by, and Jed, of course. I admit that I mostly let Jed watch Anand and try to keep him from either a) breaking something, b) dropping food on the floor, or c) eating marbles. And I relaxed with friends. Our conversations were very choppy, constantly interrupted by small kid demands, but it was lovely to see the children so happy and healthy and boisterous and playing together.

Kavi played quite nicely with both Rowan and River at various points -- the bigger boys were mostly running around upstairs and too loud for her. (I sort of keep expecting her to turn into a loud, shrieking child, but I think that's probably not going to happen. Weird.) And mama had great, brief conversations, and mostly got caught up on people's lives. I've missed a lot -- not everyone keeps blogs, it seems. Or if they do, they don't update them. Hint hint. :-)

(Dan / Heather -- I think I've misplaced any links to more updated / personal sites you might have, so if they exist and you want me to have them, e-mail me?)

I took no pictures, so please imagine delightful chaos, hot pizza, an array of appetizers and hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps provided by our host, and a beautiful house as background. So glad I got to see them. I miss these folks.

I wish I could just scoop them all up and take them back to Chicago. Did I mention our housing prices? Never mind that pesky winter....