Here, taste this....

Don't you hate that? The croissant doesn't taste right, "Will you taste this for me mommy?" Uhhh, "No. I just brushed my teeth." What else can one say to that question? Once the mere thought of eating something thought to be "bad" is enough to make it so.

This meat doesn't smell right, "What do you think?" Too late for me. What about, "Does the color look okay to you?" Done. The old, "I just brushed my teeth" really works well with my kids, because nothing tastes as it should after that. Especially,
orange juice. If it's questionable, toss it, but don't ask me if it is okay.

Done Christmas shopping and with ninety percent wrapping complete. I feel great about that. Even got the tree this weekend. Decided to go with a "real" one this year. That pine fresh smell lasted until we got it home. Less time than that new car smell. The tree is pretty. Buying it was not such an ordeal. They have perfected the nets to keep them from going all over the place. We slid it down the tree and can slide it back up after we defrock it the day after Christmas. It is still taking water on, but I doubt it will continue to do so for much longer. I don't have the best luck with fresh cut trees sucking in sustenance.

While shopping for this tree, we pretty much let Zoe decide which one to get. She hugged some trees. Yes, she is a tree hugger. Who knew? Not only that, she was compelled to name it. She looked at it through the moon roof in the car, all the way home and came up with Peter. Petey affectionately....Have you ever noticed that all the trees start to look the same after you've seen five? It becomes so confusing we go back to buying one of the first two or three we looked at. I asked the guy with hair down to his butt and wearing a flannel shirt which tree he thought was good. Well, what were we looking for? We were looking for fresh! Oh, we get trees in daily. We don't clump them together by the day they arrive. Just look for the greenest trees. I set out with this mission in mind. Green, light green fresher than dark green? Well, that depends on the type of tree, they are all different. Tree sales guy listens and knows how to close this deal. "I would pick this one, it looks fresher." Of course, the fact that he cannot wait to get the tree on top of my car and onto the next customer is foremost in his mind. He is dripping sweat, the more customers he helps, the more tips he makes. I get that. I even like the guy very much. And we didn't end up with the tree he knew he wanted me to hear was best. We ended up with Peter, the one Zoe loved the most.

The one thing I haven't done is taken a photo of the girls for our annual Christmas card. That means after I get said shot, I will still need to copy the one most loved. Then to address the envelopes, add love to those we do and mail them before Christmas! The race is on!

Speaking of photos, last weekend Katharine had new headshots done. We got to meet and hang out a bit with a major ex-OLTL star. We knew that Katharine's manager handled her as well, but we were surprised to see her with somebody we had asked to come do Katharine's make up for the shoot. I tried to be cool and not be not star struck. Normally, I handle these things with grace and I believe I stuck to that, although, I wanted to ask a ton of questions. I suspect we will be seeing each other more in the future and I can ask some questions then. I did tell her that I enjoyed her work, which she was appropriately gracious about. Then on to talk of dogs, make up, the weather, ordinary stuff.....