Christmas activities

I had every intention of making a new post last night during the football game. I changed my plans when I had the honor of being selected as Lap of the Evening by her royal highness, Princess Della. It’s nice to have a warm cat on your lap on a cold winter night. I let her stay. We need to be nice to the elderly. At 19, she is now the equivalent of 92 years old. If she wants to rest her arthritic hips on me, so be it.

Jane, Hilda, and I spent the afternoon baking Christmas cookies on Sunday. Note to self: start in the morning. We took a break for supper, and frosted cookies like made until 8:00 to get it all done. We made five kinds of cookies (wedding cakes are not shown in the picture). I gave up on moose and reindeer in favor of Christmas bison years ago because the former are not structurally sound as cookies. Skinny little legs and antlers with weak attachment points—one ends up with a pile of dismembered body parts. Bison are squat and sturdy. I pipe a wreath and bow around their wide necks to make them more seasonally appropriate.

Plates of cookies destined for my calorie sharing program (I took them to work). From top clockwise, chocolate Christmas bison, sugar cookies, sour cream pockets (apricot and raspberry). Pecan caramel bars are in the center.

Although I am far from being ready for next semester, I took a day off yesterday to take the family down to a model train display in Huntley. Terry read about it in the paper and thought it sounded like something we would all enjoy. It was an elaborate set up, with several different sizes of trains, many, many buildings, models of vintage cars, and so forth. The largest trains were around the bottom, closest to the viewer. The display went upward in layers, with each layer having smaller trains and buildings, creating an illusion of great distance by the time it got to the tiniest trains at the top. Hilda said several times, “There’s so much to look at!” which summed it up pretty well. I liked the largest trains the best. Two of them had faces on the engines, and the eyes moved back and forth. How cool is that? Another train was festively decorated for Christmas. It’s hard to see the detail in the video, which is too bad. That train never stopped, however, making it impossible to get a good still photo.

Model train village

Terry (far left), Dad (front right), Hilda (next to Dad) and a total stranger admiring the trains

Things to watch for in the video: a train with moving eyes, the Christmas train, and moving dancers in a glass pavilion. 

We had lunch at a local restaurant. I read the reviews before we left and learned that the homemade raisin bread was “to die for.” I tried it. I think it must mean more to those who do not make their own bread. The cinnamon swirl raisin bread Hilda and I made last year ran circles around this stuff. I should make that again.

We ran into snow on the way home. I suspect it might be that sort of winter.