Can I just tell you one thing I love about this time of year? Egg nog. Really, can you get more decadent than egg nog? Okay, having lived with a roommate in college whose mother created baked goods with such combinations as M&M fudge marshmallow pecan brownie caramel coconut peanut butter squares (or something along those lines), and having a childhood which included a dessert consisting entirely of whipped cream, oreos, butter mints and tiny marshmallows, I am familiar with decadence. Cheesecake? Yes. Cheese croissant? Definitely. Chocolate mousse, mm-hmm. But perhaps because these items are available year-round (and many just a short walk across the street from 7 am to 11 pm), I find it necessary to resist them, as I wish to button my pants on the first try. Egg nog, on the other hand, just magically appears sometime around or after Thanksgiving, and then by the time I am getting a bit sick of it, makes its merry way out of the refrigerated section by New Year's at the latest.
I am not a straight-up egg nog drinker, not a spiked holiday drink sipper, or even a grande extra hot no-whip egg nog latte guzzler. I am a soy latte with a splash of nog, a chai tea sweetened with nog, an afternoon decaf with nog instead of half-and-half fan. And, while the real stuff is excellent in these capacities, let me just give a shout-out to what is normally my least-favorite brand of soy milk, Silk. I am not a fan of their soy milk in general but this time of year they have Silk Nog, which basically is the sugar and flavor of egg nog without the arterial plaque. I don't know how it would be straight up (but then again, if you like straight-up egg nog you and I probably don't overlap on this issue anyway), but as a hot beverage holiday cheer booster it rocks.
Must sign off now and put the water on for tea.
and present under the tree,
but her attack on the tree itself has me worried for tonight, when she will probably decide the ornaments all need to be captured, eviscerated, beheaded, and brought to the master. We did take the most problematic ornaments from last year and put them on the mantel rather than the tree, but I doubt it will be enough to stop her.
Despite Iris's potential to wreak havoc on the finished product, we had fun deciding where to put our favorites. Adelaide chose the tree topper from the collection of stars. She is almost tall enough to put the star on top on her own!
I was glad I still needed to lift her up to put it on (and glad I still can).
Now we are fully in the Christmas spirit around here.
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