poltr1 | That Was The Weekend That Was, December 17-19, 2004.....

Fri 12/17: Had to pick up The Girl from day care as she was not well (according to the school's definition). R had a holiday party at work. Spent the afternoon at home keeping an eye on her.

Later that night, attended the holiday party for the USS Bismarck. Had a great spead of food, including roast beef brisket, ham, and Rick's famous latkes. The gifts we got in the gift exchange were a gift certificate to Target and a Texas Hold'em poker chip and card set. (Neither my wife or I play cards, so this gift will probably be recycled at next year's party.)

Also made a late-night run to Kinko's to copy the annual family newsletter on nice parchment paper. Even though most of the letter was written at the end of last week, I wanted R to proof-read it and to add material pertaining to her. The letter was finalized on Thursday night.

Sat 12/18: R had to work (it's the end-of-the-year billing crunch), so once again, I was on Daddy Duty by myself. Cooked goetta and eggs for breakfast, which M happily ate.

After R came home, we set up our new Yule tree -- a 7' tree which we purchased two weeks ago to replace the old and worn 4' tree. (The old tree has since been freecycled and is now in a school classroom.) Hung the ornaments on it. Somehow, the tree setup and ornament hanging is a great stressor for me....until it's all done.

Had dinner at Boston Market. (Puzzling question: Are there any Boston Markets in Boston?) Then went shopping at Target to complete our shopping runs. R went off by herself to get some goodies for me, while The Girl and I wandered somewhat aimlessly throughout the store. We also had to replace one of our Wiggles DVDs as the disk has gone missing at home, and The Girl wandted to watch it. (Both R and I would be content to never again see Barry Williams -- aka Greg Brady -- in a gold lame shirt, channeling his "Johnny Bravo" character, singing and dancing.)

After getting home, I wanted to get some cuddle time in, but R was just too tired. :-( Instead, I went through some recent mail, sorting it into "Yes", "Maybe", and "No" piles. Then I tackled box A24 as mentioned previously, although most of the stuff in there was in the "Yes" pile.

Sun 12/19: M and I had Irish oatmeal for breakfast. I got to go back to sleep from 10am-noon while R got up and watched The Girl. Then we started to get ready to leave to visit with our relatives in Columbus for our Christmas party. (A few of the family members will be out of town on Christmas Day.) We stopped at Kroger to get dinner rolls, and Kohl's for some gift certificates, before we headed east to Columbus.

Dinner was good -- ham (and roast chicken for the non-ham eaters in the family), salad, potatoes au gratin, steamed veggies, and a relish tray. We also exchanged gifts. I got another oversized fleece pullover and a calendar. M enjoyed playing with her cousin E, who's about a year older than M. They'll probably want to spend more time together as they get older.

After we got back, we began preparing the holiday cards for mailing on Monday. The newsletters were folded, stuffed into envelopes with the family picture, and sealed in envelopes. Return-address and address labels were affixed, and envelopes were marked for the type of stamp to use -- "H" for Hanukkah stamps (yes, I know the holiday's over), "Y" for Yule or secular holiday stamps, "AIR" for the three out-of-country cards being mailed out. A total of 108 envelopes were prepared and will be mailed tomorrow, once I get the stamps and the time to affix them. (Aside to