It’s most definitely starting to feel a little bit like Christmas here. Above is our favourite card so far (and unlikely to be topped). I wonder if Ben is bawling about seeing Santa? We love the look on Lilly’s face. That’s Santa Peaty (holding Scotch whisky – get it?) on the right.
Tuesday was Diana’s birthday (she finally caught up to me) and we celebrated with dinner at Pappa’s Bros steakhouse. The poor thing had a totally full day of work and was still dressed up and ready to go at the prescribed time.
Pappa’s Bros is consistently voted the best in the Dallas area and one of the top 10 in the United States and so my taste buds were excited. I kept the destination a surprise from Birthday D.
We started with an outstanding lobster and brioche dish. Both nicely cooked and with great flavour provided by the shaved truffle and sauce. In a very mature move we decided to save two for dinner the next day. Thank goodness because we didn’t do a very good job of getting through our steaks either. Dinner on Wednesday nice was very good. Diana had a steak special dish with ridiculous foie gras on top, shaved truffles, and a cauliflower puree on the bottom.
Trying to pick something light from the dessert tray was impossible, so Diana ended up going with a mousse concoction with a toasted marshmallow on top.
I was sad to hear that Zumie, my dog in California, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 16 (or 112). He lived a very long life for a Westie and, as my Mum said, “was a lovely wee dog”.
Diana and I had our Christmas gift exchange on Thursday night as we had a concert on Friday and travel to California on Saturday. We didn’t bring the big tree down this year since we were spending such little time at home over the holidays. However, we did not have the smallest tree we saw this year. That honor goes to Harold, Patty and Brent’s tree. We didn’t have a full appreciation until a picture entitled “pressies under the tree” arrived. Our tree is named Cooper, because he’s a Mini version. How did Harold get this name? Well, Harold is in charge of all the angels, you know – “Hark the Harold Angels Sing”. Classic Patty and Brent humour.
Both our trees fared better than the downtown McKinney tree which blew over in high winds right before the parade of lights.
Friday took us to another excellent Christmas concert – Marcia Ball, Carolyn Wonderland, and Shelley King at Poor David’s Pub.
We enjoy all three of these ladies in concert individually and together they are a real treat. They shared an eclectic mix of Christmas songs and songs that could be considered appropriate to the season. This was the opening song:
We enjoyed “Christmas in Austin” and “Christmas Fais Do Do”:
And finally, I always love a good Marcia Ball ballad:
After all that, it’s really starting to feel a lot like Christmas.
We made the long drive home and then got up and headed to the airport for San Francisco on Saturday.
Amy and Adamo prepared an excellent feast to celebrate the closing days of D’s birthday week. Some of Adamo’s hand caught lobster and yummy butternut squash risotto. Luciano and Massimo provided assistance in blowing out the candles (which seem to have got switched around at some point).
On Sunday we met up with the boys and Christine at Timber and Salt in Redwood City for the annual gift exchange.
We had a very good meal and a lovely time catching up on the news from the boys and Christine. One interesting piece of news was that Campbell had been awarded the “Rookie sales person of the year”. Among other rewards, this comes with an extra week of paid vacation. He seems to be doing really well at work and enjoying it – even admitted to D that it comes pretty easily and isn’t too much work at all.
After dinner Will took me for a ride in his newest BMW – yes, you might be thinking, “I thought he just got a highly customized new BMW from the factory”. That is correct, and he was offered a “too good to be true” opportunity to trade up a notch to the racing track BMW M2 Competition edition. It’s very fast and outfitted with all kinds of computerized engine adjustments.
It was very nice to spend time with the kids and now it’s back to Pacifica to prepare for the Christmas onslaught.