Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Again.

Mike has been bugging me for the last few days to "take down that damn fire-hazard, already". He's afraid we're going to end up those people who still have their Christmas tree up in April. But that little tree has made me feel so happy and cozy for the last few weeks, that I couldn't bear to take it down! Until he told me that his ex-wife used to leave the tree up for weeks after Christmas and in my ongoing efforts to out-wife her, I decided to take it down today.

We had such a lovely, quiet, comfy little Christmas. And I realized that without even trying, we've already developed some of our own little holiday traditions that I will look forward to year after year. Like my (now) traditional mangled and mutilated gingerbread people.

And my (now) traditional blackberry Christmas pie.


And the new tradition of having brown paper packages delivered to my door all week before Christmas, full of gifts from family in California. And without realizing it, just in one Christmas, we accumulated a whole box-full of Christmasy decorations that we can put up next year. This is all very exciting for me and I reflected on all of this as I stripped our little tree and thanked her for giving me weeks of happiness this year.

In other news, our New Years Eve was spectacular, thanks in part to the lovely dinner that Joe threw at his and Adam's apartment.


But mostly it was spectacular because, as you all know because I can't shut the F up about it, MIKE SENT HIS NOVEL TO DAW PUBLISHING HOUSE AND THEN HE QUERIED TEN LITERARY AGENTS.

(Valentine and Theo pose with the manuscript, moments before it was taken to the post office and sent off to Daw.)

God Speed, Shadowline. May the force be with you.

I hope you, too, had a wonderful holiday and a happy new year. May we all thrive, evolve, love, live and learn in 2009.