12 Oakdale

The chronology: Spaulding, Molly and Teddy flew in the Friday before Thanksgiving for a week at the timeshare her dad owns. Along with Steph and her family, they joined us for dinner: chicken noodle soup and pasta e fagiliol with sourdough  bread. The next 2 days, they had tickets to Disney. That worked out because we were booked for LAWD on Saturday. I made the cranberry tiramisu on Sunday. We pressed our electric camping cooler into serviced to have room in the refrigerator. Mary, Ryan, Bella, and Remi arrived on the red eye Monday morning. Everyone came for waffles mid morning. Swimming in our cold pool, chasing poor Gracie with the laser, cousin bonding. We took hotdogs to the timeshare to grill for dinner.  Tuesday, Steph got us all tickets to Universal. She even borrowed the Senior VP of Entertainment’s gold pass so Grant and I had free valet parking. It also got 6 people into the Express Pass lane on each ride. Exceptionally valuable for the Velociraptor roller coaster....

Because of our cruise mid-December, I haven’t been enthusiastic about putting up much of any Christmas decorations, or at least that’s the excuse I’m using. I did make the gingerbread house kit I’d bought pre-Thanksgiving, cutting window holes for pieces of vintage Life-Savers I melt into window panes. They’d gotten so sticky from old age, they were almost impossible to crush into powder. Not my best work. I also tried putting some cinnamon and nutmeg next to the lightbulb to see if the heat would make them be more aromatic. Meh. But in any case, done. That was inside. Grant hung lights on the front of the house and around the lanai. That was the outside. I did get out our Christmas shirts. December 6th was Holiday Hoopla, a games and food event exclusively for Town of Windermere residents. People like Steph who have Windermere in their address but don’t live inside the town limits were uninvited. To that end, there need to be people to check in attendees. Nancy’s daughter Brynna, a Ho...