Merry Christmas, HO HO HO!

Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, etc. everyone! I trust that you and yours have found yourselves a cozy corner complete with cookies and with whatever token/lump of coal Santa has seen fit to reward you.

The "Best Parents Ever 2008" Award is totally in the bag. We reinforced the kids' conviction that begging is effective by rewarding the pleas of the past months with the oft-requested Nintendo DSs for Christmas this year. Although we got some Christmas cheer out of the gifts ourselves, given that they kept each child occupied for at least five hours out of the trip up to the snowy North on Tuesday afternoon.

It's a relatively quiet trip for us, unusually so, given that our calendar is filled mostly with large blocked-off sections of "reading," "eating," and "visiting with family." Wonderful things all, and activities that often get short shrift when we come for other visits and try to cram in as many people as possible into too short a time. I personally intend to finish both of the books I brought with me, and possibly get started on the new Miriam Toews which awaited me under the tree.

And with that, off to pour another cup of coffee and settle into a particularly appropriate Terry Pratchett, in which Santa (aka "The Hogfather") is a marked man and the Assassins Guild attempts to send him to sleep with the fishes. Who needs Dickens and his pitiful little Cratchett boy when you can have Father Christmas with a price on his head?