the pool is open!

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted last.  I thought it had been maybe 2 weeks.  I'm not sure how that happens.  Anyway, summer's here!  In the olden days, I'd be working 50+ hour work weeks this time of year, sweating my butt off in multiple layer period costumes, chasing after bus drivers, and corralling hundreds of fourth graders,  but not anymore!  Now we get a few nice hot days in a row to warm up the pool, and we're swimming!  Alfred recently got the filter and vacuum systems all working, and also just built a new, extra tall fence at the front of the yard.  So now the pool is nice and clean (with minimal effort from us) and  no one can see in when we're skinny dipping.  Score!

Today, though, we wore bathing suits.  Lucy, Ellie, and Marly all came over for a play date in the pool.  It was a little chilly, but we're a tough bunch of gals!  Ellie was not so into swimming for some reason, which is funny because last summer she was swimming like a fish, but the littler girls both loved it.  Marly loved it so much she decided to hop in on her own!  I guess she just wanted to jump in like her mom (and test Lucy's reflexes, and my heart function, all at the same time). Hopefully all three little ones take nice long naps this afternoon.

April was a busy, fun month.  Tabby and I have been having all sorts of adventures, meeting new people, and learning a lot.  She absolutely loves playing with other kids, which is great.  She's pretty laid back around other kids too, so far at least.  We recently joined a new baby/toddler play group, and she made friends with a couple of other little girls her age.  Both of them kept grabbing whatever someone else was playing with, but Tabby was happy with whatever was left over for her.  She had more fun grabbing the other girls' toes anyway.  The newest development is separation anxiety.  Looks like that's going to be fun to deal with!  She's getting closer and closer to crawling too.  Then I'm really in trouble.

drinking with a baby

Not as in enjoying a beer while your baby enjoys one as well. I mean drinking while you have and are in charge of a baby. Cause if you have a baby, chances are there are times when you just really need a drink.

So, I have a baby whom I feed with my body. I also like to enjoy an alcoholic beverage every once in awhile. (If you didn't already know that, hi, my name is Tracy, it's nice to meet you.) My goal is to breastfeed Tabitha until she's a year old. Having already abstained from alcohol for the nearly 42 weeks I was pregnant (ok, I had the occasional sip of beer, and half a glass of wine once while pregnant) I was certainly not looking forward to being the constant designated driver for another year. So yes, I drink alcohol. Exhibit A:

This was my first power hour after giving birth; Tabitha was about a month old. And I only did half of it, actually. Man, I miss the days when all you had to do was hold her and she'd sleep like a champion. We were pretty damn loud that day, and she was right in the middle of it, passed out cold. She's become a bit of a light sleeper. She also used to go to sleep for the night around 8 and not wake up, even to eat, until 3 or 4am. Now it's a total crap shoot, some nights she's only up to eat once, other nights (ahem, like last night) she's up half a dozen times. Regardless, we've still managed to do some drinking lately.

A few weekends ago (because I've been working on this post for about a week) my mom was here to visit. Unfortunately she couldn't babysit for very long during the day (that whole boob thing), but she certainly could at night! We went out with Ilya and Mercedes and hit up a couple of local breweries. I had some delicious dark beers, Alfred hopped on a moving train, and we gorged ourselves at McDonalds on the way home. Then the following weekend we went over to Lucy and Phil's house, along with Gara and Kevin, for oysters. Oh, and some booze. No babysitter that night, so Tabby came with us and went to sleep there. Good thing Alfred stayed sober enough to drive. Hangovers are so, so much worse when you have a baby. Definitely a fun couple of weekends though, we needed a little break from our typical evening routine!

hibernating

I've heard rumors that it's cold outside today. The internet told me it was 51 degrees at like 10:00. That's cold for me now. In a month it will feel warm I'm sure, but I'm not ready for it yet. So Tabitha and I are hibernating like a couple of bears today. She's even been eating a ton all day like she really is fattening herself up to survive the winter. I have not eaten much, mostly because my digestive system has been mad at me and hurting me and making me nauseous since last night. It would have totally been a pajama day except a) Tabby spit up on her pajamas and then peed on them while getting her diaper changed so I was a responsible parent and put clean clothes on her, and b) I hadn't showered in 2 days and decided a shower was a priority today. So I took a nice, hot, long (aka 20 minute) shower during her first nap this morning and it was glorious. I am, however, still wearing pajama pants. Yesterday I was all ambitious and house wifey and made dinner and a yummy peanut pie for dessert. Today I'm staring down the dust under my coffee table and trying not to pee my pants as I sit in my glider all day while Tabby naps in my arms and wakes up to frantically nurse again every 20 minutes or so.

We were due for a lazy day at home. Our social calendar has been hopping for the past week! There was Thanksgiving of course (when Tabitha managed to pee on the floor while lying on her changing table), then we spent half of the next day at at a Mexican restaurant with Ilya and Mercedes. We got a wee bit drunk on margaritas, thank you for asking. Monday we had a lunch play date with my friends Lucy, Gara, and Mercedes, and Tabby's friends Ellie, Marly, and William. Monday I also had book club (anther Mexican restaurant=more margarita drunkenness) and coffee club the next morning. Coffee club is agroup of stay at home moms who meet once a month to discuss interesting, non-kid topics. For example, yesterday we discussed women in politics and why the US has never had a female president. Lucy (of bravofam.com fame) has been introducing us to various mom/baby activities. She's my social coordinator. Thank God, because otherwise I'd be going crazy here alone every day.

Ok, back to big important things like reading funny websites and doing Christmas shopping online.

my birthday surprise!

So far this has been a really great birthday week. Alfred and I went out for dinner last Friday; I enjoyed a spa day on Sunday; we put up our Christmas lights and bought a Christmas tree; yesterday I had a birthday lunch with one of my friends at work and then a dual birthday dinner with Gara and Kevin (her birthday is tomorrow, happy early birthday Gara!) and then today came a bunch of surprises: first the flowers that Alfred sent (which I had told him to send), then another bouquet and a sister!


Yes, Katie flew down to surprise me for my birthday! I'm so excited, it's such a fun surprise. I walked into my office after a lunch meeting and there she was just sitting there. I was so shocked, she and Alfred and everyone else who knew have kept this a complete surprise. It's awesome. What I was afraid was going to be a hard/stressful/unfun birthday is turning out to be so, so great so far. I'm feeling very loved and mushy and sappy now. :)

happy birthday, Louisa!

Exciting news for a Monday morning - Katie and Ingo's baby girl has arrived! Head over to Mein deutsches Leben to meet little Louisa and congratulate the new parents! (There's no baby post yet, but you can go congratulate them anyway!)

Growler the Turtle

Dang, how does an entire week go by so quickly without a post? Apparently I don't remember as often without Mike here to harass me about it. It's been a quiet week, it's been nice to relax a bit after the past couple of weeks. We've gotten some more work done around the house, gotten some more stuff unpacked. Today we got a bunch done, although it doesn't seem like it to look at the house now. I keep unpacking and putting stuff away in the kitchen, yet somehow the counter tops are still full. But you didn't come here to hear about house stuff, you came to hear about Growler!

So last weekend we went to K-Mart to buy some important Halloween supplies: colored hair spray (Gara and I sprayed our hair and Mister's tail pink and blue), Twizzlers, and a net to try to catch some wildlife in the pool. Mike spent a lot of time outside during the day, trying to catch various animals as they surfaced in the pool, but he wasn't having much luck. So he headed back out after it was dark and hit the jackpot: an alligator snapping turtle, and a Florida bullfrog! We put them in an aquarium and left it outside for Gara and Kevin to pick up the next morning so she could take them to school (she's a high school biology teacher). She has since let the frog go, because he wasn't eating, but the turtle is doing well and has been named Growler, since he was caught on Growler Day. Growler Day was a resounding success, by the way. Everyone accomplished the goal, and no one fell in the pool. We fully intend to repeat the holiday many, many more times.

action shot

We hit up a couple of bars last night, nothing too outrageous, but we got enough attention for our costumes to make Mike happy. We were rock, paper, scissors, and Gara, obviously. In case you don't know how Gara fits into the game, scissors cut her, rock bashes her, and she tears up paper. We realized last night that to really make the game work you need an odd number of items. Otherwise it isn't fair.

Today we have some things to make in the smoker, plus Gara and I just bought some hair spray paint. Also, it's Growler Day! So we're each drinking a growler (gallon) of beer. It's pretty cool that Growler Day and Halloween fall on the same day this year. Kevin and Ilya are both out of town (Ilya went to the big rally in DC that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had yesterday, we watched for him on TV, didn't see him but did see a friend from college, which was pretty awesome) so Gara's been hanging out with us, and Mercedes will hopefully be able to stop by later. She wasn't feeling well the other day but she was going to try to come over later. Shaping up to be a fun day!

Guess what's got 2 thumbs and had the day off today? That's right, this girl! It was great, because I got to a) sleep in ( I got almost 10 hours of sleep last night, which I badly needed, having gotten less than 10 hours of sleep the past 2 nights combined), and b) work on cleaning and unpacking the new house. Our bathroom, the upstairs bathroom, and the living room are almost done, the kitchen and our bedroom are maybe 2/3 done, and the dining room actually has no boxes left in it. One of the upstairs bedrooms is pretty much set up too, actually, the one that Mike's currently staying in. (Oh, by the way, Mike's here. More on that later.) The office is a complete disaster, it's where we kept putting all the random stuff we had nowhere else to put as we were moving in. At least some of it's going to end up in the attic, but I probably won't be tackling it for another week or so. Anyway, we're much more settled in after today, which is nice. Hell, we're probably almost as moved in as we ever were at our last house.

So, Mike's here! He got in late Monday night (technically Tuesday morning, it was around 12:45am I think). He and Alfred have been palling around, as usual, though today I got to play a bit as well. Right now we're doing a power hour. It's our first, actually, which is kind of weird. Since it's been like 2 days. We were supposed to do one earlier but Alfred had a bunch of errands to run, so he was being all responsible and stuff. Lame. Last night Ilya, Mercedes, Kevin, and Gara came over for dinner. And Mister. He didn't eat, though.

On Saturday we went to Mercedes' and Mister's birthday party, which was fun. They had a barbecue party. It was all delicious. And an ice cream cake. And a dog food cake for Mister, which Ilya tasted. Apparently he tastes all of Mister's treats, too. Full disclosure: I tried one of Mister's treats once, it was peanut buttery, it was actually pretty good.

We're talking about Mike's trip to DC. Alfred and I almost lived in DC. True story. I sort of wish we lived there now. I'm going to go ahead and post this now, because I've been working on this post for approximately 40 minutes.

ginnie!

We went for one last hurrah this summer over Labor Day weekend: Ginnie Springs! It's another park where you go tubing down a river/spring, but this park is privately owned (as opposed to Ichetucknee, where we've gone before) and so drinking is more or less allowed. So we drank. The first trip down the river started out all sorts of innocent and fun loving.

There were 9 of us total. We had 2 floats, one that fit 8 people and then 1 that was basically an inflated armchair. I'm not sure that Mercedes touched the water all day; she could definitely have gotten away staying completely dry, that's for sure. The big float was fun to do back somersaults off of into the water, though. As the beer and camel back of margaritas started to kick in, things got pretty energetic.



We had a nice big lunch after our first trip down the river, complete with more beer. We played around on land for awhile (pretty sure there was a photo shoot on the beach volleyball court conducted by yours truly with Eric and Susan's camera) then headed back to the water. The second trip was pretty fun too, but by the third time we were all pretty wiped out.

I slept the entire way down. Seriously, someone woke me up and I thought I was supposed to move over on the raft to let other people on, but we were at the end. Whoops. Alfred and I actually did make it out to dinner with some other friends that night, but we were so spent we headed home early and crashed. We really had fun though, definitely a great way to spend the last big weekend of summer.

the swim

Last Friday we spent most of the day cleaning our old house for our new tenants. That's right, our old tenants broke their lease and moved out 6 months early. Punks. Luckily we were able to find someone else to move in, and we had 2 days in between tenants to clean everything and get it ready for the new people. Also luckily, those 2 days happened to be my days off for the week. Yay for me! They did a pretty good job cleaning the house actually, so it wasn't so bad, except for the guest cottage. The girl who lived out there sort of trashed the place, including smashing one of the windows. Jerk.

That night we went out to dinner with a whole gang: Ilya, Mercedes, Kevin, and Gara, with Phil, Lucy, and Ellie joining us after the meal to say hi. We feasted on barbecue and attempted to listen to some bluegrass from the band playing there, but they weren't very loud and we couldn't really hear it. The food made up for it, though. After dinner we went back to Lucy and Phil's house for some drinks and water sports. Their new house is right on the water, so they have a paddle boat. We attempted to fit all 6 of us on it (Ilya and Mercedes had to go home so they weren't there) and very nearly sank. As you can see by the picture to the right, even 4 people almost sank it. This was all leading up to Kevin swimming in this less-than-sanitary water to earn $31 from Phil. Which he did, with flying colors. He may have almost died, but he made it, and earned Phil's money fair and square.

In other news, I am happy to report that I have spent most of my last 2 days off of work gearing up for the return of The Vampire Diaries next week. I believe I've mentioned my love of this show before. The second season starts a week from tomorrow, so I'm re-watching season 1 in preparation. I've gone through 15 episodes so far, 7 more to go. I can't wait for it to come back, it's seriously the show I'm most looking forward to. Mock me if you will, I'm not ashamed. I just feel sorry for those of you not watching it.

for Rosemary

I just talked to Rosemary and she requested a new post so she didn't have to look at the picture of the watermelon anymore. I don't know why, since it's an awfully cute watermelon, but I'll oblige. I've had to go to work every day for the past 8 days, but in exchange I get 2 days off in a row, tomorrow and Saturday! I'm pretty pumped. Unfortunately I will spend most of tomorrow cleaning. Our tenants moved out of our house yesterday (breaking their lease, which makes me very angry and makes me want to keep all of their security deposit out of spite) and new tenants move in next week, so we have to clean in between. I'm really hoping they didn't mess it up too badly in the 6 months or so that they were there, but we'll see. We haven't actually seen the house yet, Alfred said that he noticed a few things that needed to be repaired the last time he was there though. Punks.

Today after work I met Lucy and went to a Lush party. Not for alcoholics, though I'd certainly qualify for one of those types of parties these days, for the cosmetic and skincare company. Some girl Lucy knows set up this product demo through the store in Orlando, and I've heard about this stuff from someone at work, so I wanted to check it out. We got facials, got little hand massage treatment things, and when I bought something (only 1 thing that I needed anyway!) I got free stuff along with it! There was some food and drinks and it was a nice little evening out. No picture for this post though, when you google "facial" some stuff comes up that you don't really want to see.

I carried a watermelon

This watermelon happens to have grown in our garden. It's one of two that did; unfortunately the other one split open and started rotting while it was still on the vine. Also unfortunately, we brought this one over to Kevin and Gara's house on Saturday night and forgot to eat it. Very disappointing.

I've been quite the little social butterfly the past few days. Thursday evening I went out to dinner with a bunch of people from work, we hit up the 2 for 1 margaritas. Friday evening was claude's with some other work friends (he makes his own marshmallows now! Chocolate covered coffee flavored ones, mmm), then joined Alfred, Ilya, Mercedes, Kevin, and Gara for dinner at an awesome barbecue place. Saturday was a beach party for most of the day (flanked by visits to the museum to open and close, and pick up a couple bottles of wine for the road), then a power hour at 7 with the gang from the night before, plus Melissa and her new boy toy. Sunday was Turk's birthday, so we had dinner in his honor with Alfred's family after I got home from work. Busy, busy!

Sunday was also both Katherine and Jevon's anniversary, and Katie's baby shower. Many expressions of love and congratulations to all of them :)

long weekend!

I'm in the midst of a 4 day weekend from work! We decided to take a little mini-vacation and headed down to Fort Lauderdale to visit Alfred's grandmother, Egee. We left Friday morning, spent all day Saturday down there, and left to come back home yesterday morning. The three of us went out to dinner on Friday night. I wasn't terribly impressed by the meal, but the creme brulee we had for dessert was phenomenal. On Saturday we had lunch and dinner with Egee at the dining room in her building, spent a few hours at the beach, and watched TV in our hotel room. We used priceline to get a really nice hotel for really cheap, so we figured we should take advantage of it. Plus, I was on vacation! I wanted to be kind of lazy. It was a really nice little visit, and Egee seemed to appreciate us coming down.

Yesterday we had dinner with the rest of Alfred's family for Father's Day: lots of good food, as usual. Today is my last day off, and I have a bit of socializing planned. I'm having lunch with friends, a book club meeting later this evening, then some laundry and grocery shopping to do, maybe some ironing if I get motivated enough... busy, busy!

memorial-ness

I actually took a holiday off - I was off yesterday for Memorial Day! More because I'm working this coming Saturday than because of the holiday, but that's ok. It meant that I/we could go to Ilya and Mercedes' for their Memorial Day picnic! A whole bunch of people ended up coming, and we had a whole bunch of really good food. Ilya made ribs (which are always awesome), we brought smoked pork (which Alfred chopped instead of pulling, also good) and smoked wings, and then there was corn on the cob, potato salad, cole slaw, a couple of dips, and a variety of desserts. It was all delicious and I ate too much. But, what else is new?

We also spread the fun of speed Uno to a few new people that have never played before. You know us, never missing a chance for speed Uno. I've actually tried getting people to play at work a couple of times, but somehow our jobs keep getting in the way. Anyway, Ilya and Mercedes also bought Connect 4. I used to play in like 4th grade and loved it then, and apparently still love it now. So, it was fun. Of course we did not take any pictures, so no pictures again with this post. I'll have to work on this for my next post or 2. Sorry.

oh, my liver

(FYI, I started this post Saturday morning. It's now Monday night.)

Actually, I haven't really had any beer since Tuesday after work, but I drank enough Saturday and Monday to last awhile. I'd say our booze fest was a success. Alfred and Mike both finished their cases on Monday, and I finished my half case. I think Katie was within a couple of beers, I'm not sure about Maureene. Lucy, Ilya, and Mercedes all joined in for part of the day too. We played a whole bunch of flip cup. Only a couple of puking incidents. Not bad at all. The rest of the week was fun, even though I had to work a lot and couldn't join in in all of the festivities. I could make pizza, though! We had it 5 times total, twice for breakfast. Katie left on Tuesday, and Mike and Maureene left on Thursday. Now it's just us again. But we have pictures!

meet the neighbors

So I'm watching this little drama unfolding outside my house. Our neighborhood is a dog neighborhood. As in, dogs next door, dogs across the street, dogs down the road, dogs everywhere. Dogs that bark when you go outside, dogs that bark when you get into or out of your car, dogs that bark when they hear other dogs barking. It's pretty damn annoying. Well, apparently a few got loose from a house down the street, because about 10 minutes ago I heard a bunch of barking and thundering animal running sounds in my front lawn. I looked outside to see 3 big dogs running across our lawn. 2 minutes later, along comes some lady yelling at them. The dogs run back her way. 2 minutes later, more barking and running, and the dogs are running away again. This happens several times, until she finally gets one of the on a leash. The rest sort of trail along with her, stopping to bark at and harass dogs in fenced in yards along the way. Just now she was back out front yelling for another dog to come back. It's kind of hilarious. She's wearing black stretch pants. Not the stylish kind, though.

Most of our neighbors are white, it seems, though a lot of the people in surrounding neighborhoods seem to be black. In the Publix supermarket closest to us, for example, we're generally the only white people there. I texted Alfred all excited the other day because there was another white couple in there. The other supermarket by us is usually pretty evenly split between white and black people. It's an interesting area. Luckily, I'm often in my work costume when I go to the supermarket around here, so everyone's equally staring at me. I bring the races together in my 16th century garb.

In other news, I had the day off today! I have to work all day Saturday, but let's not talk about that. I made strawberry cupcakes for Lucy, who came to see our house and joined us for lunch. The frosting was better than the cupcakes, although they looked pretty cute with a little strawberry slice on top. We drank a bottle of wine while she was here. Because really, what better time for a bottle of white wine than at 1:30 in the afternoon?

In closing, I'd like to share this link to a collection of the Celebrity Jeopardy skits from SNL. We used to sit in the hallway/ghetto my sophomore year in college and listen to the audio on our computers. They still crack me up. Enjoy!

how is it already Tuesday?

First of all, congrats to Allison and her husband on their freshly born baby! Little Gabriel arrived Monday morning, safe and sound, though he caused a bit of drama by deciding not to cooperate and necessitating a surprise c-section. I stopped by the hospital after work today to say hi and visit, and to bring Allison some chocolate from Claude's. He's very cute, and she looked damn good, especially considering what she went through yesterday. So, congratulations all around!

We were actually quite social this weekend. Kevin called Alfred on Saturday and asked if we were busy, (which, other than packing, we were not) so we met them for an extended lunch (complete with plenty of colorful drinks) and then did a little sightseeing, for free of course. Then on Sunday we headed up to Alfred's parents' house for the Super Bowl. This involved even more eating and drinking. Plenty of frozen margaritas to go around. I think I watched about 10 minutes of football. So, plenty.

Other than that, most of our time over the past several days has been spent cleaning, organizing, packing, and getting things together to donate to Goodwill. They're really going to get to know me over there. So if posts are a little sparse for the rest of the week, that's why.

birthdays!

We've had a couple of birthdays lately: Rosemary and Ilya. Rosemary's birthday was on Thursday. This picture is from our road trip, when we visited her and Greg in LA. It's from the night we practically destroyed her brother-in-law's house. It was great fun! I've actually seen Rosemary 3 times in the past 6 months, which is pretty impressive. Once in LA, again in Ithaca a few weeks later, then last month in Boston. That's more than we've seen each other since I graduated, probably. Miss you, Rose!

Next up: Ilya. His birthday was yesterday. We celebrated with him and his family last night. Alfred helped drink an entire liter bottle of tequila. The food was good, as usual (Ilya's mom is a really good cook), Mister the dog performed some tricks for us, and fun was had by all. This picture is from when we went camping this past summer. Ilya was quite a fan of his gas lantern. The two of us got trashed off of vodka and Kahlua based drinks that night. Pretty sure he's drunk in this picture.

Tomorrow, one of my employees has a birthday. Not too exciting, because I don't have a picture of him, and even if I did I probably wouldn't bother posting it because no one who reads this knows him. Neato!

Another weekend (nearly) gone. It's been a fairly productive one, which is sort of nice. Last week we had our first school groups since winter break, which was good, I needed something to do at work again. Not that I have nothing to do when there are no groups, there's just nothing I want to do. I made brown velvet cupcakes Thursday evening and took them in on Friday. They were brown instead of red due to the lack of food coloring. They tasted good. I had a few interviews too, with varying results.

Friday night we went to Ilya and Mercedes' house for dinner. They had a bunch of really good sushi grade tuna, so it was pretty yummy. Then we watched The Men Who Stare At Goats, which Mercedes and I slept through. Apparently it wasn't as good as Alfred and I had hoped. Saturday we spent far longer than anticipated cleaning the new house. The tile floors, specifically. But they are now clean(er) and sanitized and ready for things to be placed on top of them. The last big cleaning thing we have to do is the blinds, but someone didn't think we needed to bring the vacuum cleaner with us for that this weekend so they'll have to wait.

Today Alfred did a little bit of cleaning and organizing in the garage, while I mostly sat around and was useless. I did exercise and go grocery shopping, so at least I left the house. We also watched the G.I. Joe movie, which probably would have been better if I was a 13 year old boy, but at least the line "knowing is half the battle" was included, which got me pretty fired up (I am a child of the 80s, after all). And "yo Joe." But not "got to get tough," or "real American heroes," but hey, I'm not complaining. Maybe they'll be in the sequel that is so clearly going to be made.

catching up

Still working on the last week's worth of activities. I had to work on Wednesday, and Alfred stayed home to unpack and take care of some laundry and other chores. When I got home, I was greeted by a new little friend: Mr. Squeakerson. He's a squirrel. Alfred caught him when he ran into the garage earlier in the afternoon. He lived in a laundry basket over night. He was really cute. After some internet research though, we decided he was better off out in the wilderness, so we let him go Thursday morning.

We both worked on Thursday, then went out for a lovely sushi dinner for New Year's Eve. Just the two of us. Aw, romantic. Actually we stuffed ourselves so much I kind of wanted to puke. Then we went over to Ilya to Mercedes' house for New Year's Eve. We ate some more, drank, exchanged gifts, and generally had a rip-roaring good time. We even made it past 1:00! Well, I fell asleep on the couch for a few minutes, but other than that we did well. We made a huge delicious breakfast this morning, too. God, this blog is all about food. Well, you've all met me. Shouldn't be too surprising.

On New Year's Day we hung out with Alfred's family and celebrated Christmas with them. Again, lots of awesome food, nice gifts, the works. We also helped Emily with a project for her dorm (she's an R.A.) It was fun spreading out Christmas this year, it made the holidays last much longer. Then we made some soup to continue our long-standing New Year's Day tradition. This year we tried some dessert fruit soups: strawberry kiwi and blueberry peach. Interesting idea, but they left something to be desired. Too bad.