Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Ah, it's Christmas time again.

While the first half of the week was warm, the second half was really cold and it was time to get out warm jackets and stop running around in sandals. I still ran around last night until my toes needed some defrosting.

Wednesday we went to our local Creche exhibit in Palo Alto. This was their 20th anniversary exhibit, so since I grew up in Ann Arbor I spent the day comparing the two exhibtions. While the Palo Alto exhibit was a few years younger and a lot smaller, there was no hesitation in declaring how much more posh and elitist their exhibit was. Instead of a simple card explaining where the nativity scene originated from, it was a full declaration of how it was acquired on the collector's "fourth trip to Switzerland from a master carver," etc. Quite humorous, really.

But Thursday was St. Nick's day and we celebrated with German food and giving out our first Christmas presents to friends. A friend of mine gave us her family recipe for German sauerkraut and I attempted to make some beef schnitzel, since we expect to have bratwurst Christmas Eve. My poor friend Jess has been away from Germany/home so long she didn't even realize it was St. Nick's day until I reminded her and she was telling me about her family traditions on that day.

We tried really hard to make it to the passport place on Friday, but my last minute mistake of only printing one copy of our passport photos made it so we missed doing that again. We'll have to try again on Monday. I had a meeting with Sam Gould until late to prepare for our Revolutionary dinner Saturday night.

And after cleaning our house (boring, I know), that's how I spent the rest of my Saturday. As a part of the greater CADRE/Montalvo/Red76 residency, we had a FM broadcasted dinner conversation about technology and resistance. Before the dinner, we made some flyers and walked around the neighborhood talking to the families about what we were doing. It reminded me too much of bad childhood memories of collecting money for my paper route. But my colleagues wanted to see my "mormon missionary tactics" for talking to people. That was fun.

I got home late, but we still decided to drive to the Masleid's Christmas party. Even though Paela was tired, she was friendly with everyone and was happy being held by the crowd. Do we have a social baby? I think so.

And now, we're hoping that Paela does better with church today. I think it has been a long time since I have been to my priesthood meetings. Rebecca might need to feed Paela during Sacrament, but it can't be much worse than last week when I had to wander the halls because she wouldn't stop fussing.