Tuesday, December 30

After a chaotic morning of the cleaners being here (trying to prepare the house for cleaning when arriving home the night before at 11:30pm was not fun), Andrew worked and the girls and I prepared for tonight's Welcome In with Mom, Dad, Molly, Jeremy, and Luca. I really just like calling this event a Welcome In, even though everyone has already arrived and we've all seen each other. But we did get to Welcome In Jeremy's mom, who we were happy was able to join us.

We had appetizers and Andrew's delicious shrub mocktails in the Long Room, in front of the fire, and then had soup around the dining room table. The kids gave us a viewing of a short movie they'd made at Mom and Dad's house yesterday. I gave a reading of some of the Situation Stories (moralistic tales meant to illustrate the lessons in religion textbooks) that I wrote when I was fifteen, and made the kids answer the "discussion questions" I'd written to go along with them ("What would you do in this situation? What wouldn't you do? Why? Explain.") It was a lovely, festive evening. Welcome In!