PhotoShootSunday 6January08

There's been a lot of snow flying since my last PhotoShoot, and I hardly know where to begin.

There was Christmas, of course. We spent 8 days in Maine - our first Christmas without Jeff's mom. We all had moments when her absence was huge. As usual, Alison handled it far better than any of us. For Ali, Grammie's not really gone. She's actually with us more because she has a better view now.

We were playing dominoes one night and Alison had just destroyed her grandfather's plans once again, and she just laughed when he complained about it. I asked her who taught her to play so well and she looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "Grammie," she said, and continued plotting the way Grammie had taught her to her eventual win.

Getting into the house on Day 1, she'd made a bee-line for her chalkboard -- the one Grammie had always started the countdown. She dragged it out and wrote out two markers: one for how many days until Christmas and the other how many days we had left in Maine. She updated it faithfully. A day or so after Christmas, she changed the first one to how many days until the Littlest Pet Shop toys she'd gotten and which were already packed and shipped, would get to Indiana. Once home, she had me mark the day of the toys' arrival on our refrigerator calendar.

Yes, she gets too many things (actually it's a combination of us all) in Maine to cram into our suitcases. The trip to the UPS Store has become part of our holiday ritual. Christmas was great. The snow in Maine was up to my knees before we got there and it made for some great sliding days. Next year we may try to ski.

So we got home just in time to get the tree and most of the decorations down before I had to be at my Bunco Christmas party and then zip down to Jasonville the next day for a visit with my family. Donna made a clam chowder that would easily pass for great even in Maine. And she has yet to share the dang recipe with me.

Our New Year's Eve party, which seems to becoming an annual affair, was more on-the-fly than it's ever been. It was its usual mix of people from different times of my life -- some old friends, some new, a case of champagne and a table full of great food. Jeff didn't cook non-stop as he has in past years, but he managed to make chili, beef tenderloin with an assortment of sauces, sushi, shrimp cocktail, spiced and roasted sweet potatoes. Friends complemented the array with orange/soy roasted chicken, cheeses, guacamole, puff pastries, cookies and to top it all off, our friend Lisa came late. She was sitting around thinking, she said, and she said to herself, "Hmmm. I make cheesecake and I make baklava. What if I made baklava cheesecake.?"

For those of you who knew Jeff and me a decade ago, Lisa was the one who made our wedding cakes -- different flavors of cheesecake decked out like a "real" wedding cake. Her latest invention was amazing -- even better than the wedding cakes. Move over Paula Deen, your 15 minutes may be up.

So we're officially back to the grind tomorrow. Ali's back to school and we're back to 5-day work weeks. I do kind of need the break... Hope your holidays were as jam-packed and fun as ours.

Talk to you soon!