Merry Christmas, everyone! Yes...I know it is not Christmas but tonight, we had the dress rehearsal. We just feel that there is so much pressure on the actual day(s) so we decided to have a Christmas before the actual Christmas to take the pressure off! It all started with a really nice chat with Gramma followed by decorating two gingerbread houses. What fun! Boy, did we stick a lot of crazy things onto our houses. Gummy teeth, a green, sour crocodile and lots of skittles from Nonna. At first, our icing wasn't quite right because we didnt' have cream of tartar so Daddy used lemon juice and the icing rolled off the eaves. After thickening it, the t.reats seemed to stick a whole lot better.

Then Daddy prepared a gourmet, Christmas feast. First we had "green" oysters which are extra special and not the usual garden variety. Who knew that being green was so awesome? We enjoyed a very nice champagne with the oysters plus various smoked salmon, mackerel and trout and an excellent cheese or two. The we moved along to a baby wild boar, mashed potatoes and roasted zucchini and onion. All too good and especially with a wonderful red, though I can't remember the name of this Bordeaux. We also enjoyed two "bouches de Noel", one chocolate and one mocha, for dessert with an Asti. All too decadent! If you think we over ate, think again because we enjoyed portion control which left room for a Limoncello cake pandoro.

Here is the very best part of all...because everything was really perfect, there is no pressure now to have a perfect, Christmas dinner on the actual day. Daddy just handed me a "Karamel Korkant Guld Barre" that he purchased in Copenhagen. I'll enjoy that later. He is just saying that he forgot the "crowning piece" as I look over and see him reaching into the freezer. What is it? He replies, "a little mouth wash to rinse the palate." Still waiting to hear what it is...raspberry sorbet laced with vodka...oh, the fun never stops...gotta go, no time to spare! Now if everything burns on Christmas eve, at least we had this perfect, pre-Christmas meal prepared by Claudio, shopped for by all of us hier soir, and enjoyed by all of us this evening, especially by T.T.L who loved the mashed potatoes and some applesauce!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas!!