Yesterday was a very fun day. To be honest, I didn't even leave the house. A friend of Joanne's (and now also one of mine) came over and brought her two children with her. We spent a few hours just chatting and entertaining the kids and being entertained by the kids. We engaged the help of Zoe and David in taking ornaments off the tree. This idea was not inspired. David found it more fun to take ornaments back out of the box and dump them on the floor. Zoe wanted to sweep up every pine needle that fell, which was an impossible task.
After they made their departure, Joanne and I made the gigantic effort of taking out our tree. Joanne is now rethinking the beauty of having a cut Christmas tree. By the time we had the tree out of the house, I think over half of the needles were on our carpet!
We had to sweep the carpet well before we could even attempt to vacuum! I maintain that a real tree was worth it. They are so pretty. I only wish we could have gotten a live tree to replant in the garden.
After that rather prickly endeavor, we cleaned up the house and eventually settled down to watch a film. Part way through the film, Joanne mentioned that our friend (who had stayed over Christmas eve) had left some pie crust dough in the fridge and told us to use it. (She didn't need it for the peach pie she made for Christmas dinner.) We starting thinking of cinnamon buns. Mmmm...
So we went to the kitchen and I started rolling out the dough. We quickly realized that this dough did not look good. I'm not sure what the problem was, but it did not look right to either of us. But I remembered that I had some puff pastry in the freezer left over from one of my previous baking experiments. So, we binned the dodgy dough and got out the puff pasty. After defrosting it in the microwave, I unrolled it, only to find out that I had a lot less than I had remembered! By this point, we were quite giggly at our unsuccessful efforts. Joanne looked up a recipe and we then made the dough from scratch, also using the remainder of the puff pastry.
Once mixed, I rolled out the dough and Josie spread a lovely concoction of brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter over the dough. We rolled the dough and then sliced it. After a brief ten minutes in the over, our kitchen smelled lovely.
Once cooled from the oven, Josie made me giggle by saying, "Come, let's go ice our buns." I couldn't stop laughing and advised her not to say that particularly odd sounding phrase again. :) But we mixed up some icing sugar and check out the result:
Neighbors have already begun their celebratory fireworks. I was chatting online to a friend in China, who is already in 2012. Time is a funny idea. It's a bit strange to think that now I'm exactly one month away from leaving London and moving back to Pennsylvania. As I've thought about the future year, I keep thinking of this song from Disney's Pocahontas (A flash from my childhood when my sister and I could sing almost any Disney song word for word). Pocahontas is in her canoe and sings:
What I love most about rivers is
You can't step in the same river twice
The water's always changing, always flowing
But people, I guess, can't live like that
We all must pay a price
To be safe, we lose our chance of ever knowing
What's around the river bend
Waiting just around the river bend
This coming year has a lot of unknowns but most of the time, that doesn't bother me. I have a sense of anticipation about what is just around the river bend. Sometimes it bothers me and I just want to know! But at some point, we go around the corner and we see. And then there is another river bend up ahead, holding more unknowns.
This is my 270th blog post. I know that doesn't seem like much for most bloggers, but it represents a lot of writing and rambling on my part, a lot of reading on your part, and a lot of memories. We shall see what the next year holds. I'll keep posting and I hope you'll keep reading. For now, Happy New Year!
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