When Pigs Fly.......

Young C and her friend M rode their bicycles over here this afternoon for a surprise visit. C was still all excited about her parents coming home last night and finding their Christmas tree up and lighted and decorated. C's dad called us last night and he couldn't stop laughing. He told me that it usually takes him a full day to get those decorations down from the attic and get the tree assembled and decorated. S couldn't believe that the three of us got that tree done in less than three hours.

We should've told S that all it took was some Christmas music, a few Santa hats, and a hopeful 15-year-old's dream of surprising her parents. Well, maybe next year they will all look at the tree-decorating as more of a fun thing to do rather than a chore.

This afternoon, however, C's friend M brought us a gift from his family's recent trip to Prague. They went there over the Thanksgiving holiday, to visit M's sister who is living and studying with a host family in Czechoslavakia. When C brought M up to our lake cottage over the summer, he noticed that I had a cast-iron pig on the kitchen counter. I had bought that little pig during our trip to Savannah, Georgia, and what makes that little pig so cute is that she has wings. (As in the old southern saying "When pigs fly....")

During one of M's shopping trips into Prague, he found a wooden pig with wings, handmade and handpainted by a woodworker there. He said it made him think of the little pig in our cottage kitchen, so he bought it for us. This pig is painted a bright pink, and there's a cord attached to it so you can hang it from the ceiling. The cord goes through the pig's jointed body, and if you pull on the bottom ring of the cord, the pig's wings move up and down, and so does the pig-- so she appears to be flying.

It's a cute little pig, and a thoughtful gift from a 15-year-old boy, so we will hang it up in the kitchen of the cottage. I always smile when I think of the great group of friends that C has... they are all just as nice and as sweet as she is. I hope they all stay friends for a very long time, way after they've all graduated from high school.

My husband and I are planning for Christmas day..... we've invited two more friends for Christmas dinner, so our table will be set for seven now. We still haven't settled on a menu yet, but I do know that I don't want to serve ham again. It seems that we've had a baked ham for Christmas for the past four or five years. I hate cooking ham, and we can never find one small enough so we always end up with way more ham than we could possibly need.

There's a trend here..... I hate cooking turkey, I hate cooking ham, I hate cooking beef. I guess I hate cooking every kind of meat there is. Except fish. I don't mind cooking fish. Salmon.... maybe we can have salmon for Christmas dinner. Lobster? They're red--- perfect dish for Christmas... it would match the table decorations. Except they're so messy... my tablecloth would be a mess as soon as the first claw was cracked. Forget lobsters, no matter what color they are. We'll just have to keep thinking.

Gorgeous day again today... I love this time of the year..... it reminds me of a mild and warm New York day in the Spring. Come to think of it, most of our Winter is like a northern Spring, except when the weather gods give us a cold snap to make sure we're paying attention.