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Meadow learned how to unwrap presents, so this Christmas was all kinds of fun. She naturally assumed that anything with wrapping paper on it was a gift for her, but she's learning. With the proper coaxing and diversion, she is one helluva unwrap-assistant and trash bag filler-upper.

Of all the presents she opened this year, her two favorite are the toy kitchen (left) from Auntie Heather and doll-house (below) from Secret Santa (but we have our suspicions!). She likes to fry up the plastic carrot and pour make-believe water into the cup with the kitchen. And with the doll-house she likes to slide the baby down the roof and put the family through various activities including putting their peepee in the poddy.

This year we did something very special for Christmas. We bought tickets to visit my family in Spokane, but didn't tell them! We showed up on my mom's doorstep Christmas Eve, my dad's Christmas Morning, and my grandpa Tom's a couple days later. No one knew and we successfully pulled off one of the biggest surprises we've ever done!

We put together a video of our visit. Click here to view the high-quality version:

Or, if you don't want to watch the high-quality version, here's a YouTube version:

Since we got home so late on New Year's eve we decided to put off our celebration until the next morning. And we're glad we did because we had just enough fruit to spend the whole morning sipping organic orange-grapefruit mimosa and discussing the finer things in life.

(not pictured: flax french toast and soft-boiled eggie for MJ)

My heart was recently warmed to read about the Chains of Cheer inspired all over the country by Starbucks' "Pass the Cheer" campaign. There are stories all over the news like this one about people buying coffee for the person in line behind them. It just made me so happy to hear about all the seemingly random kindness. But it got me wondering, does it really spread cheer or is it just a good way for people to temporarily feel "better" and a great way for a huge corporation to get even more publicity?

So I decided to take an assessment. I went to our our local Fred Meyer on December 23rd, which has a Starbucks stand in it.

To perform my test, here's what I did:

First, I ordered my coffee, and while paying asked to pay for the next person in line. I should also mention, this caught the cashier off guard. Maybe she didn't get the memo?

Second, I sipped my Jo, did my shopping, and did my assessment, which consisted of two parts. Part One: For every person I passed head-on I tried to make eye contact. Then, if eye contact was made, Part Two was to elicit a smile. My requirements were modest, I wasn't after a big toothy Ho-Ho-Ho smile, but just a simple regular-ole acknowledgment of holiday cheer: a grin (and perhaps a nod).

The store was over-crowded with last-minute gift-buyers and grocery shoppers, an atmosphere, it seemed to me, ripe for the spreading of cheer. I was wrong.

I passed a total of 68 people. Of those, 11 made eye contact with me. That's a paltry 7.5%.

Even worse, of the 11 people that did make eye contact, only 2 returned my smile. That's 1.4%.

So, perhaps it was the holiday stress. But isn't it "lame" that at the height of the holiday season, when cheer should be at its pinnacle, I got such results?

I did some reading in the blogosphere about the Cheer Chains, and turns out there's a lot of criticism against Starbucks. The yuppies that populate the Starbucks' drive-through might be in need of an attitude adjustment, but that's about it. They don't need food, clean water, sanitation, vaccinations, etc. Why not take all those thousands of donated cups of coffee, pool the money together, combine it with an in-kind donation from the huge corporation, and spend it in lump on a group of truly needy people? Seems to me this would make a true impact instead of sprinkling "cheer" around on people who will go back to being grumpy in a few days anyway.

My experience in Fred Meyer cemented my agreement with the criticism.

I do plan to do my assessment again sometime after the holidays have passed, just to see if it was the stress of that day or if in fact it's true that only 1.4% of people want to share a smile. And if any of my readers care to do their own assessment and comment the results I would be very interested!

We had a holiday get together last night and it was the first time so many of the babies got to party with each other and the adults. As I'm standing between the living room and kitchen, hearing from one ear babies squawking, squealing, and giggling, and from the other ear adults having adult conversation, I realized I've transitioned into a new kind of party.

Way back when, oh so many years ago (it seems), a party was a thing with nary a limit. Nowadays that has changed, and indeed for the better!

Now we've got responsibilities, and we have to enforce the rules ("please stop whapping the baby on the head with the foam noodle"). But that just makes it all the more fun! It's no challenge to go to a party and just... party. The real fun comes into play when balancing infants' survival and growth while at the same time getting to hang-out and enjoy other adults (ie: making fun of politicians and carrying-on an asinine conversation about Little House on the Prairie or Starblazers).

Here's a couple pics of the Boys and Girls and their babes. I should also mention there were a number of non-parents in attendance (not pictured), and THANK GOD for them to keep us sane!