December 12

The morning started in the bitter cold. Water everywhere had frozen to slabs of ice.

At church, while OLeif practiced with Judah, Reuben, Nacchianti, Mercy, etc., with the children for their Christmas program, Puck read books, played for an extensive period with Collette’s laptop power cable, and for awhile with little Juniper Spinnings.

Then it was to the Silverspoon’s where Gloria soon arrived with rolls of Christmas paper and left shortly later to prepare for the church Christmas party that evening. But not before she turned on the stove to warm up Collette’s ice cube hands and chatted with them all while OLeif made fajitas.

There were a few more paperwork errands to run that evening. This included Target for white mailing envelopes and a packet of breath mints, which Puck was keen on having.
“Please, hab one?” he kept asking.
“You have to wait for Daddy to pay for it,” Collette told him.
“I can’t pray for it!” he declared unhappily.
“No — pay. Watch Daddy put the card in the machine.”
But Puck was already distracted by the man putting extra cash in the cash drawer for the checker. Several locks of hair hung down over his eyes.
“He can’t see! He can’t see!” Puck exclaimed.
Collette shushed him.

Later in the afternoon, OLeif and Izzy returned form the choir/orchestra concert to wrap the white elephant gifts before also leaving for the party. One of them was a giant pumpkin on which Gloria had doodled a large pi symbol with permanent marker. Collette and OLeif finished decorating it with various designs and ‘Merry Christmas’ written in dozens of foreign languages before it was packaged and loaded into the car.

The night ended with a thunderstorm. Boom!