I am officially on holiday as of 5pm tonight. Yay! Anyway I thought I’d take a moment to reflect upon the Christmas season – which I love – and share a few holiday stories.

The other night I was up on a ladder in the middle of the sidewalk slinging Christmas lights into our tree. While I was up there five different men walked by as said either ‘thank you’ or ‘looking good. I thought that it was very nice of them to voice their appreciation for our Christmas spirit. Bert thought they were talking about my ass.

Bert was Santa at the office kids Christmas party and he was great, which is a good thing because the whole office is still talking about the time five years ago when Santa was from Kenya and started talking in Swahili to a colleague’s child. All of the kids apparently caught his ‘mistake’ and decided he couldn’t be the real thing because “Santa can’t speak Swahili”. Why, I want to know, can’t Santa speak Swahili? Isn’t Santa here for all the worlds’ children? What ever happened to North Pole magic? Luckily the only thing the kids noticed about Bert was that he’s a tad on the skinny side – he told them that Mrs. Claus put him on a diet.

I went to the dollar store to buy the dog her Christmas present but with Bert in France and me at work all day she’s been so sad and clingy. So I decided that instead of cheaping out with a dollar store bone I would bring Meeka something fancy from France so that she can celebrate Christmas with us when we get back on the 27^th. So I gave her the bone last night and she loved it. And since it took her a good half hour to work her way through it, I was able to avoid a half hour of sad dog eyes – totally worth the dollar (actually, 50 cents, it was a two-pack).