At Grandma Tildy's

The fingerpuppets? My mom's. The exterior decoration? Alina's. The liturgical-green curtains? Mine.

Hungry Hippos

Overheard tonight at dinner:

ME: Tassia, you were a hungry little hippo tonight! (Making reference, of course, to the game that happily occupied many hours of my childhood.)

ALINA: This hungry hippo went to market. This hungry hippo stayed home and made himself a tartine. This hungry hippo had roast beef. This hungry hippo had none. And this hungry hippo cried wee, wee, wee all the way home!

A White Epiphany

Greetings from snowy Melle. It's snowed twice this year. Given that it also snowed last year, this may announce the beginning of a new ice age. In any case, for a variety of factors, things have been...well...not quite shut down, but very calm here. Just as an example, I was supposed to teach 10 individual lessons today. I only had 4 students show up. On Monday after my lessons, we also had a little adventure involving our car, a steep hill, and ice. I'll spare you the details, but everyone is fine, including the car.

Today we made what will certainly be our last batch of Christmas cookies for the season. I'm marking the occasion by posting some slightly-belated Christmas pictures:

Alina's new apron, which she has already made good use of!

What you see here is Alina who made a "sandwich." She took a slice of foie gras (first course of Christmas lunch at the Constantini's house), stuck a goat cheese on top, and slapped another slice of foie gras on. The she proceeded to taste it. In case you were wondering, this must be some kind of major culinary faux pas. It didn't seem to taste very good, either.