I woke up this morning with the slightest hint of a hangover and the memory of a good party. My friends J & J (the parents of AJ�s friend Z) used to live in a high rise on the Lake in Chicago and throw swank parties with grownup cocktails every Christmas. We would get all dressed up and arrive to find an odd mix of lawyers and artistic types who had done the same. At the last of these parties, J and I were both pregnant and lamenting the fact that we could no longer enjoy the fancy drinks.

They staged an encore last night, so although it was snowing hard, we pulled on our finery, topped it with heavy boots and wool coats, picked up the babysitter and slip-slided our way to their house. We arrived early and stopped for a drink at a piano bar down the street from their house where a sweet-voiced tenor who looked like a dentist was crooning Christmas carols and be-bop and Buddy Holly. We inhaled the smoke, marveled at a red and green blinking moose, knocked back some Maker�s Mark and stomped back out in the snow, our breath steaming.

When we arrived, the party was in full swing, although we knew no one but our hosts. We split up, my husband found himself talking to the wives of several neighbors. I sat down next to a funeral director and ended up in a fascinating conversation that ranged from dead bodies in the Fox River to blogging to the pleasures of writing to friends with whom you also speak in person.

And then our friends arrived. And we talked and talked, and drank champagne with apricots in it and talked some more. And someone refilled my glass, I think. And then it was time to go and we said a round of Merry Christmases and bundled back into our boots and escaped into the night as the snow started to fall once more.

* * * * *

It was a lovely ending to the day that had begun with a mad dash to the grocery store, followed by our village�s annual Christmas party at the barn behind our house (click back a day or two for pictures of the barn in the snow). AJ begrudgingly sat through the performance of a local high school choir while waiting not-so-patiently to raid the table of treats. He dove into the fray and came up triumphantly with a chocolate doughnut covered in red and green sprinkles. Then he painted a plaster gingerbread man threaded with red ribbon to hang on our tree and sat on Santa�s lap and told him, �I want some cars and something for them to drive on,� by which he means a racecar set. �Isn�t there anything else you want?� Santa asked. �No, that�s it.� There is nothing better than cars that go round and round and do tricks and race each other.

In the afternoon, AJ and I hiked up to the top of the steepest pasture with his bright red sled and went up and down and up and down and made snow angels at the bottom when we tipped over. After a while, we stumbled home singing Christmas carols, at AJ�s request, and pining for hot chocolate (with marshmallows).

* * * * *

Today is warmer and brighter, but the snow is still sifting from the sky in anxious waves. AJ and I are at work on an army of abominable snowmen made of marzipan and coconut, who are storming across the kitchen, leaving a wake of great fluffy footprints across the counter. They will soon be joined by heaps of butter cookies decorated in red and green sugar and by a pile of edible Christmas wreaths. The house smells of vanilla and cinnamon.

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