The real Christmas

Having ticked off the holiday travels back east over Thanksgiving this year, we were free to enjoy a relaxing holiday on the best coast this year. We'd just warmed back up to hosting with our first games night of 2025 a few weeks prior, and we were on a roll. A quick negotiation with Wolfgang and Steph earned us the Dec. 25 hosting time slot (the real Christmas) to their Christmas Eve. (I still can't get over how some Europeans think Dec. 24 is the day for celebrations.) Steph and Wolfgang hosted the perfect pre-game on Christmas Eve, where we broke out day one of two of our signature non-alcoholic mulled wine. In parallel, our own small guest list slowly expanded as we swallowed up more Christmas orphans until a few hours before we warmed up the oven on Christmas morning. Somehow the mishmash crew of guests came together quite nicely, and our evening rode out until nearly 2am, with one guest claiming our newly freed up guest room for an overnight. We enjoyed such a lovely and warm evening filled with love and zero drama, a proper Christmas-edition Friendsgiving.

Managed a family photo of the fur kiddos, and shot pics from both Steph & Wolfgang's and our meals, but failed to snap a single shot of the wonderful humans who added flavor to our delectable Christmas celebrations.

I'm really loving life in this moment between the hellscape of embryo creation and the reality of parenthood. The buttery smoothness of foie gras with armagnac, the sweet pop of a candied cranberry stolen between elaborate high-fives with an Oakland native, and the crisp effervescence of a non-alcoholic La Chouffe, all swirled up in laughter and a late night with friends: I'd have had a hard time drawing up a better Christmas.