December is a big month for birthdays in our family - almost as popular as April. Jamie hit the big FOUR-OH. I told Melissa she gets to be a "trophy wife" for the next month, because she's still only 39. Janet and Gary also celebrated their birthdays Let's just say they are more than 40 (but don't really look it).
I hosted my own celebration this week (not a birthday). Our Ladies Out to Lunch group decided to cancel our outing this month, because of a snowstorm on that day (you can tell none of us are native Coloradoans who don't think twice about a snowstorm). So I invited them over for an afternoon tea. I recently bought a cookbook from the British Baking Show and needed some guinea pigs to try out the recipes. I also found a good recipe for winter spiced wine, so we skipped the tea and had a happy hour celebration instead. The food turned out fairly decent, though it's hard to mess up recipes with so much sugar. On the table I made treacle tart, cream cheese-topped cucumbers, lemon scones, and sticky figgy bites (though I couldn't find figs at the grocery store, so I substituted dried cranberries and apricots). The pie in front is called a Banoffi pie. It's basically a pie pan full of caramel topped with bananas and whipped cream. Even with my sweet tooth, I had a hard time eating much of it.
Luckily the snow tends to melt off quickly around here, so I can burn off calories biking. Our group is starting to look very professional with our bright yellow jackets. Only the guy on the end is wearing jeans and a black windbreaker. What can I say... he's an eBiker and doesn't have to pedal as hard up the hills.
I went to the library earlier this week. It was all decorated up with a multitude of Christmas trees, each with their own theme. Some represented book characters (like the Harry Potter tree), and others took after movies or TV shows. I thought this Minions tree was really cute, but I wondered where in the world the library stored all those decorations in the off-season. There must have been 20 trees scattered amongst the bookshelves.
Bruce and I decided to go on an end-of-the-year hike with the Hiking Club. Their last several hikes have been up in the mountains (too much climbing for me), but this one was in a flat open space. The scenery was gorgeous with big red rock formations, but the cold wind was brutal. Luckily there was a great Mexican restaurant right outside the park, so we talked a few other hikers into joining us for lunch. Since we burned off so many calories hiking (and shivering), we all ordered the El Grande (3-item combo) as a reward. Yum!
