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This pine tree, always bare on one side, wasn’t much of a looker. Indeed, when we moved in eleven years ago, Al Wolcott thought it so ugly he said we ought to cut it down. The tree has saved us the trouble — as well as the trouble of cutting down the Norway maple it crushed on the way down.

Sarah celebrated her 15th birthday with a riding lesson, lunch with the Lawson twins, and a fantastic cake baked by Jen.

As is customary, Sarah could select any cake she wanted. Jen made a three layer vanilla cake with chopped Oreos in the batter, crushed Oreo buttercream frosting, and chocolate ganache.

It was icy cold on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but we had a had a warm weekend with a visit from David Upson and his family. Many kitchen gadgets were pressed into service: we made Chicken Adobe in the somehow back-from-the-dead Instant Pot, a perfect 136 degree beef tenderloin courtesy of the sous vide machine Julie and Stacey gave us for xmas, and overnight waffles from the Toastmaster. We also whipped up some spinach and ricotta stuffed shells using nothing fancier than a pyrex casserole.

The Upsons brought their Yorkiepoo, Pepper, here seen climbing Burger Hill. Daisy was a model hostess to Pepper.

If it remains as cold as it was this weekend, and it doesn’t snow, we’ll have a rare chance to skate on the pond next weekend. In the meantime, we kept warm on Saturday with lasagna (veggie) and movie (Little Miss Sunshine) night.

Sarah presided over a very merry Christmas in her traditional elf capacity, with a little help from her assistant, Daisy.

Despite our rather short, pudgy tree, we had a festive time with the entire Burleigh clan. We feasted on gravlax, herring, stollen, and fruit salad. For Xmas dinner, we had country ham and biscuits, as well as mushroom risotto for the vegetarian set.

Sarah made presents for everyone. Jen got a scarf, which Sarah had surreptitiously knitted in the back seat during Sunday night return trips to New York, while her mom was driving. I got a handkerchief embroidered with my initials. Geoff, shown above, and Lew each received a beautiful framed picture she made. Lewis got an eyeglass case with a fuzzy interior. Rinda received a glass bead necklace created by Sarah in the glass-blowing shop at camp. She never took it off.

Erica received this quilted pillow.

Sarah, exempt from Secret Santa rules, received many presents herself. Daisy also made out pretty well, scoring a stuffed llama, a stuffed dinosaur, and a new Chuck-it.

On Saturday we had Sue and Michaela Mermelstein over for dinner.  I sneaked out to capture this image of the moon shimmering on the pond.

It was about 40 degrees in the house when we arrived Saturday morning. The boiler was repaired by mid-afternoon, but our drafty old farmhouse heats rather slowly. We solved this problem in a first-world kind of way: we decamped to the cottage with an Instant Pot, Sarah’s 92nd Street Y menorah, and a bottle of wine.  We made coq au vin, lit the candles, and had a lovely Chanukah celebration.

Our Thanksgiving this year included Rinda, Lew, Julie, Stacey, and the Perkins family, four visiting Australians celebrating their first Thanksgiving.  We had an 18-pound turkey from Salt Point, together with pecan stuffing, green beans with slivered almonds, creamed onions, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, strawberry jello mold, three kinds of cranberry sauce, and four pies. We think of these as customary accoutrements, but the Australians seemed to find many of them bizarre.  Here, Jen pulls a hickory nut pie from the oven.

Daisy was polite, if not welcoming, to the Perkins’ Chihuahua, Gigi.

Sarah got everyone to play board games.

After dinner, Stacey and Daisy relaxed by the fire.

Sarah’s babysitter-for-life Lauren Ballback, fresh from passing the Virginia bar examination, visited this weekend.

She brought her dog, Hamilton, a very good boy who did not dig any holes during this visit.  Daisy enjoyed his company.

Today, all of us — except for Hamilton and Daisy — attended the Hudson Valley Hunter Jumper Association annual banquet at the Poughkeepsie Grand Hotel.  Sarah won some very large ribbons for her season aboard Owen.

We seem to have a number of foxes in the neighborhood (or at least two).  Here’s one in the front yard.

Foxes are nice to see, but I hadn’t seen our large flock of wild turkeys in a while.  I was relieved to see that, for now, they seem to be coexisting with the foxes in our yard.