The Prairie Fire Lady Choir is on haitus until March or April, so instead of getting together to sing, we got together to make tamales!

Valerie hosted us, with the husks and sangria prepared.

There may have still been some singing and piano playing while we were together.

Molly made masa all day long. Masa for meaty tamales, masa for veggie tamales, and sweet corn masa for plain tamales.

Valerie (and her husband) have beautiful cats and Buddha alters.

Adding lard!

These cookies were homemade and covered in edible glitter. Me = impressed.

Valerie showed us a few example tamales to get started, then we let ‘er rip!

We were putting our tamales into the big silver kettle for steaming.

We made so many! They took much longer to steam than anticipated.

Annette decided to grab my camera while I was making tamales. Proof that I helped!

Ready for eating!!

Yum! I can’t wait to do this again!

Hannie tried on Pop-pop’s glasses.

Then Hannie and I took a photo together (while I tried on Aunt Debbie’s glasses). SMILE!!

Jason and I stopped in Blue Earth, Minnesota, to meet the Jolly Green Giant.

LOL, egg nog.

This afternoon I had a few dozen Thrushes (I think) hanging around outside my office window. Kinda creepy.

So many more photos to share! Why do I take so many?

In theory, having a WordPress app will help me to update more often but I think I’d rather have my photos linked from Flickr instead of uploaded to my blog’s media center. I’m torn. Any iPhone bloggers out there with helpful tips?

he made egg nog cookies. they are magical things.

egg nog (with optional rum) was served in very fancy glasses. we have a lot of fancy glassware, by the way. many options.

the host always spends time in the fridge. (right?)

after dan arrived (in his very festive vest), jason kicked off the christmas celebration with a “yankee” gift exchange.

everyone brought a gift that cost $1 or less.

during round one, after everyone had drawn a number, each player picked a gift from the pile — no unwrapping yet! player #2 could either keep their gift from the center or trade with a previous player (#1, in this case), and so on. i like this round because it is fun to create speculation about what a gift might be!

i actually think it’s fun to do this mystery-gift-trading round once or twice more, but jason decided to skip right to round two.

to kick off round two, player #1 unwraps his or her gift. then player #2 unwraps his or her gift, and can either keep it or force player #1 to exchange. player #3 can keep, or trade with one of the previous players. and this continues through all of the players…

but, in the end, player #1 get final choice! he or she can claim whichever gift, of all of the gifts, that he or she desires.

during our exchange, melissa was player #1. she picked a kazoo out of the gifts and at the very end of the game — she wanted that kazoo back!

i actually traded a yoda-shaped usb flash drive for this giraffe bust. i want the whole collection of miniature busts!

after this, some friends stayed to enjoy santa’s slay with us, then we played rock band until about 2 a.m. — another fun evening!

i’m wishing a very happy holiday season for you and your friends, too.

we had six instruments hooked up — guitar, bass, drums, keys, and two microphones. we would’ve had seven, but we would need to get one more microphone. not that it mattered, actually. it seemed like everyone who wasn’t holding an instrument was singing along with most of the songs anyway!

check out laura in this photo — she’s playing some sweet air guitar!

i don’t remember how it came up, but vani remembered every word and every handclap for down down baby.

crystal brought us an adorable halloween plant, too. it didn’t have a nametag, though — any one know what kind of succulent this is?

molly and ryan brought a really dangerous (read: delicious) buffalo/cheese dip.

vani brought a bunch of tiny cupcakes!

the bacon table: bacon/cheese crackers, bacon cheeseball, bacon chocolate, and bacon dip.

jess also made chocolate chip cookies. (jess: you are welcome to bake here anytime!)

as a somewhat informal tradition, we took a group photo. (yay, i got to be in one of my photos!) unfortunately, we missed taking the photo before dave left for another event, so we’ll need to take another photo at another get-together. what a shame.