the night before christmas

We've been busy in the kitchen all day preparing for this evening's feast. Mostly, Derek has been busy in the kitchen since he decided to undertake the challenge of cooking the bird. Dan arrived this morning with some of the necessities for meat-making that I don't keep in our kitchen, like a baster, thermometer, a giant dish, and cooking expertise. Together, the guys prepared the capon for cooking while Jude and I hid in the other room chopping the ingredients for stuffing. Once in the oven, Derek pampered the bird every half hour for the rest of the afternoon until we pulled everything off the stove and out of the oven to join our friends and celebrate Christmas Eve.

The doorbell rang after dinner and we discovered a sack of gifts that Santa left for the kids- mostly pajamas to be cozy for the rest of the evening while the grown-ups (I guess that's us) indulged in the many desserts. After the party, we were excited to head home and settle down for our long winter's nap.  

tête de véret

The temperature is still mild and we are waiting for snow, but today we decided we couldn't wait any longer to begin our first season of touring. Most of the resorts have not opened for skiing, which gave us the opportunity to practicing along the runs. We started near Flaine and made our first climb to Tête de Véret. It was an absolutely clear day, and we started shedding layers immediately.  We climbed a bit before stopping to eat our gingerbread and drink hot coco. We didn't have much of the ascent left after our snack, so after de-skinning, we took a few stops to enjoy the quiet mountain on the ride down. The snow was shallow and hard with plenty of rocks to dodge, and like the first run each season, I felt completely unbalanced. Luckily, we should have lots of skiing ahead to savor our descents after each climb. This is going to be fun!