This week’s Ten on Tuesday topic is 10 Favorite Holiday Traditions. Here are some of mine relating to Christmas:

1. Throw a tree-trimming party: I started this tradition the year after I graduated from college. I was working at a university and had a dozen students working for me. Remembering how sad it was to miss out on decorating for the holidays by the time you got home from school, I invited them to join my friends and me in trimming my tree. I no longer have interns, but I still invite friends over the first Sunday in December to kick off the season in style.

2. Decorate Spritz cookies with Mum: When we were kids this forced labor, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate a well-adorned cookie — and the less sweet taste of these pressed butter cookies.
3. Decorate Gramma’s tree with Dad: At some point my grandfather said he didn’t want a Christmas tree anymore, but my parents over-ruled him and bought one for them, figuring (correctly) that he wouldn’t be able to turn it down once they’d spent their own money on it. I suspect the first couple years Gramma decorated it herself, but as she began to slow down, I’d come over and assist. And then it became Dad and me doing it once it was obvious that her heart wasn’t really in it anymore. Now my parents pick one up before Rudi and I leave after Thanksgiving so Dad and I can get the tree all gussied up before we head home.
4. Make a Christmas cd: Cds are outdated technologies, but it feels nice to be able to hand someone a physical disc rather than pointing them to a url to download a playlist. It’s fun to listen to music to winnow down the contenders (and how I’ll be spending at least part of the coming weekend) and to find the perfect flow.
5. Send Christmas cards: Rudi and I like finding fun and/or pretty cards, and I take seriously the writing of each one. It gives me a few minutes to think about each friend and what they mean to me and to think good thoughts for them. I pull out my red and green pens and stickers and send them to everyone in my address book. This year I’ll be starting at the front of the alphabet after beginning at the end last Christmas.
6. Celebrate St. Nicholas Day: This is a tradition that has come from Rudi’s family, as his dad’s family was Dutch. On Dec. 6, if we’ve been good, we’ll likely find a few treats and a small gift or two in our shoes.

7. Make merry with friends: Many of our D.C.-based friends also throw Christmas parties, and it’s become part of our season to stop in for some munchies at one party and to watch Christmas cartoons at another.
8. Watch holiday specials: We watch cartoons and concerts on tv and movies (and any cartoons we’ve missed on tv or at Sarah and Megan’s party) on video. We’ve got John Denver and the Muppets and The Bishop’s Wife and Frosty Returns (the real one with Mrs. Frosty; not the one they show on tv these days) and Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (which I insist on watching Christmas Eve). And between our collection and Mum and Dad’s, we’re always able to find a new one we haven’t yet seen.
9. Go to a Christmas Eve service with Dad: It’s the one time a year I go to church, but there are candles and carols and a sense of wonder and faith and magic and it feels nice to be a part of that for an hour.
10. Spend Christmas morning with my family: We all curl up in the living room (most of us in our pj’s), with the tree lit up and a fire blazing in the hearth and Christmas music playing on the stereo. We open lovely presents (and hope that the presents we have picked out go over well with their recipients) and snack on sweet breakfasty things and ball up discarded wrapping paper to see who can get the most in a paper bag. It’s fun and relaxed and full of loved ones. Who can ask for more?

What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

You know you are loved when your dear ones…

• offer you a stash of Samoas if yours runs out before you reach your deadline.
• give you a list of things to watch out for at the end of your project that you wouldn’t have known to look for.
• mention a much loved book that ends up being just what you need to read in the mornings while waiting for the Metro.
• come into work on the weekend in large part so you won’t have to be there by yourself.
• don’t complain about how late you are at the office for a month.
• keep pots of soup on the stove for when you finally make it home at midnight.
• send emails and texts checking in on you.
• wash your workout gear so you will have something to wear this week.
• make you tea so you have cups to drink when you drag yourself out of bed and when you arrive home.
• snuggle into your lap as soon as you collapse at night.

Thank you all.

One more day…

Carole‘s Ten on Tuesday topic this week comes at a good time. Neither Rudi nor I had to work on Columbus Day, so we headed north to spend the holiday weekend in Connecticut. This offered plenty of options for this week’s subject.

Ten Things I Did This Weekend

1. Finished my first pair of Socktoberfest socks in the appropriately titled New England colorway and started my second. (Photographic proof coming soon.)
2. Worked on some trip-prep for the upcoming Iceland vacation by catching up on my reading and buying a red winter raincoat.
3. Celebrated Dad’s birthday.
4. Ate Mum’s delicious apple crisp.
5. Sat outside in the sun.
6. Slept in.
7. Took in some fall color. (It’s muted and still edged out by green leaves after a ridiculously wet summer, but the yellows, oranges, and reds are still there.)
8. Bought unpasteurized apple cider (Note: should you decide to do this, I would recommend against storing it in a non-refrigerated garage for two 85+ degree days and then taking it on a cabin-temperature, 8-hour car ride. It pretty much guarantees that your trip will end with the cider blowing its seal and leaking all over the car, the sidewalk, and the entryway to your apartment. You will, however, remember that cider forever regardless of its flavor.)
9. Dozed in a hammock.
10. Decompressed and relaxed enough to realize that a work deadline can be moved back a week without disastrous results.

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

Periodically, Carole posts three things about three things. Less periodically, I steal the idea. Today is one of those days:

Three tv shows I have been watching on Netflix
1. Numb3rs
2. Fame
3. Bones

Three things I did tonight
1. Left work early … at 8 p.m.
2. Finished Will Grayson, Will Grayson
3. Pet Jeremiah while he napped on my leg

Three things Rudi has cooked for me this week (this was a suggested topic)
1. Homemade tomato soup
2. Chili
3. Tankards of tea

Yesterday, Sarah wrote up 13 things she’d like to do between now and Thanksgiving. I thought I’d join her in making such a list, but will stick to ten things since I failed to make the admirable progress on my summer goals that Sarah did on hers. Please note I’m only including fun things I want to do, rather than things I have to do on this list:

1. Attend the National Book Festival — With the exception of the years we were in England or Salt Lake, I have attended every one of these since we moved down here in 2003. This year it’s two days. That’s twice as much fun!
2. Finish a sweater — I was hoping to do this over the summer, but then I never picked up anything larger than a sock.
3. Play volleyball every week — I have joined a rec league. It’s partly to get me playing the one sport I ever really loved taking part in (rather than viewing, like baseball) and partly to introduce me to some new people. Tomorrow night is the first scrimmage, and, frankly, I’m mildly terrified.
4. Attend weekly yoga classes — I have signed up for classes at four different studios. I have no excuse for not getting to at least one each week.
5. Pick apples — Both John and Sarah have mentioned it, so one of these next couple weekends should find us at an orchard.
6. Spend a weekend in Connecticut — I’m overdue for a trip to see the family.
7. Catch up on my classics — I’m woefully behind on my classics reading challenge.
8. Find/make a Halloween costume — Because it’s fun to dress up.
9. Learn twenty useful phrases in a new language — Which leads us directly to …
10. Go to Iceland — And have a fun time!

This weekend, I plan to:

• Have a picnic at the Yards with friends. (Okay, including this is kind of cheating because it’s already happened, but still…)
• Go to yoga class.
• Get to the Corcoran for their final free Saturday of the summer.
• Watch the Mets-Nationals game followed by a Lifehouse concert.
• Swim at the pool.
• Stop by the garden.
• Clean a bit.
• Visit the library.
• Perhaps go to a local farm.
• Perhaps rent a canoe and paddle around on the C&O (although I might want to do a preview sniff test to assess post-Irene drainage issues).
• Perhaps go to a movie.
• Perhaps cook out.
• Go to the farmers’ market.
• Drink strawberry daiquiris.
• Break out the Wiffle ball and bat.
• Do a little baking.
• Knit.
• Read.
• Sleep.
• Get outside.

How about you? Any fun weekend plans?