Little lessons

1. If you are making a standing rib roast for your Christmas dinner, get a good meat thermometer – one that you can leave in the oven with a monitor outside. This was the first year in the past 3 since we’ve hosted Christmas dinner that the roast wasn’t overdone.

2. When you use the fancy meat thermometer in your roast for Christmas dinner, make sure you don’t put the tip next to a bone. This will cause the temperature to register incorrectly (it will appear to be taking FOREVER to cook, when in fact it’s dangerously close to becoming too well done).

3. If you volunteer to host the breakfast for celebrating the birthdays in December, and 9 people are going to be eating said breakfast, you need more than a dozen eggs. The eggs needed to be rationed. There was more than enough sausage however, and the cinnamon crunch bagels from Panera were a big hit.

4. Do not believe your brother when he says he only spent x per person on gifts. He’s a liar. And while in theory I agree it’s kind of ridiculous for adults to give each other gifts (when you can go out and buy whatever you want yourself), it’s nice to get presents.

5. Snow is pretty the first time it snows before the holidays. After that, it’s a pain. Even if it’s only a few inches, shoveling every day gets old. Remind me again why I live in the only part of Connecticut that got any frozen precipitation this past week?

6. It’s nice to shut the Blackberry off and not look at it (except for use as a timepiece) every once in a while.

7. That my 6 year old daughter knew about “ripping” and “burning” cds through the computer to get onto the mp3 player. She knows more than I do!!