on tightropes, pogo sticks and santa's slay

I hope you all had a fine weekend and if you celebrated, a wonderful Christmas!  Ours was great -- opened presents in the morning, and then spent the day at my parents' house, where Marcus introduced his new cocktail, the Santa's Slay.*  It was a hit:  we spent the day drinking several of them, soaking it up with a good traditional Christmas feast.  Fantastic.

Today, however, we headed over to the home of our friends, Trish and Carl and their kids.  Trish and Carl are two of our dearest friends, and over the years, we seem to have developed a tradition:  after spending the major holidays (primarily Thanksgiving and Christmas) with our respective families, we always spend the day after together at one of our houses, usually eating leftovers (or, as today, pizza).  It has become a wonderful way to extend our holidays, and for this and many reasons, Trish and Carl feel more like family than friends.  In fact, our kids even call each other "cousins."

Anyway, Carl happens to be a PE teacher, so anytime we go over to their house, there's always something active that is guaranteed to happen.  This time, it was all about the tightrope and the pogo sticks:

It was such a great time.

And on that note, here's wishing you a wonderful start to your week.

*  Santa's Slay:  In our house, we traditionally toast Christmas morning with mimosas (or, if you're English, a "buck's fizz") -- champagne and orange juice.  However, late Christmas Eve, we realized that we forgot to get orange juice, but we did have cranberry juice on hand.  So Marcus got to experimenting, and came up with the idea of putting a shot of golden rum in a champagne glass, then filling the glass halfway with champagne, and then the rest of the way with cranberry juice.  I asked online what people thought we should call the drink, and Wanda suggested a "Santa's Slay."  Sounded good to me.

(Incidentally, while the drink is seriously refreshing, it packs one hell of a wallop.  We didn't pick the name lightly.)

Images:  All taken with the Nikon D700 and the 16-35mm lens Nikon lent me.  So much fun.

Song:  Fire on the bayou by The Meters