Happy New Year, Hogmanay and Auld Lang Syne

We brought in the new year at the home of our new friends, the Pilbeam family and, as usual, we were on the prowl for new customs to help us celebrate. (I was disappointed to find out that Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year celebration, doesn't involve carving turnips.) In fact, when we asked our hosts, Ian and Anne, exactly what Hogmanay means, they admitted the didn't really know the origins -- it's just New Years in Scotland.

Since then, we've been asking more Scots about Hogmanay. I asked at the barbershop and no one knew. We asked our friend, Billy, from Glasgow and he didn't know. We asked at the grocery and the checker didn't know and Brenna asked at her hair dresser and neither woman there knew either. One of them was determined to figure it out though and so of course... Googled it.

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This Christmas will be different...

In our previous/normal lives in Los Angeles, the holiday season starts today for our family. We put on the Christmas music, put up the decorations, and I start pestering Bob to go out and get a tree, which takes a week or two. [Bob's note: If you wanted the tree up on Thanksgiving you should have started pestering me two weeks before Thanksgiving.] Nothing Holiday-ish happens before today. No decorations, no music, no gingerbread... We joke about how all official merriment is forbidden until The Day -- that being the day after Thanksgiving. We stop each other from absentmindedly humming Jingle Bells, and blissfully glide past Christmas isles at the store; noses in the air. Christmas doesn't start until

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