Of Sunrises and Santa

The Day after Thanksgiving may have been Black Friday for a lot of people, but it was Beach Friday for us as we headed down for our first full weekend at our little place.

Doug had to wrap the newly repaired pipes under the trailer with heat tape for the winter, but other than that it was a no-work weekend for us.

We don't have cable TV at the cottage, but we brought two Christmas movies to watch on our new TV-DVD combo--the Muppets Christmas Carol (one of my favorites) and Christmas in Connecticut (one of Doug's).

We also walked on the beach, where we saw thousands of snow geese:

and explored the St. Jones Reserve, which is just two miles from our house:

We discovered that our humble little place has front row seats to sunsets (over the marsh) and sunrises (over the bay):

We put up a little Christmas tree:

and I spent a cold, windy afternoon reading in the cozy living room with my trusty companion Pax in my lap:

I made some peanut butter cookies with my new small cookie sheets--I discovered last time that large sheets fit our mini-oven but don't allow the heat to circulate, so my cookies were underdone on top and charred on the bottom. This time, they came out perfect:

Pax also tried to tell us in his own way that was a mouse in the couch, which caused just a little bit of drama--we've since set traps and plugged holes and are now hoping for the best:

Here is my little buddy waiting for me to come back from running on Sunday morning:

But the highlight of our weekend was Doug being mistaken for Santa Claus at the Italian restaurant where we went for lunch on Saturday.

Two little boys at the table next to us were eying him carefully while we were waiting for our pizza. It didn't hurt that Doug not only looks like Santa but also was wearing a bright red long-sleeved T-shirt. A few minutes after we sat down, the boys' mother came to our table with a note asking Doug to say something to the boys.

Doug got their names from the mom and then called out to them, "Hey Ray, hi Marcus."

Their eyes widened and their jaws dropped.  Not only was Santa right next to them eating pizza, but he KNEW THEIR NAMES!

They came over to our table, and Doug asked them if they had been good.  I got a quick picture, which isn't very clear because they were moving:

Doug, please don't waste any more of your time trying to convince me you don't look like Santa. Three-year-old Ray and six-year-old Marcus know better.