"Imagination is more important than knowledge"

This has been a wonderful season of friends, family, entertainment, cooking and sharing. We rang in the season with a trip to the North Shore Music Theater for an absolutely fabulous production of The Christmas Carol and the Friday before the Day, we saw The Irish Tenors and enjoyed a lavish evening of song: their voices filled the Rochester Music Hall with joy!

Stephen and Joann (who live in Seattle) were with us for 5 days prior to Christmas. On the 17th, we had an early Christmas party with them, Amy, Mike, Victoria and Anthony. We prepared a glorious buffet of traditional family foods and some new recipes as well.

Christmas Day was joyous, indeed, as Shelly, Katherine, Esther (age 5), Ari and Noah (9months) came up for the day. What joy! A grand day! A great feast that was topped of with 'steamed pudding', a Spiller family tradition.

I have the great gift of working in a loving environment that has lots of spontaneous holiday cheer as well as the organized variety.

We'll cap off the season with dinner and a show at the Stone Church on Saturday night where Bill Morrissey is playing; he is one of our favorite folk artists. And of course, there's New Year's Eve; we, however, are not party-goers so we'll stay in with a festive meal and champagne.

One very nice slice of Christmas joy came from Artella -- the on-line e-zine. The folks at Artella offered a holiday swap and I signed up for it. Yesterday, the mailman brought an artistic creation by Sherry from Tennessee. You can see it at the top of this post. Imagination IS more important than knowledge. The body of the little person is articulated; his arms read: "Think Big". His head is an old, rusted bottlecap. It will find a spot by my desk at work. Sherry is a very creative woman; I visited her blogs (stillwatersstudio.blogspot and stillwatersart.blogspot). On a very interesting and unusual note, Sherry makes art from found objects and leaves the items anonymously in restaurants, rest rooms, the gym where she works out and other places! Fun. Probably makes the day for the reclaimers!!!