Mojo is wise to this whole Santa Claus thing. But that doesn't stop him from submitting fantastical Christmas wish-lists any chance he gets. Like in school this week where he was invited to write a letter to Santa:

Dear Santa,

I want a DSI a Teck Deck Big Ramp a Teck Deck 10 pack a Teck Deck Half Pipe a Lego set another Lego set and another Lego set a Army Men pack a Lego free build kit a IPod a Nerf gun pack and in my stocking I want cole gum a Teck Deck and I want World Peace + a cell phone + a penguin.

Got that Santa? I especially like the way he segmented the stocking-stuffer portion of his list. The coal gum is, I think, something we got him in year's past -- probably because we couldn't find lumps of real coal. Not sure where to get a penguin. Or where to send him to get a comma.

Okay, last year's project to hang lights in Tuckahoe turned into a total fiasco -- wrong lights, wrong placement, wrong attitude... even the wrong vermouth. This year we made up for it: stopped at Stews and got a crate of lights -- no blinkers, no chasers, no funny business. We'd gotten the pork and the vermouth the day before. We were set.

It went well. But it was freezy cold. And it's not quite the same without Da Chimpz following us around trying to help (those were the days). After a few hours of that my hands could not keep the blood circulating, so I went upstairs to sip my vermouth while the food cooked.

Went on Monday evening to get the Berea-Rose family Christmas tree. Bought a wholly adequate tree at the nearby luxe garden outlet. Even got 10 percent off! They told me pull the car around and someone would check my receipt and tie my tree. So that's what we did. But no one was there. We stood around for a while, staring at the one wrapped tree that was sitting there and had to be ours. We and even had the crazy idea that it would fit in the Jeep, even with the backseat up and the boys in the car. Yeah, fail on that. Had to look priceless though, like the Grinch trying to stuff the tree up the chimney. Finally we lashed it to the roof ourselves and drove off, fully expecting the thing to fall off. Now it's here, all decorate and hung with light strings that only partially work. Which is a whole other story.

Changed the oil in the Forester yesterday. Temps were in the 30s. Sucked.

It's not often you can walk away from the photo line with a kid who can say, "Santa slapped me" and really mean it. Oh, and deserve it -- throwing up the gang signs while the photographer got into position was total ambush and Santa had every reason knock some heads together. We laughed our asses off, especially when the boys teamed up with their friend from school and started dancing to the Christmas music being played at this morning's Kiwani pancake and sausage breakfast.

This week Mojo once again stated his desire to have a dog. And now he has a name for the dog: Economy. His logic, if you want to call it that, is that he can then walk around sternly shouting, "Bad Economy, baaaad Economy."

This from a kid to taped fins to a balloon to make it into a pirate zeppelin. It's not the jolly roger he penned on the side that concerns me: it's the knife-wielding rabbit he drew on the front. The kid has serious problems. He ought to go back to songwriting.

There are Christmas lights hanging now on Berea-Rose. Not many, for now, but enough to signal the fact that Thanksgiving is over. What a week. Don Vito sat by the fire, sipping a ghastly chablis and listening to WFAN... snoozing. Yep, it was exciting.

Of course, we ate a traditional meal (no turducken this year).

We also made some serious pumpkin pie -- the story of which is retold here as photo essay. Da Chimpz were on hand to, er, help. That little pumpkin never had a chance. And oh yeah: that's a gluten free pie crust I had to make. Because I have an auto-immune system that works like the Federal Reserve.

It snowed a bit on Friday morning (more excitement for Vito!) but that cleared up quickly. Alane hit the stores early and came back reporting weak crowds -- Northeast Ohio is about as economically backward as Michigan, so full-on commerce would be shocking anyway.

Steve, who blogs even less than I do these days, was apparently in Philadelphia for Thanksgiving but never got himself over to Tony Luke's for the cheese steak that defeated Bobby Flay. Alane had it, said it was good; Dan tried it, said it was mediocre. Steve could've broken the deadlock. Maybe next time.

Heh, it just hit seven o'clock. Which fills my dining room with a happy little Christmas jingle: Deck the Halls indeed. I love that clock.