The Night and Morning After....

One of our Spendlove traditions is to go to a movie as soon as Christmas is over.  This year, Lisa, Jonny, and their families joined Dave, Mike and me in seeing "Saving Mr. Banks" on Christmas evening.  Grant wore his Christmas gift from the Flindts--a face-warmer designed as a wooly brown beard! 

"Saving Mr. Banks"  was a touching tale about Walt Disney convincing the author of the "Mary Poppins" books to sell him movie rights.  The story was autobiographical, it turned out, and the author was concerned that Mr. Banks, the banker, who was a thinly disguised version of her alcoholic father, be shown in a sympathetic light.  Disney took the author to Disneyland to show her how magical the film would be, but she was not impressed.  The film would lack "gravitas," she feared! (And I've not seen a Disney movie yet with "gravitas").  The film provided interesting insights on how light fiction can transform tragedy into something bearable and uplifting, and what makes a negotiation successful (Disney was unable to convince the author to sell her rights until he understood her personal history and what she really wanted from the deal (not just money, but to preserve her father's memory).

The next day, December 26, 2013, we celebrated Sophia's and Dave's birthdays at Camille's house.  "I've never taken a picture of a failed dessert from one of my parties before," Camille said, "but this disaster demanded it."

Camille and I cooked a great meal of clam chowder, baked salmon, flank steak, oven-roasted Brussels sprouts, baked sweet and white potato fries, green salad, and corn bread.  It included some of Sophia's favorites (clam chowder and corn bread) and some of David's (salmon and Brussels sprouts).  Camille made the dessert, a lemon bundt cake, from an untried, online recipe, in response to Sophia's request for "a cake with lemon frosting."  Alas, it rose up and boiled all over the oven!

This was Sophia's second birthday party of the day.  Steve's family came for breakfast and Camille already had the house decorated with balloons and photographs of Sophia.

We played a game to celebrate the lives of both Dave and Sophia.  We had family members take five minutes to write down as many things as they could about Sophia, and then another five minutes to write down as many things as they could about Dave.  We gave one point for each item that was on no one else's list.  There were so many items about Sophia (looks good in blue and purple, is a good cousin, fell off a horse) and about Dave (loves practical jokes, calls his children every day, ran a 3:04 marathon) that I compiled all the suggestions and emailed them to everyone.  A good time was had by all!