Toads-in-the-Hole

Finished with our exams, our shopping and our wrapping (well, as finished as we ever get with those), we took off for St. Cloud on December 21st for the first leg of our Yule-O-Rama. The first order of business was the celebration of our fifth wedding anniversary, which we accomplished in style at the pretty darn good restaurant Cafe Renaissance.

The menu was largely Greek and our food was presented by a very charming man of Mediterranean descent named Emmanuel. His charm was only accentuated by his ability to present his encyclopedic knowledge of our menu options with (to our ears) authentic Greek pronunciation of the specifics (“Moussaka” with the accent on the final syllable), while maintaining the overall characteristic patois of central Minnesota (“Okay, so. Dontcha just love dose appetizers? Not too bad, eh?”)

We were joined by Don, Mary, Kelli, and Erin Wurzberger, and Kelli’s fiancé Charles. Between hanging out with him on Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’re getting to be very good friends with Charles, whose kindness, good humor, and keen mind more than compensate for his freakishly overgrown left hand.

On Christmas Eve, we attended mass at the St. Francis Xavier church, where Kelli and Mary are members of the excellent and rocking Worship Ensemble (My suggestion that they rename themselves “The Papal Bulls” fell on deaf ears). And we rounded up the evening with an excellent meal of seafood pasta and asparagus.

No Wurzberger gathering of import is complete without the traditional spoon-nose-trick (a feat that my proboscis has always been two ample and broad to perform) from Don, the master, and Erin, the cheeky apprentice.

With his typical acumen, Charles quickly streamlined the exercise. No wonder America leads the world in worker productivity!