Also during my blogging absence, we hosted our first Thanksgiving in our new house. Last year, even though we had just moved into the house we spent the holiday with my family in Wheeling. But this year my mother came to visit for the holiday as did my brother, MK, and his girlfriend, Ginni.
It was really nice to get to do all of the cooking again. And I am so happy that we re-did the counters and the sink before I attempted to cook a big meal here. The old kitchen would have grossed me out for food prep. It was nice to find out that our kitchen is big enough to cook a holiday meal in without being cramped. My mother bought me a huge roaster which I cooked the turkey in and that freed up the oven for pies and side dishes. I have to say that the turkey prepared in the roaster was the best I have ever tasted. When it was first done cooking and had rested for 30 minutes, I cut into it and all this juice poured out. I feared that it wasn’t done or something, but no, that is what a truly moist turkey is supposed to be like.
And take a look at this magnificent pecan pie that I made…
Good times. In fact, I would hope to get to host Thanksgiving for the rest of my life in this house. It was so homey. I think this might actually be one of the most perfect holiday homes ever.
But then there is Christmas… Christmas belongs to the S family. It always has and I fear that it always will. Christmas Eve is really the big thing for them. There is a family party at the home of S’s grandparents. They decorate the house full of Christmas splendor and they spend weeks making their special pierogies, which are the main Christmas food. We always unwrap some gifts at their house and we play Christmas Memory for the Christmas Cup. Oh, yeah, and we drink a lot. This year S and Bud added a new holiday twist with a musical performance of Christmas tunes. S played her sax and Bud played her flute and we all sang along through five songs. I taped it and made a dvd for everyone in the family. Good times.
We always stay past midnight on Christmas Eve, which means it is too late to travel anywhere else. S’s brothers now have wives and houses not far from the parents, so they get to go home at the end of the night. But we have to stay with her parents in the most uncomfortable guest bed ever. In the morning Gil and Bud come back over to the house and we unwrap gifts and have a special breakfast. Because of these activities, we don’t get around to seeing my family until late in the day on Christmas. Sometimes it makes me sad but I would never ask S to give up Christmas Eve with her grandparents.
I hate that we might never get to celebrate Christmas in our own home. And even though we have lots of decorations, I can’t really get into decorating for Christmas because we aren’t here to enjoy it. This year we didn’t even get a tree until the 22nd and even then, I didn’t so much want one. I only went out to get it because S really wanted a real tree for our house.
That’s Rummy wondering why we brought nature into her house.
The one real Christmassy thing I did this year was bake. I baked dozens upon dozens of cookies. S took some of them to school and gave them away as gifts. We took some to her family and some to my family. And on one fateful evening, Emma and Rummy got into the cookies while we were out. They ate about six dozen cookies.
You cannot tell me that those are not perfect peanut blossoms… Rummy says they tasted great too.
We had a wrapping paper theme again this year. We went with a plain, brown postal paper and then tied the packages with lovely ribbons. Classy.
The best gift we gave this year went to S’s mom. We gave her a very easy to use MP3 player, bringing her into the digital age. Nobody else would have given it to her, having no faith that she would be able to use it, but we had the faith. We pre-loaded it with some music so that she would have something to lsiten to before she gets comfortable enough to download music on her own. She loved it. And she loved it all the more because we believed she’s be able to handle it.
The second best gift we gave went to my niece, Shaggy. She is four and maybe the gift is a bit too old for her, but she seemed to be ready. We got her a remote controlled dragon fly from Radio Shack. It zips and zooms in the air. She seemed to really like it. And her older sister was jealous, so we knew for sure that we had picked the right thing.
This picture was taken at DK the Asshat’s house Christmas evening. The dragonfly had gotten off track and flown into the Christmas tree.
Okay, so now the blog is all caught up.
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