Christmas Pictures. Enjoy!

Thanks to all our friends and family for the thoughtful gifts we received and for making it such a great holiday season with lots of happy memories. I'm very grateful to have such a delightful family to be with at this special time of year. I just wish more of us lived closer together so we could share all the fun with everyone.
As a reward for making it this far, please click here to watch a short, funny video from Christmas Day at my dad's house; just a sample of the goings-on.

Christmas Potluck Last Night

That picture is my new favorite snapshot of the girls. Those dresses were given to them by my dad's wife, aka, Grandma Debbie :)
Our friends a few blocks away threw a fantastic Christmas party last night, complete with games for the children, a table full of potluck goodies, craft activities, cookie and cupcake decorating station and even Santa himself paid a visit. Raquel was thrilled to see Santa. Maxine was frightened of him. He gave presents to all the children and eventually made an exit through the sliding glass door at the back of the house.
I made two trays of different open face sandwiches inspired by Smørrebrød or smörgås of Scandinavia and one tray of shortbread topped with cream cheese and sweet things. It took several hours of work and my neck is killing me today because of it!

The Holidays are Very Different This Year

Usually I'd already be in the swing of the holidays. I would have already asked Jose to bring up the boxes of decor and lights from the basement. I would have already baked and stored 5 different recipes of cookies in my freezer. I would have already planned what presents to give out. I would also be ready to embrace the season and the revival of warm memories of holidays passed. Things are different this year. Who would have thought a little adjustment to my schedule and priorities could have such a dramatic effect on my life?
Of course, I'm talking about COLLEGE. A year ago I had just quit my job as a barista to stay home and raise my kids full-time. I wasn't in school or even thinking about going to school. One year later, here I am with text books, extensive writing assignments, the responsibility of group research with a 20-minute presentation, another presentation on some volunteer work I did, finals to study for, a kid in kindergarten who cannot read her own homework instructions yet and then all the other extra-curricular stuff like a baby, a husband and a house. Oh, and myself! HAhahaha, that's funny.
Last Thursday in my art history class all of us students were asked to participate in an anonymous evaluation of our instructor. I had only good things to say. I am enjoying the class so much. It may be the best course I've ever taken and I wasn't even expecting it to be such. He's not easy. He assumes all 100+ of his students are seasoned. Sometimes I get my assignments back and I re-read what I wrote and wonder, Where did that come from???, in a good way! I take super fast, messy notes and a lot of them. The only one who needs to read my writing is me :)
My other class is giving me a lot of grief. The text was written by the professor. It's terrible. The book, I mean. Oh, but so is the class. This is probably the WORST class I've ever taken. The professor simply reiterates what she has "written" already in the text (I use those quotes because she didn't write anything--she stole it all from other books). Pretty much word-for-cliche-word. It's a 3-hour class and she keeps us the entire time. We have a TON of work due in the next few weeks. This is what weighs on my mind all the time now. I hope we get to evaluate her; I have a lot of suggestions to improve the course structure. One suggestion is: don't make all the big assignments due on the same freaking day, especially when we also have to study for the final.
Thanks for letting me vent.

Raquel's Halloween Costume

I'll write a full blog on all the haps over the past few days at a later time. For now, here is Raquel as a scary clown for Halloween. She was a hit!

My Wreef

Yesterday the girls and I had some fun shopping at Michael's. Maxine gnawed on a wooden cat figurine while Raquel and I chose fixins for our Autumn wreath to go on our front door at home. She chose the crab apples and the sunflower. We like the way it turned out but I'd actually like to do another one, a silly one without pretty faux flowers but rather with little turkeys, pumpkins and other cute fall-ish items. We could put it on the inside of the front door and gaze upon it all day if we want.

For now, we like this wreath and will enjoy it every time we walk up to the front door.

Christmas Dinner at Dad's

My dad lives about 45 minutes away from us but it took at least twice that long to get there on Christmas afternoon. Rain was pouring and the 210 freeway wasn't flowing faster than 20 mph. Seems to me traffic was much heavier than usual for Christmas Day.

We were so happy to get to Dad's house. It was FREEZING there and windy, making it rain sideways! Maxine slept for the entire trip and was happy to be the center of attention when we got inside. Both of my dad's brothers were there, making it a rare occasion, especially appreciated by Grandpa Charles who, at certain moments, seemed overcome with pure joy. He gets like that sometimes.

Dad made a beautiful prime rib roast. Everyone brought a little something to share at dinner. The food was so good, better than most in recent memory. Dad opened up a $60 bottle of Cab. Don't remember the name but its the best wine I've ever had.

Uncle Mark ate a giant spoonful of some super hot homemade thai sauce from the next door neighbor's garden of peppers and Uncle Jim suggested he drink whiskey to cool himself down. Yadda yadda yadda, a huge bottle of Jack Daniels appeared at the table and Uncle Jim had himself some. Grandpa, the nondrinker he is, couldn't resist being a part of the fun and decided he'd try some. It was pretty funny. None of us had ever seen him do that before. I got it on video for you to watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6IDTFZDdqQ&feature=channel

For the rest of the evening we sat around talking, eating pie and cake, drinking coffee, watching classic Christmas movies, playing with Raquel and gratefully absorbing the happy feeling evident in every space between us.

Christmas morning

Raquel is still too young to get crazy-excited about Christmas morning so we actually went in and woke her up after 9am. Then we took our time opening presents and checking our stockings. Jose made a pot of coffee and I took plenty of pictures. After we played for a couple hours we got the girls ready to head out to my dad's house (blog forthcoming).

Xmas Eve Eve and Eve

Shy little Maxine has turned a new leaf. Suddenly, she doesn't seem to be afraid of house guests or family members, even at their houses. It has been such a pleasure to see her being her cute happy self with everyone! Pictured above is my best girlfriend, Iris, who is due to give birth to her first child in a few weeks. She had been wanting to hold Maxine without upsetting her and it finally happened!

Christmas Eve was spent at my mother-in-law's house a half a mile away in Altadena. Also there were my sis-in-law Rosy, in-laws Miriam and Ricardo and their son, my only nephew, Little Ricky, who is too precious for words and loves his Aunt Sarah. He was dressed as Santa. He's only 12 days older than Maxine but is so much heavier and is already starting to try to crawl, slaps your palm, dances on your lap and can put his own pacifier in his mouth. He's very advanced!

For Xmas Eve dinner, I was responsible for making dessert. I chose to make Giada De Laurentiis' Panettone Trifle. It was good, very rich, really easy to make (no cooking required!). Now that I've discovered the ease and versatility of trifles, I'm going to make them more often.






We did lots of karaoke, too. Here is my brother James and his sweetheart Allie. They showed up later on in the evening.I got new jammies! We stayed late opening tons of gifts. Raquel got to open Maxine's presents. What a good helper she is. It was a really lovely night.

Oooh, Gingerbread Cutouts

I loooove gingerbread. We made gingerbread cookie cutouts this weekend. Some of them are actual gingerbread men but we made several others including angels, mittens and doves. The spices used fill the kitchen with the ultimate Christmas aroma.

I rolled them out thick, like 1/4 inch, and baked them on parchment paper. It worked out really well. The key to making cookie cutouts is making sure the dough is thoroughly chilled. The recipe I used said to place the cut out raw cookies in the freezer for 15 minutes before baking.



Cookies should normally be cooled on racks meant for that purpose but I don't own any so today I invented a new way to cool them: pull the entire sheet of cookie-topped-parchment paper off the pan and place on top of the cookie cutters. Yes! I was happy with this idea and thought myself a regular genius.

After they cooled, I decorated some with simple royal icing. We will decorate the rest tomorrow, Raquel and I. She's gonna have a blast! I think I'll put on my old Christmas records while we do it.

Santa's Lap

The four of us went to the mall today to take the Santa picture. I bought Maxine a dress last month specifically for this picture. I bought one for Raquel, too, but she's worn it a few times without it being washed so I decided to have her wear her birthday dress instead. It looked really pretty. I did not want to pay the ridiculous price for the photo CD so we just bought a couple 5x7s. Here is our collection of Santa pictures starting from when Raquel was 5 months old in 2004.

In 2004, Raquel and I waited in a very long line to see Santa. When I gave her to him she looked upset but the photographer took the picture fast enough that we got a good one before she cried.

In 2005, Raquel was very upset at seeing Santa so Jose sat with her.

In 2006, Raquel cried yet again. She refused to sit on his lap, so I sat with her.

Last year Raquel was happy to see Santa and she looked darling.

Today, both girls did great. Raquel was outgoing and smiley and Maxine just sat there staring off into the distance. That was a better reaction than I expected!

Afterward we had lunch at the mall and shopped for tacky Christmas sweaters to wear to my dad's house on Christmas Day. They are very hard to find!

And just in case you were wondering how much weight I've lost so far on Weight Watchers....21.2lbs. The jeans I'm wearing in this picture are so big I don't even have to unbutton them to take them off.

Thanks For The Lights, Jose!

Jose had put the fence and outside-tree Christmas lights up last week but today he borrowed a ladder and put some on the house, too. When he went to work tonight, I went into the basement, got out all my Christmas storage boxes and found even more lights for him to put on the house. I think he enjoys this part of Christmas. As for me, I enjoy pulling out my boxes of Christmas stuff and seeing my old favorites and also the new stuff I haven't gotten to use yet (the stuff I buy really cheap at after-Christmas sales).

This is our cherry tree all lit up. Raquel is standing in front of me--she's a dark blur.

I took these pictures with the timer on my camera. It's not the best camera I've ever had but at least I learned how to use the timer on this one.

Our orange tree is in this picture. It is my favorite part of our Christmas lights display. The picture does it no justice.