The Christmas Catch-Up Post

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, filled with friends, family, and food...just like ours! Christmas this year was such a blast; Squiggles definitely understood the idea of presents better this year than last year, and had a lot of fun tearing the paper off his packages. I say "tearing" but it was more like controlled peeling. He would peel back the smallest bits of paper, and the gift was not unwrapped until every bit of paper and tape had been removed from the package. I guess he's a lot like me in that way, though hopefully it won't last because I know I drive everyone crazy with how I unwrap gifts! Anyway, he would get frustrated if he couldn't get the present opened right away, but he's going on 2, so he gets frustrated if his toys look at him funny these days.

We had our little family Christmas here before we left for Ohio, and it turned out to be such a great day. Squiggles and I made cookies, and I fixed a few of Brian's favorite foods for our celebration. We did it all up as if it were Christmas Eve, putting out cookies and milk for Santa and reading "The Night Before Christmas". I don't think Squiggles really gets the idea of Santa and the birth of Jesus still, but we sure had fun with it. He was definitely excited, even if he didn't really know why.

After we opened presents (Squiggles got entirely too many action figures!) and ate breakfast, we got dressed in our shorts and took cookies to our neighbors. We all agreed that taking a walk in the sunshine was a good Christmas tradition to start.

The next day we drove to Orlando to stay with Brian's brother, Phill, for a night before we all headed up to Ohio. I am so thankful that Phill was on the same flight with us; I was so sick all day. Brian and Phill picked up a lot of the slack, and the crew on our flight were extremely helpful, so everyone made it through just fine. I just had a 24-hour thing, so I did get to enjoy the rest of our trip.

Christmas was wonderful! We got to spend a lot of time with both families, and Squiggles was sufficiently spoiled. His present opening technique did not change, but he did develop a fascination with bows (we don't usually use them). He would go around the room, pick the bows off of everyone's presents, and then redistribute them. Hilarious!

He also developed a keen sense of how to respond to each gift. Especially the clothes. Of course, we told him to say "thank you" after he opened a gift, but when he opened a box with clothes in it, he would pull each piece up in front of his face, shout "woo!" and then throw it backward over his head. You could definitely see the "Gee, thanks, Grandma, another pair of socks is just what I wanted" look on his face.

We even got to spend some time with our friends from our BCC home group, along with being able to attend two services at BCC. Oh, how we missed our church! The process of finding one here is daunting only because it has such a high standard to live up to.

So here's to a great 2009! May your year be filled with smiles, love and...dancing!

NaBlo...never mind

Well, I failed at NaBloPoMo again this year. It is difficult enough to post every day, let alone to do it while I'm on vacation. I did much better than last year, though. I'm not sure if I'll do it again next year or not. I felt like I was clogging the web with silly posts on some days just for the sake of posting. Plus, I had to back-date my posts a couple of times.

Speaking of which, between last night and this afternoon, I managed to put up a few posts from our Thanksgiving vacation, so scroll down to see what we did last week!

Lazy Sunday

No, not that Lazy Sunday.

Today was a perfectly lazy day. We came home last night so we could have a day to recombobulate before diving into the week, and I have to say that it was a great idea. We loved spending the week with my family, but it's nice to spend some time just the three of us, too.

Brian started the day off by getting up ahead of me and taking care of Squiggles. Then I got a daddy-baby bomb (I was already awake and expecting it, but still fun), and a chance to snuggle in bed with Squiggles and watch cartoons while Brian made breakfast. We drank coffee while Squiggles played; and while he napped, we put up a few Christmas decorations.

We put up a tree (the pre-decorated slim tree we put on the second story ledge in the entryway at our old house), my Willow Tree nativity, a creche, our advent tree (the star plays Jingle Bells, and we do a little dance to it every day), and one of those sound and motion deals from Hallmark - you know, where you press a button and the thing sings and dances? We have one from a few years back with a snowman and two penguins that dance and jingle.



I apologize for the horrible lighting there - I didn't think our family room was that dim. Plus, it was taken with our digital camera as opposed to our camcorder. I still haven't figured out how to take video off our camcorder.

Anyway, we had a wonderful day, and it feels slightly more Christmas-y here now than it did before. I'll get the Christmas plates down in the next day or two, too, so that might help some more. It's very hard getting my mind around the idea that Christmas is in less than a month and I'm still wearing short sleeves and light jackets.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, full of family, fellowship and food. We got to watch the parade (Squiggles only paid attention off and on, but he loved the Sesame Street float), eat a yummy dinner, and spend time with family that we haven't seen in a while.


It hit me during dinner that just a year ago, our little Squiggles hadn't even started eating solid food; this year he had a little bit of everything on his plate and ate most of it!

He played really well with his cousins this year, too. Last year, his cousin tried to play with him, but I think was disappointed with a baby that just drooled and cooed and rolled around. This year they had a blast playing with Legos, running around the house, and even doing push-ups! I so wish I had a picture of them, but I still haven't gotten the camera fixed. Grrr.

Baking Bonanza

I've had the baking bug the last couple of days. Maybe it's because I won't be able to bake Christmas cookies here like I do every year, but I wanted to bake some lovely things for Thanksgiving at The Reservation next week. So yesterday I made the dough for my Grandma's famous feather bed rolls; and today I made her pumpkin roll and some yummy ginger pumpkin pomegranate muffins. The muffins come from a wonderful recipe in The Complete Cooking Light Cookbook. The original recipe is for blueberry-yogurt muffins, but I improvised a little:

Yield: 1 dozen

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup orange juice
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 (8 oz) carton vanilla low-fat yogurt
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries, thawed

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cups. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl; make a well in center of mixture. Combine orange juice, oil, vanilla, yogurt, and egg; add to dry ingredients, stirring just until moist. Gently fold in blueberries.
3. Spoon batter into 12 muffin cups coated with cooking spray; sprinkle 1 tbsp sugar evenly over muffins. Bake at 400 degrees for 18 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove muffins from pans immediately, and place muffins on a wire rack.

I have had wonderful success with this recipe using blueberries, except I usually use blueberry yogurt instead of vanilla because I'm more likely to have that on hand. Also, I find that tossing the berries in a tablespoon or two of flour before mixing them into the batter helps them to keep their shape and prevents them from sinking in the batter while the muffins bake.

Today, I substituted canned pumpkin (left over from my pumpkin roll) for the yogurt, pomegranate arils for the blueberries, and added 1/2 tsp of ginger. I think they turned out very well, and it cements this as one of my favorite recipes.

Toy Safety

With Thanksgiving next week, I am reminded that we are hurtling toward December 25 (which seems impossible!). I know there is a lot of concern about toy safety these days, so I thought I'd pass along a site that I visit quite frequently.

HealthyToys.org is a project of the Ecology Center, a nonprofit based out of Michigan. The site tests all kinds of toys, gear, and mealtime necessities (bibs, plates, etc.) for different chemicals like lead and chlorine, then posts the results on their site; picking up the ball that our government agencies have dropped. You can search their database by toy type or brand, keep a personal list of toys, and vote on which toys they should test next.

They will be posting over a hundred new results on Dec 3, so this is a good time to surf over there and familiarize yourself with the site. I ended up throwing out a few of Squiggles's toys based on their findings, and I have an idea of what to look for when shopping for new toys - and putting together a Christmas wish list.

It's November, people!

A little playmate we encountered at the park back in early October

As I type this, I am wearing shorts and a tank top and we have the fans running on high. It's very humid here, and the temps were in the low 80's today, with more of the same on tap for tomorrow. Normally, I would kick on the AC, but there is something very, very wrong about doing that in MID-NOVEMBER!

Adapting to the weather here in Florida has been a bit strange for me. On the one hand, it was an easy transition; we moved during warm weather, so there wasn't a major temp change to acclimate to. On the other hand, sometimes it hits me that Thanksgiving is next week and I'm still dressing Squiggles in shorts. Now, to be fair, we have had a few weeks of mild weather that called for pants, and even a jacket in the morning. Even the warm weather we're experiencing now is only temporary; by Sunday, we'll only see highs in the mid- to upper 60's. Still, I've been used to Ohio weather all of my life, and we would be preparing for the first snowfalls right about now. I haven't decided if I miss it or not.

Veterans Day

We want to give our sincere thanks to all the men and women who have left their homes and families to fight for our country and our freedom. We are truly grateful.

And what holiday would that be, exactly?

I saw this little story on Snopes.com yesterday about Lowe's calling their Christmas trees "family trees" in a recent holiday catalog. Now, to be fair, Lowe's admits that the "family tree" moniker was an error, and that their TV and magazine ads, and fliers from here on out will bear the word "Christmas" in the description. So please don't go boycotting Lowe's!

However, this brought a familiar ire to the surface for me. Retailers switched from "Christmas" to "holiday" advertising some years ago, which, in a way, I can understand. The "holiday" season starts right around Halloween and lasts through New Year's Day, so I can understand lumping all the holidays in this time period together for marketing ease. What I don't understand is why the "holiday" decorations and marketing are almost always related to Christmas, yet the word is rarely seen or mentioned anywhere!

If you decorate your store with evergreen trees strung with lights and ribbon, put a Santa hat on your store mascot, hang red and green banners, and play "Jingle Bells" and "Silent Night", are you invoking images of Thanksgiving? Hanukkah? Kwanzaa? Ramadan? New Year's Day? No! These are, without a doubt, solely Christmas trappings.

Why the ambiguity, then? So as not to offend non-Christians or those opposed to Christmas? Fine; I am not one to judge, but wouldn't the proliferation of the obviously Christmas theme without the inclusion of your preferred holiday encroach on offensive as well? Wouldn't you say to yourself, "Ah, my favorite store is celebrating the holiday season. Wait, what's with all the Christmas trees? Where's the (insert preferred holiday symbol here)?" When is the last time you saw a menorah in a "holiday" display? Plus, aren't retailers at all concerned with offending Christians, too?

And then there are the well-meaning employees that I will come across who will wish me a hearty "Happy holidays!" I suppose I can understand the generality here, more so than with their employers ("Happy Internet Explorer Day!" "I hate Internet Explorer - viva Firefox!"). Why risk invoking an angered response when you're just trying to do your job? Perhaps I could adopt Chef's response; an even heartier "Merry Christmas to you, too!"

In the end, I know that retailers are really just unwilling to lose even one of the $474.5 billion dollars they hope to rake in this year by potentially offending someone. I know that Christmas is becoming an increasingly commercial holiday. Fewer and fewer people are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

And that makes my heart break.