Ho Ho Holiday!

Ho Ho Holiday!

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful week! Today after I get off work, I will drive up to the (snowy!) mountains where my parents live, where I will don flannel and wool and will spend time eating and reading and kicking butt in Rummikub (hopefully). This year my brother is not going to make it, but it will be nice to see my parents and my aunt and her family and to partake in the annual traditions.


The other thing I always love is getting together for the annual day after Christmas breakfast. It has been a tradition that my high school friends and I have had for probably about 10 years, if not more. Most years, most of us make it and a lot of the time the Moms and sometimes even my Dad, some brothers or even a boyfriend or two straggle in as well. It's always great to catch up with the girls and to see the kids get older and older. Last year I missed it since Christmas was on a Wednesday and I had to work, so this year I am looking forward to it twice as much!

I hope that everyone out there has a great weekend and a joyous holiday!

What are your plans for the next few days? Do you have any annual traditions? 
Woof!

Woof!

There is a guy in my office who sometimes makes this noise when he is overwhelmed, and it sounds like, "woof!" I think he is really saying, "oof" or basically, "phew". However, the first time I heard it, I thought he said WOOF, and so it has kind of stuck. Any time things are getting out of control or we are feeling a little crazy, we call out, "Woof!"

So....Woof!

The last couple of weeks have been crazy. In addition to getting all my Christmas cards sent out, I met up with my brother to be a sweeper (tail end safety runner) for the Northface 50 mile race, and went to two holiday parties and met up for a holiday weekend with my family. This is on top of the normal every day stuff, such as grocery shopping and working out. We also got a new client at work and the past couple of weeks have been a flurry of activity getting him set up.

Don't get me wrong, it has been fun, but I can see why some people get stressed out during the holidays, especially if you are the kind of person of which social interaction is overwhelming. Personally, I bring it all on myself, so I am not complaining! However, it will be nice to roll into January and hopefully read a few more books and spend a bit more time relaxing.

A couple of things on the agenda this week are:

- A visit with a friend from high school. She is coming to stay and we will do a lot of walking and eating and gabbing.

- The annual cookie making party with my friend and her daughters. Her daughter is 4 and last year she helped decorate all of the sugar cookies with heaps and heaps of sprinkles! It's become a fun tradition and everyone at work benefits from it as well!

- A Sunday morning run in the hills. As always, no week is complete without some time outside. I am lucky to live in a place where we can run outside year round and I am taking advantage of it! I love where I live...

How is your holiday going? What do you have planned for this week?
Then and Now: December

Then and Now: December

Happy New Year's Eve! I hope that wherever you are, you are having a great weekend! Have a wonderful time tonight and I will see you next year

The holidays are often very similar each year. There are holiday parties, get-togethers with friends and food to be eaten and presents to open with family. This December was no different. There were many people to see that I see every year, and many holiday traditions that were observed this year, just as they were last year. There were also a few things that were different. Here is December 2010 vs 2011, The Who, The What and The Where.

The Who:  Every year I get together with friends in San Francisco for a snackapalooza. This year was no different, except we got together in November instead! So we met up in Sacramento for some carb loading before the marathon instead. Also, I get together with my old HS buddies on the day after Christmas each year. It's great fun and I am glad we have kept the tradition alive!

2010: Snackapalooza, San Francisco, 2011: CIM carb loading

2010: Hail, grey skies and a large group, 2011: Sun in the eyes and less people
The What: Last year I did many of the same things as this year. I went to see the birds; I ate cheese platters; I make cookies. The only huge difference was the running. Last year I took lots of walks; this year I took many runs instead (mileage last December: 0 miles, this December: about 100 miles).

2010: Walks, 2011: Runs

2010: Birds + great reflections! 2011: Birds but no reflection

2010: Small cheese platter, 2011: large cheese platter! (2012: Cheese table?)

2010: Pumpkin Choc Chip, 2011: Macaroon
The Where: Last year I went on a road trip from California to Iowa, where I met up with my friend Red at her new house. This year, I have been in California all month.

2010: Iowa

California

What were you doing last December? Do you do the same thing every Christmas or are your holidays varied?
Shhh, It's a Secret

Shhh, It's a Secret

A while back, I signed up for a blogger gift exchange at Run With Jill. Just in time for Christmas, I received my gift in the mail! My secret Santa, Kim, must have peeked at my blog, because she got me exactly what I needed!

First, she got me this great necklace made of a scrabble tile with my initial on the front and a world on the back. Perfect for me, since I love to travel AND play Scrabble! How did she know?


And an Amazon gift card! Which I totally asked for on my wish list. I can't decide whether to buy a book or this!


I went and checked out her site, Life in the Twin Lane, and she seems like a great girl. Not only did she find the perfect gifts, but she is training for several races, is a reader AND quoted Tommy Boy on her blog. So Thanks Kim! 

If you want to see what I got my Secret person, you can read all about it on her site!

Did you do any gift exchanges this year? How do you exchange gifts with your family? Do you give everyone gifts, pick names, or only give the kids gifts?
Three Days of Christmas

Three Days of Christmas

This year, since Christmas fell on a weekend, it meant that the whole weekend was packed with fun Christmas things!

Every Christmas we give out tons of cookies to the neighbors. Otherwise we would eat them all!


This year, for pre-Christmas-Eve dinner, we had dunganess crab!


We always open one gift on Christmas Eve. This one was a big one, so rather than carry it (we have Christmas at my Aunt's house) I opened it! It was just what I wanted, a new hiking backpack! 


We watched the old standby, The Muppet's Christmas Carol.


On Christmas Eve, we all headed up to my Aunt's house for a feast! Around 1 o'clock we put out hors d'oevres: 7 types of cheese, several dips, veggies, chips, bread, and a few kinds of meat. After that, we are not really very hungry, but we still manage to put out dinner (and put down some of it!) around 5. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, a stein full of gravy, real cranberry sauce and the kind shaped like a can, stuffing and broccoli!


Next up, dessert! Lemon meringue pie, pumpkin pie, and tons of homemade whipped cream! Somehow I managed to have a little bit of each one.


After all the food, a walk is in order. We take a half an hour or so to mosey around the neighborhood, looking at the lights, trying to stay warm and trying to work off (or pretend we are working off) a little bit of the turkey!



After that, it's Wii time. We like Wii bowling and Wii frisbee golf. I am pretty bad at all of them! The next morning we got up early and opened our stockings! We still have stockings and we stuff them with little things such as soap, undies and pens. The only non-adult at our party had fun playing with the wrapping paper more than the presents!




After stockings, we eat a huge breakfast. My brother made biscuits and gravy, eggs, bacon and hashed browns. Even though I did not need any more food, I managed to eat 4 pieces of bacon. I am not sure how. They just kept sliding down my throat. Gobble, gobble.

After that, the boys went out to shoot their guns (yes, I live in the woods) and I went for a really nice and much needed run (through the woods). Then we came back and relaxed, played games and checked out our new toys before having a nice dinner of turkey sandwiches.

running trail
We ended the night with a bang.

The day after Christmas, I always get together for a nice breakfast with all my highschool friends from home. Each year we add a few kids and the moms have started to come as well. It's always nice to see everyone and to catch up on what has been going on in their lives.


And then, just like that, it's over. It always feels a little strange to get back to real life again after the holidays.

How was your holiday weekend? Do you eat real cranberry sauce or the kind shaped like a can? Do you overeat as much as I do?
Grab a Mulled Wine

Grab a Mulled Wine

Normally, the recap for the week is on Sunday, but we all know that this Sunday is a very important day. So, this week's Grab a Beer (inspired by Kim) is today instead. My week, of course, has been filled with all the things I talked about in this post. Also here are a few additions!

It snowed! It did not stick for long. There is still a little left, but only in the shadowy places.



We bought mandarins from an orchard. Oh I love it when they are fresh from the tree. 


We went bird watching. This is where the geese from Canada come in the winter time. There were so many of them, as you can clearly see! 


My bird watching buddies. 

Can you find the duck? 

And we made hundreds of these, literally. It was a lot of fun


What did you do this week? Are you ready for the holidays? Is there snow in your neck of the woods?
Cookie Monsters

Cookie Monsters


Last weekend I got together with the girls and we had a cookie decorating party. The original idea was that we would have our friend C and her two kids over, so that we could have a fun time with them, but they were not available. This did not deter us; we decided to have the party without them. 


In attendance was my friend N and her mom, me and my mom and our friend C.  We were assisted by little C, who is about 18 months old and actually decorated cookies better than I did, I think. Excuse the lighting, the low winter sun was shining right in the window and made it really hard to get a good photo.


Everyone brought snack foods to eat while we were hard at work; as hard as I tried to eat only carrots and hummus, I think I may have snuck in a lot of cookies along the way too. I mean, you have to try each type of cookie with each type of frosting! Right? 



My friend made two kinds of cookies: sugar and gingerbread, and three kinds of frosting: maple, orange and butter cream. 



We had several shapes, such as a bone, a star, a Santa, a couple of men, a heart, a tree and a bell.



We used food coloring and sprinkles to create our masterpieces.




We had a great time, all of us adult girls, decorating cookies badly. 


Have you ever had a cookie decorating party? Do you think you could do a better job decorating (meaning if you have preschool skills or higher) than we did? 

Note:  I just realized that my posts from the last few days were not showing up in Reader! After much detective work, I went to a site that I already followed and signed in, and VOILA, they were back. What the heck, google.
Christmas Is

Christmas Is


Mom’s Village: About 15 years ago, I bought my mom her first piece for what is now a village with about 25 buildings including a post office, a fire house and a cannery, several different kinds of trees, an ice skating rink and a sledding hill. I wish I lived in this village.



The Advent Calendar: My aunt made this for me when I was a baby. For the last 26 30 few dozen years, we have been putting up an ornament on the tree each day, in anticipation of the big day, December 24th, when the Santa goes up and the next day is Christmas. My brother and I had a deal every year. One person got to put up the star (Day 1) and the other person got to put up Santa (day 24). Each year we would forget who put Santa up the year before, so it would always be a discussion about who got to put it up this year. 


Getting Santa’s Sleigh Ready: My parents (who are very crafty; I don’t know what happened to me. I guess those things skip a generation) made these wooden figures of Santa and the 9 (including Rudolph) reindeer. This year we screwed them to some old wooden chairs we had lying around. It’s really fun to look out the window each day and see Santa and his reindeer, about to take off into the Christmas sky! 


Homemade Ornaments: Like I said, my parents are very crafty. My Dad draws the annual Christmas card. My Mom sews and paints and makes things. When we were kids, we always had mostly homemade ornaments on the tree. We would make them, using wooden cutouts or my favorite, the salt, flour, water mixture, which you shaped and then cooked in the oven until it was hard. Then you could paint it. My mom also took goose eggs and blew out the insides and painted the outsides. We still have many of those ornaments now (you can see the little boy; he is made out of flour.)


The Tree: Naturally, this is a big part of Christmas. But. Did you know that where I live, we go and cut down our own? It’s a tradition. Each year, we buy a permit ($10) and then drive up higher into the mountains (where we live is too low; the branches are not as straight) to find the perfect tree. When we find it, we take an axe to it. It was always such an adventure chopping down your own tree every year. I even got to have my own small tree in my room! Afterwards, our socks would be wet and we would be very chilly, but it was okay because that meant hot chocolate and a roaring fire when you got home. **You may notice our trees are not as bushy as some of the ones in the Midwest or Back East. They are Doug Firs, and we like them a little sparser, as this makes it easier to see all the (homemade) ornaments. My boyfriend, who is from Back East, thinks they are a little spindly, but personally I think the bushy ones are a little ridiculous.**



Wrapping Christmas Presents: I almost enjoy wrapping presents more than I enjoy unwrapping them! It is so fun to put something smelling of cinnamon in the oven, turn on the Christmas music and get to wrapping! We always listen to the Messiah (Hallelujah!) as well as a variation of other albums, such as Bing Crosby, Charlie Brown Christmas, Muppets Christmas Carol Soundtrack, Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Elvis. 


Stockings: Even though we don’t have any little young kids left in the family (although there are babies now so it’s only a matter of time) we still do stockings every Christmas. We each contribute by buying a few little things (paperback books, chapstick, socks) to put in the stockings each year. It is fun to wake up and see “what Santa brought”. At the bottom, there is always a mandarin.  All our stockings are handmade (wow, this is becoming a theme); some by my grandmother, others by my other grandmother and some by my aunt (the one who made the advent calendar). 


Mandarins: Speaking of, these are the fruit of Christmas for me. Not only does the mandarin signify the end (or bottom) of your stocking, but in our area, there are tons of orchards and so we get them fresh every year. They are so good, I have been eating at least 2 a day, and some days more like 10. I love it that they don’t have any seeds and that the skin comes off as if it were just waiting for you to peel it! Yum. I am going to go and eat one right now. A close second to the mandarin is the persimmon, but not the baking kind. Never eat that kind unless you want your mouth to taste like sawdust. Always get the Japanese (Fuji) persimmons.

Making Cookies: There is something about winter that just makes you want to bake. It keeps the house warm; it is something to do since you can’t go outside in the cold; it fills some void that I don’t seem to have as much in the summer time. In November it’s cakes and muffins and bread; in December, it’s cookies. We give the cookies away as gifts to the neighbors. We try not to eat too many ourselves. We have few regulars and I always try something new each year, some of which are good and some of which will not be making another appearance next year (pictured: overcookedchocolate chip, oatmeal, pumpkin no butter chocolate chip, Russian kisses).


What is Christmas to you? Do you have a bushy tree or a skinny one? Do you put out stockings every year? What song do you listen to every Christmas?
Don We Now

Don We Now

I love the holidays! Everything is so festive, the fire is going strong, things are being made with love and there is just a certain something in the air. Therefore, this week has been full of Christmas related activities! Grab your mulled wine and check out what they were (inspired by Kim)!

There was some decking of railings with bows.


The advent calendar came out of it's box (yes, a tad late but such is life).


I ran here. It's getting colder. It was probably in the 20s. 


Oh the wintery river. Doesn't it just LOOK cold?

I am Santa's little elf. I did a lot of this.


 I played around with my camera and the tree.


I baked a lot of these. And why not? Remember what I said about the running


I met up with some friends and we finished up our shopping and then went to the Sierra Nevada Brewery for lunch. 


Fa-la-la-la-la La-la-la-la. 


What did you do this week? Did you finish your shopping? Are you ready for Christmas?