Christmas merriment

We spent several days celebrating Christmas -- starting with pre-Christmas on Dec. 19 with Derek's family.
Since this was our year to be with my parents for actual Christmas, we hosted Derek's parents, grandmother and brother for pre-Christmas. It was so fun having "Christmas" at our house. We had a delicious fondue dinner, followed by Christmas presents and chocolate pie. At the end of the night I felt like we'd already had Christmas, but there was more to come.

Lydia, Derek, Diana, Kurtis, Heber and Noma

A rocking chair from Grandma and Grandpa Larson. It's beautiful!

Lydia opening presents with Daddy...

...and with Mommy

Christmas at the Gradys

Traditional delicious Christmas Eve dinner.

My dad and Grandma Grady

Christmas morning! Lydia and her string.

Santa brought Lydia a kitchen. She loves it!

Lydia was really good at opening presents. I especially loved her excited "ooohh!" when she opened things.

So many toys!

A special gift from my mom. She gave Lydia (and I) the rocking chair she received when she was 2 years old. We've all sat in it as children and now it's part of our home. I was so touched. What a special present!
(the photo on the chair below is a picture of my mom when she received this chair)

Everyone says Christmas is so much better with kids. You know what? They're right!

The smell and taste of Christmas

If Christmas had a fragrance and a flavor, it would definitely include this...

Merry Christmas!

Life’s simple pleasures

We have a refrigerator and it is located in our kitchen.

To most of you, a fact like this might seem too obvious to share. Where else would you keep your refrigerator? Well, for the last 7 weeks, ours has been in the garage.

I’ll explain.

The week before Halloween Derek and I were in the kitchen one night and noticed an odd buckling in our laminate wood floor. A quick inspection revealed water and we soon discovered our fridge had been leaking water, unbeknownst to us, for who knows how long. Long enough to buckle the wood.

I was panicked. Do we have mold? Have we all been breathing toxic fumes?

My next panic set in when I realized I had absolutely no idea who to call. Derek’s dad was first on our list. He seems to know a little about everything when it comes to home projects. However, he told us when it comes to electricity and plumbing, he steers clear.

Time to call in a professional, but who?

We opted for flooring people – grossly overlooking the fact that our floor was flooded and we’d need other help besides simply laying new floor. Fortunately, one of the companies I called alerted me to this fact.

Duh.

They recommended a flood damage company and we called them in for a quote.

I’ll spare you the exhaustive details from there but suffice it to say our kitchen went from this…

To this…

And finally to this...

Because of some issues with ordering the replacement floor from Home Depot, the entire project took several weeks longer than it should have. In the meantime we have been trudging to the garage every time we want something out of the fridge. I am amazed how often that happens. Perhaps some people would use this as an opportunity to go to the fridge less, thus eating less and being healthier. I chose to just complain more.

I encountered many reasons to complain -- including some incompetent behavior on behalf of the appliance repair company and having to meet with repair men every day for a week. I felt like we were remodeling again except the end result is exactly what we had before.

Now we have a fridge and it’s in our kitchen and life is simple once more.

Really?

Since when did Peeps earn a spot on the Christmas candy shelves?
Sure, these sugar-rolled-in-sugar snacks are an OK fit among the pastels of spring, shaped like chicks and chubby little bunnies, but I just returned from the grocery store where I saw sugar-crusted reindeer, snowmen and green blobs that vaguely resembled Christmas trees staring up at me amid the rows of festively colored Hershey Kisses and delicious seasonal mint M&Ms.
How have I been missing this for so long? And who is choosing Peeps for their holiday treat when the options (superior in my mind) are seemingly endless?
I am perplexed.

Ringing in the holidays

(I have no idea why she is pulling this face,
but I love it.)













On Friday Lydia joined me for a work assignment shadowing a man who has been ringing a bell for the Salvation Army each holiday season for 10 years. Since I don't normally work on Fridays I wasn't sure if I'd have childcare but the bell ringer told me to bring her along because apparently having an adorable child near the bell ringing station ups the donations.
So I dressed her in her most festive ensemble (which made me realize she is in desperate need of festive apparel) and off we went to join in the spirit of giving.

Lydia with Dick Higgins, the Salvation Army bell ringer

With her very own bell.

The man I interviewed was very sweet (story coming Sunday, Dec. 12, on TheSpectrum.com) and Lydia was in pretty good spirits. The only problem lately is that she is not a fan of anyone except mommy and daddy and sometimes she only likes mommy.

Naturally I'm flattered to be the chosen one, but it can be draining and for some reason I feel like I have to apologize for her lack of desire to socialize or be friendly to most people -- even people she knows. I assume this is a normal stage.
I hope.
Still, the bell ringer was sweet and even gave Lydia her own Salvation Army bell to ring. It was cute.

More holiday cheer
That outing kicked off a whole weekend of holiday fun.
Derek and I went Christmas shopping with Lydia on Friday night. Then on Saturday we hit the Dickens Festival -- this amazing annual event here where the entire area is made to look like Charles Dickens era England. There's street theater, tons of shopping, festive music and all the vendors are dressed in period costume. It's a ball.
Sorry, I forgot to take any photos but we got a lot of Christmas shopping done there as well.

My kind of home
Saturday night we had a few friends over to decorate gingerbread houses which was so much fun!

Lisa, Josh and Amber Every, Emily and Nick Neumann

I stuck with my traditional style home -- the same way I've been doing them since I was a child.

I was impressed with the creativity of everyone else at our house though. Derek particularly took his love for all things Apple to a new level and made the Apple headquarters building out of graham crackers and candy. He's so funny.

There must be a better way

Seriously? Is this my only option if I want to stick with my running regiment? Wrapping myself from head to toe and leaving as the sun is just peaking over the mountains and the air is still bitterly cold?

I know what some of you are saying: it's colder where you live. Well, you're probably right, even though it really has been cold here lately -- well below freezing in the morning.
Old Jack Frost has left me with a terrible dilemma every morning, one that I am (remarkably) not arguing over while laying in bed.

I get up. I'm dressed. My shoes are on and I'm ready to go. But then I look out to behold my neighborhood in all its wintry glory and it is all I can do to open the door.

Once I'm out I spend the first half of my run chastising myself for leaving the house at all. When I'm not questioning my own sanity I am trying to decide if it is better to have my nose covered with the scarf so that I risk suffocating by inhaling too much of my own carbon dioxide? Or do I allow my nose to peek out over the scarf so that my nostrils freeze together with each breath?

It's a battle I can't seem to win.

Even as I finish for the day I'm still frustrated with it all -- proud that I went but annoyed that it wasn't more enjoyable. So naturally I think, there must be a better way. A few obvious things come to mind like buying a gym membership to do something indoors but that's not really in the budget and frankly, treadmill running just does not generate the same thrill. Going after work presents a problem too because it's starting to get dark and by then I have Lydia and if it's too cold for me, it's definitely too cold for her.

Anyone out there with a great idea for how to keep the cold from putting a freeze on my exercise and determination, let me know.

Move over Johnny Depp...

... because your Willy Wonka's got nothing on this candy lady.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving I was invited to a candy-making day at Derek's Grandma Noma's house, along with his Aunt Paula and cousin, Mandy. Noma has been hand dipping candy for years and as with everything else she does in her kitchen, her candy is amazing!
I was so excited to be included in with the Clark women and make my first attempt at candy dipping.
I had no idea what a process this is. It was a full day of mint, peanut butter and caramel centers with hours of dipping each piece into silky milk chocolate. Although we did not weigh or count how much candy we ended up with after roughly 8 hours of work, we used 15 pounds of chocolate so that is some indication. All I know is the end result is a whole heap of candy at my house to use for gifts and parties that is constantly beckoning me to have another piece.

Hmmm... maybe just one more...

Getting started

One of my tasks was the peanut butter centers. I don't want to brag, but they are absolutely heavenly!

Trays all over the garage while the chocolate sets.

Putting them in candy papers -- the finishing touch.

Decadent

Family + food = Excellent holiday

Happy Thanksgiving! I love this holiday. So unassuming. So un-commercialized. So filled with amazing food.

If you can't read it, her shirt says: "Everyone is thankful for ME!"
How true it is.

This year we spent the holiday with Derek's parents and some of the extended family on his Dad's side: Grandpa Bruce, Aunt Cindy and Aunt Pammie. Dinner was amazing -- thanks to Diana and Cindy. Diana tried to incorporate a favorite food for each person intermingled with the traditional Thanksgiving fixings. Rolls for me (yeah!) Cheesy carrots for Derek (they sound disgusting but are delicious) and too many other favorites for everyone else to list here.

Our family's corner of the table.

No surprise that Lydia thoroughly enjoyed the meal -- she is such a good eater -- and continued to enjoy eating all day long as Grandma spoiled her endlessly with cookies and her first sampling of the Larson family Thanksgiving tradition: Homemade chocolate pie. It's divine. After one bite, Lydia was hooked just like the rest of us.

Thanks to Diana and Kurtis (Derek's parents) for hosting such a great feast.

Derek, Lydia and Diana looking at Derek's baby book.

Derek's Aunt Pam and his Dad, Kurtis. Pam was so cute playing with Lydia. They seemed to hit it off.

We attempted to get a photo of Great-Grandpa Bruce and Lydia but Lydia was not having it. For some reason she really shies away from Bruce, but I don't know why. He's such a sweet man. Sorry Great-Grandpa, hopefully we can get a better one next trip.

She did, however, LOVE the chocolate pie.

This is sign language for "more" which she did after each bite. It's so cute, how can we resist?