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We spent Christmas in St. Louis with Jeff's family this year. It's a HUGE event for them. They haven't quite figured out that all the kids are grown up now, and that none of us really care about presents anymore. Oh well. Jeff and I registered at Crate and Barrel for Christmas this year, which worked out brilliantly. We received very few weird and unwanted gifts because of it. I really hate it when people waste money on stuff they think we'll like, but we don't need. I'd rather get nothing.
We waited until Sunday afternoon after church to make the 6+ hour drive (there was a blizzard on Saturday, and we wanted to make sure the roads were clear before we left) and arrived later that evening. The next day, Christmas Eve, was spent on a trip to a local shop to pick up some wine that they were holding for us, and a visit to the pet store so Jeff's mom could pick up some treats for her grandpuppies (which she proceeded to give to them in copious amounts for the next 3 days, so much for their diet). Then it was off to dinner at an Italian (make that St. Louis Italian, there's a BIG difference) restaurant with Jeff's mom's side of the family, which included Grandma A, Aunt, Uncle, two cousins and a wife of cousin, and the four of us. Grandma's elderly neighbors also joined us for dinner. Then we proceeded back to Grandma's house to open presents for a couple of hours. It was a long night, but all went rather well.
On Christmas morning, we opened a few presents with Jeff's parents, had the traditional orange flavored cinnamon rolls for breakfast, then got dressed to await the next round of visits, which came in the form of Jeff's dad's side of the family - Grandma J and Aunt. More presents were opened, and then we started to prepare lunch, for which the aforementioned mom's side of the family arrived. Jeff's parents picked up some bacon wrapped filets that Jeff grilled for the main course (yum!) and mom and aunt and I made a plethora of side dishes to go alongside it. Everything finally wound down in the late afternoon and the relatives all left. We watched a movie and relaxed for the rest of the evening.
The next day, Jeff and I went to visit and clean out our wine storage locker in St. Louis - it was like Christmas all over again for us. We can't ship wine to Kansas, and prices here are much higher than elsewhere in the country, so we order some over the internet and have it held for us in St. Louis. It was fun to go through all the bottles and see the tasty stuff we'll have to drink in another 10 or 20 years when it's properly aged. Weird hobby, isn't it? After visiting the locker, we moved on to Grandma J's house for a visit with her and the aunt. We helped install some little lights in Grandma's closets, and chatted for a while, then it was back to Jeff's parents' house, where we got ready for a night out. We took them to a new restaurant called Araka as part of our Christmas gift to them. It was pretty good, and the interior of the restaurant was really cool.
The next day we started to head back home. We stopped in Kansas City overnight for a visit with my Grandma F and my aunt and uncle. We haven't been able to visit with anyone there for more than an hour at a time here and there over the past few years, so it was nice to be able to stay and chat with them for a longer visit. In the morning, we hooked up with a couple of good friends from college, Mary and Luis, who were also in town for the holidays. We had lunch with them, and puttered around Crate and Barrel for a while afterwards. It was a nice way to end the trip. We got back on the road in the middle of the afternoon and made it home in time for dinner.
We managed to not take any pictures during the whole time, but Jeff's aunt got a few and sent some our way. So, here's a few, to prove we actually did attend the Christmas extravaganza this year!
Check out this guy's light display! You'll want to have your sound turned on, and you'll need to view the videos to get the full effect. My favorite is the one set to "Music Box Dancer". The link is here.
We were watching Food Network yesterday during our morning snowstorm, and this recipe came on. It sounded tasty and looked pretty easy to make, so we headed over to the grocery store, picked up the ingredients, and made it for an appetizer for dinner. We had Matthew and Joella over, and we all agreed that it was pretty good. Here's a link to the recipe. It was really easy to make. I added an extra splash of lime juice to ours because it wasn't quite tangy enough for my taste, and I think you could add some extra chili flakes, too, if you like your food a little spicier, but otherwise, I wouldn't alter the recipe from what is written. The wonton cups were super easy to make, and you could fill them with almost anything and use them for all kinds of appetizer dishes.
It's been a while since we last posted because... our new piano finally arrived! Yay! It got here Monday morning, and we've been playing with it in the evenings. I've pulled out my old piano music to play, as well as some new books I picked up, and Jeff is starting to learn to play from an adult piano education book he chose at the music store. He mastered "Amazing Grace" on all black keys in his first lesson. LOL Anyway, it's been pretty fun for both of us. It's a digital piano, so it has a bunch of built-in music that it can play by itself as well as various instruments to mess around with in addition to the basic piano sound. It doesn't sound quite as awesome as a real piano, but it's pretty close. It feels a lot like a real upright piano, though - it has a full wood soundboard built-in to the back, so it reverberates and vibrates the pedals and all that. Not bad for a piano that we can pick up and move around on our own, and that we'll never have to tune. My brother, Nathan, the music major, has already snubbed our choice of digital over acoustic, but I think he might like this one a little better than other digitals he's played. It will be interesting to watch him play next time he visits us, which may be a while, since they just received 13.5" of snow in Hays last night!
Errol is a pretty amusing dog. Lately, he's taken to growling at us when we try and get him to move from wherever he's lounging at the end of the day to our bedroom for bed. We think it's just hilarious because he's so tiny. I thought I'd be clever and tape him growling at us (you know, as evidence of our innocence for when he tries to disown us), but instead of that, he just played ragdoll puppy for us, which was equally funny. If you watch closely, you'll even see his little tongue flop out when Jeff tries to pick him up...
We watched "Mr. Bean's Holiday" last night. Jeff's always been a fan of Mr. Bean, and he introduced me to the Mr. Bean shorts sometime after we moved to Wichita. I think the character is amusing, and I enjoy watching Rowan Atkinson act him. We weren't expecting much from the movie, but it turned out to be pretty good. The story was decent, the other actors were good, and the scenery (shot mostly in France) was absolutely beautiful. They really put some work into some of their cinematography. It made me yearn to vacation in France next summer, which, as you'll read below, is no longer the plan. If you want some mindless humor that's safe for the kiddos, check the movie out.I don't know if you remember a post I wrote a few months ago about learning French? Well, I've kind of put that off, because we decided our next big overseas trip would probably be to Austria and eastern/central Switzerland, not France. I want to see some palaces with the fountains turned on and I want to hike the Alps in the summer. So, I should be learning to speak more German, not French. Of course, the more I learn of each language, the more flustered I get when trying to come up with the right word in the right language at the right time. Anyway, I was planning to go next summer, but I've kind of been waiting to see if the dollar would quit declining relative to the Euro before I firm up those plans. It's kind of looking like we'll put it off until 2009, when, most likely, the dollar will be even worse off compared to the Euro. Hmm, perhaps I'll reconsider those plans, yet again!
We spent a few hours doing our Christmas shopping yesterday, and we finished up at Michael's, where we looked for some outdoor decorations for our yard and porch. We haven't done any outdoor Christmas displays since we bought our house 3 years ago, and I am feeling like it's time to put at least something out. I bought a wreath hanger for our front door last year, but we never found a wreath that we liked enough to hang there. I tried again to find one this year, looking online, and around town, and finally at Michael's, but still didn't find anything. So, I decided to try and make one. We picked up some supplies, and I spent a couple hours working on it, and here's the final result! Not too shabby, I say. We'll see how it holds up in the Kansas wind over the next few days. I fully expect to hear glass shattering now and then when ornaments escape their wire ties...
Do you see Fang in the second picture? He was banished to the back deck while I worked on hanging the wreath on the front door.
We took a break in the middle of it all to try a new recipe for pork sugo. It's basically a slow cooked tomato sauce that's loaded with other veggies (carrots, onion, celery, mushrooms, etc.), but we served ours over polenta with a dollop of ricotta instead of over pasta. It came out really tasty, but it's a bit ugly to look at. I pulled the recipe from this month's "Metropolitan Home" magazine.
The view out towards the backyard and the greenspace.
The view out towards the front yard.
Fang watches the snow fall, but the drift on the window ledge is almost too high to see over.
We got some cool drifts in the planting beds on the front side of the house.
It finally stopped snowing at about 4:30.
Do you see Fang in the second picture? He was banished to the back deck while I worked on hanging the wreath on the front door.
