Christmas Aftermath

Christmas eve we had dinner of beef tenderloin...I wanted to do the old family beef fondue with mustard and chili sauces, but I decided to cook the tenderloin whole in an Asian-inspired sauce with soy sauce, honey, ginger powder, garlic, and pepper.  In fact, it turned into a rather international dinner...French bread, Swiss cheese fondue, and Asian beef.  It was delicious!

Afterwards, we cleaned up the dishes, and went to open presents.  Each of the kids had five or six presents consisting of games, videos, and assorted entertainments.  Kelly had two presents--a cozy sweater and a wonderful Sounders rain jacket.  I had one gift...an iPod gizmo for my car.  Not that I'm complaining, mind you...I love my iPod gizmo.  I hope it will significantly improve the sound in the car--the thingy I have only works in the right speakers, which doesn't work well with some songs where they play with the balance between speakers.  [I asked for a GPS gizmo for geocaching, but I also complained about the sound quality of the iPod.]

Christmas eve, Santa came and left gifts for the kids and stuffing the socks.  Ben got two DS games that are for the 3DS, which sucks because he doesn't have a 3DS.  Maybe one of the girls will be nice enough to allow Ben to borrow their 3DS thing from time to time, but I'm thinking that we may have to trade in the DS for a 3DS, which will cost $150.  Ben has a savings account with some money in it, and we can pull the money out for that.  I just didn't want to buy another DS machine--we've already purchased five of them.  Stupid machines.

The other thing we did was get Emma a phone.  I've never seen her so happy!  It'll be so much nicer to be able to text her and say, "I'm running late" or "Math teacher needs to see you after school" (they email these notices to the parents...like it does any good if you're not anywhere near your computer during the day and don't know that you're supposed to pick them up late).

We goofed around for a few hours, then went visit Kelly's uncle who lives in town, but we never see him.  They have an open house every year and people come by and nibble, chat, and view Marjan's little village of lighted ceramic houses, train tracks, and characters.  She has a pop-up shelter on her deck with walls on it, a mini heater, and filled with tables covered with these little homes and winter scenes.  I love the look of these things, and someday I'd have my own collection.  When I do, I'd like to get this Christmas Story house, which comes complete with the Fragile leg lamp in the window.  It has a whole series of buildings, so you can create the entire town.

Christmas dinner was turkey, red potatoes, green beans and bread...I was going to go all-out and make cranberry sauce (I'm the only one who likes it), and home made bread, but I really didn't have enough time or energy.  Kelly picked the carcass clean and is making soup with the leftovers.

Now that the holiday is over, I'm hoping to have some time to put a new outfit together.  This is the one that I have in mind--something from the Ottoman empire...Persian...or Turkish...I have some blue linen and some yellow, too.  I have the undertunic made already, as well as the salwar (pants), and I'm betting I could make two layers over the Christmas break--one in dark blue and one in the medium blue...but I need some muslin to make the pattern first.  I want to have them done by 12th Night, which is the second weekend on January.  I'd love to have something to show to the Costumer's Guild, even if it doesn't count towards my Journeyman level...but I can get the documentation done for the other pieces and bring them to show.  I had entered them a couple years ago and they LOST the records!  So while they had the information and sent me the beads for my achievements in the Junior and Senior levels, they somehow didn't get the records put where it could be found again.  Mysterious.  Luckily, I have most of the documentation in the computer and I can throw together a group of items to show...hopefully I can get this train back on track and I can get a few steps closer to finishing my Journeyman level costumer challenge!