12 Days of Christmas (or at least the first 7 days)

On the first day of Christmas, my little loves did with me...
OK, we already did that on the last post.  Kids.  Gifts.  Apple crisp.


On the second day of Christmas (26th)...we headed over to visit my in-laws and let the kids open gifts.  We stopped giving gifts to adults (mostly), although Kelly and I did give gift cards to each family to go to the theater.  We also have the cousins get together for the annual photo in front of the tree.  My three kids (seated on chair), Nate (standing), Aurora & Aaron (seated).  Nate & Cam are in the same grade (different schools, of course) and have been bosom buddies since they were toddlers.  Ben and Aurora are about the same age (I think Miss A is a year or 18 months younger).  Aaron is now in his young 20s and will be getting married to his high school sweetheart soon!  (She's not pictured here...I didn't get any photos of her...bad auntie.)

On the third day of Christmas (the 27th), we had dinner at the local Asian buffet place with the in-laws.  Cam decided that she wanted to try a whole cooked mackerel.  She ate quite a bit of it, which was surprising since it's such a strong-flavored fish.  She's brave, that one.  Crystal wondered if they shared any genetic material at all (she's a self-proclaimed picky eater).  Cammie may not like everything, but she's certainly willing to try lots of things at least once.  She's turned into quite the chef, too...I got her a copy of the 1930 (reproduction) of the Joy of Cooking.  I hope she finds lots of inspiration in it!

We hit the ferry to head back home.  We had some time at the ferry docks, so we wandered around the park to look at the lights for a few minutes.  I found a Geocache there, which I had tried to find once before.  The trick--bring a flashlight to those night-hunts and trust the Geosenses.  It was right where I thought it was but couldn't see it without the flashlight.

When we got home, I found this in the mail!  What is it?  Most of you will recognize the metal piece in the plastic envelope--it's a sewing machine foot for the Brother XL 2600 that I got for Emma several years ago.  She lost the original foot a few years ago, but I found a web site that sold replacement parts.  I also needed to get a bobbin cover, which also disappeared while it was in storage.  I was really excited to be able to replace this as well!


On the 3rd day of Christmas (28th)...we had a great dinner with Mom & Dad, Tara & Hollie, Andy & Courtney, and my family.  We had dinner at a nearby restaurant, which was fabulous.  They had a few issues in the kitchen, which Andy called them on (he works in a high-end restaurant up North, which has very strict standards on food quality and presentation), but they fixed it right away and everyone walked away with full bellies.

On the 4th day of Christmas (29th)...I stayed home rather than go out for breakfast with the family.  I had probably five glasses of wine over many hours (with food and I was drinking water, too), and something didn't agree with me.  I don't know if it's a sulfite thing, or what...in any case, I won't be drinking any wine for a while.


After the rest of the fam had breakfast, they came over to open presents for Malcolm.  I got a couple of pictures of Mr. M. with his new quilt, but this one where the boys were all together was just precious.  I gave Mike & Laura the poem that goes with it, and everyone passed it around and got a giggle out of it.  I think Ben wants a copy of the poem, and I'm thinking maybe I need to take the leftover charm squares and make him a quilt, too.

Emma got a very special gift from Gramma--a bracelet that has been handed down for generations.  This was originally given to Sophia Burgwardt from Charles Krakow, possibly as a wedding gift.  It is inscribed, "C.K. to S.B Oct. 26, 1876".  According to a census, they married in about 1877 (which is an estimate based on "years married" in one of the columns in the 1900 census), so that's about right.  Mom wore it all the time as a teenager, and it barely fits Emma's tiny wrist, but it needs to have the latch and safety chain fixed to make it wearable.

On the 5th day of Christmas (30th)...Cammie decided to make Chinese food.  We made meat dumplings and were planning on making more things, but the dumplings took so much time, we cut the list back.  Cammie made a sort of beef egg drop soup with mushrooms and I chopped up a bunch of veggies and chicken for a stir fry.  We were going to make some fried rice, but that didn't happen.  Ah, well.

On the 6th day of Christmas (31st)...we had a New Year's...gathering.  I'm not sure how many people you need to have over to make it a "party", but it seems like we just didn't have enough to really make it a raucous event.  We had four--Jeanie, Bekah, Neil, and Carol.  Jean had to leave early, so it was just three guests and us.  We played a few hands of Fluxx, then watched a movie, ate my gumbo (made with Kelly's recipe) and chocolate fondue with fruit and cookies to dunk, and ended by watching a vampire show until midnight.

Before

We watched the fireworks go off on TV around a very foggy Space Needle, which started off looking very cool, but quickly turned into a light show in the clouds.

After

On the 7th day of Christmas...I went Geocaching.  I wanted to see if I could find 17 to make up for the number of finds I was short for 2013...kinda sneaking in the last few I needed for the One-a-Day Geocaching challenge (find an average of one a day for the year), but alas, I fell short again.  I did find 10, but DNF (did not find) 4 that were either missing or too challenging, and by the time I came across a dead seagull by the last one I tried to find, I ran out of steam.  It was after 3 pm, and the light was starting to fade.  So, I will have to concede a failure to meet that goal, although I was very close.

I decided to try the One-a-Day challenge again for 2014, which will be a bigger challenge since I will have to go even further afield to collect them; I've gotten most of the ones that are located near my house.  Last year (2013), we did a cross-country trip with the family, which would have given me ample caching opportunities, but I got so few Geocaches...which was a huge shame.  I did get to 10 different states on our summer trip, which was an unexpected goal, but cool.  I could have spent just a couple hours more and gotten all I needed to meet this (rather silly, but still fun) goal.  Maybe we were in just too big a rush to do that properly...another four or five days to take our time...and an RV...and a scooter.  Yeah.  I'll have to make plans to do some in-state exploration or something.  I know lots of the state parks have several caches in each one, and we should try to get out and see what kinds of great things are out there in our state!  Ben has a book on National Parks, so it would be cool to do a road trip to one of those parks each year and do some Geocaching on the way.

What else?  Today I finished reading the Hunger Games series.  The first two books were pretty good, but that last book was a lot of war scenarios that I couldn't picture in my head.  Lots of running and crawling, supernatural creatures sproinging out and attacking people, streets turning into oceans of tar or turning into giant trap doors.  Lots of death and blood.  Overall, I liked the way it ended and she settled down with the guy that I figured she might, but I gotta admit, I skimmed quite a bit of the third book.  I haven't seen the movies yet, so that'll be interesting how that compares to the books.

The rest of the 5 days of Christmas will probably be filled with sewing--I need to make a couple new garments for 12th Night.  I gotta get crackin!