Christmas 2012: We Survived (Part 1)

Not the Mayan apocalypse; I already planned on surviving that. But the rest of the holiday, I just wasn't sure.

Let's go back to last Wednesday, the 19th. Things were going fine until I got a call from my mom. She had three things to tell me, and none of them were terribly positive. 

The first was that because of the snow Madison was about to get on Thursday, no one was going to be able to pick my Grampa up from the airport here in Milwaukee. OK, no big deal, we can handle that. Mom booked him a hotel room (we don't have a proper guest room, and I doubt Grampa wanted to sleep on our sleeper sofa or the futon) and all we had to do was pick him up when his flight landed on Thursday around 3:50. Sweet. Sad that Grampa would have to spend the night in a hotel in MKE, but at least we could help.

The second was that Mam-maw (my dad's mom) - who is staying with my parents right now - had gotten in on the 15th, but had already been in the hospital. Ugh. She was dehydrated and sick, but fortunately my dad was able to go pick her up that afternoon and take her back to their house. Again, not good that she was sick, but good that she was being released.

The third had no up-side. My aunt's husband (my uncle through marriage) had been in a car accident and had died. That one made my heart ache. My aunt is one of the nicest, sweetest people you could know (a lot like Mom) and to know something so terrible had happened made the world seem wrong. Even worse was when I found articles online about the accident; it wasn't really a car wreck, it was a "freak accident" that killed him. There are so many questions that might never get answered, and I'm afraid the hurt will stick around for a long, long time.

On Thursday, the snow storm hit Madison, but we only got rain here for most of the day. Regardless, Grampa's flight ended up getting canceled, and Mom had to make arrangements for him to stay at the airport in Orlando and to get another flight booked (which meant Mom was on hold for almost an hour and a half). After my lunch break, Hubby asked me to check our basement for flooding, since  a coworker of his was having some issues. I ran downstairs to check, didn't find any water, and came back to work, only to find that my internet was out. Poor Hubby spent about 2 hours trying to help me troubleshoot (via text and phone call), but to no avail. He called our provider, but they couldn't get out to the house until 2 PM on Friday. Great. There goes the rest of my work week.

Even better was when the guy came and figure out what had happened. Our internet amplifier is in the basement and, for whatever reason, is hooked up to a light switch in the back room. (See where this is going?) When I had gone down to check on the flooding situation, I had flipped the switch, but when nothing happened, I assumed the bulb was out and I just moved on. Instead, I had essentially turned off our connection. (Insert facepalm here.) Thankfully, it turned out that had been only part of the problem; we also had a cable that had gone bad, and had he not figured that out, I might've gone insane trying to make our internet work on my desktop. Aye yi yi.

On the plus side, I got to spend Friday wrapping presents and finishing up crafts. I watched a couple of movies on demand (Mr. Poppers Penguins was pretty sweet) and cleaned some things up a bit. That cleared up some time on Saturday, which means I had time to make all 3 kinds of cookies I'd set out to bake. I made Oreo truffles, peppermint pinwheels, and meringue cookies with mini M&Ms (they were out of the dark chocolate and mint pieces by the time we went shopping). Unlike last year's meringue cookies, these didn't turn out to be globs of gooey messiness, so that was nice. And the Oreo truffles are kind of like crack (my dad told my family that the first one's free, but the rest are $20 each). And Mom really liked the pinwheels, which made me happy. Saturday evening, K got into town, and that night, she and S came by and we went out for dinner. I love having time with my sisters, and dinner was just what I needed.

Sunday we drove into Madison. Our original plan was to have our traditional dinner and gift exchange with K that night, but instead we went to my uncle's visitation and funeral. It was actually nice to spend some time with my family and it wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as I'd imagined (except for the chairs, which were terribly uncomfortable; Hubby's leg even went numb at one point). We also got to have some awesome Italian food after the service (thank you, Biaggi's!), some of which we got to take home as leftovers. That night, we had a fire in the family room and sat around to enjoy it, just Mom, Dad, Hubby, Mam-maw and I. 

Christmas Eve Day meant more cookies! My mom made the traditional sugar cookie dough, and I rolled it out, used the cookie cutters and baked them up. While we let them sit, Hubby and I headed to grab some lunch (more Italian food; I'm not Italian, but I think my taste buds are) and then to the grocery store where K and S were ringing bells for the Salvation Army. Mom gave me $5 to donate (I give my money elsewhere) and we picked up some raisin bread for Mam-maw. When we got home, I made frosting and Hubby and I decorated the sugar cookies. We got to relax for a bit after that, and then eventually we opened presents (before dinner this year; another tradition broken). Hubby got me season 1 of Sherlock on DVD, Dumbo on blu-ray, and a couple other fun things. I also got a puzzle, a beautiful scarf, and we got a ginormous generator. Dad told us the idea was originally for camping, but that the unit he got was a bit bulkier than he anticipated, so we were given the option of keeping it or returning it to Gander Mountain and using the money for other camping stuff. (We're not 100% decided yet, but I think we're leaning toward returning it and getting a new tent and some other things.) Everyone seemed to be happy with their presents, and that's all I could really hope for.

More to come.

Stupid Cookies

Here I am, trying to be a good little baker and make some meringue cookies and what do I get?  Piles of goo.  Yep.  Piles.  Of.  Goo.  FAIL.

How do you mess something up that's essentially made of eggs, sugar and air?  Seriously?  FCOL.

Well, at least I tried.  Hopefully my mom can give me some pointers over Christmas and I can try again next year.  Stupid cookies.

On the bright side, it's almost Christmas Eve!  Which means it's almost Christmas Day!  Huzzah!!  Here's hoping the rest of the holiday goes better than those cookies...

Christmas Time Is Here

Time for joy and cheer?  One can only hope.

I find the few days leading up to Christmas to be both exciting and dreadful at the same time. 

Exciting: Everyone's getting into the holiday spirit!  Lights and trees are up, presents are getting wrapped, cookies are being baked...  It's fun to get caught up in it and remember Christmases past. 

Dreadful: Constant worrying about whether I forgot to send a card to Great Aunt What's-Her-Name or didn't get the right gift for little cousin What's-His-Bucket.  Also, the concern of whether I have enough time and energy to pull everything off is exhausting to think about, let alone do.

But, all this aside, it really can be a great time of year.  I guess the best thing to do is try to push the negative thoughts aside for now and deal with them when they come up.  For now, I must focus on the good!  And fortunately, the good means cookies.  

Mmmmm... cookies.

It's Almost Here!

Yes, kids, Christmas is just around the corner!  In fact, one week from today I will be baking cookies with my mom and getting ready for the best meal of the year: Christmas Eve Dinner.

Ever since I can remember, Christmas Eve has been as big of an event as Christmas Day.  True story.  So it's only fitting that Christmas Eve Dinner be as fabulous (if not more fabulous) than Christmas Day's meal.  

Every year my mom makes prime rib.  It is by far the best prime rib you will ever have in your life.  It's so good that during the five years I went vegetarian, I always took Christmas Eve off so I could indulge in this magical meal.  

The prime rib itself would be a complete meal, but there's more.  Oh yes, there is more.  Mom makes Yorkshire pudding.  If you haven't had it, you need to try it (assuming you like things that are delicious).  Yorkshire pudding is the perfect compliment to the prime rib and is to DIE for.  Soooooo good.

As if that weren't enough, the table is also filled with things like salad, potatoes, green beans, black-eyed peas, and/or any other number of side dishes that my mom prepares.  In other words, if you walk away from the table hungry on Christmas Eve, you weren't at OUR table.

Top the night off with hot cocoa and opening gifts and you have a pretty perfect holiday.  :-)

Flookies

I have this habit of baking for my husband for special trips he takes.  For example, when he went fall camping last month, I sent him with Snickerdoodles.  A few years ago I made peanut butter cookies for him to take hunting.  I've made sugar cookies once or twice as well.  I like to bake this time of year!

So last night I attempted chocolate chocolate chip cookies, only I made them with peanut butter chips AND chocolate chips.  They're fine, I suppose (hubs likes them), but they turned out as flookies.

What, you may ask, are flookies?  Flat cookies.  Flookies.  Yep, that's what they are.  

This term got coined while I was on a road trip with my non-biological sisters in August 2009.  Kristy had made these cookies that were really tasty, but flat.  I mean really flat.  At some point, we stopped asking to be passed the "flat cookies" and started asking for the "flookies" instead.  Thus, a word (or Phippsism, if you prefer) was born.

And now, apparently, it was my turn to make some flookies.  

Again, they're tasty enough, I guess, but they just look so goofy, especially compared to the pics shown with the recipe (apparently using shortening could have helped, so say the reviews, but I tried just using butter).  And it's even more amusing to me because I just read my friend Sarah's blog yesterday about the cookies she attempted where she had almost the opposite problem.  

Why are some cookies just hard to make?  They should be easy and tasty and wonderful!  And yet, sometimes, you get flookies. Oh well.  They'll still get eaten.  :-)

So, anywhoozles, hubby will be going hunting this weekend (alas, yes, I am to be a hunting widow), so the puppers and I have big plans to do a whole bunch of nothing.  Well, that's not entirely true.  We're going to see my parents on Sunday, so I guess that's something, eh?  I really don't like sleeping in the house alone while he's gone, though.  Just feels so empty.  I usually try to make Maxine sleep in bed with me for the company.  We'll see if she puts up with it.

And now, I leave you with 5 random songs you should listen to today for fun.  Why?  Why not?

"Only Girl (In The World)" - Rihanna

"Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" - They Might Be Giants*

"In My Room" - The Beach Boys

"Love Is A Dirty Word" - Jason Collett

"End Of The Line" - The Traveling Wilburys

*Or you can listen to the original by The Four Lads.  I just like the TMBG version. :-)