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.

Spring Break Weekend

I've technically been on spring break for the past week.  It's not nearly as exciting when you're still working full time, but them's the breaks.  

Anywhoozles, we did have ourselves a tropical night on Friday so I could pretend I was somewhere far away and warm.  We had surf and turf kabobs (made on our George Foreman grill), our normal tropical salad with homemade pineapple vinaigrette dressing, and some tropical style drinks.  Our tropical movie selection for the night was Joe Versus the Volcano, which is a fantastic little movie, if not all that tropical (they're only on the island for a bit toward the end of the movie, but oh well).  All in all, a good night was had. 

Our original plans for Saturday were to go exploring around Cedarburg for the afternoon, since it was a recent feature in the paper's "Weekend Getaway" part of the Travel section.  But, we woke up to find that the weather wasn't being so cooperative.  22-28 mph winds, some rain, many clouds...  Boo.  

Instead, we went to IHOP for breakfast and then went to Menards to shop for a bit.  Not exactly a romantic day together, but still fun.  I had the Nutella crepes at IHOP, with the bananas and strawberries and whipped cream... OMG, so good.  I also go a side order of turkey bacon, which I LOVE.  We also had our favorite waiter there (not that we're regulars; we just happened to have him the last time we were there, which was probably January).  This guy is awesome.  Seriously!  He has a positive attitude about everything, and his memory must be phenomenal.  He took our orders (didn't write them down) and then went to chat with the table behind us for a bit, and I kept thinking, shit, something is going to get fucked up.  Either Hubby's eggs will be wrong or I won't get my turkey bacon or something.  But I should've remembered just how awesome he is, because he came out later with our order just as perfect as could be.  At the end of the meal, he handed me the check and said, "You're married; I know who has the money here!  I'm married and have 4 kids - I don't get to see any money!"  We joked about how he doesn't get asked about his day when he gets home, just how much money he made for the day.  The thing is, maybe I'm completely naive, but I really just think he's trying to have fun with his customers, not trying to get sympathy or extra tips.  He really just seems like a good guy who's making the best out of life.  It's inspiring to me, and so that's how I choose to see it.  

Menards was...  Menards.  You have to understand that I hated...  No...  I loathed Menards growing up.  It was the most boring place on Earth.  No contest.  The only things there that kept me from going insane were the doorbell section (I loved the different noises they all made) and the door section (where I would open and close doors, wandering through them like it was some kind of maze for me to get through).  When I got a little older, I would just bring my Walkman in with me and listen to my cassette tapes while we wandering through the store.  My parents (or, more specifically, my father) were always looking at the most boring things, and music kept me entertained.  These days, I actually don't mind Menards, but I still hold some of that resentment.  I mean, I was clearly old enough at some points to have stayed home by myself for an hour or two, but instead my parents dragged me along to Hell.  Maybe they thought the torture was character-building.  Who knows.  

Anywhoozles, we ended up watching most of the Band of Brothers marathon on Spike last night while we cuddled on the couch and ate our dinner.  Hubby got the grill out last night for our steaks.  The first grill of the season was definitely a success.  Man, I love a good rib-eye on the grill!  Droooooooool.  

Today, the hubs is off to help his dad get some things done, so it's just me and the pooch.  I'm sure I'll end up doing fascinating things like laundry or homework or sleeping.  No matter what, I had a great weekend. :-)  

Noms!

So Friday night I wanted to have a Mexican food night.  To be honest, I just wanted an excuse to have guacamole.  I loves me some guac!  So, I hunted down some good looking recipes for entrees and off we went to Sendik's for ingredients.

There are two things you should know about me: 1) I love going to the grocery store with my hubby.  Mostly.  When he starts playing with the cart like it's a race car, I tend to get a bit annoyed, but otherwise, it's actually something I enjoy doing.  2) I especially love grocery shopping at Sendik's.  For anyone who hasn't been to Sendik's, I highly suggest it.

Sadly, I was a bit disappointed by our Sendik's trip.  They didn't have pre-made guac, for one.  Really?  I can go to most any Pick n Save and find already made guac.  Sometimes it's already packaged for me, too.  Step it up, Sendik's!

For another, NONE of their normal avocados were ripe.  We had managed to find a guac mix ("Just add avocados!") and figured we'd give it a try.  But the avocado selection was less than stellar.  They were like bumpy green stones.  Not cool.  We spent six dollars getting two "organic" avocados (and justified it by saying we weren't getting any other ingredients for it, like onions, tomatoes, etc).  It ended up being pretty tasty, but still.  

For dinner, we made chimichangas.  Here's the recipe.  I was seriously surprised that this recipe was as easy as it was, AND it was tasty!  We substituted ground turkey for the ground beef (as we almost always do) and I melted some cheese over the top of the chimis, but otherwise followed the recipe pretty closely.  With a little taco sauce and some sour cream on top...  Mmmmmmm...  Now I'm getting hungry, dammit.

Anywhoozles, just thought I'd share a good food experience with y'all.  :-)  This weekend we're going for another tropical night, so stay tuned!  

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. :-)

What A Wonderful Weekend

Ok, so, morons aside, this Monday I also have to write about my weekend with my hubby.  

Normally, Zach and I like to try to get away a few weekends of the year.  It's a chance for us to get away from everything and just be us.  This is a little harder with Maxine in the picture, so the only getaway we've really had in the past year was our honeymoon.

So, rather than a trip to Door County or a weekend camping trip, we decided to have a date weekend in our own area.  Not only did this mean we didn't have to find arrangements for the puppers, but it also saved us some money since we weren't paying for a campsite or hotel room.  Huzzah!

The only "rule" was that we weren't allowed to go on the computer during the weekend.  A few exceptions presented themselves (I needed to re-order my meds and we had to check on a pints-to-cups conversion), but otherwise, we stayed offline and made each other our focus.

Saturday was pretty low key.  Maxi and I went to wake Zach up around 10:30 and ended up napping with him until about 11:30.  After getting some dishes done and looking up recipes, we headed to Milwaukee Public Market for lunch.  We got some great burritos (with chips and guac - yum!) and did some window shopping around the market.  We did end up buying a bag of Herbs de Provence for a recipe we intended to make for dinner, as well as a container in which to store it.

Then we headed out to do some fun shopping.  We went to World Market (because I could spend a lifetime in that store and never get enough of it), PetCo (to get some belated gifts for Miss Maxine's anniversary) and finally Sendik's to get things for that night's dinner.

As it turned out, we weren't able to do the recipe we had planned for because I'm an idiot and didn't notice that it needed to marinate for 8 hours before grilling.  Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.  Instead, we kind of winged the entree and I focused on the rest.  For those curious, our dinner consisted of the following:

• Grilled beef tenderloin, seasoned with dried garlic, dried onion, kosher salt, pepper and herbs de provence.  Complimented with a gorgonzola cream sauce.
• Prosciutto-wrapped asparagus. 
• Alexia brand Oven Reds (Olive Oil, Parmesan & Roasted Garlic).
• A slice of chocolate orange dream cake from the Sendik's bakery.

Some quick notes on this dinner, if I may:

1. These were some seriously rich foods.  And while I love rich foods, this was a lot even for me.
2. In the past, we've used cream cheese (even light or fat free) in place of the Neufchatel for the asparagus.  It really doesn't make a huge difference, in my opinion, though the cream cheese probably makes it lighter.
3. The oven reds were good, but were more like steak fries than I had anticipated.  They also went great with the cream sauce.
4. Speaking of the cream sauce, we made a HALF recipe and still had tons of leftovers.  Also, it didn't reheat well, so next time we plan to make only a quarter recipe.  Should be more than enough.
5. The recipe we didn't get to make (but someday will) can be found here.  We're excited to try it when we have enough time and foresight.  As it was, the tenderloin was pretty awesome, AND the leftover meat was great in the morning for a makeshift "steak and eggs" type breakfast.

Anyway, we pretty much lounged for the rest of the evening.  We watched some episodes of Castle on DVD and watched Night At The Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian on TV (huzzah for cable!).  Then we went to sleep, full and happy.

Sunday we had a nice breakfast of leftover tenderloin and fried eggs.  Then we got dressed and headed out on an adventure.  We stopped at Fowler Lake in Oconomowoc, and then headed on to Astico County Park near Columbus.  Our final destination for the day was Day One Pizza in Columbus, an awesome pizza place we stumbled upon a few years ago that we make an annual mecca to just because it's just that good.

Once we made it home, we watched Knocked Up and then Zach caught up on his new zombie show (Walking Dead).  Overall, I'd say it was a successful weekend indeed.  :-)

Phew!

So, we had quite the scare with our poor puppers yesterday.  We learned the hard way that she's allergic to the new flea/tick medicine we bought her.  It irritated her skin (which resulted in two baths last night) and made her puke about 6 or 7 times (which, according to the company, was because of the taste of the stuff...), but she's doing MUCH better now, and may someday forgive us for the baths.

Anywhoozles, some good did come out of last night as well!  Instead of our normal roasted/toasted pumpkin seeds (post-carving), this year I decided to make a modified Chex Mix with the leftover seeds!  I had made Chex Mix early last month for a party, so I had some leftover ingredients to use up.  Turned out pretty delicious, especially since I added 1.5-2 times the suggested amount of Worcestershire sauce (which, by the way, is one of the hardest words for me to pronounce for some reason) and added some garlic salt to the mix.

Essentially, I took this recipe and changed a few things:

*No mixed nuts.  This is a personal preference.  Instead, I used pumpkin seeds leftover after carving for Halloween.

*I only had a few bagel chips left, so instead, I added a cup or two of Cheerios.

*Used at LEAST 3 tbsp of Worcestershire...  2 was NOT enough last time, so this made for a bolder taste.

*Used a little over 2 tsp of seasoned salt (Lawry's, of course).

*Added garlic salt just before AND just after baking.

Now, I'm a big fan of garlic, as is my hubby, so that's obviously our preference.  I grew up with my mom randomly making garlic Cheerios, where she took some Cheerios, coated them in butter and garlic salt and baked them.  So simple, but SO good.  

Basically, this is a combination of Chex Mix, roasted pumpkin seeds and Mom's garlic Cheerios...  It's a match made in Garlic Heaven (which is where I hope to go when I die)!