Merry Christmas (part 1)

For some reason this year I was thinking a lot about traditions: Christmas traditions I thought we would have had (but we don't), Christmas traditions I never thought I would love (but I do), and Christmas traditions I have always treasured.

I don't know why I always assumed that Christmas Eve would include a church service for me once I was "a grown-up," since I certainly wasn't raised in the most religious household. I do know that stockings on Christmas Eve and presents on Christmas morning was something I was raised with as the "right" way to handle Christmas presents.  But now that I'm in my mid (late?) 30's, have been married for over a decade, and we have an awesome kid of our own, I suppose what we've been doing the last several years is now the "Burcusa family traditions" that Rose will grow up to treasure, expect and savor as she herself grows up.

So our beloved family traditions now include Christmas Eve with Mike's dad and step-mom, Jack and Marsha!

Mike always spends a few hours re-doing the annual 1000-piece Christmas puzzle that Jack previously completed: he won't eat dinner until it's done!

Jack puts on old-fashioned Christmas movies, like Rudolph. These classics hold a special place in Mike's heart, and now Rose's as well.

Usually Jack ends up napping during the movie. :)

Rose is also getting the puzzle bug from her daddy! She did this one about 20 times, both before and after nap. It won't be long before she'll be able to help with the official Christmas puzzle that Mike completes.

In addition to classic Christmas movies, we also usually zone out to some "bad tv," like this Alaska show that was surprisingly interesting.

Marsha is usually pet-sitting a dog or two. Rose varies in whether she loves the dog in question, or whether she resents it taking some of the attention from her grandparents.

Yummy snacks throughout the afternoon are also clearly part of our holiday traditions with Grammy and Grandpa.

The neighbors (Bob and Ellen, Karen and Allen) come over in the late afternoon / early evening to partake in the delicious snacks and the even more scrumptious dinner: prime rib, scalloped corn, twice-baked potatoes, bread and salad, followed by Sebastian Joe's ice cream. So good!!!

After dinner the neighbors leave and it's time for presents! ("Tired eyes" also made an appearance this year.)

Trula loves Christmas too! Grammy always gets the job of distributing the gifts, and the presents always get opened one at a time, in order from youngest to oldest. Rose did a GREAT job being patient waiting for her turn this year!

Every year I say to Mike, "Your dad and Marsha are SO generous!"

This year we started a new tradition with Mike actually taking my photo instead of me being the sole photographer! :)

Some of these traditions are different from what I imagined for myself as "a grown-up," but I've come to love them all so much. Sometimes the specific elements get tweaked a bit (like the year we tried chicken cordon bleu for dinner), but we always come back to the core elements: family togetherness, generosity, the comfort of beloved traditions, and bellies filled with scrumptious food. That's the Christmas Eve I've come to love, even if there isn't a church service involved!

Merry Christmas eve!

Saturday morning at MOA!

My friend Dotty and I try to get together for a walk with our kiddos every other weekend or so, although we've missed several weeks this fall for some reason. But this morning's walk has been on my calendar for a few weeks, so I had been looking forward to it for quite some time!

We typically go to one of the lakes when the weather is warm (or even just warm-ish), but it was 9 degrees this morning (which will never, ever qualify as "warm") so we opted for the MOA. Typically the mall isn't open when we walk, but there were special extended holiday hours this morning - thankfully it wasn't too crowded when we arrived!

We made about three laps around, stopping at all the requisite photo opportunities.

Somehow Dotty snapped this photo with no one else in it!

Rose was a rock star with completing the expedition sans stroller! (And Dotty and her boys were rock stars at tolerating our sometimes sluggish pace!) To reward us all, we got to go on some "roller coasters" before we left.

The scary thing I discovered today is that Rose is now technically tall enough to ride unaccompanied. Yikes.

Little Miss is growing up!

baking

This is absolutely my favorite season for baking:  it's cold enough that running the oven for a couple hours adds some welcome heat, it's dark enough that there's nothing to beckon me outside and away from my kitchen, and it's forgiven enough to gain a couple pounds during the winter. So I've been experimenting with all sorts of new recipes!


My first ever frosted layer cake!

kind of looks like a big snowball

I only had one 10" pan and one 9" pan, so I "fudged" a little. (I have since bought a second 9" pan!)

What would Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry say?!

These cookies were the subject of an article in the WSJ. They lived up to all the praise! Amaze-balls.

I also made a delicious cranberry cake but forgot to take pictures.

I did, however, take a picture of the ugliest ginger bread cookies that have ever been baked on the face of this earth:

The first time America's Test Kitchen cookbook has handed me an utter fail.

Also a couple loaves of bread, two types of cranberry muffins (neither of which was anything to write home about), and some other stuff that was apparently quite forgettable.

So much fun! And so much YUM!!


Next up for this week: parker house rolls, foccaccia, and a long walk around the neighborhood to get some exercise! :)

Raining in December!

This has been the most glorious, warm, prolonged autumn I have ever experienced! Once I get over the completely disorienting nature of it (mentally it feels like it should be October with these temperatures), and once I repress the acknowledgement that this is a disquieting manifestation of global warming, I can then try to focus on embracing the holiday spirit. This weekend we made progress!

We started off bright and early on Saturday morning and tried to get to Macy's right when they opened. Back when it was Dayton's, they had the most glorious displays up in their 8th floor auditorium - and it was a different theme every year! Well, Macy's went all cheap and have shown the same display every year since 2008. Ugh.

BUT, it's still all new to Rose! So off we went:

She was pretty much in awe of the whole thing! It was fun to see it through her eyes, even if the display would have other been pretty tired to my jaded, ever-loyal-to-Dayton's mind.

And after the display we went to see Santa!

 She was definitely apprehensive about the whole encounter (as evidenced by her refusal to get any closer than arm's length away), but the whole things was definitely better than Santa 2012.

After Macy's we went to see Vocal Essence's annual family-friend Christmas concert, Star of Wonder. I had never been to this particular concert before, but I really wanted to expose Rose to some great choral music and perhaps to start a new family tradition.  We ended up with *awesome* general admission seats (third row, dead center), due to our confusion about where to enter and thus accidentally entering through a side hallways and getting to be the third family in line just as the doors opened and we didn't realize there was a HUGE line just around the corner. OOPS!

Rose especially loved the dancers and she was enthralled . . . for the first 30 min or so. After that she got a little bored - even announcing her boredom in a stage whisper (d'oh!) and even covering her ears at the end of the concert (double d'oh!). But overall it was a good experience - more so for me than for her, but sometimes parenting means a win for the parent instead of the kid, no?

To top the day off, we also made gingerbread cookies after nap. Let's just say I was going for function over form (i.e., taste over appearance), because otherwise these would be considered a total fail!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

harassment

For the past year or so, we have been dealing with increasing harassment directed at our vehicles. Given our one-car driveway, one of us generally has to park on the street. Depending on which direction we come from, we often park on the street directly in front of our house (rather than parking across the street from our house), between our driveway and the tree which is ~15 feet from the fire hydrant. And given that Mike gets home before me 99% of the time, he typically takes the driveway which means I get the street.

(typically I would insert a picture here to illustrate, but it's been dark for about four hours and I can't find anything saved that demonstrates my point)

So, about a year ago I started noticing that my windshield wipers would be pulled up off my car every once in awhile. A little weird, but it was only once a month or so, so I didn't think too much of it.  But then the notes started, and the frequency increased:

Since my car was always the target, it started to feel very creepy, very fast. And the frequency increased to nearly every time that I parked on the street - multiple times per week. Yuck and EW!

After several calls to the police department, there was still not much they could do without a specific suspect. So Mike and I put on our thinking caps and came up with an idea:  given that the culprit was typically writing in the frost, s/he must be writing in the early morning (given overnight temperature patterns). And given that it only occurred on weekdays and not on weekends, it was probably not someone in the neighborhood who owned a dog and was out walking every day. And given that the handwriting looked like that of a male in later middle age (based on the baseless "science" of handwriting analysis)... Mike  hypothesized that it might be our newspaper carrier, who happens to be a man of that age, who only delivers our weekday papers, and who typically delivers our paper around 5/5:30 in the morning. Hmmm...

We started by looking at motion-activated surveillance cameras, hoping to catch him (or whoever it was) in the act, but quickly (based on pricing - $100+!) decided to rely on our own manpower instead. So last Tuesday morning I got up around 4:45am, confirmed that our paper had not yet arrived, and then spent about 30 min just staring out the window from a small crack in our curtains. Then Mike took over at 5:15 and around 6am (after I had done my morning treadmill walking routine), Mike told me that he had SEEN the paper guy writing on the car - AHA!!!!!  It was such a relief to know the identity of the person! But we still needed a plan. Should we confront him ourselves? (but what if he was violent!) Report it to the Wall Street Journal? (but we didn't want him to lose his job!) Hmmm....

We eventually decided to call the police yet again. Less than 30 min after taking the report and stating that he would follow up with us later, Officer Tony called back to say he had spoken with the suspect. Interestingly, the guy denied ever touching either of our vehicles. But he also told the officer that he had his own complaint that cars in front of our house were illegally parked too close to the hydrant, and in fact there was a complaint of his on record less than a month ago! Officer Tony said he educated the man about the actual parking laws in our city, specifically confirming that where we park is 100% legal, at which point the man reportedly became "weird and evasive" and "started changing his story." Hmmmm...

So even though he denied it, I think it is safe to say that we found the true culprit. And, interestingly, there have been no more notes on our cars since the police contacted him. Hopefully we have resolved the situation!! I am choosing to believe that he was acting out in a misdirected attempt to "help" us correct what he thought was an illegal act, but I am still glad to have an end (I hope!) to this ordeal.

Now we just have to decide if we want to give our newspaper carrier a holiday tip this year...

From the mouths of babes...

Rose to Mike, as he was dusting (at my request, since I hate dealing with cobwebs):

"Why are you cleaning, Daddy? Mommy usually does that!"

Yes, she is observant! :)