Holiday Round-Up

Lots of adventures this December.

A week and a half ago I overrode my powerful compulsion to follow the rules and pulled my children out of school on a Monday. Instead of taking a math test (still feel guilty, but she did fine on it), Joy joined the rest of us and some treasured friends for a train ride into New York City.

Larry, Dawn, Dara, and Jocelyn came up the night before and stayed at our house. (I pirated some of these pics from Larry's facebook album...thanks!) Instead of riding the train from near our house (which would have been much easier but STUPID expensive), we drove into Jersey City, parked at the in-laws' church, and took the PATH train into New York at $1.75 a head. We are either smart or very cheap. Probably a little of both.



We had a great time, and despite Dawn's very earnest concerns, none of us came home with bedbugs from the train. To my knowledge, at least. I suppose they could be lurking in dark corners of our home, plotting a coup.


We ate at a fun, local-feeling dinery-type place. (Hamburger Heaven, I think?) Wide variety, good quality, thick sandwiches, sky-high prices, so...pretty much authentic New York.


We hit the American Girl store, where Joy, to her immense delight, used some Christmas money to acquire a nightgown that matches her Kit doll's. Afterward, we visited the tree at Rockefeller center and the Nintendo store, then rounded out the afternoon with snacks from street vendors (Will got a pretzel the size of his head) and photos with randomly-appearing characters.





Elmo and Spongebob and Mickey waved us over, posed for photos with us, then shook their money bags in our faces until we gave them some cash. Jack was apparently on to their scheme before we were...as soon as he saw Elmo (whom he adores), he burst into fits of terrified screaming. I should pay more attention to his instincts.

We made it home before everyone descended into complete meltdown mode, so I'm calling it a victory!

The NYC train trip was on my list b/c we live SO close to the city but rarely go in. It's intimidating, at least for me...expensive and a hassle and potentially dangerous. But I don't want them growing up without memories of experiencing New York. So I'm trying to be braver. See me being braver? :)

Later that week Will had his Christmas program at school. He was Joseph in their little nativity, which: love it. I don't have pics but am hoping Mark does. When he gets home I'll ask. I stayed home b/c Jack had a fever and a chesty cough, but I was supposed to send finger food, so I made these spinachy things.



Apparently they were a huge hit...Mark reports that the teachers started asking around the crowd trying to find out who made them. I told him he should have taken credit for them, but he probably couldn't have pulled that off. Endearingly, he is a terrible liar.

The recipe was a good starting point but seemed like it would be a little bland, so I sauteed the onion in a little butter, added the spinach, and spiced it up with some salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Red pepper would have been good, but I didn't have any. I spread it on the dough with the cheese and a few slices of ham, then baked as directed.

Crafts: We recycled some Christmas cards from the last couple of years and made them into Thank You notes for this year's gifts. Now I need to make sure we USE them. I am notoriously terrible at this and am in imminent danger of passing the problem on to the next generation. Time to break the cycle.




OK, I'm calling the next one a craft, though it's probably really a recipe. Maybe a project? We'll say it's a project and count it as a craft. We had a blizzard here last weekend, and at my friend Melissa's suggestion we put a big bowl out to collect some snow. It was kind of hilarious, actually...we put the bowl on the deck, where it got COMPLETELY buried beneath like 18 inches of snow. Joy dug around and eventually found it the next day and brought it in. We added milk, sugar, and vanilla, and it made something like a slushy ice cream. Lots of recipes for this online.



The kids loved it. I could take it or leave it. It was sweet and nice, but it really did taste like snow still...hard to describe. Also, Haagen Dasz is significantly less likely to have pine needles in it. They were so into it, though, that I suspect it will become a tradition.

I may be forgetting something, but that's all I have pics for, so that's all you're getting now. :)

The next year promises to hold all sorts of goodness and comfort-zone stretching as I work through the rest of this list. I'm excited about 2011. Hope you are, too. Happy New Year!