Wednesday, December 31, 2008
The Obligatory Christmas 2008 Report - Now With New Author!
Liz here. I've abandoned my defunct blog for Doug's highly acclaimed site. Cousin Kyle notes that this makes us the Blogsmas.
The 10 day trek of family visitation through Michigan and Ohio has been completed with gusto. Aside from lots of snow, a lot of driving, and getting a 24 hour flu bug on Christmas night, it was a pretty successful trip. We didn't take a lot of pictures, but here are a few highlights:
The nephews! As you can see from the previous post, we got to spend lots of time with my brother, wife, and their three kids, ages 6, 5, and 3. Everyday is a party at their house! A few of my favorite conversations:
Alex (age 5): "I want some orange juice."
Me (holding glass of juice): "Okay, here's your orange juice, but first you have to tell me who's your favorite auntie?"
Alex: "Aunt JoJo!"
Me (holding glass a little higher): "Yes, but I have this glass of orange juice, so tell me again, who's your favorite auntie?"
Alex: "Aunt JoJo! Aunt JoJo!"
Fortunately, bribery still works with the other two.
Grandma Pam: "Athan, who did you sleep with last night?"
Athan (age 3): "Um, a lot of white people!"
"I just kinda love you. I just kinda love you" - lyrics from Athan's original song "I Just Kinda Love You."
Games. When we set foot in Michigan, we are required to have our Scrabble, pinochle, canasta, and euchre skills well-honed. We played dozens of games this week. A new addition for this year was Wii sports and Mariokart. My favorite? An 8 man tennis doubles tournament into the wee hours of the morning.
Cooking for the fam. We love cooking for people, but rarely have the opportunity to cook for our family from far away. Doug and I took over the kitchen for Hillman family Christmas for a nontraditional holiday meal of fish tacos, homeade black bean salsa, and jalepeno cornbread.
Gifts! We gave and received some really fun and thoughtful gifts. Doug's mom got me a book called "The Encyclopedia of Country Living", a 922 page book on homesteading with topics such as growing mushrooms, homemade bug spray, delivering a baby, calculating harvest yeild, building a mud oven, cooking wild animals, tanning hides, turkey reproduction, you name it. Not only is it a highly interesting gift, it also makes the Blocksmas marketable to join a commune should our financial system collapse entirely.
A great Christmas, but we are glad to be home where the sun shines and we go to sleep at reasonable hours. Happy New Year to you all!
The 10 day trek of family visitation through Michigan and Ohio has been completed with gusto. Aside from lots of snow, a lot of driving, and getting a 24 hour flu bug on Christmas night, it was a pretty successful trip. We didn't take a lot of pictures, but here are a few highlights:
The nephews! As you can see from the previous post, we got to spend lots of time with my brother, wife, and their three kids, ages 6, 5, and 3. Everyday is a party at their house! A few of my favorite conversations:
Alex (age 5): "I want some orange juice."
Me (holding glass of juice): "Okay, here's your orange juice, but first you have to tell me who's your favorite auntie?"
Alex: "Aunt JoJo!"
Me (holding glass a little higher): "Yes, but I have this glass of orange juice, so tell me again, who's your favorite auntie?"
Alex: "Aunt JoJo! Aunt JoJo!"
Fortunately, bribery still works with the other two.
Grandma Pam: "Athan, who did you sleep with last night?"
Athan (age 3): "Um, a lot of white people!"
"I just kinda love you. I just kinda love you" - lyrics from Athan's original song "I Just Kinda Love You."
Games. When we set foot in Michigan, we are required to have our Scrabble, pinochle, canasta, and euchre skills well-honed. We played dozens of games this week. A new addition for this year was Wii sports and Mariokart. My favorite? An 8 man tennis doubles tournament into the wee hours of the morning.
Cooking for the fam. We love cooking for people, but rarely have the opportunity to cook for our family from far away. Doug and I took over the kitchen for Hillman family Christmas for a nontraditional holiday meal of fish tacos, homeade black bean salsa, and jalepeno cornbread.
Gifts! We gave and received some really fun and thoughtful gifts. Doug's mom got me a book called "The Encyclopedia of Country Living", a 922 page book on homesteading with topics such as growing mushrooms, homemade bug spray, delivering a baby, calculating harvest yeild, building a mud oven, cooking wild animals, tanning hides, turkey reproduction, you name it. Not only is it a highly interesting gift, it also makes the Blocksmas marketable to join a commune should our financial system collapse entirely.
A great Christmas, but we are glad to be home where the sun shines and we go to sleep at reasonable hours. Happy New Year to you all!
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3 comments:
sweet. i'm coming to your house when finaciapocalypse occurs.
the skills i bring to the group include eating a lot, making snarky comments about everyone else and drawing a really mean logo for our sign.
Hi Liz
You can always come and join us, homesteading (or self-sufficiency as we call it) is exactly the sort of information we have been reading up on just lately. Hopefully we get to try out a bit more this year and find the chanterelle mushrooms - that is if the wild boar have left the area alone this year and not dug it all over. Cranberries from the forest were good though and had them over the Christmas period.
wellllllll
if you don't find that book helpful you can just send it to you know who that really wanted it. :)
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