Fifteen Minutes of Delusion

I hope your Christmas was safe, warm, and full of only happy surprises. Ours was. My Christmas Eve started with a trip to the dentist - 7:00 am, to be precise. It's admittedly a strange way to start the season, and I hope to not make a habit of it. But there you go. They did a periodontal cleaning, so they numbed my whole mouth. Fortunately, yogurt in a tube can be eaten even with a numb mouth (as long as you have a good napkin). I still had a bit of shopping to do - some for Christmas presents, some for the regular weekly needs, and some for Christmas Eve dinner. My first stop wasn't too bad, since it was 8:00 am. However, by the time I finished my errands at around 1:00, parking lots and checkout lines were cram-packed with people. To top it off, Mother Nature decided to bless us with a white Christmas, and she was in full-force delivery mode. I drove home in some very heavy, blowing snow. Fortunately, the day before had been in the mid seventies, so there was no real danger ...

It was an epic holiday project two and a half weeks in the making! Well, okay - maybe it wasn't really all that much. But it did manage to take two and a half weeks. However, the gingerbread house is now done, and bringing joy and laughter to all who see it. Here's how it went down. I mixed up our favorite gingerbread dough way back on November 29th, and then put it into the fridge to chill for two hours. Six days later, I took the dough out of the fridge, and rolled it out onto parchment paper. I then cut out the five pieces that make up this modernist masterpiece and backed them to perfection. After the pieces spent six days hardening, I put them together using nasty white frosting made from stale Crisco. The unconventional design is so the finished product can live under glass. Then the next day I attempted to move the house to its home on the cake plate, and it totally fell apart. So the next time I put it together, it was on the cake plate itself. Then last night - finall...

Oh, my goodness. What. A. Weekend. In a good way, of course. Thanksgiving Weekend 2009 is winding to a close, and I am thoroughly exhausted. So much so that the thought of sitting on my bum all week writing computer code sounds like a bit of a vacation. Kara, the girls, and I had a nice dinner here at home. A few weeks ago, we'd talked about taking a trip down to SeaWorld, but decided that would be just a bit too much, and would probably throw us off for the rest of the weekend. Kara makes a wicked good turkey, and together we made our traditional honey pumpkin pie. (If there's enough interest, I'll have her post recipes.) I also made our famous eggnog ice cream (pour one quart eggnog into an ice cream freezer and say 'go.' That's it!) and baked a key lime pie recipe for my friend Josi (she writes culinary mysteries, and I'm lucky enough to be part of her test kitchen). The girls helped quite a bit with making the other side dishes, which made the day fun. I...

The girls and I had a great time at Sea World yesterday. I will attempt to share the fun of the day in Seen and Heard format, with a Texted thrown in for good measure. Seen: Anna watching cartoons on her computer instead of getting ready to go. Heard : Dad - Anna, come on and get in the car. It's time to go. Anna - But I haven't eaten breakfast yet! Seen: Some kind of butterfly migration taking place near San Antonio and making a mess of our windshield. Seen: Anna and Alyssa loving on each other while posing at the Trick or Treat Street props. (Sadly, Alyssa was too old to participate in the Trick or Treat Street.) Seen: This guy, standing ten feet tall, wearing a glittery blue fish on his head, and giving me a great idea for a character in a future novel. Seen: Alyssa absolutely refusing to pose with a mermaid. Heard: Alyssa insisting on posing with this couple, and Anna being the one to refuse. Seen and Heard: The Count, Elmo, and the gang. Alyssa loved this show even mo...

It all started last month when I noticed October 31st fell on a Saturday. I asked the girls if they would like to spend Halloween at Sea World, and they both jumped at the chance. We know they decorate the park and have special shows during October, so we thought this would be a lot of fun. Plus, it would get us out of Trick-0r-Treats for the year. This is a good thing, because neither girl holds their sugar well. And besides, this still left the Trunk or Treat activity our church does every year for costumes and candy. The bombshell came a couple of weeks ago, when it was announced that Trunk or Treat would be held the same night as Anna's band concert. "I'm not going to the concert," she announced. "You're willing to fail band just to get a bunch of candy?" I asked. "Yes," she replied. "I don't think so." So this year, Halloween is going to be a little different around our house. We still brought down the old Imagewriter II box ...

Easter at the Carey house started out with a big, noisy thunderstorm in the middle of the night. I'm pretty sure it went right over our house - it was loud. I believe it was all this noise that prompted Alyssa to get up at 3:30, ready to go hunt her eggs. Anna awoke and noticed Alyssa was not in bed, and all of the lights were on in the house. Fortunately, Anna was able to get Alyssa back to bed without involving Kara and I. Thanks, Anna! It was 6:50 when Alyssa finally made her way through our bedroom door, and when Anna got out of the shower at 7:00, the egg hunt commenced. The Easter Bunny had a bit of a challenge filling the plastic eggs with candy at our house, as food colors have long been forbidden and Anna has recently been breaking out in a rash from chocolate. This rather limited our options. I found some jelly beans and gum drops at Whole Foods that were colored with fruit juice, and also found some yogurt malt balls, which were a big hit. Alyssa actually eats boiled egg...

I like President's Day. I have the day off from work, but the girls are still in school. Perfect! This year, the day is not quite so perfect. Alyssa has a cold. She's staying home from school. Kara has a cold, too. Shari has a cold, too One of Kara's friends had to leave the place she was staying Saturday. She's been sleeping on our couch the last few nights. She now has a cold, too. I'm getting ready to leave on a trip to the home office, and I'm all packed except for a few things that need to be washed. However, we can't run the washing machine (or anything else that uses water) because the septic system is almost backed up. The pump truck is on the way. They should be here in 90 minutes or so. Yes, this is turning out to be a most interesting President's Day.

Welcome to the last year of the "Oh" decade. It's almost over, and I don't think we've really figured out what to call it. Anyway, 2008 was full of all kinds of ups and downs. I won't bore you with the details - that's what the archive is for. For our family, we ended the year on the ups, and hope that 2009 continues the positive trend. We had a fun and exciting New Years Eve party. I didn't even think to get out the camera. Kara and I did a puzzle. We played a 10-round game of Mario Party. Then we watched The God's Must Be Crazy. It's an interesting psychological phenomenon. Then we opened the sparkly cider, waited 2 minutes for the clock to switch over to 12:00, said "Happy New Year," and took off for bed. Yippee. It's about all the excitement I can handle these days. Maybe we'll roar our way into 2010.

I made pani popo. Kara made turkey... ...and strawberry jello cream (based on Elizabeth's recipe ). Anna cleaned the guinea pig cage. Alyssa took a bath... ...and went to the park. Here's our Christmas Eve dinner... ...and the Christmas Eve diners. We like doing our dinner Christmas Eve, so Christmas is a much more relaxed kind of day. After dinner we played Wii games, read the Christmas story, and watched Miracle on 34th Street (the 1994 remake). We had a great Christmas Eve, and hope you and your family did, too.

This year we are doing a different kind of advent calendar. Each day is associated with an activity for us to do together as a family. I read about this somewhere - I think one of the many blogs I frequent. (If it's your blog, let me know and I'll give you proper credit.) This is our calendar wall - we started the day before Thanksgiving. Behind each picture is an activity. Today's activities included taking the girl's Christmas portraits (see below). Some other activities we have to look forward to are making cookies for friends, looking at Christmas lights, a few Christmas parties, and singing carols as a family. Many of the activities involve watching a favorite Christmas video. I want to try keeping the favorites locked away this season, only watching them once, rather than over and over, ad nauseum infinitum. I'll let you know how it goes.

As promised, here are some portraits of the girls in their new Christmas dresses.

In our home, the day after Thanksgiving is traditionally a day of decorating. This year, about all we got done was the tree. The day started out late and lazy, as most of our Christmas shopping is done and we just didn't care what kind of doorbusters were going on. I know: It's because of lazy shoppers like us that the economy is in such a funk. Sorry. We worked our way through breakfast, and I spent some time with my book , then I went into the attic and got down the tree and the lights. Kara and the girls put the tree together, and I spent the next hour trying to get any of our 5 strands of white lights to work. Not a one was interested in lighting up. So after lunch, I piled Anna into the van and together we contributed $7.64 to the global economy by picking up three new strands of lights. I showed Anna the correct way to string 300 lights on a 4' tree, because Kara and I still remember how much work the 8' tree is. (Anna has forgotten, however, and begged us hopeles...