This past weekend was all about Christmas party prep since we're hosting the extended family this year. We finished gift wrapping, planned the menu, bought all the groceries we needed, and the last chore was shoveling the snow off the sidewalk in front of our house. We had done it once but then it snowed again, covering over all our work and we hadn't touched it since. Can't have that when there are 24 people showing up tomorrow (more on that later). But then two miracles simultaneously happened: (1) the weather warmed up to low 50s or so, encouraging the ice-hardened snow to melt and (2) a little Cat snow plow showed up and dug out the entire length of sidewalk in front of our house and 3 others!
We suspect that one of our neighbors had a friend that came over and did the plowing. At first I was wondering why there was a truck making all that racket on a Sunday morning, beep beep beeping as it backed up. When I got up to check it out my jaw dropped and I was so excited--seriously, that saved me probably 40 minutes of work, at least. Woo hoo!
As for the number of guests, originally it would have been the usual 18 family members (immediate family plus aunts, uncles, cousins, and their kids). But then we invited the H family over because they don't have family in town, except that MH's mom ended up coming to visit and will be here for a few weeks. Then my godmother apparently doesn't have anywhere to go this year so she and her boyfriend are coming over. That's +6 = 24 people total. I sure hope there's enough food to go around!
I'm breaking a holiday food rule and trying out three brand new recipes tomorrow, all in the CrockPot. I'll have to report back on how it all goes. At the very least I finished most of dessert-type baking this afternoon (cookies, brownies, Rice Krispy treats) so at least there will be sugary sweets to tide people over ;) Wish us luck tomorrow! And Merry early Christmas!
Monday, December 24, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Stop snowing!
Damnit, it's snowing again! The novelty's wearing off now, mostly because this is the third time in a week that the white stuff's fallen out of the sky. And I'm bitter because I didn't get to work early enough to snag one of the covered parking spots so I'll have to clean off my car before I can drive home tonight...grrr. I'm spoiled by the garage we have at home; it's so nice to be able to just leave in the morning and not have to deal with scraping the car first. But, I have to admit, it does look pretty on the trees and it's pretty peaceful to watch the flakes drop from the warm coziness of being indoors. It's the remembering that you have to drive in it later part that sucks :PTomorrow is my mom's 60th birthday and my sisters and I are throwing her a big birthday party at a function hall near their house. There are about 50 people coming and it should be fun, but I'm a little stressed about making sure everything looks nice and having it go off well. Then right after that I'll have to really start dealing with details for hosting Christmas at our house this year. I have no idea what I'm cooking, but I admitted to my weaknesses early and asked every family to bring one dish each so I'm not flying solo on providing eats. Besides cooking I still need to finish wrapping gifts (and maybe doing a bit more buying of gifts), clean the house, make sure our walkways are clear so someone doesn't slip and fall on Christmas day...ack, I don't want to think about it anymore. Let me get through the birthday party tomorrow first before I tackle the next one!
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...
...especially if some of it falls on the slopes in Colorado since we're headed to Vail in February :)
We got our first real snow of the winter on Sunday night into Monday day. We got probably 2" or so where we live, nothing too bad. Temps have dropped considerably in the last week or two, regularly registering in the 30s and below. That part kind of sucks, but it's getting us ready for Vail, that's for sure!
Happy belated Thanksgiving, by the way. We spent the holiday in Arizona with WC's mom. My mom came with us too so I wanted to keep her entertained while we were there. Usually WC and I end up just doing chores for his mom while we're visiting since she lives by herself and always ends up with a list of miscellaneous upkeep items she needs help with. Unfortunately for WC this time he had to take care of everything himself while I drove my mom all around Arizona to fill up our days.
WC's aunt and uncle (from his dad's side) recently moved to AZ as well, and only 10 minutes away from his mom. She's still friends with that whole side of the family so she's enjoying having some "family" around. Two more of WC's aunts and one of their husbands also flew in from out of town (Philly and Toronto) for the holiday and all nine of us sat down for dinner last Thursday at the aunt and uncle's house. WC, my mom, and I actually flew in Thursday evening so we went straight from the airport to dinner, starved by the time we finally got dropped off by SuperShuttle. Good thing, since they'd cooked up about 10-12 different dishes, mostly Chinese-style. Yum....
While WC and his mom stayed home with the chores, my mom and I went off with the rest of the family to explore Scottsdale and Sedona in the following days. Old Town Scottsdale is basically one tacky tourist shop after another--nothing to write home about. I wish we'd driven around the town instead and done a tour of the nice homes. Sedona, on the other hand, is gorgeous. All those red rocks. WC and I did a Pink Jeep Tour the last time we were there and got to walk around on the formations a bit. This time we strictly did a car tour and stopped at a couple of places to check out the view. It was nice.
After a nice visit, we finally boarded our red eye home on Monday night. Three hours later, we were still on the ground. Stupid mechanical problems. We finally had to de-board and get on another plane, only to miss our connection in Detroit by 2.5 hours. What was supposed to be an 8:15am Tuesday arrival time turned into more like a 3:00pm arrival time--one whole day lost of work. I did drag myself into the office around 5:00pm (in jeans because no way could I handle getting dressed in office wear after 18 hours of travel) . I don't think my partners appreciated me missing another day, but they didn't say much about it. Oh well, will just have to not take too many days off around Christmas. But, seriously, in all my traveling days this was probably the worst return trip ever. Thank goodness WC found direct R/T flights for Vail in February. The Thanksgiving trip exemplified exactly why I hate layovers.
We got our first real snow of the winter on Sunday night into Monday day. We got probably 2" or so where we live, nothing too bad. Temps have dropped considerably in the last week or two, regularly registering in the 30s and below. That part kind of sucks, but it's getting us ready for Vail, that's for sure!
Happy belated Thanksgiving, by the way. We spent the holiday in Arizona with WC's mom. My mom came with us too so I wanted to keep her entertained while we were there. Usually WC and I end up just doing chores for his mom while we're visiting since she lives by herself and always ends up with a list of miscellaneous upkeep items she needs help with. Unfortunately for WC this time he had to take care of everything himself while I drove my mom all around Arizona to fill up our days.
WC's aunt and uncle (from his dad's side) recently moved to AZ as well, and only 10 minutes away from his mom. She's still friends with that whole side of the family so she's enjoying having some "family" around. Two more of WC's aunts and one of their husbands also flew in from out of town (Philly and Toronto) for the holiday and all nine of us sat down for dinner last Thursday at the aunt and uncle's house. WC, my mom, and I actually flew in Thursday evening so we went straight from the airport to dinner, starved by the time we finally got dropped off by SuperShuttle. Good thing, since they'd cooked up about 10-12 different dishes, mostly Chinese-style. Yum....
While WC and his mom stayed home with the chores, my mom and I went off with the rest of the family to explore Scottsdale and Sedona in the following days. Old Town Scottsdale is basically one tacky tourist shop after another--nothing to write home about. I wish we'd driven around the town instead and done a tour of the nice homes. Sedona, on the other hand, is gorgeous. All those red rocks. WC and I did a Pink Jeep Tour the last time we were there and got to walk around on the formations a bit. This time we strictly did a car tour and stopped at a couple of places to check out the view. It was nice.
After a nice visit, we finally boarded our red eye home on Monday night. Three hours later, we were still on the ground. Stupid mechanical problems. We finally had to de-board and get on another plane, only to miss our connection in Detroit by 2.5 hours. What was supposed to be an 8:15am Tuesday arrival time turned into more like a 3:00pm arrival time--one whole day lost of work. I did drag myself into the office around 5:00pm (in jeans because no way could I handle getting dressed in office wear after 18 hours of travel) . I don't think my partners appreciated me missing another day, but they didn't say much about it. Oh well, will just have to not take too many days off around Christmas. But, seriously, in all my traveling days this was probably the worst return trip ever. Thank goodness WC found direct R/T flights for Vail in February. The Thanksgiving trip exemplified exactly why I hate layovers.
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