Merry Christmas & happy end of 2008!

It is December 31st, 2008.... where has the time gone? Today John said to me "Remember Y2K?" It seems like so long ago. It was my full time job helping our company prepare and test and test and test some more for Y2K. And honestly it was so anti-climatic when it came and went. And here we are, 9 years after computers were supposed to stop working, we would have no water and the world would come to an end. I wonder sometimes how the people who bought bunkers out in the plains feel today. Anyway, I digress because I am tired and a simple thought process seems quite challenging right now. And of course the kids want to stay up to ring in the New Year. I think we will be half zombies at Mass in the morning. 

But, I did want to update the blog and let you know what a wonderful Christmas we had this year. Unexpectedly John's parents were in town to help my brother and sister-in-law move to a new home (a totally awesome, beautiful dream home with an amazing kitchen!) so we had a wonderful big family Christmas.  

         

Christmas Eve we had a small dinner - just John, me and the kids - and we had ham dinner. I grew up in Peru and having a big hot meal on Christmas (in summer) just seemed insane - so we always had our dinner on Christmas Eve. John and I adopted a modified version of this Mortimer tradition. I cooked dinner while John and the kids delivered all the goodies we had baked. We enjoyed dinner, and then went to Mass where Alexandra was Altar serving. We came home and in a tradition John and I created for the family - the kids got one present to open. Now, the get excited every year but they know exactly what it is - pj's!! Two reasons - a) they normally need new winter pj's by this time of the year; and b) they are guaranteed to be clean and decent in pics from Christmas morning!! We did our Advent readings and off to bed we went. 

    

Christmas morning we had promised to keep the kids out of the gifts until John's parents could get here to celebrate - which was around 9am. Fortunately the little ones slept in but the big ones hid in the basement to contain their excitement. Grandma is always very generous and stocks the tree abundantly. The kids love this! They know that from John and I they will get three gifts.... after all, we are celebrating Christ's birth and Jesus himself got three gifts. Another family tradition I guess! Usually the gifts are an outfit, a book or movie, and a game or something fun. Then Santa brings the kids one big gift each. This year Santa gave in on their repeated request for a game system - so he brought one gift for the kids to share - a Wii game system. Talk about excitement, and screaming and jumping and now endless hours of playing Wii tennis, bowling, baseball and Mario-something-slugger.  We were also joined by my brother and sister-in-law (Greg & Brenda) and together enjoyed a wonderful turkey dinner. Brenda has the reputation of making the best deserts in the family - and she baked a delicious cake and yummy cheese cake. 

Now to share some of the kids favorites this year - 

Peter - light up Christmas socks - 

Alexandra - snicker doodle scented candle

Tommy - the remote control helicopter that Jack got from his godparents

Jack - the heli, a foam disk shooter and a maze book + computer game 

Michael - hands down...the Wii

And on an embarrassing note I must confess my own lack of being in good shape. This last summer after Peter turned a year I started exercising again. I went out every morning and was doing 4 - 5 miles a day part walk and part run. I felt great! I lost weight! I felt good!! Then school started and my life went crazy. I didn't have time to exercise, I never got back on top of laundry and felt like I was constantly flying by the seat of my pants keeping up with home, kids, husband and work. Ahh! Well, I recently recognized my need to start exercising again - so I've been getting up early before everyone else to fit in prayer and exercise. I have become somewhat fanatic in the last couple of weeks in my useless attempt to look more like Heidi Klum before my trip to Peru. I am failing terribly despite being up to 6 miles a day, eating little and drinking lots of water - I'm cursed! Anyway, I digress again. I was started to feel more comfortable that I was getting "fit" again. Michael challenged me to the Wii. "Sure" I told myself "just a kids game - how hard can it be?" Well, he kicked my @$$ at tennis which was embarrassing. I decided to move onto bowling - you know - a sport more suited for us maturing parents. Well, he double kicked my @$$. My competitive edge kicked in and I was bound a determined to master the bowling. In a less than stellar parenting move, I sent Michael off to bed and stayed with the Wii. I bowled for an hour trying to beat Michael's 203 score. I maxed out at 185. It was midnight and I went to bed. I should have iced my shoulder because my right arm was so sore I could barely move it for three days. I have not yet taken on the Wii again!

Anyway - it is 2009 in half the world, so I better wrap this up and just say THANK YOU GOD for a wonderful 2008! please continue to guide us and bless us in 2009!!

Love, 

catherine 

My Dream Kitchen?

Ask me how I would describe my dream kitchen - and likely I would tell you all about the design. Almost opposite of what we have now! I dream of a big kitchen, center island, country sink, double oven, etc. You know - the kitchens we see in TV or in magazines. But, reality is I have a small galley style kitchen that requires creative packing to get everything into it.... especially since I have somewhat of an addiction to small appliances - I will unfortunately never have enough! 

This is what my kitchen looks like right now.... and yes that is a glass of well deserved wine after a long day! 

  

So, this is not how it looked all day. And that is where the true dream kitchen comes in. While my kitchen is not my fantasy kitchen design, today it was my dream kitchen. All my kids piled into our little kitchen - each with their well-used and somewhat stained apron on. Each with their own little project. But, each project perfectly intertwined with every one else's project. The perfect timing of baking. And, through it all there was laughter, teasing, a lot of fingers "taste testing" and a smidgen of drama. Would hate to imply we are a perfect TV family because Lord knows we are not! (You will see the evidence of taste testing below)

But, at the end of a long day, and a kitchen that took over two hours to get free of a couple of loads of dishes, dropped M&M's, finger smudges and stuff I don't even recognize - we have a recipe for family togetherness and a lot to show for it!  So here is a bit of the magic everyone brought to the kitchen - 

Alexandra made peanut butter and swirl kisses cookies:

  

Michael whipped up a double batch of brownies using the same recipe I learned in summer school at his age:

   

Jack made is very own double batch of M&M cookies. He also helped mash the bananas for our banana bread:

   

Tommy carefully made a batch of vanilla ice cream and lent his expert "taste testing" to everyone's special projects:

 

Peter was in and out of the kitchen sprinkling us all with love and giggles. And I made up another batch of blackberry jam (yes - the berries were still on sale!). 

    

We tied all our projects together and have goodies for our neighbors that we plan on dropping off tomorrow. 

   

So, back to the dream kitchen - today I had my dream kitchen! I had the kitchen I close my eyes and dream of when I am at work missing my kids like crazy. Today we spent the time together creating with our hands - and at the end of the day (even if super late) can put our feet up and smile. 

God bless you all as we continue to prepare for Christmas.... and let our recipe for life this week remind us the real reason for the season. As my kids say - Happy Birthday Jesus!

catherine