for leaving you with such a sad story last post. Not something you want to read around the holidays, eh?
So, I’ve been on holiday for almost two weeks now and have a couple more days before I head back to work.
S’ parents arrived last Sunday and we headed up to Tahoe for a winter getaway. We found, what we thought was, a great house on the lake. What we got was an okay house on the lake. Being on the lake was fabulous, having a fenced in backyard for Lucie was even MORE fabulous. What wasn’t fabulous was the less-than-desirable heating system that came with the house. The warmest room in the house was the spot that was directly in front of the heater in the living room. We spent the five, yes five!, days exploring the new village at Squaw Valley (very nice, very chic!), Tahoe City, downtown Truckee and Reno. Unfortch for us, the only part of this trip Mads enjoyed was climbing up and down the stairs in the cabin. Needless to say, she didn’t take to well to the snow. (I’m really glad we shelled out money to buy her a snowsuit and cute little winter boots!) As soon as you would stand her in the snow, she started to cry and wanted to be held…everytime. Ugh.
Cute little snowflake.
Last sunday, was a milestone event – Madison’s first haircut! She arrived at Snippety Crickets, blinded by the numerous toys in the window, not knowing what was going to happen to her. She wasn’t going to sit still in the chair by herself, so I got in the seat and had Mads on my lap. The stylist was quick to wet her hair, made a few snips, and now Mads was showing off her SuriBob. :o)
Xmas was absolutely crazy – of course, 95% of the gifts under the tree were for Miss Mads. Out of all the gifts this year, her favorite was the stuffed giraffe that S won her at Circus Circus in Reno. (It’s amazing, you can ask Mads where her giraffe is and she’ll go look for it and bring it back to you!) A close second is the “laptop” that my mom bought for her.
Xmas Night, we had friends and family over for a little get together. I ended up employing the slow cooker again and we had pork loin with sage and apples, gratin daupinois, brussel sprouts lardons and assorted sweets for dessert.
We’ve spent the last couple days with grany and granpy shopping and running errands. (They just left today, Sunday.)
Now, we’ve got a few days of vacation before we head back to our usual routine. Yay.
And to end…a pic that didn’t make the cut for the holiday card.
…for not watching the “real” news when there are headlines like this?
Trash Collector Finds Abandoned Toddlers – Surveillance Video Shows Children Being Dumped
Sad and sickening at the same time.
Links to my Kaboodle lists: Baby & BabyMama stuff and Things I Heart, have been posted to the right…
Cacciatore
The working mama’s savior – the slow cooker. Friday night our dear friends Katie & Matt came over for a “holiday” dinner. Since dinner was planned for apres work and I wasn’t able to take the day off to prepare, I turned to my All-Clad slow cooker.
Earlier in the week, I bought a FABULOUS cookbook at one of my favorite cooking shops. What makes is fabulous is that it is divided into three sections: 15-minutes hands on time, 30-minute hands on time, made for extras.
So for our dinner, I decided upon Chicken Cacciatore (Hunter’s Chicken, in Italian, I think). Thursday night I prepped the veggies. Friday am, I browned the chicken, made the sauce, threw everything into the crock and that was it! (I was a bit worried that the slow cooker was going to short, and burn the house down, but it didn’t.) I got home, threw in the ‘shrooms, cooked some pappardelle and we were good to go.
It was a lovely evening, but no naked baby dance for entertainment, perhaps next time.
Lumpia
Saturday evening, my family got together for an early birthday/holiday celebration.
As always, there was way too much food. Roast Beef, Spiral Cut Ham and Lumpia. My grandma made a pretty mean lumpia and now my uncle is following in her footsteps. I only had two, but could have easily eaten 5 or 10!
We also had a mini-birthday celebration for my cousin’s daughter Kady, who turns 2 in a couple days. She had a delicious neopolitan cake from Goldilocks. Yum!
We did have a white elephant gift exchange, but IMHO the gifts were, eh. Next year, we’ll have to require the gifts to be items people actually want.
Bouchon
As if Friday and Saturday weren’t enough, we headed down to Palo Alto for dinner Sunday night. (And S got to test his early xmas gift. Btw, I no way paid the price listed. Are you kidding? I could have gotten myself a nice gift at Burberry or elsewhere. But I digress.) Our friend G, made a wonderful dinner! So wonderful, Mads even enjoyed it! Mixed green salad with duck breast, pecans, followed by trout with green beans, roasted pearl onions & shallots and croutons, pommes anna, and ended with creme brulee and chocolate bouchons (I’ve talked about these before).
Mads really dug into the duck breast, trout and pommes anna (wasn’t too fond of the pearl onion, though) and especially LOVED the creme brulee and chocolate bouchon!
So, as I tackle another week of work, looking forward to the holidays and getting xmas shopping done!
Phew!
Our first (and hopefully not last) holiday party has come and gone. And unfortunately, I did not take any pictures! Boo! I had the best of intentions to take them…it’s hard to be the hostess with the most-ess and party photographer at the same time…and watching after your toddler…and refilling the super popular Rebaud holiday punch (dee-lish!)…and making sure the children weren’t tormenting the dog. (Poor Lucie was pooped!)
We had quite the spread, but not nearly enough French people as the cheese plate went untouched for the first hour or so. I believe that people got stopped at my mom’s super popular crab dip (the brie en croute with raspberries, was a close second).
Mads was the perfect little hostess / social butterfly. She played with the other children and more or less subsisted on crackers, bread, juice and guacamole throughout the afternoon. She was so full, she even refused her most favorite meal.
Thanks to everyone that came and celebrated with us and helped refill our wine “collection”.
A few months ago, our neighbor Barney Miller (no joke!) passed away.
He was a very sweet man and because the neighborhood’s business was his business, he was the first of our neighbors to befriend us. He filled us in on who was who, what they did, how long they’d been living here, etc.
Barney, also a San Francisco native, and I would chat about schools we went to. If I recall correctly, he went to Poly, and he also knew many folks from SI.
I wish I had gotten to know him better…I imagine that he must have had fabulous stories of San Francisco seen thru a gay man’s eyes.
I actually miss seeing him, dressed in his burgundy velour caftan, getting his morning paper on the weekends.
Since his family didn’t have a memorial for him, I just wanted to remember him somewhere.