A Great BIG Catch-Up Post

It’s been awhile.  So the quick rundown on what we’ve been up to since the last time we updated this is going to be a bit long…

Nick headed down to Austin for the Supercomputing conference towards the end of last month.  I’m told that Austin is as weird as it’s been kept, and that it would be a cool place to live.

While Nick was down in TX, I was finishing up the last parts of the home improvment fall project – mainly repainting our bedroom and getting the backsplash up in the kitchen.

We headed back to Rochester for Thanksgiving (that was an earlier post), and then came back to MD with a full week including my company holiday party and our annual holiday party back to back.  All of the holiday baking was put to work in the form of take out boxes for everyone to take home.

We splurged a bit on a pre-Christmas present to ourselves – a nice Nikon digital camera and an extra zoom lens.  We headed down into the DC on a lovely brisk Winter day to play tourist with the new camera.

December was flying by, and (amazingly) I was able to hold out until we had ‘our’ Maryland Christmas to give out presents to Nick, Cashew or Pinot.  Good times were had by all, Christmas at home. 

Right after that, December 19th rolled around and – just in time for the biggest snow storm of the year to hit the east coast – it was time for us to drive to Rochester.  (Nick was amazing through non-stellar driving conditions the entire route.)  We picked up a real tree and decorated it with my mom, and had a lot of fun watching Pinot romp around in (her first?) big snow experience.  Cashew wasn’t so happy to be away from home, but we had a wonderful few relaxing days with my mom in the ROC. The turntable that we got for my mom was the awesome (loved listening to some old 45s), a few classic holiday flicks, and my mom did a great job of shopping this year (too much!)

After a few relaxing days in ROC, we drove to Buffalo to fly out to Nebraska.  A bit of snow on the way there, we thought we were going to have to shovel ourselves out on the way back.  The Christmas trip to NE was great as always, with the fun amplified by 2 youngun’s under 2 years old, and everyone’s willingness to let me play with all of the new camera settings. 

And alas – after heading back to Buffalo (60 degree weather no less), driving back to Rochester, sleeping a bit, having lunch with my mom and then driving back to MD, we’re back home, momentarily at least.  Excited to see my neice Vanessa tonight (who is down visiting Melanie for the new year).  And soon….  very very soon…  our new year trip awaits

The first 12 days of Christmas Cookies

I’m not sure if there will be time for any more baking (or at least, I’m baked out for the most part right now, but who knows what next week will bring), but here are the first 12 kinds of holiday cookies!  All are new recipes to me this year, with 5 of them coming from Julie’s holiday baking cookbook!

Starting from 6 o’clock and going clockwise:

• chocolate cherry sugarplums
• hazelnut meringues
• pistachio spice cookies
• coconut macademia triangles
• double butterscotch cookies
• buckeyes
• bourbon balls
• kisses
• rolo cookies
• green and white cookies
• pecan pie bars
• butterscotch coconut cookies

I still want to make maple frosted pumpkin cookies & coconut macaroons, but not sure if the motivation is there.  Regardless, don’t these first 12 look so pretty all packaged up?

Package Thefts

We were obviously out of town for Thanksgiving, and we had 3 packages delivered in our absence which were left at our front door with the newspaper – or so the delivery confirmations say.  When we arrived home, we found NO packages whatsoever.  The neighbors don’t have them, USPS & UPS say ’sorry they were delivered’ – ugh, so someone must have taken them.

Not cool.

But – as a bit of free press – one of these packages was from Cafepress.  When I contacted them to tell them that the package appeared to have been stolen, they were awesome and are re-sending us our products at no charge.  They even mentioned that if the first package did show up late, we could keep it.  And this was all within, oh 1.5 hours of contacting their customer service department via email.  We’ll never think twice about ordering from them again, and wanted to pass along the good customer service tip!

AND – ThinkGeek had the same policy and is reshipping!  ThinkGeek & CafePress rock!

The Last Week In November

It twas a very busy week!  We started off on Monday the 24th by a small make-your-own-pizza dinner when Colby & Josey dropped off CJ.  We were dog-sitting Mon night – Weds AM. Once Julie picked CJ up on Weds, we headed out the door to drive up to Rochester for the long weekend.  It took about an hour longer than normal, but otherwise no complaints.  Got in to the ROC and unpacked by 9PM, just in time to meet Mandy out at the Distillery for her 21st birthday.  What better way to end the night than garbage plates.  Thursday was Thanksgiving proper – I got up and made stuffing and candied sweet potatoes to bring to Debbie’s house – Debbie and Bob had prepared all of the makings of a full dinner (which we were able to have firsts, seconds, and sometimes thirds of).  Yum..   turkey induced coma on Thursday night, just in time to wake up early for some black friday shopping in the morning.  We got some Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch (my first time), and headed home to watch the Nebraska game.  I will admit that I slept through the first half (turkey + early waking+ battling stores = sleepiness), but I woke up during half time, and didn’t miss the 57 yard field goal and interception-TD to win the game over CO!   (Insert victory dance here.)  Good stuff.  We had dinner with my mom, and headed out to meet up with Melanie, Javed & Borch @ Oxfords.  Somehow, we ended up with garbage plates on Fri night too!  Saturday we tried to track down Vanessa at Wegmans, but we couldn’t find her….  got some Bill Gray’s (worlds best cheeseburgers!) and then got ready for my 10 year HS reunion.  Meet up with the ladies & Paul at Johnny’s Irish Pub for a quick hour of pre-game and then headed over to the Daisy Flour Mill for the reunion proper.  It was not as awkward as I’d imagined, so that was good   Sunday it was time to head back to DC, which ended up being a much longer trip than anticipated due to blowing out a tire about an hour south of Williamsport, but we were able to change the tire and get back on the road without losing too much time.  Minges & Javed were nice enough to follow us back (going at donut speeds no less), and the tire was still covered under warranty so it was not an expensive fix yesterday.

Phew.  So I hear it’s December now, or something!