Ohio Christmas

We had a really delightful Christmas with Jason's family this year. Jason's work schedule forced us to arrive on Christmas Eve, but we were able to get there by lunch time and spend the afternoon hanging out with his parents before heading to the Christmas Eve service at their church that evening. I like Christmas Eve services. Growing up, we always did the carol singing and Christmas story reading together at home, but it is nice to do it at church, as well--plus, we enjoyed the Christmas "readers' theater" in which George deftly played the dog that guarded the Baby Jesus in the manger. :)


After church, we had dinner together and then watched The Nativity Story. This is definitely on Jason's and my list of Family Christmas Traditions--I was skeptical until Jason practically made me watch it a few years ago, but oh, so good. It gives me a new appreciation for the Christmas story all over again.


We had a fun Christmas, complete with White Christmas, gift opening, a delicious dinner, Christmas crackers with silly crowns (Grandmom wore hers all day, and I don't think she realized it was still on when she went to go home that evening!), and a fun game of Christmas bingo during which $20 was at stake. Of course Jason won the money. And he wonders why I don't like to play games with him! We got to meet Justin's girlfriend, April, at dinner, too--she was the perfect addition to the meal, and it was so great to get to know her a bit!


We finished off our trip with more games and lunch at Hunan Garden (which I've heard about constantly but had never been). In light of all the crazy storms on the east coast, we made it home easily and without incident--and to absolutely no snow on the ground! I think DC must have had a weird bubble over it over the weekend... Such a nice weekend and such a fun Christmas!

Run-up to Christmas

We have been very bad bloggers. Apparently my subconscious now associates spending time at my computer with school (sadly, also, Christmas music, so v. good that Christmas season is almost over, as feel like some sort of grinch), and have therefore neglected not only blog but email, organizing photos, and spending the $10 Amazon gift card that was burning a hole in my pocket during the pre-Christmas ban on shopping for self.

Anyway. Christmas did come to our house--we got home from Thanksmus at about 3 am on a Sunday morning, and once we finally woke up and got unpacked, we got a tree, put it up, and hung the stockings, knowing that the next few weeks would offer no time to stop and decorate. Then we went into a holding pattern until school finished, when we could finally begin to celebrate.


We got to host our now-annual Christmas get together with the Kings and the Gambills--brunch this year, and I made my mom's cinnamon rolls, which (finally) turned out fantastic. Baby Carter was fantastic, too, in his adorable Santa outfit. What with the addition of two little ones, our brunch was much noisier than last year! We ate and ate, and then we just hung out and visited for a long time, and it was wonderful to have no where to be and nothing hanging over our heads! Wheee!


Jason did a bang-up job again this year of putting lights on our house (we are getting good enough at this that it does not threaten our marriage anymore--nary a fight this year!). So good to come home to after long nights at class!


And this year I listened to A Christmas Carol on my drives to and from class. I love A Christmas Carol, it puts me just in the Christmas spirit, and I have fallen in love with audiobooks this fall--am only disappointed in self for not having discovered them earlier as great distractions from long and painful drives to class. Which, happily, are now over.

It wasn't perfect this year (had to miss many Christmas parties, teas, gingerbread house constructions, etc., in order to write mediocre final papers), but we did a pretty good job, considering. And besides, as was discussing with my friend Deanna last week, not having everything just right at Christmas reminds me--sharply, sometimes--about the real point of Christmas: God coming to us, offering grace so that we can accept his invitation to be beautiful.

Grandma Cookies

Even though "Baking things, i.e. cookies" was near the top of my list of "Things to do when school is done," I'm really not much of a baker. Most people I know say they prefer to bake than cook, but, unless I'm in a crowded kitchen of sisters and moms and grandmas (and nephews, as Cole is a pretty awesome sous-chef), I get tired of baking. I get annoyed by having to interrupt whatever I'm doing every 12-15 minutes to take cookies out of the oven and put in a new batch, etc. It's not just that, since Jason is not a dessert lover, I end up personally eating at least 70% or whatever I bake (though that's a large part of it). It's just that I think baking--especially cookie making--is a social activity, and I get a bit lonely when I do it by myself for too long. I miss my mom's big counter and huge yellow canister of flour spilling out while we haggle over washing the mixer bowl, with too-loud Christmas music in the background and Grams sitting in one of the counter seats, tempting us with Rice Krispie Treats or Muddy Buddies and slicing anything that needs cut and laughing at my lame jokes.

That last bit motivated my pre-Christmas cookie extravaganza this week. Another thing I've learned about myself as a baker is that, while I love to try new cooking recipes, I like to bake the same things over and over--my recipe box (circa 1987) has three very used dessert recipes at the front (Grams' peach cobbler, Grandma's rhubarb crunch, and Mom's brownies, mmm), and then a bunch of totally clean recipes I've never tried.

My cookie recipe collection is similarly organized--Grandma Bunn's sugar and spice molasses cookies and Mom's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (best. ever.) constantly stay at the front of the stack. But for the past few years I've missed the carrot cookies Grandma Johnson made every Christmas. I guess carrot cookies make about as much sense as carrot cake, but I distinctly remember trying them for the first time one Christmas when Grams and Gramps lived in central Washington being amazed at how tasty they were--all orange scented and cakey and so light you could put down a whole stack before noticing.

All this to say, I've decided to make a holiday tradition of baking my favorite cookie recipes from my grandmas (acknowledging that Rice Krispie treats don't count as cookies and to this day eating them makes me miss my Grams each time). So by the time Jason got home on Tuesday I had dozens of carrot and sugar and spice cookies littering the counter...and he, who only likes plain chocolate chip cookies (which I had made on Sunday), hasn't eaten a single one. Of course, these cookies were for me, a way for me to remember grandmothers who loved Christmas so much and for whom I ache a bit when this time of year comes around. Oh!

I don't really remember Grandma Bunn making the molasses cookies as much as I remember my mom making them, but when I tasted the first carrot cookie to see if it turned out, I found that I had to swallow it around the lump in my throat that it evoked. It was to cookies what Grandma Bunn's piano music is to carols--perfect and just a little bittersweet.

I'll pass on the recipes as my Christmas gift to you.

Grandma Bunn's Sugar and Spice (Molasses) Cookies: These are like gingerbread, but soft and thick instead of crunchy and crumbling. I'll let you guess how I prefer my gingerbread.

(Warning--this recipe makes about a million cookies (by which I mean 5-6 dozen). Expect a v. full KitchenAid bowl.)

Mix together:
1 c. soft shortening
2 c. sugar
2 eggs
1/2 c. molasses

Sift and stir in:
4 c. flour
4 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. ginger
2 t. cloves
2 t. cinnamon

Roll into balls the size of walnuts and bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

Grams' Carrot Cookies
3/4 c shortening
1 c sugar
1 egg
1 c mashed cooked carrots (canned carrots work fine)
2 c sifted flour
2 t baking powder
1 grated orange rind
1/2 t lemon extract
1/2 t vanilla
1/4 c nuts (optional)

1. Cream shortening and sugar add egg and beat.
2. Add rest of ingredients and mix.
3. Bake 12 minutes in 400 degree oven.

Frost with a powdered sugar frosting using lemon or orange extract (I like orange). 1 c powdered sugar, 3 T milk (1% gives a nice thin glaze, but use cream if you want it thicker), and 1/2 t orange extract.

...1!

Done! This morning I sent my 90 page bibliography and my 17 page research paper to my professor and officially finished my career as a student (assuming I pass, of course--my paper on Kim was really sub-par). A silly grin comes to my face every time I think about it...which, of course, is quite often!

Between the end of term and the beautiful snow we got today, it's been a really delightful day--even though I thought we were going to be celebrating by writing constituent mail (me) and trying to quell violence in the Ivory Coast (Jason). We ended up leaving work in time to go to the Carlyle for dinner, where the snow set off the twinkle lights perfectly...just like we have been planning for about six weeks. So many things to do now--take a bath, watch the Northanger Abbey I DVR'd in February, make cookies, read the backed up pile of magazines, get Jason something for Christmas besides having his wife back...

...2...

Things are getting exciting around here. The paper chain my friend Missy (I think I will always have to call her "my friend Missy" so that you all don't think I'm talking about myself in the third person) made me in August is seriously sooooooo short (seven links left!), and I can actually see the end of the semester looming before me.

That is due, in large part, to the fact that yesterday, at approximately 3:29 p.m., I turned my 123 page thesis over to the GMU library. WOO-HOO!!! Even typing those words makes me want to laugh out loud! I went to bed last night at least a thousand pounds lighter. Yes, I still have two major projects (including research project I have barely started) due in less than a week, but oh, to have that thesis done, to know that it is approved and signed and out the door... Glorious feeling.

And now I have this lovely Friday stretching before me. My boss unexpectedly gave us the day off today. Lo and behold, it is snowing (first snow!) and for some reason the Christmas lights outside came on again this morning, so I'm sitting wrapped up in blankets and drinking tea and reading. Granted, I'm reading academic journal articles about seances in Victorian England so that I can write a credible research paper about Kim, but I'm not complaining. A week from now I will be reading Bridget Jones' Diary with a sense of complete freedom....

3...

The countdown until the end of school (forever) is finally on. (As if it hasn't been on since this.) Tuesday night I attended my last lit class for the semester. One down, two big things left to go... Am v. happy to be done with this class--as you can see, we read a lot a lot a lot of books. That's 5,267 pages since Labor Day. My final paper was a shining example of mediocrity, but I read every single one of those pages--a graduate literature class at its finest.

Actually, apart from the fact that I've done absolutely nothing but work and read in the past four months, this was a class full of good books. I loved The Young Lions. And Mary Lee Settle's WWII memoirs. And, oh, East of Eden. And I will never look at World War II the same way again--on Monday our office got a special tour of the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and the painting "Back to Civvies" actually made me tear up. And don't get me started on the first 28 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

But seriously, I have a stack of books this high that I've been saving to read.

Thanksmus 2010

It is so almost midnight, and I have soooo much homework to do tomorrow, but I just logged onto our blog and realized that I haven't posted in almost a month. And that the last post was about October. And I felt suddenly compelled to prove to you that we had a November.

I love Mom and Auntie Fay's "silly" faces.

I mean, we sort of had a November. Every time I thought about posting, the only thing I could think to write about was what book I was reading for class (Andrea, let me know if you want an annotated bibliography...). Otherwise, only three things really happened in November--our friend Carter Gambill made his long-awaited appearance, the Harry Potter movie came out, and we went to Idaho for Thanksmus.

Everyone (but photographer Auntie Fay) at the Thanksgiving table.

Cole made everyone beautiful place tags for the table.

We have a nice schedule in place for the holidays, switching Christmas and Thanksgiving so that each family is together for the one holiday each year. Somewhere along the way, my family decided that, since we were all together anyway (and we would all spend Christmas with other sides of the family), we might as well exchange gifts in person on Thanksgiving years. This year we took it to a whole new level, pulling out most of our annual Christmas traditions--reading The Littlest Angel and the Christmas story, ornament giving, and the fabulous seafood feast--a few weeks early. We even threw in some Beatles Rock Band (best.game.ever.) and a foot or so of snow to make it extra Christmassy. Gramps and Auntie Fay, Uncle Charley, Katie, and David joined us, of course.

We got Troy his own tools set for Christmas.

Cole with the feast of clams (Shaanti got a label maker for Christmas and promptly labeled her eldest).

Mason likes to share Troy's toys. He put the goggles on and just walked around beaming at everyone.

I can't believe that we didn't get a picture of Cooper smiling. He smiles ALL THE TIME.

So fun. Troy and Mason are now old enough to be best buds, and it's hilarious to watch them chasing each other around the cabin and laughing hysterically. Cole is getting so grown up, and we watched Cars together at least twice. And Cooper is seriously the most adorable little guy, always just waiting for someone to look at him so that he can beam a smile at them. We can't wait to meet the newest Bucher boy in a couple of months! It was a fabulous time together, perfect if it hadn't been so short.