Holiday Mixups

I feel like a failure today.  I realized this morning that three gifts I had chosen online a couple of weeks ago, gift wrapped, with carefully typed notes, and had sent to my parents house were never sent because I selected an old credit card number.  Despite the fact that I was up early, wrapping gifts for my boys, I was already feeling lousy because I am shipping our distant moms' homemade gift today, the last day the USPS says you can ship for it to arrive by Christmas Day; I am obviously not very confident in their guarantee.  And to top it off, that is not even all of the gifts.  Some of the gifts for 4 sets of grandparents will not even be made because they involve photos that I cannot get from the Post Office because the line now involves a two hour wait.  I already waited once last week for 30 minutes and another day for 40 minutes and that was plenty.  I also feel kind of badly because I'm not sure that we will be able to retrieve any of the packages that people have sent to us.  I think next year if we are not all together on Christmas, I will either have to plan much better or use Fed Ex or UPS instead of the USPS.  It is sad to see the postal service cutting more and more employees and hours each year and people walking into the post office and having to walk away because they can't afford to wait in the lines.  Anyway, I have to admit that I have never been very good at gift giving.  My husband, on the other hand, is great so I am trying to learn from him.

It's in the -40s again, but we enjoyed a warm week and a whole bunch of new snow.  In the meantime, I made some new dishes:  mince-meat pie and figgy pudding with rum sauce.  The pie especially involved and one of the times that the power went out due to the heavy snow, I left my sealed canning jars of carefully prepared mincemeat pie filling on the counter overnight.  I fed it to us anyway and it was fine, but the morning I saw that I had left it out, I felt completely defeated because I thought it might have gone bad.  To top it off, this was one of the dishes I was making for a party and leaving it out meant I would have to make it again.  Maybe my dedication to mastering this new dish partially explains my tardiness with the packages.


I did have a couple of successes.  I threw a nice party last evening with some of my best mom friends.  We each made traditional holiday dishes from countries of our choice.  I received a gift that contained items I can use and that I truly love:  a beautiful home-made jean apron, kitchen towels, home-made bottle cap earrings, and a book on how to cook Alaska's fish.  I purchased a shirt in my son's favorite color and tie (which he had been requesting) for his school Christmas program and he stood in the middle of a packed church filled with cameras and video camera's and sang loudly and proudly.  He declared before the program, "I am going to look so nice!"  When I asked him if he was nervous he didn't know what I was talking about.  During our warm stretch, I was finally able to take a photo of my baby girl at low(er) film speed.  The photo above by the tree, inside, when it was -40 was taken at ISO 800, but the second photo of baby in the snow was taken at ISO 200.  And the church was very dark and I had to use ISO 1600 or flash.  The success here is that I have one high clear photo of my baby girl's blue eyes and rosy cheeks.  I did send out 50 Christmas cards this year but even that was not quite enough; local friends will not receive them.  But, it is much better than last year, when I did not send any at all.  I should mention also that I feel like our lives are full of good friends.  We have been able to play, eat, and converse with many close friends this week and that has really brightened the dark days.

It is -45, our coldest temp of the year, and the check engine light is on in my van.  I am thankful that the only things I have to do today is love my kids, make soup, and drive to the post office.

My first pie

Despite that fact that it's been one of the coldest Novembers on record (hmm, I seem to remember last winter had some record breaking months also), I have been having a good time.  The kids seem healthy, except for one brief fever, which gives me time to focus on keeping them healthy, trying new things, and enjoying them.  I am incredibly proud of my husband and all that he achieves as he wears so many hats and I remain thankful for his support and encouragement in our journey through life together.  And I think I am finally getting to the point where I can entertain myself.  What do I mean by that?  Well, I have had a constant push my whole life from either school or work, parents, building the house, you name it:  something big.  I guess you could say now I have a push from my kids, they're big of course, but to me it doesn't (yet) feel the same as having to report to a job or write papers or take exams or play in that concert.  Maybe that's because everything is going smoothly.  Maybe not. When I graduated from college the second time a year and a half ago, I had to read the newspaper every night just to fill the gap.  Well, after about a year it seemed like I was drifting away.  The newspapers were not being read because I had started gradually to fill the gaps by reading books instead.  This was new.  I have never been the book-a-month or book-a-week for pleasure type of person.  I have had periods throughout my life where I would read a bunch of books.  I read 5 books about Egypt before I went there in college.  I also read about 10 books written by Peace Corp volunteers when I was planning to serve in Africa.  When I became pregnant the first time, I read a variety of books on natural childbirth and new baby care.  But, now, I have been reading whatever I please, and it is so much fun.  This month I read Cure Tooth Decay (Nigel), Wheat Belly (Davis), The Devil in the Milk (Woodford), The Vegetarian Myth (Keith), and Last Child in the Woods (Louv).

On another note, my kitchen journey advances.  On my 30th birthday, last year, I cooked pancakes for the first time in my life.  The kids were thrilled.  I haven't made them since.  The truth is, my husband is really the pancake and waffle maker of the clan and me making them on occasion won't change that.  But, at least I can say I tried it.  I also taught myself how to make scrambled eggs.  I have made them a few times since because I do really like scrambled eggs and so do the kids, even though my husband is the breakfast master.  I think that is kind of cool.  My dad was always the one who made us breakfast when I was growing up also.  It is kind of neat to have dad responsible for one major part of the day.  Anyway, I digress.  I am 31 now, so I figured it was about time I step it up and learn how to bake a pie crust.  A friend was going to teach me, but she is traveling the world so it didn't happen.  I had to teach myself.  It was not as bad as I thought it would be.  I did it with a baby strapped onto my chest, after all.  I want to make pasties, and chicken pot pies, and moose mincemeat pies with our moose, and hopefully next year also with our meat chickens and pig share.  You see, I like a meal that fits into one LARGE dish.  Anything that can fit into a large pot, a large casserole, and now a pie pan makes for easier cleanup, easier storage, fewer dishes in general, and you said it MORE LEFTOVERS, which all means less work for me and more time to ... well, tomorrow morning it will be making king shoes, a king crown, and king ring for my boy, probably while my husband cooks us eggs and sausages.  Every day is a new adventure with the kids and in the kitchen and over the last year I have added many new recipes to our table that I will probably continue to make for years.

Well, this is little more than a stream of consciousness at this point.  It's midnight thirty, and the thought of everyone else sleeping soundly has me drifting off also, but I wanted to be sure that I didn't let too much time pass before posting.  My goal at this point, with three kids, is once a month.  This last month, we continued with preschool activities, entered our second month of violin lessons which means A started playing his real violin, and sweet P, who is now chubbier than ever, starting cooing a lot.  N remains the clown of the family, always making us smile and laugh when we least expect it.  We took a vacation to Anchorage and stayed in a house while we visited the water park, zoo, and museum.  We enjoyed perfectly clear skies on the entire drive through the mountains, both ways, and near the Cook Inlet.  We said goodbye for the winter to Great-grandma Carol as she spoiled the boys and the girl with new coats and a toy John Deere riding lawn dump/mower.  The boys built a snow igloo in the front yard with their dad and spent plenty of time playing hard until they were completely exhausted at their grandparents house on the other side of town.  We all, even the baby, attended an opera for kids about aliens.  I tried to knit a hat and it turned out to have a bunch of holes in it so I quit.  I went to the hot springs with some girl friends, and my husband had a night with his guy friends.  My man and I went on three dates and tried out three new restaurants.  I'm sure we did many other things.  We used to say in our house that the days are long but the years are short.  That is no longer the case.  Even the days seem short ... every single one of them.  There is just so much that we want to do.  It is hard to stop looking forward to the next project, the next event, the many goals, and just enjoy the moment.