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.