The Friday before Christmas — “Christmas Excellence”

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Joel

Busy, busy day. I worked from home Friday in the morning, and we got a notification of early dismissal for 12 noon. That worked out great, because my sister and her family were coming over for the annual “Christmas Excellence” dinner that night. There was much vacuuming and dusting and cleaning up to do in preparation. “Cleaning up” also included getting the secret present for the kids out of the downstairs hallway, and into their room.

Fast-forward to the evening, and Christmas Excellence went off without a hitch. I made sliced meats, cheeses, and crackers for appetizers. Namita made a roast, stuffed, pork loin, and her patented carrot souffle, and green beans / potatoes / bacon / onions side dish. It was all delicious. For dessert, my sister brought over homemade cookies. We opened presents, and I hope everyone was satisfied with their gifts. If they weren’t, they aren’t saying.

Julie, Robbie, and Joshua @ Christmas Excellence

Julie, Robbie, and Joshua @ Christmas Excellence

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Ah, time for the annual family portrait

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Joel

I don’t know why getting a family portrait can be such an ordeal. It should be a simple act of scheduling everyone, getting everyone together, and taking a good photo. Instead, twenty different variables come into play.

  • Nobody is free on a single day.
  • All of the good photographers are booked.
  • Nobody likes where you did find a photographer.
  • You have events scheduled before and after, and there’s a tight window.
  • The kids are tired and/or cranky.
  • Even though you know better, you keep going back to Sears out of desperation.
  • The photographer is either incompetent or in a rush, they never tell you that the kids weren’t looking, someone blinked, or that you have lipstick on your teeth.

We’d gone to the Sears Portrait Studio at least three times, and I feel that we never learned our lesson. Inevitably, after paying all that money, it ends up with me paying for one 8×10, scanning it in, and Photoshopping the beejezus out of it to get it respectable. Then send it to Walgreens, and hope the Christmas cards come out well.

This year, no more dealing with lousy Sears. We scheduled an appt with Artist House down in Bellmywr, NJ, which we’ve seen often when going to visit my sister. I mean, there’re a professional photography studio. They have to be better, right?

Luckily everything worked out. After a busy morning of dance classes and soccer scrimmages on December 10th, we dressed up and drove down to south NJ for our photo sitting. Not only were we taking a family photo, we were meeting my sister and her family there. Why? We were also having a photo taken of Josh, Lily, and my niece Abigail.

I’m pleased to say that the photographer was very experienced and professional. He took the time to make sure our pictures came out well, instead of rushing us. He accurately judged when the kids were tired, and all of our photos came out very well.

We just got the photos back today, and they look very good. I had to drive down tonight to pick them up after work, but it was worth it. In my mind, we’ll certainly go back next year.

Family Portrait 2011

Family Portrait 2011

Lessons learned:

  1. Small business owners can be 1000x better than a chain.
  2. You get what you pay for.
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The annual Christmas party with friends

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Joel
Kids opening up their gifts

Kids opening up their gifts

We had our Christmas party with friends on a busy Saturday evening. Luckily this time around, I wouldn’t have to cook anything like last time. I was DJ’ing, so I only had to collect some song requests, download them, and throw them on my iPod Touch. Of course, I had to help pick up gifts for Secret Santa, but my lovely wife took care of most of that. Hey, I gotta enjoy the perks of marrying a capable and thoughtful woman.

As I mentioned, we had much going on that day. Besides all the gift-wrapping, we had a morning service at the church celebrating the new ministry of our new Rector. After lunch, we rushed home to get ready. We got up to our friends Plexy & Sheba’s house, and we were thankfully neither the first nor the last guests to arrive.

Just to summarize the evening,

  • Lots of appetizers, entrees, and desserts.
  • Lots of drinks.
  • Lots of presents to be opened for the adults and kids (Secret Santa.)
  • A wild game of Pictionary.
  • Mercifully, the karaoke machine wasn’t working.
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Our first real Christmas tree

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Joel
Our first Christmas tree

Our first Christmas tree

In 2005 after Josh was born and we moved into our first house, we wanted to have our very first Christmas tree. We opted for a pre-lit artificial tree. It was fairly easy to set up, turn on, and get on with life. In subsequent years, the lights would stop working, and we would buy additional strings of lights. Last year, all of the lights failed, I took the time to remove each dead string, and we decorated the old fashioned way.

Earlier this month, I pulled the tree out of storage in our basement crawlspace, and discovered that our dear kittens (one of them at least) had “inappropriately eliminated” on the tree while it sat in pieces in the cardboard storage box over the summer. It may have been in the Fall, as they both reached their sexual maturity, and may have felt the need to spray. I have two knuckleheads for cats. I tried cleaning it, but to no avail, the smell was burned into the plastic faux pine needles. Out to the trash it went.

It took us a week or so, but we decided to try our hand at getting our first real Christmas tree. No, not a fake one. An honest-to-goodness actual tree, real pine needles and all. Monday, December 12th, we drove out to a nearby garden center, and bought ourselves a Frasier Fir tree and a tree stand. It’s been a few days, but the tree is up and now decorated. So far, it’s pretty nice, but I’m constantly vacuuming up the pine needles off the carpet.

BTW, the cats are ridiculous about having a tree in the house. Constantly eating the needles, drinking the water, knocking down ornaments, and climbing the tree. Argh. I know cats will be cats, but it’s a bit annoying at times.

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Dinner party for friends

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Joel
Nicole & Nums

Nicole & Nums

On Sunday night, We hosted dinner for Namita’s coworkers and their significant others. Nums was making a big South Indian spread of entrees, with some basic appetizers and desserts. As ususal, there was much preparation beforehand with an inadequate amount of time to prep the house, buy groceries, etc, but somehow we did it. We went shopping the night before to buy groceries, buy new plates, etc.

Um, not much to write about, because it was a dinner party. My wife made lemon rice, a coconut chicken curry, and a few other dishes that I can’t remember, but it was a 3-course meal. All in all, it went extremely well, and we kept the drinks flowing too.

Dinner party at our house

Dinner party at our house

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Breakfast with St. Nicholas

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Joel

Our church hosts an annual St. Nicholas Breakfast event in December. Volunteers start making the pancake batter the night before, and get to the church early Sunday to set up. Before the service, you have pancakes, breakfast sausage, muffins, and bagels, hot apple cider, etc. After the service, the kids take a picture with St. Nicholas.

Josh with St. Nicholas - Dec 2011

Josh with St. Nicholas - Dec 2011

Lily with St. Nicholas - Dec 2011

Lily with St. Nicholas - Dec 2011
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The end of the 2011 Fall soccer season

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Joel

And that’s it for soccer for at least a little while. This was the first year where we had both kids in soccer programs, and we found trying to get both kids to practices and games on weekends a bit hectic. We had a few cancelled games, but we did our best to make it to almost all the games and weeknight practices.

Josh has gotten a bit better, as this was his 4th season playing soccer in this particular league since last year. He’s never been very interested in athletics (neither was I growing up), but I think he’s beginnng to grasp the fundamentals and generate an interest in sports.

Autumn was Lily’s first season of soccer. To be completely frank, with Lily’s personality, we expected her to really shine at soccer. Instead, I witnessed a complete lack of interest. Oh, I know she’s just 3 years old. I’m just saying I thought she’d be running and going for that ball. Nah, most games she either wanted to sit and snack on the sidelines, or just stood on the field twirling around, or talking to her friends. Well, better luck next time. Interestingly enough, she’s been enjoying her ballet dance class much more. Who knew?

I’m a little late with this, but I finally scanned in the team photos.

Fall 2011 - Joshua's soccer team

Fall 2011 - Joshua's soccer team

Fall 2011 - Lily's soccer team

Fall 2011 - Lily's soccer team
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Friendsgiving 2011

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Joel

Turkey time, same as the first!

First off, I gotta talk about the great turkey-napping of 2011. We do almost all of our grocery shopping at our local ShopRite, especially after our local SuperFresh closed down. We found out on Sunday that we had acquired enough PricePlus points to qualify for a free turkey. Sweet! I went back on Tuesday to pick it up, and while checking out, the cashier informs me that I’ve already redeemed my free turkey. When? 4:30pm today, while I was at the office. Apparently, according to the cashier, there have been people using other customer numbers and redeeming/stealing the free turkeys. Unbelievable. I don’t know if this is a situation where people are trying various home phone numbers, or it’s an inside job by fraudulent ShopRite employees. More than likely, I’m thinking it’s an inside job. Sad.

In the end, since we were buying a turkey now with our own cold hard cash, I put back the ShopRite brand turkey and went for a Butterball. I didn’t know if it was truly better, but it costs more, and another customer endorsed it. Why be cheap?

Our guests were bringing appetizers and liquor, so we were responsible for the turkey, the sides, and dessert. Nums started cooking up the sides on Friday, and we started the brining process. Now I’ll admit that roasting our first turkey for a large party of our friends intimidated me. I’ve read the horror stories of undercooked or dry turkeys, and I’m not much of a roasting meats kind of guy. Still, my wife’s confidence in turn gave me confidence.

We kept it defrosted in the refrigerator until Friday, then we started the brining process of letting it soak overnight. First, I had to do all the prep work of opening it up, taking out the insides, etc. It went into the covered tub we borrowed from my sister on Thursday with all the brining juices and spices. Then I covered the bin, and put it outside in our backyard to stay cold overnight for 12-16 hours. The bin would obviously not fit in our refrigerator, and the outside overnight temperature would be in the mid-30’s, much like our refrigerator. Saturday afternoon we walked through the rest of turkey prep by watching some step-by-step Food Network video.

Our slowly arrived around 6pm. Unfortunately, we had some last minute cancellations from guests, so we had more food leftover than expected, but the dinner went very well. We actually fit just about everyone around the dining room table, and the turkey and sides were delicious. As a matter of fact, all the appetizers were delicious too.

So all in all, it was a good experience. While it was originally daunting, roasting a turkey wasn’t all that bad.

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The Muppets (2011)

Posted on November 26, 2011 by Joel

Ah, I love a four day weekend. Today, we bought our tickets early, and took the kids to see The Muppets, the latest Muppets film, which I believe Disney wants to bring back in a big way. Jason Segel both co-wrote and stars in this film. Along with Segel and your favorite cast of Muppets, the film also stars Amy Adams, Chris Cox, Rashida Jones, and a number of actors in cameos.

The film’s premise is reminiscent of the first three Muppet films — a ruthless business tycoon wants to tear down the now-shuttered Muppet Studios and drill for oil. Segel, Adams, and a new muppet named Walter, discover the plot, and work to reunite the Muppets to save the studio. I’ll admit that I’ve struggled in the past to reconcile my memories of the Muppets when I grew up, and the voices of the Muppets in the post-Jim-Henson world. The voices are still different to my ears, but I’m learning to let it go.

I have to say the movie was pretty good. I liked how the premise acknowledged the existence of the original Muppet Show and the earlier films, with many references to the old programs. Those were the old shows and films that they acted in, but now had all moved on. Furthermore, the world had forgotten them, and they now had to find relevancy in 2011.

The Muppets were fun again, the songs were engaging enough, and everyone had a good time. Success. I hope there will be many more new Muppet films.

20111208-112931.jpg

The Muppets (2011)

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Thanksgiving 2011 @ my sister’s

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Joel

As early as last month, there was much discussion within the family as to who would host Thanksgiving this year. Ultimately, my sister Julie and her husband Robbie agreed to host the holiday dinner, while my wife would bring the desserts, and my parents bringing some appetizer. They were also inviting many of Rob’s cousins.

We brought two pies (farmer’s market), and my wife made flan, cheesecake brownies, a fancy bread pudding (?), and I momentarily forget the last one. My sister roasted the turkey and cooked the sides, and they were all pretty good. My parents hung out with their grandchildren, Rob’s cousins had fun with each other, and it was all nice. I was also glad that we didn’t have to clean up all of the mess! Though I did hep out with the dishes.

One note: we hosting “Friendsgiving” this Saturday, which includes roasting a turkey. My sister gave us some tips on brining a turkey as a good way to keep the turkey moist after all the time in the oven. We also borrowed a few of their items, including the roasting pan and rack. Keeping our fingers crossed for Saturday.

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