Unique Christmas

For the first time ever, my hubby and I went to the movies on Christmas day. We were originally going to be with my family on Christmas day, but since it fell on a Thursday and my brother and sister both had to work today we decided to celebrate this weekend instead. So, we were not sure what to do on Christmas day and decided to take the opportunity to see some movies we've been wanting to see. We went to the first showing of the day of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and made it a double feature by staying to see Doubt. Between the two movies we ate at the restaurant at the theater and even had time to get an ice cream at marble slab, also in the theater. I'm glad that restaurant was open, that's the only way we could have made it a double feature without having a dinner of popcorn, nachos or other movie theater food. I thought that no restaurants were open on Christmas day, but hadn't considered a restaurant AT the movies.

I know that for many families going to the movies on Christmas is a tradition (the theater was so busy by the time we left it seems like everyone goes), but it never has been in my family, so it made for a very unique Christmas for me. Tonight I'll head down to my parents' house and Kevin will come for the day tomorrow to celebrate with my family.

Christmas Celebrations

Today and tomorrow are the last two work days of the year for me and Kevin, so I am fairly sure that they'll be spent mostly watching the clock until we're on vacation. I could've taken the days off, but since Kevin has to use a week's vacation to have the same days off that I do thought it best to save the rest of my days to be able to go somewhere on 2009, we used just about all of our vacation days for the two trips we took this year.

We will celebrate Christmas with my side of the family, but aside from that plan to stay in town and just take care of stuff around the house. I'm looking forward to the time off, and in addition to our projects, plan to sleep in (if Smokey lets me), read, work out, see friends, meet up with friends, and just enjoy having some down time. One project I must get done is to go through the stuff in the attic, we can't put the new Christmas tree away until I do.

We celebrated Christmas with Kevin's side of the family this weekend, with all of the family on Saturday and with the immediate family yesterday. Both celebrations were a lot of fun. I love watching the kids open their gifts, especially now that he's old enough to really start to get into it. Kaden's unwrapping of gifts used to be tear off one piece, set it aside, repeat and he'd get tired before he finished unwrapping the gifts. This year he unwrapped them all himself and was excited to get to play with them. I'm excited about my white elephant gift, a panini maker and at the store yesterday I bought some bread, ham, cheese and tomatos to try it out this week.

Yesterday, at Kevin's parents house we exchanged gifts. This is Kaden's first year to really know who Santa is and be excited about gifts, so we were really looking forward to seeing him open his gifts, especially the train table. We opened gifts and then he was taken into another room to play with some of his new toys while my father-in-law and brother-in-law set out the train table and rang the doorbell. We told him that Santa's elf had dropped it off early so it wouldn't have to go in the sleigh, but instead of being excited about the train table he was sad he'd missed Santa. He got over the disappointment and played with the table most of the afternoon (including blowing it up with the toy tank we'd given him), but that was a reaction we weren't expecting. Kids will always surprise you, that's what I've learned.

O Christmas Tree

Here is a picture of our gorgeous new tree. Its 7'6" tall, so we had to use some creativity to make our tree-topper fit and not be up against the ceiling. We finished Christmas shopping yesterday, and I finished the wrapping too....so this picture has our nicely wrapped gifts under it - I waited to take the photo until I had some gifts under the tree. I like to wrap gifts, but am not particularly good at it, and rarely do I try to put bows or other decorations on them, getting them wrapped in paper and labeled with who they are to is my major goal. We turn on the lights each evening and it really adds to the holiday season to get to see that every day. We also have lights up the banister of our stairs and across the railing on the second floor and put up our old tree upstairs, so you can see it out the window.

I'm ready for the Christmas holidays and ready for the break from work. I only have 7 more days to work this year. A perk I hadn't thought about when I chose to work in higher education is that they close for the holidays.

I love listening to Christmas music and finally started using Pandora again to listen to it at work, I get a lot more variety than I will with bringing what few Christmas CDs I have.

Christmas parties

On Thursday, we had the School's Christmas Party, called an "Open House" to be cognizant of the different faiths and cultures or politically correct since we're a state institution. It was fun, but oh so different than Kevin's party last weekend. It is during the work day (nice since we are paid to be there and makes for a better turn out), and was held in the event center on the 3rd floor. It was FULL of people, I don't realize how many people work here until I see the huge room we are in and how full it is, and this is just the employees not guests, etc. that many parties have. It makes sense we have so many employees but I forget since I interact with a much smaller group, and with faculty on their own schedules I almost never see them. They had a DJ with karaoke, and a photo booth to get your picture on a magazine (we actually got one this year, last year we got in line too late), and lots of appetizers - my favorites: some kind of fried corn ball, and an arthichoke heart stuffed with cheese and fried, nothing fried is good for me but oh it tastes so good! I'd told Kevin he was on his own for dinner, because I figured (correctly!) that I wouldn't be hungry for dinner. I recognized a lot more people this year than last year (at last year's party I'd been here only a few weeks) and it was good to see everyone, but it fell on a day when I had a meeting all morning and then right after I left for my fitness release time, so I was in my office for all of about 2 hours.

Contrast this party with Kevin's party, they really couldn't BE much different. He works for a small, private company. It was held last Saturday at a really nice restaurant (Smith & Wollensky's) in Uptown Park. It was a great excuse to get dressed up and have a nice night out. They had a cocktail hour with servers coming around with great appetizers, several of which I couldn't pronounce, the ones I can come up with a name are: ahi tuna, chicken salad with truffles in a shell (puff pastry?) that looked like a tiny ice cream cone (my favorite), beef wellington with truffles, spring rolls, some sort of filet with a pepper sauce (I can't remember the correct name, and when I asked the server what it meant - I was trying to remember it, he said he had no idea). They were all beautifully served, and I tried a little of each. This place has a different level of service than any other place we've been - we went to eat here once and they seriously have a person who picks up the crumbs off the table for you with this little metal tool. The servers would wait for you to eat the appetizer then take the toothpick, napkin, etc. back from you. I wasn't ready to eat it so kept apologizing and they're like quit apologizing. I like to eat out but am never comfortable with that kind of attention. After that we had a sit-down dinner, here were the courses (we chose one from each course):

First Course:

• Caesar salad -- everyone at our table got this one, so I couldn't really see the other one. But this was the strangest looking salad. It was like "assemble your own". They were full stalks of romaine, with parmesan pieces on one side and a generous helping of salad dressing on the other (on the plate, not in a bowl or anything). This is one of two things about the night that I didn't like. Strange thing is we had this salad here before and it didn't come out like this.
• Iceberg wedge - from what I could tell, it looked like an eighth of a head of lettuce on a plate.

Second Course:

• grilled mahi mahi - I got this, and it was good. It came out with grilled vegetables underneath it and it tasted delectable


• filet mignon - Kevin got this, it was also very good, but they didn't make sure everyone got the steak cooked the way they requested it (his was way too red), and he said it was chewy :(


• lemon chicken- one person at our table got this, I opted not to since we make chicken at home a lot and I wanted something I'm unlikely to make. it came out with french fried onions on top of it, really pretty presentation.
  

For everyone to share there were these sides, the first two served in copper pots:

• mashed potatoes
  
• a creamed spinach - melted in your mouth
  
• stalks of asparagus - I can't cook it, but I love asparagus

oh, and their rolls, ohhh...i could go on and on about them. They come out in a round dish and are all connected to each other....mmmm..I love bread.

Third Course:

• Chocolate cake - we each got this, and it was so good, layers of cake with a mousse layer in between, we actually split one piece and brought the other home


• berries and cream - looked good, but can't compete (for us) with chocolate
  

Did I mention there was an open bar? We thought they're probably be just wine, the restaurant is known for it, but nope there was pretty much anything you wanted - I had a cosmo and wine, and Kevin had red wine. We also had wassail that they brought around for everyone to have, very sweet but good and hot since it was cold outside (we kept getting a draft from the door on our dining room that kept opening and closing for people to go outside to smoke - the other thing I didn't like about the evening. The smokers are the ones that want to go smoke, so make them walk a little further so I can stay warm! I actually made the comment seeing all that was spent on that night, that in that room you wouldn't know there was a recession. The company had a great year in 2008, their best yet, and we were happy to share in the good fortune. They had a photographer taking photos, we took a picture of us in front of the tree, I can't wait to see it...hopefully they'll get them next week.

Let it Snow

I can honestly say this is the FIRST time I've ever driven home from work in snow! When I left work it was a few flakes on my windshield and then as I got closer to home it was getting more constant and thicker, I could see it in the light of the headlights and then eventually against the dark sky I could see it really well, and it was really coming down!! I actually had the thought that it was easier to drive in than rain, but I am sure that its because its really a light snow, and don't ever wish to have to drive in a snow storm. When I got home, Kevin was outside looking at it, in disbelief I think. We just aren't use to seeing it here. Its quite a novelty for us, and something that'll make this Christmas that much more special. Here are photos that we took of our house and yard. We're enjoying our winter wonderland.

Our nephew is enjoying his first snow. He made a snow angel in the snow near his house. People all over town are enjoying it and its the TOP news story...

Snow in Houston?

Its been colder this week - once again a chance for me to pull out my favorite coat that I bought to wear in Kansas City last winter- and today I've heard several different reports that it is snowing in Houston. I doubt it'll accumulate, but really weird to hear about snow in Houston, Texas! It reminds me of Christmas 2004, when we DID get snow, I was at my parents' house and we had several inches of snow, a first for all of us. Photos of that year are here.

I like the colder weather, but do NOT like hearing on the radio that there might be sleet, people in this town can't drive in rain...so if there is sleet? oh, it'll be bad (not to say I know how to drive well in sleet).

Kevin just called, he's driving on 59 and its snowing there, so its even snowing on the south side of town!

This kind of weather makes me want to curl up and stay inside. I plan to wrap Christmas gifts tonight, so its the right kind of weather to listen to some Christmas music (Walkin in a Winter Wonderland comes to mind), drink some hot chocolate, and wrap gifts. Definitely more like the season then wearing shortsleeves on Thanksgiving, which we do quite often!

If the snow does accumulate, I have to see our dog's reaction to it, it'll be quite different from this. Our goofy dog doesn't even like water.

Where did this week go?

For being a full workweek after a holiday week, this week has flown by! I am sure its because I was so busy at work (meetings galore) and at home, a quick recap of the week:

• Kevin went to the Monday Night Football game, the Texans' first game and they won! wahoo!
• I volunteered on Tuesday night
• Wednesday night we were both home, made dinner and watched a movie on the new bluray player, Iron Man. It was actually pretty good. I also got to play with my new phone, - having the internet, facebook, etc in a handheld is ~dangerous~
• We had date night Thursday night, much more fun than going to my book club to discuss a book I hated (and didn't even finish) which were my original plans that night. We like going to Buffalo Wild Wings, especially on cheap boneless wing night, and I love playing the trivia games they have there. I do not know how some players get the full points for EVERY question, but even though I'll never be a top scorer I enjoy it.

I love having a Christmas tree at the house every night, and hope to be home a little more this weekend to enjoy it. We'll attend Kevin's company Christmas party this weekend, it should be fun and I hope to finish up my Christmas shopping. Still not sure if I want to do Christmas cards this year...hmmmm