Merry Christmas

December has gotten away from me (what else is new?).  As usual much has happened, but I want to write a Christmas post before anything else.

Today was the third time in these three weeks that my Christmas tree has been knocked over--Emily two times, Norte once.  Miraculously, my grandmother's glass christmas ball has survived intact... most of my hand painted salt dough ornaments, however have been glued and re-glued.  Today I put away all the breakable ornaments because I'd had it up to here.

Emily is in love with the Christmas tree and it's pretty cute.  She kisses it good night and hugs it.  She hangs all manner of strange things on it and has tied ribbons of some of the boughs.  It is easy to see how all the love and affection has lead to more than one accident.  As for Norte, he pulls the Christmas balls off the tree to chew them and thus pulled down the whole tree!

Our Christmas was a strange one to say the least.  Toward the end of dinner Christmas Eve Emily began complaining that her ear hurt.  I gave her some tylenol and put her to bed.  She woke up at about 11:30 screaming in pain.  So we spent Christmas eve in the ER (thankfully, there was no one there and we were seen right away).  Emily was diagnosed with an outer ear infection!  She still has her cough and is using an inhaler morning and evening for that... The poor kid is has to go around with an entire drugstore in tow. :(

Santa wearily prepared gifts when we got back from the ER, but our Christmas morning was a near fail because Angelines and I have had zero time to buy each other (or ourselves) gifts.  I was proud of myself because we had purchased Emily's few gifts weeks ahead of time...otherwise, she very well might have had nothing!  But my sweet, considerate girl observed sadly as she choked back tears, that Santa didn't bring anything for Mommy or Mamá. :(

I am not a present person.  Don't get me wrong, I love finding the perfect gift for someone and seeing the look on their face when they open it; but I do not like giving for giving's sake.  If I can't come up with a gift that I think will actually be appreciated and used, I prefer to give nothing.  The pressure at Christmas to get a gift for everyone is just annoying most of the time.  Really, here in Spain, there is less of that consumerist take on things: or maybe it is just Angelines and my family here; but we don't fret about gifts and hardly give Christmas presents.  It is such a relief, honestly to just enjoy the season without stressful last-minute shopping.  If I get one little thing and Christmas, I am happy, and I do my best to get something small for Angelines, but this year was impossible.  I won't rule out a King's Day gift, but Christmas was too soon to get anything lined up.

Of course, I couldn't explain any of that to my four-year-old who was visibly effected by Santa's lack of consideration for her parents.  I did my best to explain to her that my very favorite gift at Christmas is spending time with her and Mamá...but that didn't comfort her much.  I think part of it was lack of sleep.  She was out of sorts all morning and wouldn't even eat pancakes for breakfast.  Around 11 she began crying that her ear was hurting again and when the medicine finally kicked in, she fell asleep on the couch and slept for a good three hours.

I confided in Angelines that I was very sad because of how sad Emily had obviously been for us.  As I was tidying up the house with a sleeping, sick baby on the couch, my Christmas elf snuck out and went down the road to the gift shop at a truck stop near town--the only thing open Christmas day!--and bought a gift for me and herself. :)  When she arrived home with the presents, I sent her back for one more little thing for Emily just because.

When Emily woke up, she found a second note from Santa who explained that apparently he had got all the way back to the North Pole only to discover that he had forgotten to give Mommy and Mamá their presents...and one more for her!  He claimed it was his age... ;)  Anyway, since she had fallen asleep again, he'd snuck back in the house to leave the presents in our stockings.

Emily was thrilled!  And so happy for both of us.  Angelines had found some cheesy stamp pens for her, but she was obvioulsy much more excited about OUR presents than her own.  What a sweet girl.  It was a true Christmas moment.

I hope your Christmases were merry and bright.  I promise another more newsy post soon.
XO and happy holidays!

Thanksgiving :)

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!  As always, we celebrated turkey day on the nearest available Saturday to the actual holiday.  This year that meant yesterday.  Our gathering was a bit smaller than other years, just 12 of us total.  I had invited my co-teacher and her son, but she is still not well enough to do much, although she is, thankfully, out of the hospital.  She is muslim and so I had specially ordered a halal turkey for this years celebration.  I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but the bird this year was the best I've ever cooked...and I have cooked some good turkey in my time abroad (if I do say so myself!). ;)

On Thursday, Emily came home from school absolutely beat and so I fed her some oatmeal and sent her to bed.  She was asleep by 6:30!  That is an unbelievably early bed time by Spanish standards, as some of you may know.  Anyway, her early retirement left me with plenty of time to do some Thanksgiving prep work as I had warned my friends that I would only be doing the turkey, stuffing, cranberry relish and "pumpkin" pie this year.  I made the pie crust and baked the sweet potatoes (remember I have taken to making sweet potato pie and passing it off for pumpkin...).  I even got the cranberry relish out of the way.

Friday all that was left to do upon arrival in La Roda was bake the pie, make the stuffing and brine the bird.  This year I brined in my own special concotion of herb-infused salt water, broth, vinegar and orange juice (oranges from our own tree).  The brining is the trick for a really moist turkey.  This year it was absolutely succulent!  Even the breast was tender and juicy.

Since Emily was so well rested, she woke up VERY early on Saturday and helped me get the turkey prepared.  She stuffed it all by herself and had a great time rubbing oil and salt all over it. It was adorable how excited she was for Thanksgiving.  When she saw the turkey she giggled giddily and exclaimed, "it's a BIG, fat turkey!"  And all morning she kept asking when our friends would be arriving. Thanks to my little chef's help, we got everything set and in the oven quite early.  This was the first year that I've had everything baked and ready by the time my guests were arriving.  The turkey was actually getting cold because some of them were particularly punctual, as Spaniards are known to be.  It was a nice change not to be madly stirring gravy or burning my hands carving a scalding turkey while my guests were hungrily snacking on jamón and cheese. ;)

Our dinner was delicious, but most importantly we had a really wonderful time all afternoon and evening.  Among the guests were a 6 and 10-year-old boy who really thought Norte was the best.  The three of them were playing wildly in the patio for most of the evening.  Norte was in heaven...and so worn out when they left!

I am so grateful for such wonderful friends who so willingly collaborate to help me celebrate the very best of American holidays.