Happy Holidays

is what the terrorists say (shamelessly stolen from 30Rock - pure awesomeness).

Happy Festivus and Hannukah
Have a very Merry Christmas
Don't forget to celebrate Kwanzaa...

and our cards won't arrive until New Years as has been our tradition for the past few years.

But aren't they just adorable?  Thank you Shutterfly and Clever Girls for the free cards.  Amazingly, the first cards I picked out were not eligable, even though they were significantly cheapers (photo cards vs stationary), but there were certainly plenty to choose from.  Lots of brown this year, though, which I love but Brian is not a fan and nearly everything the boys own is red and blue.  Next year I'm going to perhaps try some actual editing of the photos, or maybe go back to the "old days" and do a shot just for the cards.

Without further ado...

With Love Blue Christmas 5x7 folded card

Shop Shutterfly for unique, personalized Christmas photo cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

You'll have to be on our list to get the inside, but feel free to send a request :)

Mexico Holiday Montage

I managed to get my kids to do a few things in Mexico out of their comfort zone with the simple promise of a peso. They are in a Spanish immersion school so I really wanted them to practice their Spanish, although unfortunately Puerto Vallarta is not exactly a hotbed of Mexican culture. My proudest moment was when Keegan asked the teller at the bank for some tape in perfect Espanol, although their rendition of Feliz Navidad with the mariachi band at a local tourist trap restaurant took a close second.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Holiday Recap and Happy New Year

So one of my new years resolutions will be to start blogging more, every day perhaps, and in a more timely manner. How hard could that be (I'll let ya know later). This is all starting tomorrow, it's not even new years yet, thank goodness, since I've already ruined one pumpkin pie (oven set to broil gosh darnit), and made a Mexican version of these scrumptious things (note, even though carnitas are marinated in orange juice, they still will not work for an Asian type dish, and you should really use a bamboo steamer). Perhaps I'll start a Pioneer Woman and me blog, ala Julie and Julia, 365 days of ruining the recipes posted on her lovely blog. Tomorrow I'm attempting the Leftover Turkey Pot Pie, with my dad's leftover smoked turkey. A prepared Trader Joes foods blog might also be in the works, as in addition to the carnitas, I used their buttermilk biscuits and have frozen veggies and pie crust for said pot pie - scratch that idea.

Now that I've wished you all a Happy New Years (of if not, consider it done), it's back to the holiday recap. We all had two full weeks off, where we tried not to stress too much about the fact that our future employment prospects are a bit grim. Think this was my first unpaid holiday in about 15 years, yikes.

I tried to reintroduce Hanukkah, lighting the menorahs nearly every night and getting gifts for the kids for the first time in a few years. Having never had that Christmas morning feeling, I've been living that through my kids and ignoring this fun but frankly pretty low key holiday. I actually didn't get any gifts, so good think I'd finally bought myself the coat I've always wanted and some cute boots.

I brought these scrumptious things into the classroom, and gave each class a little lesson in Hanukkah.

This color-your-own ornament was one of their Hanukkah gifts. Not surprisingly, it's much easier to find little Christmas themed items than Hanukkah. I refused to spend $10 on a snow globe with a dreidel inside.

Sad as Pelota was after losing her brother, she got into the spirit with a jaunty holiday scarf.

We were very fortunate to get to spend the holidays in Mexico. This is something I did a number of times as a child, and it's not quite as fun when you're the parent. We did have a wonderful time, although I missed the snow we saw the last two Christmas's.

You can see the boys had tons of fun, hardly even complaining during the day long "Jungle tour" which was actually a bus trip to a restaurant, cliff diver and tequila distillery (why yes, there were free tastings).

I have to say, wearing a bikini did not turn me back into the flirty teenager that I remember. They actually had tequila volleyball every day at the pool, but without a co-hort to join in, or a husband that drinks, I just could not get in the spirit.

No worries, though, I had plenty to drink. The owner of their restaurant brought over a tequila slammer at the beginning of the meal, and finished us off with this Kahlua and Bailys concoction. Too bad I had to drink both.

The most fun we had was the Pirate cruise, and there you see our personal pirate, Choco - yum.

Happy New Year, everyone, from the Pachuka boys!

Lights, Music, Christmas

It's freezing here, really, the grass was even covered in frost this morning, much to the kids delight. That's okay, though, because I do love this time of year, at least for the lights if not the weather or the feeling I'm missing out on all sorts of holiday parties. Now that I'm a grown-up, I can decorate my place to my hearts delight, at least inside. I have to admit Christmas lights are still as magical to me as when I was a kid.

We still have never had Christmas lights on our house, so I live vicariously through my neighbors, and this new 'hood is a doozy. I've been taking different routes with our doggy at night, so I can see the latest in Christmas light creativity. Apologize for the poor iPhone quality, but check out those two characters above. Hi frosty! Hi Santa!

When I saw this house, I thought, "oh, they're Jewish."

Then I saw the same lights here. They're snowflakes, not stars of David.

This is our classy neighbors, all matching red and white, with a subtle little Santa in the yard.

Happy happy, joy joy

Christmas cactus anyone?

Say hi to this little guy, who's part of a piece de resistance, the musically coordinated light show on the corner. I stood through two or three songs when walking the dog.

Our only tradition is FOOD

Whenever we visit my husband's mom I have this strong desire to fill up seventy-five bags of trash to throw out. Although she lives alone, her two fridges and three (yes three) freezers are packed to the brim, not to mention the craft room chock full of candy she's just made. So of course since we are visiting, she runs out a buys a lot more - stuffed salmon and these fried apple yummy things for a Hannukah dinner, lots of fruit and juice for the kids, lots more milk, whipping cream and vanilla ice cream just in case those are needed for the two giant pumpkin pies. Putting leftovers away, not to mention finding something in one of those places, can take up to 15 minutes and two frozen hands. But we just love the food so who can complain.

She taught my kids how to make apple smiles (apple slices, peanut butter and marshmellow), which my son insisted on making the next day, only so he could eat marshmallows for breakfast.

They also dipped cheesecake squares in rick dark chocolate, and decorated those with swirls of white.

And just for fun we all made butter molds.

Christmas dinner brought more salmon (hard to see, by my nephew put a peace sign with the extra dough on top of the baked salmon, over ruling his wife's suggestion of the middle finger),

pork roast, two types of cranberry sauce and my first ever green bean casserole. It didn't come out so good, but was so easy to make I might try again in a smaller dish (the only ingredients were bread crumbs, butter and pepper, heavy cream and blue cheese -

and of course green beans). I swear I've never seen so much homemade candy: rocky road, peppermint/pistachio/cranberry/white chocolate bark, two types of chocolaty toffee truffle goodies, beautiful patterned chocolate peanut butter bark, maraschino cherry chocolate, and several types of cookies, including the "million dollar peanut butter cookies." These won the Pillsbury baking contest million dollar prize, and are certainly good, but a million dollars? And of course since my MIL made them she had to drizzle melted peanut butter chips and chocolate on them.

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. We're of to enjoy the new snow and give the kids their first taste of skiing.

Snow Vacation Day One Recap

We landed in Salt Lake City yesterday, and before we even went into the house to see grandma the kids had jumped in the snow. The did allow me to put their coats and mittens on at least after giving grandma a hug before we were off again, rolling around, face diving, and making pitiful snowballs with the very dry but fluffy stuff.

Here are a few more stats from day one:

1. Fights over the single pair of boots: 1
   
2. Times they've asked to go skiing, snowboarding or skating: 15
   
3. Fevers, no doubt from playing in the snow wearing pj bottoms, boots, t-shirt and scarf only: 1
   
4. Mugs of Kona coffee I've drunk: 2, yum! (courtesy of world's best employee)
   
5. Smashed fingers from playing pool: 2
   
6. Cups of gourmet extra special hot cocoa the kids have rejected for "being too rich" (but I've drunk with peppermint schnapps): 2
   

My MIL, who was one of the top caterers in Utah for the longest time, has this bowl of cocoa mix consisting of rich good cocoa powder, chopped up dark chocolate and peppermint, and sugar. You fill a mug halfway with this chocolately goodness and fill the cup with boiling water or milk, yum!

Photohunt: Delicious

Delicious, ooh I can't wait to see the yummy things I'm sure will be posted.

I have to say these look a lot yummier than they taste. Ain't they cute, though? It was a fun family project, even daddy got involved. His had the bow tie and funny blue collar, K made the Santa with the ginormous belly button. D's had raisins all the way down the middle and the giant mouth.

Now this was the really delicious Christmas dinner: roasted ham and potatoes with maple glaze, carrots in butter and triple-sec, salad and sweet potatoes and green beans topped off with wine and of course pumpkin pie and the above gingerbread cookies.

We usually go to Utah for Christmas, but we're off to Oregon this year so missed my MIL's cooking, such as the delicious orange glazed rolls above, which my son pretty much lived on during the week.

We also made caramel apples with Uncle Steven during thanksgiving. You didn't think I'd be able to skip photos of the kids, did you?

These are "Puff the Magic Pancakes" mmm mmm good. Made lovingly by the kiddos with the help of Grandma. Similar to Dutch Babies, another favorite when we visit.

And finally, Happy Birthday Grandma! It's the super deluxe rocky road cupcake.

For more delicious go to PhotoHunt.

You just gotta check these out

I'm not sure how we got so lucky, but the resort we stayed at in Oregon had an amazing display of Christmas lights. It was a mile long and included ski jumping and baseball playing Santas, golfers and skiers and of course your typical snowmen and elves feeding pooping reindeers.


... See my Tabblo

Why do I bother?

As has become a tradition in our family, we celebrated Christmas (ie. opened presents) a few days before Christmas as we'd be away. This was the first year they seem to understand and believe in Santa so there was some debate about how to handle that. My husband, the Christmas obsessed non-religious half barely gives a thought to Santa, while I, the Jew making up for lost time, have gone a bit overboard, while still not fully committing to the lie. I'll ask things like "Who is Santa?" to my three year old and "Do you think he'll come to Oregon or drop the gifts at our house?" while threatening them with no gifts if they aren't good. Like a bad lawyer, I really don't know what answer they will give. Since they said he'd come to CA, and I, fantasizing about their walking into gifts under the tree that "Santa" left (while knowing they'll just whine it's not a video game), snuck a couple gifts after we'd got the kids in the car.

But then they said he was going to find us in Oregon, so we (okay I) actually got this sneaky plan together which entailed me walking a mile in the snow after breakfast (hee hee, it was fine), buying gifts en route at Radio Shack and the Dollar Tree, sneaking them into the car and then out later. We even talked about leaving cookies. The kids abruptly fell asleep so we left some cookies and milk, the gifts, and a tiny decorative tree (yes, $1) in front of the fireplace.

The next morning I actually woke up early, obsessively worried about my younger son (who always wakes up at some ungodly hour) spoiling the surprise for the older one, who sleeps late, of course, now that he's started kindergarten and actually has to be somewhere on time. So 6am rolls around, and my little guy, bless his heart, asks me to read him a book so he can go back to sleep so Santa will come (he thought it was the middle of the night and has never ever done this). We read but finally he must go downstairs to watch TV. He walks over and grabs the little tree and moves it to a more "appropriate" location. That's it. No mention of the gifts, the cookies, Santa, etc. I asked him who he thought ate the cookies? "Keegan?"

So hell, we watch Lady and the Tramp II for the umpteenth time, then Keegan wanders down, sits in front of the TV and starts watching . Egads, what is wrong with these kids? Finally, finally, they notice the presents. Confusion arises as there are no presents for mom or dad ("Santa brings presents for everyone"), but of course the gifts themselves overshadow that conundrum. I now worry what will happen tomorrow, when they find more gifts. Who could they be from?

If anyone who actually knows me IRL and is on our card list reads this, they are coming, really, in the new year. I swear. In the meantime, though, we've gone green (lazy, cheap, whatever you want to call it) and have posted the Annual Pelton Holiday Letter online. It's written by my husband, always good for a few laughs.

We dreamed of a White Christmas

And we got one...

We stopped in Klamath Falls, three quarters of the way to Redmond, Oregon, and built this guy.

This is right behind our condo, oh joy! It snowed on Christmas morning.

Photohunt: Messy

This one should be easy for me, hmmm.... I just have so many snowy photos right now.

Here's the messy masterpiece the kid's made for our Christmas dinner centerpiece.

Gingerbread house #3 - we call this "Candyland"

And of course the snowy hat - the kid's cheeks have been red since we arrived in snowy Oregon, but he claims he isn't cold.

For more messy messy, go to PhotoHunt.