Following the lead of some other fun pictures I saw on the web, I took some tri-pod enabled night time photos of the Christmas tree in Miami. Ours at home was of the small basic, baby in the house, variety. My in-laws had a nice big one. One year I will eventually get one set up with a small table on the bottom and a train set, like my grandmother had.

I think it just looks like magic with the glow! Celia only broke one ornament, the rest survived. If she had been healthy and faster I think we would have lost some more.

Christmas morning the girls were up their usual early selves and I took a video of them coming down the stairs to find the tree and presents. It’s dark and out of focus. Sorry about that. Most notable is that Celia and Josie both want to know if they get to eat the cookies that Santa didn’t eat, and then Jordi drops most of them on the floor. Pretty much this video is only for the grandma’s, everyone else can skip it.

The girls went for their stockings first while waiting for everyone else to get up and shower. Josie enjoyed that Santa knows her favorite restaurant.

They both wanted things out of each others stocking.

Later on we opened presents. The kids struggled with how long it took for everyone to get through it all, but they did ok playing with their new toys and old toys and the boxes the new toys came in. Celia went around picking up different presents from different piles trying to open them, but then didn’t want to open something when it was her turn!

All in all it was a relaxing morning at home opening gifts. We got some pretty fabulous stuff and lots of gift certificates to spend! We’ve already booked our winter weekend getaway.

Later that afternoon we went to Javier’s new place and got to see all the hard work he’s put into fixing it up. It looks nice and modern! Josie and Celia enjoyed a clarinet performance and banging on the keyboards (both musical and computer). But I guess I forgot the camera because I have no pictures.

This morning I was rushing out of the house to get Josie to ballet lessons. Just as I shut the door I realized that I left my keys, ipod, and phone inside the house (my door locks when it closes). Ugh. So I go get the other key hidden to go open the door and get all my stuff. When I try to stick it in the lock I find my keys are already in the lock, left there from the previous night when I went grocery shopping. Oops.

I’m always on the hunt for new recipes to try and expand our tastes and enjoy and so I want to share some of our favorites from this year that we’ve started making. This has definitely been the year of using my slow cooker.

• Vegetable enchiladas. I’ve been experimenting with different recipes and this one is by far my favorite, especially in the height of summer when everything is ripe and perfect.
• Veggie dogs in biscuit blankets. I know this is pathetically easy and I’ve been making them for a long time with crescent rolls, but it’s quick and yummy and when the crescent rolls from Trader Joes are disgustingly moldy even though you just bought them, biscuit dough (half a recipe) from Joy of Cooking saved the day.
• Quinoa with black beans and corn. We’ve done a lot of quinoa this year although less so now that Celia is eating with us as it is a tremendously messy food. Still tasty, but I’ll just wait for her to get a bit better at eating.
• Tofu with spinach in the slow cooker. This is an approximation of Indian cooking, which is good, although not nearly Punjab good. But also not Punjab prices.
• Crockpot Tapioca pudding. Real tapioca takes a long time and requires a ton of stirring. In the crockpot it takes a bit longer but requires very minimal stirring and tastes really good. I like to get my tapioca pearls from amazon, dirt cheap although the supply will likely last me all year. I think I’ll make a version with coconut and coconut milk soon. Too bad for Jordi that he doesn’t like it.
• Vegetarian meatloaf. (the first recipe) Unfortunately this has been off the menu since Celia joined us in eating as it has nuts in it, but it will return once she has proven non-allergic to nuts!
• We tried two kinds of chili which I keep making, just to get some variety in the basic yummy dish!
• I learned how to make my own falafel, which I definitely should have tried earlier. The box mixes are terrible and the already made version is obnoxiously expensive for what is purreed beans.
• Baked beans. I’ve shared this one before, but it’s been my winner slow cooker recipe.

I look back on this list and yet still each week I’m still wondering what’s for dinner. Like right now, I should be making our grocery list and meal plans but I am uninspired. Love to see your favorite recipes for the year to inspire me too!

Diligent blog readers may remember that we started growing plants back last February. We planted zucchini, basil, impatiens, and butternut squash. We had drastically varying luck with them. The zucchini plants were strong and prolific. The impatien plants and basil were very small and fragile. My parents cat has some munching on them which didn’t really help anything, but was better than my cats who threw our plants on the floor and the sink repeatedly. Sometime in early May we transplanted them into the ground at my parents house.

My parents got these nifty planters and we installed them with some fresh dirt, water and covers. My mother also planted some green bean seeds herself. We also picked up some tomato, pepper, and lettuce plants at the store and from a neighbor of mine who is a very excellent gardener. Towards the end of spring things were growing pretty well. The zucchini plants were growing like crazy and flowering a lot too.

We also planted about half of the impatiens here at my house and half at my mothers. The basil plants were tiny, so we punted on them and my mom bought two regular basil plants so we could make pesto.

So what grew? not so much, but a few things. We ate a few green beans regularly, like these below.

If we waited a week we could even get a small serving of those green beans. By the end of the summer the impatiens grew very well and looked just as gorgeous as the ones we had bought the previous summer. I know I took a picture of the flowers themselves, but I can’t find it. So here’s some of the pretty flowers in the background of Celia playing with the drain hose.

At my moms house, the bought basil plants grew ok, not as well as the year before. The pepper plants didn’t do all that much, we only got a couple. The lettuce plants grew well until they stopped getting picked enough. The zucchinis grew until mid-summer sometime with tons of flowers, but absolutely no zucchini. Then they just all sort of shriveled and died. I had even tried pollinating them myself but still nothing. I’m not sure what went wrong, some people think little critters were getting in and eating the buds. Similar to the zucchini, the butternut squash plants grew well, but nothing happened after the flowers. The tomatos grew well from both kinds of plants we had and so my mom had an abundant tomato supply.

For next year? I think we’ll do the impatiens again as those worked well. The green beans were a hit, although fragile, we may just want to plant them right in the ground in late spring so we don’t have to transplant them. Josie really enjoyed planting, transplanting and learning how to harvest. I just wish we would have gotten some squash for all the effort! We eat a lot of them.

Poor Celia has an ear infection. She hates medicine. Hates hates hates it. Anyone have any favorite tricks for getting it in? we tried applesauce, chocolate, kefir, yogurt and dipping her grapes in it. Absolute no go other than a really ugly scene of forcing it in.

Here’s some photos of her in happier times this month.

So as I previously mentioned, we’re all sick in Miami, spreading our germs around more. Sorry about that. We most kept it low key hanging around the house while Josie had a fever upwards of 104 for 48 hours. Wrapped some presents, got some naps. We did some exploring of the decorations too.

By Christmas eve thankfully Josie’s fever had broken so she was feeling considerably better. The party was at my inlaws house so everyone came over to visit and party. We had food, mostly cooked by Vanessa, and what we here would call a Yankee Swap. Jordi and I managed to go home with the present we came with, score! It was great to get to see everyone and even introduce Celia to a few people she hadn’t met yet.

Josie spent most of the night with Sabrina, pictured above in blue. Josie had a great time telling her what to do and where to go and Sabrina played along gallantly. They even worked on a gingerbread train together. Later on Josie hung out with Sonya, in pink above, playing. Later on she told Jordi, about the time when she was with Sonya (who is married to Jordi’s older cousin), “we were all alone without any grownups!”

We had a last minute cookie emergency, in that there were no cookies for Santa Claus. We had made 7 different kinds up here in Boston, but didn’t travel with them to Miami. So I whipped together a batch of shortbread cookies for Santa, which Josie insisted on hiding inside the cage that holds wine ‘So no one else here would eat them.’ We also put out some carrots for the reindeer. Josie insisted that we make a sign that said ‘Cookies for Santa, Carrots for Reindeer.’ She was also a little disturbed when she realized that since the cookies were in the house, that meant that some wierd guy in a red suit was presumably going to be in the house that night. Perhaps she thought he’d just leave the stockings out front like the postman.

This year for Christmas we started off in Orlando to visit with Jordi’s paternal side of the family and his mom, dad and sister drove up to visit too. The night we got there we were invited to Jordi’s uncles house for a yummy traditional Venezuelan Christmas dinner and many presents. In the picture below there was an alligator in the water behind everyone, just a little one, but still. Josie was not in a mood for pictures after the long travel day.

Sadly Celia is not as a good a flyer as Josie has been and was a lot fussier on the plane than usual since she couldn’t move around much in our laps. Josie enjoyed JetBlue’s TVs as we broke our normal TV rules and let her watch some for all our sanity. But she got bored before too long anyway.

We stayed at an easy Orlando hotel with a spray park and pool. Only us northerners thought to bring our bathing suits though, and it was a good thing we did, the pool was heated and awesome the next morning.

I played with the bright bright light and a high shutter speed to freeze the water.

By the end of swimming I think Josie was tired enough that she didn’t notice all the pictures.

After our swim we cleaned up and went to a Thai place for a quick lunch before a family nap. And by family I mean everyone but Josie who somehow managed to be considerate and quiet for two hours in a hotel room with us. Maybe she did sleep a little but she didn’t admit to it.

A couple of days before the trip I started to get sick with a cough and runny nose and chills. The airplane didn’t help, but we continued to muddle through.

After our nap we went to Downtown Disney and met up with more family. We posed with characters and ate ice cream.

Josie was not terribly impressed with the legos, but maybe she will be later when she starts to play with them herself.

Josie and Celia rode on the train. But then of course the train ride ended. And Celia was very sad…

Thankfully she then saw we were headed to the merry go round and then she was excited again.

Of course that ride had to end too eventually and we had more sad faces and crying. But we moved on eventually and did some pictures with characters and I tried some artsy shots as the sun went down and there wasn’t enough light to do anything.

All in all I should have brought my flash for some pictures. But we capped off the night with a nice dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s little restaurant and headed home with the girls while everyone else went out for more fun. The next morning we did a little more family visiting before heading for Miami. Unfortunately we all started to feel considerably more sick that Friday and the ride unfortunately was capped off by an hour of Celia crying and Josie vomiting in the car only three blocks away from the house and spiking a high fever that night.

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates!