A Merry Little Christmas

When I pictured my first Christmas in the South, I thought about gracious Southern hospitality, amazing food, and beautifully decorated front porches.  The one thing I really didn't factor in...

...was snow!  You can imagine how excited Sam and I were to wake up at the farm to find a winter wonderland.  

This is the acceptable version of Sam and I enjoying the snow.  We had to have many tries because one of us wasn't cooperating with my vision for Christmas morning joy:

Sam's mom is known for spoiling us with ridiculously lovely breakfasts, but for Christmas she outdid herself.

We had a lovely time together.

Growing up, I always thought I was a little too cool for Christmas morning pictures.  My mom wanted to capture every present that I opened for posterity, and I thought that wasn't totally necessary.  I think history will show that my mom has documented our Christmas mornings with such an outstanding level of excellence that were we to view those pictures quickly it would be a stilted video of the actual day.  But in this as in many other things, it turns out that I am (proudly) my mother's daughter.  So when Sam and I opened our presents, I was all over it.  

Not to be too braggy, but I thought I really caught the energy of that paper ripping

For our first Christmas together, Sam and I pretended we were snowed in and made a gorgeous dinner of steak, lobster, and of course, Fanta (who could get by without their Christmas Fanta)?  

  

It was a very, very  happy day.  Hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas!

New York

Sam and I recently went for a weekend in New York City as a Christmas present to ourselves.  As always when you travel, you learn a few things.  Along with this picture of the Hershey store in Times Square, here's what I got out of it.

1.  The Flavored Americano
This may be the most important thing I learned, and I believe it is absolutely crucial to impart it to you.  How many of us (and by us, I mean coffee addicts), when we go to Starbucks (if we drink corporate coffee), really want the Pumpkin Spice Latte, but feel like we are getting a punch in the wallet every time we cave in and order it instead of something more responsible?  When I was in line at the airport, the man in front of me ordered a Gingerbread Americano with room for cream.  Call me shallow, but my world exploded.  How could I not have thought of this before?  It saves you over a dollar a cup, and it tastes really good.  I don't know if I can make a case for it being significantly less calories, but in my heart I tell myself there are less.  Seriously, try it.


2.  Tourists are crazy...

This is a picture of me being superior to tourists

...and we are tourists.

Sam pointing out the Statue of Liberty

Me with the Statue of Liberty in my mouth

3.  Guidebooks are back
I have always liked guidebooks, but in my twenties I tried to hide it.  All the cool kids were going places flying by the seat of their pants, just experiencing life.  Lately I have come to accept about myself that it scares me half to death to fly by the seat of my pants, and that I'd rather just have the guidebook.  For me, just getting there is the adventurous part, and at last I'm okay with it.

Thanks to our NYC guidebook we found this little gem--the Hotel 17.  Not only did Woody Allen make a horror movie there (which is something I always look for in a hotel), but it is really cheap for New York--under $200.  It was clean, we didn't get bed bugs, and we even had a flat screen t.v. with 15 channels.

As an extra bonus, it was the narrowest hotel room I ever stayed in.

4.  Go with your gut
Have you ever walked into a restaurant and thought to yourself, this just isn't a good idea.  Sam and I experienced that sensation on our honeymoon when we went into a restaurant we just didn't have a great feeling about.  Things were moving VERY slowly, and yet we plowed on.  Three hours later, we had finally received our overpriced dinner.  It wasn't some European leisure thing with it taking three hours for us to eat, it was more that no one cared whether or not we starved or died of boredom.  Since that experience, we now just leave if things aren't going well.  So in the big city, when we had sat at our table for twenty minutes in an almost empty restaurant and no one had taken our order, we left for greener pastures.  It is such a good feeling!

Anyway, there is really too much good food and not enough time in New York City.  For instance, there are places like the Mac Bar, which serves twelve different kinds of macaroni and cheese and is shaped like a macaroni noodle to boot.

Lobster Macaroni and Chipotle Macaroni

Here we are trying to blend as world weary New Yorkers

5.  Stay street smart
Since I lived adjacent to Boston for a couple of years and I live in Atlanta now, I like to think that I am an aware person who approaches the big city with a good balance of caution and hipness.  This image of myself was a little battered, however, when I went out one morning while Sam was still sleeping to get us some coffee by myself.  My wallet was in my coat pocket, which really didn't seem like a safety first option for me, so I decided that I was probably going to get mugged.  I made it successfully to the coffee shop and because of a slight debacle with making our drinks I left carrying two cups of a coffee and an open cup of cream.  A man who looked a little sketchy began to approach and immediately I shifted into being hyper alert, like the city girl I am.  He suddenly stepped a little too far into my personal bubble and I jumped, completely covering myself in cream.  Because I'm always cool under pressure, I left my cup on the sidewalk (please don't tell, I usually never littler!) and ran away.  What I learned from this was that doing harm to yourself may startle your would be bubble burster, but it doesn't really seem like a good form of self defense.  In the event of a real emergency, I would try to throw the cream at him.

Briefly achieving my hip and cautious stance

Christmas is Here

I had grand ambitions to blog every day in December.   I was so excited to write all about the holidays at our house and what we were doing for our first Christmas together.  You can imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and realized that it is three days to Christmas and if we can trust what appears on my blog, I apparently haven't written a word.  Disaster!  This is like that recurring nightmare that I used to have that it was Christmas Eve and I hadn't bought anyone any presents and all that was left at the store were Jabba the Hut Pez dispensers.  Friends, we will just have to do our best with the time that remains to us. 

Let's start with the tree.  As you can see, I am a real curmudgeon at tree time.





Sam practically had to drag me to the lot to get one.  Like most of you, I decided that there was really only one way for a busy youngish couple who is going to be out of town every weekend in December to go with decor--completely hand made origami lights and ornaments.

We started off strong.  During slow days at the store I was able to make about a hundred little boxes to cover our Christmas lights.  And Sam made five or six while he was watching t.v. so we were in good shape.

 

I have to say, I LOVE the way the lights turned out.

I believe that Christmas should be a meaningful time of year.  When I began the paper ornaments crusade, I had visions of us sitting down every evening and cutting out a paper ornament (paper because it will be our paper anniversary) with a crackling fire in the background (in my imagination we have a beautiful fireplace).  Sam and I would stare lovingly into each others eyes and write on our paper ornaments the things we were thankful for and our hopes for the year.  We each wrote one, and it was nice.  Then we completely lost steam.  About halfway through December I decided that if I didn't do something soon, our tree would remain half decorated so I had to make a very hard decision.

I hope that when my imaginary daughters grow up living with me will have taught them that sometimes in life a woman just has to cowgirl up, admit defeat and go to Target to buy plastic ornaments.  

I would like to say that I learned my lesson from the ornament debacle.  But I don't know if that is the case because I have to leave this blog and go bake five dozen meaningful cookies for friends and family...  I leave you with a few scenes from the Chalkboard house in December.

Uncle Perry

Last week, our family lost a very dear person--my uncle Perry.  Being so far away, it is hard to believe that he can be gone.  With his death being so close to Thanksgiving, it made me think about how thankful I was to have him in my life.

This is Uncle Perry at my wedding.  He and my Aunt Pat have been at every major event of my life to support me, and most of the not so important piano recitals and and choir concerts, too.  I remember a time when the three of us were driving from Twin Falls to Boise and I mentioned how they must be so happy for their grandchildren because they had to wait awhile before they got these great kids:

He told me that he had always thought of me as one of his grandchildren.  I have thought about that many times because it meant so much to me.  It is hard to put into words what someone can mean to you.  Uncle Perry wasn't the kind of person who had to be in the limelight, but it was his presence--calm, kind, always ready to laugh that made you feel like there was something safe and right with the world.  It is a tremendous thing that I can say that in a lifetime of knowing him I never heard him say one bad thing about another person.

It's really hard to say how many times I barged into Pat and Perry's house without knocking because I was excited about something, or had a bad day at school, or was just bored.  I am so thankful that I had someone who didn't mind me barging in and would always be there in his faithful chair to listen and laugh with me.  I'm really grateful for our camping trips and the time we spent sitting around the fire.  I learned so much from my uncle's kindness.  I loved him a lot.

Sometimes words just fail a person.  I really wanted to let Aunt Pat, and Mike, Theresa, Jim, Susan and Paul know how my heart is with them, and how very much I love them.  I was so honored and blessed to have Uncle Perry in my life, and I will dearly miss him.

The Frida Flop

Let us go back in time.  Back far into the recesses of our memories to that long ago holiday--Halloween of this year.  Back then I had a grandiose sense of my own abilities.  Sam and I had been camping in the wilderness like we do, checking out the fall colors.

Here we are at the beginning of the trail like two gazelles ready to bound through the forest.

We said to ourselves, we can do eight miles up and down a couple of mountains in our sleep!  Who needs lunch when we are so cute with our wedding ring pictures and our love?

We needed lunch, as it happens.  We also needed sleep.  I think the whole thing would have ended differently had we not been trying to roll ourselves sideways up a hill all of the previous night due to an unfortunate (and unavoidable!) tent placement on the side of a mountain.  One of us actually ended up crying when faced with an unexpected extra hill to climb near the end of our hike, but I won't name names.

Suffice it to say, with all this going on, Halloween kind of snuck up on us.  As we were driving home from the camping trip, I suddenly realized that it was Halloween day, I had to work, and rumor had it that my boss always dressed up.  I racked my brain for a costume idea that could be accomplished in twenty minutes using stuff I already had in the house, and hopefully one that represented another country since I work at Ten Thousand Villages.  I bet you know right where this is going...

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, of course!  Maybe I'm just unique in this respect, but in my world Frida pops up all the time.  She is on all kinds of pins and cards in hipster coffee shops, and you can't leave your house without tripping over old movie posters from when Salma Hayek played her in the aptly named movie Frida a couple of years ago.  Some people might think that the hiking failure would have made me more cautious about so quickly taking on another big adventure.

But no, when I saw Frida staring back at me in the mirror I was so pleased with the floral arrangement on top my head I didn't even consider that my foray into the Mexican art world might be a bad idea.  We didn't have enough time to research what her husband looked like, so Sam contented himself with being an everyday Bandito.

Please note, Mom and Dad, that is not a real gun.

Honestly, I was pretty proud of our efforts.  I thought it a great sign that the Starbucks Barista knew right away who I was.  However, things took a bad turn at work.  My boss slept in and hadn't dressed up after all, so I was the only Mexican painter there.  And it turns out that not as many people as you would think had heard of Frida, despite all of Salma Hayek's efforts to raise awareness.  What people did seem to think, from the stilted conversations I had with them in the store, was that unibrows are very, very scary. In fact, it is my belief that Frida was far more terrifying to people than if I had shown up with elaborate zombie makeup and blood dripping down my face.  No one would make eye contact with me, mothers hid their children behind their legs so they wouldn't have to see it me, and old ladies gave me frightened glances out of the corners of their eyes when they thought I wasn't looking.

I'm not proud, but I couldn't handle the terrible reception my costume received.  I had to abandon the Frida ship fairly quickly for a more traditional look.  It hurt my soul to wash off my unibrow, because who can say who might have a similar abundance of brows her own self if nature wasn't constantly being battled against?  It seems to me that this was a great blow for all who choose less conventional facial hair situations.  It was a hard lesson that I learned that day.  We have a long way to go, people.

I'm glad that no matter what style of eyebrows I sport, I've always got this Bandito by my side.  

La Famiglia

For those who only know me virtually, a little background.  I am the oldest of three.  I have a sister who is two years younger and a brother who is 12 years younger (side note, he looks WAY older than he is).  Being the oldest, I have often felt it was my duty to hold the family together and set a good example for the children. Four months ago, as we all know, I was whisked away to the charming south as a newly married bride, where frankly it is harder to keep an eye on them.

At first, I wasn't that concerned.  I said to myself, they are all adults, they can take care of themselves.  But secretly, I worried.  My dad started looking into getting an old car and talking lovingly about a 1940 Packard. You know how sometimes your gut just tells you something is wrong?  I thought to myself, this car is a bad seed. I hoped the deal would fall through, but no luck.

Oh Friends!  The calls started getting fewer and farther between, and when I did hear from them it was collect calls from pay phones with hacking coughs and sirens blasting through the bad connection.  Dad said that what sounded like gun fire was just the Packard backfiring.  Little did I know how bad it had gotten.  I got an email with these pictures from Danny the other day and I was shocked at what I saw.

When I left my dad was an upstanding man who I had NEVER seen with a cigarette.  I'm sorry to tell you this cigarette isn't even filtered!  Even worse, (I can hardly say it!) my little bearded baby has been corrupted.

And excuse me, am I imagining things, or is he actually packing HEAT!?!

I see that my mom has avoided the smoking, but I can hardly say that I'm comforted.

I'm just so saddened by this picnic.  

These are direct quotes from my dad:

"Tell Sarah we've been on an extended road trip and business has been very good.  Since I'm getting older now, Danny went along to assist with the driving.  I bought the Packard after all because it has a bigger engine and more room and this has been a big help in the business.  Things have been a little stressful on the road so I started smoking again.  Your mother is happy now that the money is flowing in again like water."

When I knew him, my dad just collected some coins here and there.  What in the world have they been doing to have a bag full of Benjamins and need guns, for heaven's sake?  

Needless to say, I'm worried sick about this state of affairs.  I'm hoping this blog will be a wake up call for them.  Family members who live nearby, please see if you can talk to them, for the child's sake.