The Many Faces Caused by a Pup-Cake

A cupcake is called a "pup-cake" in our house.

Not sure how or why, but that is what Carolyn calls them.

And she loves them.

Here is the face of one happy little girl.

This is the face we see when Daddy takes a bit from Carolyn's pup-cake.

After Daddy tried to eat it, she shoveled the rest in her mouth as fast as she possibly could.

All done. Can I have another one?

The answer is NO.

Soup's On

In years past, we hosted a Sunday brunch before Christmas. This year, we never found a sunday that worked with our schedule, so we decided to do a soup party between the holidays. We chose a wednesday night. There were four kinds of soup: 1. Beef Barley with Mushroom 2. Potato Leek with Spinach 3. Turkey Vegetable Noodle 4. Split Pea with Ham

The party was supposed to start at 5. At 430, a blizzard came to town. Literally, a blizzard. The streets and grounds were covered with snow within minutes. By 445, I received several text messages from people saying that they were cancelling and not going to try to drive on the roads. By 520, no one had showed up. We thought the party was a bust. We were a little sad, and decided to sit down, pour ourselves a glass of wine, and enjoy the food. We figured we would package up the soup and deliver it to our friends tomorrow.

Thankfully, as we were having our pity party, the first set of neighbors showed up. Shortly after that, another guest showed up after work. Then, a couple more showed up. By 615, the house was full. Altogether, we probably had about 40 people. The final guests left around 11. The house was cleaned up and back to normal by 1130.

For the kids, I made a big batch of mac-n-cheese and corndogs. Several of the adults were jealous of the corndog treats and wanted one for themselves. Several of the adults also wanted bowls of mac-n-cheese, too.

Either we have gained new friends who have kids, or a lot of our friends have had kids in recent years .... because there were a lot of kids running around the house.

The Pink Piccolo

We told Carolyn that Santa Claus grants wishes for little kids who are well behaved all year long. Her wish was for a piccolo, and it had to be pink. She never forgot about it. Whenever she would see a picture of Santa Claus, she would say, "I wish for a pink piccolo." However, whenever we saw a Santa Claus at the mall or the zoo, she was too shy to talk to him and tell him about her wish for the pink piccolo. She would say, "I need to be lots bigger." So we had to tell Santa what her wish was. Thankfully, he got the message.

Before we went to bed on Christmas day, we decided to look through the house one more time to see if Santa left anything for Carolyn. Tucked inside the tree, we found one last package.



She immediately started playing with it. And taught her doll baby how to play too.

She even took it to bed with her, along with another whistle that Grandpa Mike sent to her and the new doll baby that Grandma Lynn and Grandpa Mike sent to her.

Santa really does make wishes come true!

And a sincere thank you to all of our friends and family who shared the holiday season with us and who sent us wishes of Christmas cheer. We miss those who we were not able to be with. We are thankful for those who we were able to share times with the past few days. We feel blessed.

Christmas Day

Carolyn slept in until 1030. When she got up, she slowly wandered around the living room, looking out each window. When I asked her what she was doing, she said she was "Just looking." When Iasked "For what?," she sort of smiled and kept looking. Finally, she said, "Where's Santa? Is he here yet?" We told her that Santa only comes when little kids are sleeping, and she forgot about it. Instead, she started to focus her attention on the gifts that still remained under the tree.

We first opened gifts from the grandparents. Thank you Harry and Carol for the golf ornament (for steve), earrings (for me), and the picture frame (for Carolyn). We purchased our zoo membership with the money you sent, which is one of the best gifts that we could get. We use it almost weekly.

Carolyn was pretty funny opening gifts. She definitely knew how to open them this year, and did not hesitate starting right away. She often wanted to open them, no matter if they had her name or our name. And, she almost always wanted to use or wear whatever was in the package immediately. For example, when we all opened up new aprons from Scott, Char, and family, we all had to put them on. When she opened a new plate and silverware set from Grandma Lynn and Grandpa Mike, we had to take a break and eat breakfast. When she opened up a new bath towel, she had to wear it, too.

One of her favorite gifts was an umbrella. Grandma Lynn bought it for her over Thanksgiving from the used-kids store. Carolyn forgot about it, so I threw it in her stocking. She LOVED it, and immediately wanted to go outside. She walked around the backyard with her umbrella for about 30 minutes. Thankfully, it was suny and almost 50 degrees.

She was really proud of the gift she picked out for dad. We were in Rite Aid the other day, waiting for a prescription to be filled. I told her that we needed to pick out a gift for daddy. First, she picked up a pair of fuzzy pink socks. She said they would be "warm and fuzzy" and that "daddy would REALLY like them." Next, she picked up a bag of goldfish crackers. Then, she found a bottle of bubbles. She picked up the blue bottle because it was "probably daddy's favorite color." She also picked up some sort of spaghetti fork because "daddy likes to cook." There might have also been a toy car in her arms too. Finally, she found something that really caught her eye ... a lollipop that had an airplane on top. If you pressed the button, the airplane propeller spun and light up. She said, "Daddy LOVES airplanes, and the fan is good in case he gets hot." Before we paid, I told her that she could only get daddy ONE gift, so she needed to pick between the ones she had in her arms. Of course, she picked the airplane lollipop and put the rest of the stuff back away. We put the lollipop in Steve's stocking, but she had a hard time sharing it with Steve on Christmas morning.

Christmas Eve

Carolyn definitely knows what to do with gifts this year ....

Steve made a delicious dinner for us for Christmas Eve: Arugala salad with pancetta, Beef Brisket, brussel sprouts, quinoa, and homemade cookies. We washed it down with a special bottle of wine from the Zimmers. Carolyn's favorite part of the meal was her special cocktail: bubbly water with frozen berries.

Zak & Tess gave her a wagon with four little animals. THANKS, guys.

We spent Christmas Eve with RJ, our next door neighbor. We are thankful to have her so close to us, and we were honored to share the evening with her. She showered Carolyn with several pink dresses, stuffed animals, and an ABC book that she could not get enough of. THANK YOU.

Throughout the evening, Carolyn and Steve had to keep checking the computer to see Santa's progress around the world. If you have never seen it, check it out ... http://www.noradsanta.org/

Oh yes, and we had matching pajamas again this year. Even Leo got a set.

Merry Christmas from the Altman Family

Bounce, Bounce

On Thursday, Steve and I took Carolyn to Kangaroo Zoo, a bounce-house warehouse. She bounced for two hours, non-stop.

Ginerbread Houses

I have never made one before, not sure I will ever do it again. It was a mess. It was hard. And, I had sticky gooey icing everywhere!

Though, all complaints aside, I bet I will do it again next year because we all laughed pretty hard and had a lot of fun doing it. Carolyn kept licking all of the "gooey" off. She liked the "sparkles" on all of the gumdrops, too. (gooey = icing & sparkles = sugar coating on gumdrops). As she was going to bed that night, it was no wonder she said she had a belly ache.

Every morning since we made it, she has asked to see it. She acts like she opens and closes the door, so the gingerbread man can go to school, or to bed, or to make dinner.

This last picture cracks me up. At one point in the decorating process, Carolyn ran off to go potty. It was not until I uploaded these photos that I realized that she had failed to pull up her pants after going to the bathroom.

Best babysitters ever

We are so fortunate to have such awesome babysitters. Thank you to Kim & Austin! And, look what they brought to Carolyn the other night. She LOVES it. They also brought Steve and I a frame with photos they had taken of Carolyn over the year. I feel lucky to have such caring and thoughtful babysitters.

Holiday Songs

Fun with Friends

It seems that we have had a party almost every day for the past few weeks. I have, unfortunately, not been good about taking photos, but here is one of Carolyn with some friends at a party yesterday. They were making christmas ornaments, and then I showed them "Willy the Worm" (where you scrunch up a straw wrapper and then put water on it so it grows). They could not get enough of it and kept asking our waiter for more straws.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ....

The tree is up. The lights outside are up. All gifts are bought, shipped, and wrapped. Christmas cards are printed and mailed. We are ready.

For those who have been asking for some photos of the railing, stairs, and concrete work that we did to the front of our house this summer... you can see them (kind of) in the picture below. I will remember to take some photos in the daylight, too. Stay tuned.

Cook-Off Party #4

The competition continues .... Faithful readers of this blog may recall that the cook-off tradition amongst our friends started with the pizza cook-off about two years ago. Then, we had a panini cook-off. We had a grill-off this summer. And, now for the holidays, we had the best one yet. We each were randomly assigned one of the five "flavor pairings" that some spice guru said would make for good holiday dishes this season. They were:

Pumpkin Pie Spice & Coconut

Citrus & Sage

Bay Leaf & Pear

Roasted Cinamon & Bacon

Almond & Caramel

This time, we could bring anything -- a cocktail, an appetizer, main dish, dessert. With 9 couples and lots of entries, we had a fabulous dinner party with delicious food. If you have friends that like to eat and cook, this makes for a great party.

The first entry was from Zak & Tess (also the hostesses for this party). They made a cocktail from fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, muddled sage, and vodka.

Next, we enjoyed an appetizer from Rudy and Heather: a baked brie with caramel and almonds, served with apples.

Julie & Matt treated us to a salt-brined roasted chicken served with a lemon herb sauce. It was served with mushroom sage stuffing. They won the award for the BEST TASTE.

Nikki and Joshua came up with a very original contribution -- they made tamales from Joshua's grandma's recipe. The tamales were stuffed with pulled chicken spiced with coconut milk and pumpkin pie spice. They won the award for MOST ORIGINAL.

Next up was Nick and Sonya. They served a lot of meat. It was a pork tenderloin wrapped in bacon and roasted with cinnamon sticks. By the way, they own a pot-bellied pig as a pet.

Julia and Chris served a pasta, which could not have been good for our arteries. It had bacon, cinnamon, purple cabbage, lots of cheese and sour cream.

We had two entries .... first we roasted a turkey breast with a glaze made from a honey that was infused with bay leaves. It was served on baguettes with a pear and bay-leaf chutney. We also made a pear & bay leaf sorbet, which was surprisingly refreshing. Bay leaf was a hard ingredient because no one really knows what they taste like; we just know that we throw a leaf or two into soup broths. Nevertheless, we won BEST OVERALL. This is determined by the total of the ORIGINALITY and TASTE scores. The overall winner is suppposed to host the next party. Damn! Nikki and Joshua came in second overall. Third place went to Julia and Chris. It was decided that the third place couple will host next since the first and second have already hosted. Phew.

Michelle & Josh baked two delicious tarts. One was a chocolate ganache with almond/caramel filling. The other had an almond crust with caramel pudding. Both were delicious. Both were topped with a piece of salty almond-caramel brittle. The first one was as good as what you would get in a fancy restaurant.

There was a final entry from Codrina & Rudy. I guess I did not get a picture of them and their pumpkin bread with coconut. It was good, but to me, tasted like someonthing I would eat for breakfast.