How I spent my vacation

I discovered that my local library now has downloadable ebooks that work with the Kindle app.  For me, this is the equivalent of putting a steady supply of drugs next to an addict.  I have been in ebook heaven this past month.

When I first got an iPad, I didn't think that I would use it much for reading, but I wrong.  It's just the right size to prop up in bed and you can read it one handed on the metro.  Now that Cheeks is going to school with her sister, we don't have to haul stroller downtown in the morning.  I really miss the extra time with my littlest one, but I am also a bit giddy to have a hands-free commute.

So--a few good books to download and a few you can skip:

Religion--

"An Unquenchable Thirst" by Mary Johnson: a biography of Johnson's time spent as a nun in Mother Teresa's order.  Boy, does she ever tell all.  It's a brave book.

"In the Land of Invisible Women" by Qanta Ahmed: I wanted to know more about what it was like to live as a western woman in Saudi Arabia, and Ahmed's narrative of her time as a Muslim doctor in the Kingdom was an interesting read.

Fiction--

"Winter Sea" by Susanna Kearsley:  I devoured this book.  Loved it.  Loved the fact that it was a curl up, dive in, flat out escape novel.  I enjoyed it so much I went right ahead and read "The Rose Garden," also by Kearsley immediately afterward.  It was also very good.

"Blue Nights" by Joan Didion:  I don't want to like Didion's narrative style, but I can't help myself, I do.  If you read "The Year of Magical Thinking,"  it's just like that, and just as good.

"The Story Sisters" by Alice Hoffman:  One crazy sister, one good sister, much angst.  Three stars?

"The Lace Reader" by Brunonia Barry:  Set in Salem, but not your traditional witch tale--the protagonist uses lace to read the future. A wee bit too much drama for me to recommend this one.

"The Buddha in the Attic" by Julie Otsuka:  This book was written entirely in plural voice.  It was lyrical for the first half of the book, but became annoying by the end.  We do not recommend.

"The Scottish Prisoner" by Diana Gabaldon:  More Jamie for those of use who love the Outlander series.  And more Jamie is never a bad thing.

Non Fiction--

"In Siberia" by Colin Thubron:  Reads just how one might expect a travel novel on Siberia to go: lots of trains, cold weather, communist references, and vodka.

"Medium Raw" by Anthony Bourdain:  I'm not the biggest fan of his travel shows, but, despite his potty mouth, Bourdain is a good writer, and a true good food devotee. 

WWII--

"Where the Birds Never Sing" by Jack Sacco: Partially about the liberation of Dachau, but mostly about an American GI's experience in WWII.

"The Heavens are Empty" by Avrom Ben David-Val:  All about the lost Jewish town of Trochenbrod, destroyed in WWII by the Nazis. Not as compelling as "The Lost" by Daniel Mendelsohn.  (This book makes you sad, whereas Medelsohn utterly and completely breaks your heart and makes you resolve to be a better person.)

"Lost in Shangri-La" by Mitchell Zuckoff:  Just change one letter of the author's name and oh my goodness you are in trouble! This book is an amazing true adventure set in the wilds of Papua New Guinea.  It's not as good as the book "Unbroken" but definitely worth a read if you like narrative non-fiction.

New Years Resolution

Go to bed earlier. 

This one really might be overly ambitious, folks.

Wishing you a sweet 2012

My much labored over Buche du Noel from Christmas Eve with "12 Days of Christmas" peperkakor cookies, sugar cookies, spritz cookies, with a set of french macarons thrown in for good measure.  Oh, and some chocolate fudge and chocolate covered vanilla cardamom cakes to finish everyone off.  Let's just say I find baking to be cheaper than therapy. 

I'm not particularly good at making or keeping resolutions.  Year before last I resolved to try 50 new recipes. I think I made it somewhere into the high thirties before I stopped keeping track.  Another year I resolved to learn to bake bread, and succeeded at that, much to my family's great happiness.  I also once decided to read 50 books within a year, which was less of a resolution and more of a pleasure.

I haven't decided what I will resolve to do this year, but 2012 brings a lot of excitement all on its own: I am looking forward to meeting two new nieces/nephews before winter is done.  In the spring, we are heading off on a long-anticipated Disney cruise.  In the summer, I'll switch to a new position at work. Bee will start kindergarten in the fall. This boggles my mind.  And in December, Dear Husband and I will be married a full decade.

I'm looking forward to this year's adventures, praying for strength to meet the challenges, and am optimistic that, if nothing else, there is a very high likelihood that Cheeks will be potty-trained before the year is done.  Praise the Lord!

Wishing you all a very happy New Year.

Christmastime is here

This year, both girls are finally old enough to get into the Christmas spirit.  Every morning a mad dash ensues to check for treats inside their Advent calendar and to see what mischief the Nisse (Danish elves) have been up to during  the night.  Happiness.  Cheer.  A week's vacation.

 My house is decorated and I have baked enough cookies for a hungry army of family members.  It is officially Christmas time.

The Nisse are very naughty and have gotten into all kind of trouble. Every morning they can be found somewhere different in the house.

The girls scold them for their bad behavior, which is adorable.  Their enthusiasm for Christmas magic is contagious.

At the start of the Advent season, the Nisse brought a Playmobil Weihnachtsmarkt, which has been a family favorite.  Don't tell anyone, But I quite enjoy putting the market to rights after the girls have gone to bed.

 Miss Bee has become quite the baking expert, and has gone from making messes in the kitchen to becoming an amazing baker in her own right. The gingerbread cake, for the occasion of Cheek's second birthday, was my own special masterpiece. 

 

If they're not in the kitchen helping me, you can find the girls curled up in their book nook, which I have managed to fill with an embarrassing amount of Christmas books.  We are reading a nightly advent story, which has become a yearly tradition, as well as a book of special Advent prayers.  
Both girls are on Santa alert, and on their very best behavior, with the exception of Cheeks shouting, "NO, BABY JESUS" during church earlier this month.  I'm surprised lightning bolts didn't fly down from the ceiling after that particular outburst.

We're doing our best to be good though, and would like to wish you and yours all the happiness in the world, a wonderful 2012, but especially a

Very Merry Christmas!

Oh my oven!

The girls helped me make gingerbread babies tonight, and they lavished their cookies with every possible candy decoration.

While we waited for dear husband to finish up dinner, we read Jan Brett's "Gingerbread Friends" and "Gingerbread Babies."  Sitting there on the couch, with my daughters, in a flour covered apron, was the highlight of my weekend.   Because this recipe makes so many cookies, I also cut out a whole host of autumn gingerbread shapes: leaves, squirrels, acorns, apples, and turkeys.


I used these cookie cutters to use up the scraps, and have a container full of tiny cut out bears (for a teddy bear picnic perhaps) and another with the noah's ark menagerie (perfect for a quiet Sunday afternoon) tucked away in the freezer.

I really think there are two secrets to perfect gingerbread--black pepper, although I only used 1/2 t. in this batch, and refrigerating the cut out cookies before baking.  A good 15 minutes in the fridge means that the cookies keep their shape in the oven, and they'll come out looking Martha Stewart perfect.

From tonight's dinner: want to know how to make the world's best bechamel sauce?  It's not what you might think...

Double rainbow

Favorite pic from my trip to NZ right here:

R.O.T.

I have been sitting here, eating ice cream, musing over this particular post, trying to focus on a good opening sentence. And while I'm not quite sure how to start, I know (and by this I mean the kind of knowing that you know with all your heart) exactly what I want to say.

Dear Husband had to work late tonight and so Cheeks and I commuted home together. We were lucky enough to get a seat on the train, and passed the time reading books and drawing pictures on my iPad. As we exited the station I saw my father standing there at the entrance waiting for us. I hadn't told him what time we were leaving work but he had headed down to the station anyway to meet us. As we walked home together, I got to thinking about the many journeys my father and I have taken together. There is a special bond between this father and this daughter.

When I was very small, Dad was my nightly bedtime story and ride through the "spooky spooky jungle" (really just the hallway) on the way to bed. We traveled greater distances still, as we roamed the wild prairies and survived the long winter in Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series. I would beg for just one more chapter, and most nights he would oblige.

One time, Dad traveled on Santa's sleigh. The Christmas when I was nine, Dad was sent to the North Pole to assemble a three story, Victorian, approximately 7,000 piece dollhouse kit. He managed to build it and put it under the tree with a bow just in time for Christmas morning. And, like everything he has ever built, it was perfect.

When I was in high school, he was a willing chauffeur, driving me to countless activities. And when I was troubled with school or friends or some other adolescent silliness, he would put the leash on our family dog and invite me for a long walk through the park near our house.

When I was in college, he logged hundreds of miles on the family station wagon, driving me home for long weekends, or coming down just for the day, so he and my mother could take me out for a grilled cheese sandwich at the Biltmore restaurant.

And at my wedding, he drove me to the church in his blue pickup truck. He put down an aisle of drop cloths from the house to the truck, so that I wouldn't get my dress wet in the snow. I was proud to have him walk me down the aisle, but I cherish the memory of driving with him to the church.

When Dear Husband and I moved to Guatemala City, I remember showing Dad that small sliver of a country on a map, and imagining myself transported hundreds of miles away from home. Dad visited us there and braved the jungles of Tikal and Guatemalan air transport (ever flown on a propeller plane, the reeeally loud kind?). He traveled farther still, thousands of airline miles to visit us in Eastern Europe.

And now we are all back together in the United States. And I am a mother with two girls who adore their grandfather and I carry my kids to bed and sing "spooky jungle." I have more gray hairs than I would care to admit. My little house is about a mile away from the house I grew up in, the house my father built. The distance between us is short.

I love you, Dad.