Christmas with the Peebles

We went to Pasadena (a Houston suburb) for Christmas this year. We headed down Monday (Christmas Eve) and stayed with Joe's parents. His dad is recovering from knee replacement surgery and still has to be on a lot of medicine for pain (especially after his physical therapy appointments). He surprised us Christmas Day by walking for the whole family with a cane or walker! It was great - he was able to do it without a limp at all. Hopefully soon he'll be in less pain and be better than before the surgery.

Joe's sister Emily cooked a fabulous meal for us all and we got to watch some HD movies on Rabi's huge television. We highly recommend seeing Stardust - it's a Princess Bride-type movie.

One gift we were excited about giving is a calendar for Joe's mom. We snuck away some pictures earlier this year and I made scrapbook-like pages for every month. Joe finished it off by writing in special memories he has of his mom throughout his life that went along with the pictures. Everything he wrote was very sweet and I know she'll enjoy it all year. (Sorry, my flash makes everyone blink!)

Christmas with the Turpins

We got together with my mom's extended family in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday the 15th. We shared food and did a gift exchange (like white elephant, except something nicer you bought for $12). The highlight was getting to meet my cousin's three-week-old son. It's his first child and he's only the second out of my cousins (7 of us) to have kids.

My parents came back that night and stayed with us. They had to go back to Dallas the next day, but it was really good to see them because we didn't get to see them at Christmas time.

They also brought down a matching curtain (so our window in the living room no longer has a comb-over) and switched the way our refrigerator door opens. It's much more convenient now, but I bet if they had known how hard it would be they would have thought twice before doing it!

cookies, cookies, and more cookies!

I'm going to catch up on the last couple of weeks in a few posts, so bare with me. :)

Joe and I decided (okay, I decided and Joe - being the best husband ever - helped out a ton!) to give baked goods to some of our local friends. We have so many people we wanted to share these with that we couldn't give some to everyone, and so we ended up only taking them to people we've been in small groups with at church, our elders at church, and my boss at work. It really stunk limiting it like that because there are some people we really care for (and even spend more time with than the people we took some to) that got left off. So the small group rule was the only way we could keep the numbers down. If you're reading this and didn't get any cookies, please know that we really do care about you, and it was really frustrating for us! Just think that we were trying to help you stay skinny this holiday season.

Anyway... we baked a TON! And I really mean WE! I might have done a tiny bit more baking than Joe, but only because he ran to the store (3 times, I think) to get things I forgot. I took a couple of pictures part way through, but we got so busy that I forgot to take a final picture.

This picture was of the ornament sugar cookies - they were dipped in icing. Joe did almost all the decorating on these, and I'm so sad I don't have a picture. There were 62 at the end! With the exception of one that had what looked like an angry face on it, they looked fantastic, and Joe was such a good sport to decorate with what I gave him. (We won't talk about the "red" icing that turned out brown.)

These are in the picture above:
Andes Mint chocolate cookies
snickerdoodles
ornament sugar cookies

Here's the rest of what we made:
blue or green butter cookies
peppermint meringues (with red stripes)
chocolate fudge
peanut butter fudge (which Joe called pb sludge since we didn't let it get hot enough to get hard)

It took a really long time - all our free time on three days! I didn't really take in account how long it would take to wrap the cookies, and the baking got split up some. It was crazy to look at all our piles of sweets afterwards. I think the best part is that Joe helped out so much, even though he doesn't like baking and especially doesn't like cleaning up afterwards. :)

Merry Christmas!

You should be able to click on that to open it in a larger format. We're very busy this holiday season, and will be out celebrating Christmas and then our 6 year anniversary this week! Apparently, the traditional gift for the 6th anniversary is candy! How great is that?!?

I haven't been posting as much recently, and probably won't until after New Year's, but I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a new year full of hope.

the Yip Yips

Do you remember the aliens on Sesame Street? They gave me nightmares when I was little. Enjoy.

Nice 'n' Easy Dinner

Tuesday night we had the EASIEST "nice" dinner (that we've cooked) in a while! First, I should define "nice." In our situation, "nice" means a meat and sides not all combined in one dish. It was easy because it hardly required any work to cook it. We also ate the freshed salad either of us have ever had! We picked some lettuce (about 5 different types!) straight from the garden in our backyard. After my experience with caterpillars, I was very carefully to wash the leaves carefully - we have no need for extra protein!

We ate the hand-picked salad with bread and spinach dip from HEB (they have the yummiest spinach dip, but it's a little pricey so it's only for special treats). We also had Betty Crocker Au Gratin Three Cheese Potatoes and Emeril's Chicken and Apple Sausage (heated on the grill). They had samples of this sausage at Sam's, and it's amazing! Instead of a strong pepper taste, it has a more savory blend of spices. It only has chicken (for meat), so it's fat content is nothing compared to regular or beef sausage. Mmmm, so yummy. I was so excited about our rare "nice" meal on a busy weeknight, I took pictures.

Upside Down

(sorry - I wrote this Monday but am just now publishing it)
This past weekend felt very upside down in many ways.

First, a light-hearted way...
The high temperatures for Saturday and Sunday (December 8 & 9) were both 82 degrees! Saturday we picked up some mini-marshmallows (along with a few other things) at the store, then went to a track and ran for about 25 minutes, then went home and took in the groceries. It being December and 40 minutes until sunset, we didn't think twice about leaving the food in the car. When we got home the marshmallows looked like this:

Melted Goodness.

Second, a heavy-hearted way... (note: the article I referenced seems to not longer be available - you can check this out instead)
You can read this news article that starts out "It was a frightening morning Friday for one Bryan business after a driver of a SUV blacked out, lost control of his vehicle and plowed into Techniques Hair Salon." My friend Jenny was getting her hair cut there for the first time when this happened.

Part of the article sounds contradictory because their facts are a little off: "Three people and a baby were in the salon's back room. 'If they would have been in the first room it would have been over for everybody,' Joham said. 'It was really lucky that they were in the next room.' A hairdresser was cutting a woman's hair, when the wall came down and they were both pushed into another room." Actually, Jenny and the hairdresser (Genie) were in the front room and Jenny's husband and 11 month old son were in the back waiting room (where they were not seriously hurt). The salon chair Jenny was sitting in actually got pushed through the wall into the back room, so she was found there. Everyone should recover fine, but Jenny is not able to use either arm at all for at least 6 weeks. On opposite sides, she has a completely separated shoulder and a broken collarbone. We are very grateful that her baby was not in the chair at the time - he had just finished getting his hair cut about 15 minutes before. Tons of people from church have signed up to help - from bringing meals to volunteering blocks of time to be there and help care for Jenny (and baby Sam). I know Jenny's needs will be met, and that God will heal and protect her, but finding a new "normal" will be very upside-down seeming for a while.

Mondays

This makes me think of Joe (umm... mostly because he says it every week). (You can check out the source)

my friend the elf

A friend of ours, Brian Gibbs, took over the voice lessons his wife had been taking when she moved to Scotland this fall. His recital was Saturday and it was a lot of fun. Most of the students were little kids, so the rest of the concert was cute (although somewhat painful :) ). Brian sang "Baby It's Cold Outside" which was recently made more popular by the movie Elf (hence the costume). Watch Brian's performance: