Man, what ANOTHER weekend

WOW. What a busy busy weekend.

Friday night - I decided to make Christmas cookies. Yeah the same ones that I was talking about for about a week now, but I needed to get them done since I saw the rest of the weekend getting full fast. Jen had to work, so I started after putting the boys to bed. The recipe that I use is one that has been in our family for years (as long as I can remember). They are a real good sugar "cut-out" cookie with real grated orange peel in the dough. The cookies went together pretty fast, but didn't have the exact taste that I was going for. The recipe calls for butter flavored crisco, but I used regular since it's all that I could find in the pantry. Of course I found the butter flavored crisco after I was done and I dug a little deeper in the pantry. Dang. In keeping with tradition from my grandma, I drank a beer in a regular glass and gave up a nod to grandma. I seem to remember my grandma having a glass of beer handy when she was cooking. While I was making cookies I put in "Christmas Vacation" for atmosphere while baking. After cleaning up my mess (I would frost and decorate Saturday) I decided to get a head start on making caramel corn. Jen decided to make caramel corn for her co-workers as gifts but had to make at least 5 batches to fill the tins that she bought, but in inspecting the pantry, no corn syrup. I had used the last of it for my Hoosier pies at Thanksgiving, so, no caramel corn tonight.

Saturday - The family gets up and Jen heads to Meijer to grab some corn syrup for the caramel corn and to look for honeybuns (another tradition with me). She gets back and I start putting together the stuff to make the caramel corn, but just remembered that we were almost out of popcorn too. Opps, So, Jen head out to Scotts to buy popcorn and look for honeybuns again (none at meijer). She gets back and I start putting together the caramel corn and I make a little routine where one pan is baking while I cook caramel in the stove. The first batch is good, but the caramel seems like it isn't mixed well enough. I call it grainy, but it's like the sugar isn't melting. I thought it might be a fluke so I keep going. Second batch, still not right. Third batch, still not right. We decide to stop. We figure that the corn syrup that she bought is bad somehow, or the brown sugar has an issue. I still say it was because I wasn't stirring the pan well enough before putting the caramel over the corn. SO, a third trip to the store, this time to Kroger's to buy new corn syrup and to look for honeybuns (still can't find them). We start the process again and finally it's starting to go together much better. So with the three first tries, the 5 batches for the co-workers, 1 overcooked batch, and 1 batch for my mom, we ended up making 10 batches of caramel corn. Once Jen and I got into the routine we were able to hammer them out pretty fast. Finally we finished the caramel corn and Jen headed out to deliver the caramel corn and do some other stuff. When she got back I headed out for some last minute shopping. When I got back Tracy and the boys had come over so we visited with them and the boys played until 9:30 or so.

Sunday - The boys kinda slept in since they were up late the night before and we started putting stuff together for the day. Jen continued baking, while it was my job to frost/decorate cookies and get the boys bathed and ready for church. I had to make a Kroger run to get yeast for Jen's next project in the kitchen. We got stuff done around the house and headed out to church around 4:00. Upon arriving at 4:10 for a 4:30 service, it was already standing room only. Lucky for us we found a couple chair in the cry room so we were able to camp out there. William was being difficult. He had his cars, but insisted on kneeling in front of the chair to play with the cars on the chair. Of course with chairs being at a minimum he wanted to play on my chair. Initially we said no, but I finally ended up standing just so I wouldn't have to deal with his whining and pouting. After church we headed over to my mom's house. Mom puts out a great meal with shrimp cocktail and other snacks for an appetizers and then a great pan of Johnny Marzetti that was delicious. We exchanged presents with my mom, uncle, brother, and sister-in-law. We all got some neat presents, of course the kids getting the vast majority. Upon reading my blog about what I wanted for Christmas and my memories of "ULTRAMAN" and other stuff from my childhood, by brother got me the DVD collection of "STARBLAZERS" which is another cartoon/anime thing that we watched at kids. I had stared collecting the VHS copies of the series a few years ago, but at $20 a tape for one or two episodes it became real expensive so I stopped, but now I have the full series. The kids of course were loaded with all kinds of toys and some clothes. Some of the most interesting stuff were the things that my mom brought back from China. We even put the boys in these silk pajamas that mom brought back. My brother presented my sister-in-law with a pendant that he designed and that he created from scratch that brought tears to her eyes. (Stay tuned for pictures and more description about that). We finally headed for home around 9:30 or so again. Upon putting the boys to bed we still had a ton of presents to wrap for the next day so we were up till about 11:00 wrapping presents.

Monday - Sunday morning we hear the sound of William leaving his bedroom around 8:00 or so and we are waiting for him to come into the bedroom, but he doesn't. After a few minutes we go to the balcony where we see him downstairs playing with the toys he got the night before. He didn't even notice that there were presents around the tree and in the stockings. The morning was busy with opening presents and having breakfast. Jen had made cinnamon rolls since we couldn't find the honeybuns, and they were pretty good. So we get the crew cleaned up and head for the in-laws house whereupon we have more food and present opening. We hung out there for most of the day and stared to head for home around 6:00. We ended up hitting my mom's house one more time to give her a chance to see the boys on Christmas, and because we had forgotten a present for her the night before. Finally home around 8:00 and kids quickly to bed. Jen and I just looked at the carnage in the living room. She likes to say that it looks like Radiator Springs exploded in our living room. After trying to clean up a little bit I headed to bed. One more holiday down. The plan for New Years? Not a F##&*ng thing.