Merry Week-After-Christmas! My mother-in-law continues to give me the best possible gift: time away from my children. I kid! Except no. I’m sitting in a quiet coffee shop, sipping a hot chocolate, and writing this blog post in the company of other adults while she plays Uno with Henry and chases a naked George who delights in ripping off his diaper and leaving it on the kitchen floor. Mary, you are my everything. The holidays were awesome, and I felt filled with love for the friends and family in my life, but this break is glorious.

In the past week, we sort of recovered from a stomach bug, crafted furiously, ate not a lot and then too much, and spent lots of time with loved ones. Here’s what it looked like.

Bagel. So I got that stomach flu too. When I was still feeling healthy and spry, I went to the farmers market and bought tons of random vegetables- purple cauliflower, fennel, rainbow chard, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes. I started feeling sick the next day and the sound of eating a steaming pile of cauliflower made me want to ralph, so we all ate bagels for dinner instead. Those vegetables are all still hanging around the house. I’m going to salvage what I can this week.

Tangerine and Cranberry Jello. For the summer solstice, we always make jiggly lemonade jello cubes with packaged gelatin and lemonade. For the winter solstice on Tuesday, Henry wanted to make a blueberry jello thing. I dug through the freezer but it turns out I finally threw away the half-bag of freezer-damaged blueberries that had been in there for 3 years. But I found a bag of whole cranberries! So we put those in a pot with water and sugar and let them heat up and burst. We also had a big bowl of sour tangerines from an unschooling friend, so we juiced those and made a pretty fantastic jello from a combination of the two.

Thai Red Lentil Soup. This was our first foray back into real food after eating the BRAT diet for several days. It’s a glorious, simple soup. It felt perfect for the solstice because the bright color is like a celebration of the days lengthening and it used several ingredients from our anemic little garden- lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, cilantro, and thinly-sliced green beans. It’s supposed to have an infused chile oil drizzled on top, but that felt like way too much of a gamble on our pitifully tender stomachs.

Roast Chicken, Apple Panzanella, Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad. Festivus Dinner! I have celebrated festivus with my friend Molly almost every year since that Seinfeld episode came out in the late ’90s. Back then we did the whole nine- metal pole, airing of grievances, the feats of strength. I strongly encourage you to do none of these things. The airing of grievances would always start out lighthearted, but then someone would air an actual real-life grievance and then the door would be open for the other to retaliate, and retaliate we did, until it was a full-blown fight where we rehashed all the wrongs we’d inflicted on each other in the past year. The feats of strength is also demoralizing because I’m a weak pile of nutrient-deficient flab, and Molly is 5 feet 4 inches of lean muscle. This year we wised up and did a simple arm-wrestling competition for the feats of strength, and Molly won, no surprises there. There was some discussion that her beefy-armed boyfriend might have let her won (he claims there’s a whole suite of youtube videos of boyfriends accidentally snapping their girlfriend’s arms during arm wrestling competitions) but I think she won fair and square- she’s scrappy.

Christmas Eve Dessert Platter: Salted Brown Butter Crispy Treats, Chocolate Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies, Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups, Magical, Marvelous, Memorable Cookies, Moonrock Cookies, Sea Salt Caramels. I made a batch of my favorite chocolate cookie dough and split it in half. I mixed in peanut butter chips and chopped peanuts into one half, and toffee bits into the other- a recipe my mom used to make and which she named moonrock cookies. I had leftover peanut butter cup filling and used it to make sandwiches out of the peanut butter chocolate cookies. I don’t know if they were any good or not because I was feeling sick again on this day and didn’t want any of these beautiful things. A tragedy. We brought these to my sister’s house for a Christmas Eve day hangout where the kids mostly ignored them in favor of a bowl of taco-flavored Doritos. I didn’t eat anything after we left, and I was still feeling super nauseous, but then I thought it might be the sort of nausea you feel when you haven’t eaten anything. Is this a thing that happens to other people? I am weak and sickly. Anyway, I decided to throw caution to the wind and drive through Taco Cabana and get a plate of greasy cheese enchiladas with rice and beans. I ate the whole damn thing and felt better. I’m going to patent a jar of cheese enchilada sludge as a cure for the stomach flu.

Christmas Eve Dinner at Molly’s. Pumpkin Soup, Tamales, Corn Dip, Pomegranate and Orange Salad, Tomatillo Pecan Breakfast Pie. I made none of these things, but they were so pretty I had to photograph them. I have recipes for nothing except for that quiche-y looking thing on the bottom left- it is insane! Thinly-sliced tomatillos layered with bacon and egg in a crust made from pecans and masa harina and bacon fat- how cool is that? Molly’s mom made it and I am absolutely adding it to my dinner rotation.

Banana Bread. The kids woke up at 7:30 on Christmas and we all dove into our stockings. Henry got the saf-t-pops and butterfly gummies he’d been hoping for and George got a My Little Pony pink camera. I got good paint brushes and lovely watercolors, dark chocolate sea salt caramels, and a mole-flavored (imagine an accent over that ‘e’ in mole. It’s the Mexican spice blend, not the blind ground rodent) chocolate bar. Thanks, Andy! We ate a breakfast of this banana bread and stocking candy.

Apple Pie for Christmas. We spent the morning with my sister Helen, brother-in-law Jordan, and my niece Phinnie. The kids got light sabers from my mom and my brother Caleb and they all fought with them on the front yard. Helen gave the kids a beautiful hand-painted constellation book and homemade puzzles, and brought over warm cinnamon rolls too! Then we drove out to Dripping Springs to Joanna’s house and spent the rest of the afternoon walking through their expansive vegetable garden, roasting homemade marshmallows at the fire pit, and playing in the epic fort Joanna’s girls built in the woods with Aunt Magi. It was such a beautiful day and I felt so grateful to have married into this family. The only negative was when we took a goofy family picture and I forgot to not unhinge my jaw so there’s another photo in the world of me looking like a sarlacc.

This is a gluten-free version of my very favorite Apple Crunch Pie, a recipe my mom found in a magazine when I was a kid. Lately I have felt like the filling has needed a few tweaks- I only use granny smith apples and I thought it was tasting too boring and pasty. I used the juice of a whole lemon instead of just a tablespoon, added a heaping half-cup of white sugar and another 1/4 cup of loosely-packed brown sugar, plus warm spices (cinnamon/clove/nutmeg/allspice). I thought it was my favorite version yet, so I wanted to note the changes for next time.

Homemade Christmas! A selection of the homemade presents that I remembered to photograph. I needle-felted a play mat for my niece Lucy with help from Molly and Christy and Christy’s daughter Josie, who is 8 years old and a far more talented crafter than I’ll ever hope to be. Andy helped me make the wooden accessories and Christy and Josie taught me how to make the little pipe cleaner dolls with acorn hats. I gathered natural elements from around the yard to make little snacks for their table. For Lucy’s sister, Clara, I filled a briefcase I found at a thrift store with the equipment one might need to be a spy. Invisible ink pens, a fingerprinting kit, rope, and even a tiny crowbar. Yes, I gave a seven-year-old a crowbar for Christmas. I’m not sure it was a successful gift- time will tell! For Henry, Andy made a sweet exponentiation chart that Henry is super into, and I made a science kit with test tubes and powders to crush in a tiny mortar and pestle and tons of food dyes that he has already used to paint his hands a vibrant purple. George got a treasure chest that he can paint, filled with beads and rhinestone jewelry- he loves it! My niece Phinnie got a book with the lyrics from The More We Get Together paired with pictures of her friends and family, plus a little needle-felted vegetable garden playmat to go with the adorable doll house Helen made her for Christmas. For my grown up friends, I just gave homemade treats- jams, jellies, pickled jalapenos, homemade cocoa mix and marshmallows, and the treats you’ve already seen here.

Every year I vow I’m going to start homemade Christmas earlier, but I never do, and I spend the last week or so before Christmas crafting frantically. And I phoned it in this year with several gifts (science kit, treasure kit, spy case) that could only generously be described as semi-homemade. Even so, I love it. I like that the pile of presents under our tree is modest and that the emphasis is on spending the day with our family. Plus eating a lot of candy. I hope those of you who celebrate had a wonderful day too!

Butternut Risotto. I don’t ever want to eat another bowl of risotto for as long as I live. I had chicken stock in the house though, and Henry knew it, and asked if I could please please make him risotto, so I did. Not pictured, because I wanted to take a break from sharing sad taco pictures with you, but Andy, George, and I all ate bacon and egg tacos instead.

Chicken Pot Pie with a Flaky Double Crust. A cold front came in yesterday- it was in the low 40s, y’all. So we stayed inside all day and all got sick of each other. Henry got Uno in his stocking and is obsessed. He played probably two dozen games with Andy. He is savagely competitive, but mostly doesn’t get mad at his opponent anymore unless he has a wild/draw four card that he doesn’t get a chance to use before the other person wins. Then he gets really mad and it’s a whole big thing. George slept terribly the night before and accidentally fell asleep so I got to take a very rare nap with him- it was glorious. I made a double crust for a pie by cutting two sticks of butter into 3 cups of flour, 2 tsp kosher salt, and big pinch of sugar. I mixed in 1/2 cup of ice water, and then used the fraisage technique where you use the heel of your hand to smear the dough into sheets across the counter, which makes thin layers of butter that steam up beautifully in the oven and make a super flaky pie crust. I halved the filling recipe from the linked recipe and it was just the perfect amount.

In the last few days of this year, I’ve got a to do list a mile long of all the stuff we’ve been neglecting around the house. Andy’s off from work and you better believe I’m taking full advantage of it/him! Wishing you a very happy New Year! See you on the other side.

Merry Christmas, dear Readers! Please enjoy the delightful second installment in a series of holiday guest posts from my dear sister! If you missed the first, which introduces these totally-made-up-definitely-not-based-on-you characters, you can read it here.

Holiday Tales
by Helen Morille

Dear Diary,

Dun dun dunnnnnnnnn.

Meadow Breeze Kisses is coming for Christmas.
With Rain, who will shower our furniture with her pees of terror.
And her husband who waxes about how great “Napa” is while sneaking shots of tequila when MBK is cleansing her chakras with steam in the bathroom (she doesn’t shower, I think she just sits in there, but who knows really).

Greg is equal parts pretentious and totally vapid. He is an expert in everything, which is inconvenient because he tends to take over tasks that don’t really need his “know how.” He once took a whisk right out of my mom’s hand–she looks like a slightly younger Mrs. Claus but she has a jewish evil eye like you wouldn’t believe, and that day her ayin hara packed a real good punch! Hey, look at me, turns out I know three Yiddish words, including schmuck and gribenes!  Anyway, the first time he came to our house, he jerked his head in the direction of our sweet, kind Mexican neighbors and asked loudly if it was safe to park the car on the street. Nice guy.

I’d be excited about the entertainment aspects of Meadow & Co. if I wasn’t totally devastated about the inevitable demise of our otherwise perfect holiday. They’re getting here on the 20th. I’ll do my best to report all incidents, but before I do, I want to write every detail of what Christmas looks like in our house before they get here and pee on it:

When it comes to thanksgiving, my mom is experimental and adventurous with her menu (turkey everything was delicious, by the way, all except for the aspic which made me want to cry softly to myself) but Christmas makes my mom totally peaceful and serene, and nothing if not traditional.

“I think I love it because I didn’t get to have Christmas growing up,” she told me, “we just had Hanukkah, and it’s really, just, not the same. Hanukkah Harry can’t hold a candle to Santa–”

“Or eight,” my dad called from the couch, without taking his eyes off Call of Duty.

“Yeah yeah, Hanukkah Harry just isn’t the same, no offense,” she finished, shooting that last part upward, as if G-d was ready and waiting to say, “no no, none taken!”

We celebrate Hanukkah by eating donuts for eight days straight, but we are the happiest Jews on Christmas, I’m sure of it. From December first on, the house is covered in garland and twinkle lights and tiny snow covered porcelain houses with tea lights inside. Mom makes cookies non stop, we buy presents for kids in need, we pretend our Texas winter requires fires in the fireplace, it is magical.

Or at least, it was.
Okay. Here we go.
Love J

December 20th:
They’ve arrived and Meadow is smudging every room in the house with burning sage. Apparently she’s confused the Christmas Spirit with the lost souls from the movie Poltergeist. I made sure my dad was within earshot when I asked if she was concerned that we moved the headstones but forgot to move the bodies. Five bucks to Gryffindor!

Rain, who’s 4, didn’t get to walk through the door first and threw a fit.
“She’s been really into the Dog Whisperer,” Greg informed us, with smug superiority, “whoever walks through the door first is the alpha, and the other dogs submit to her authority.” I guess we’re the dogs? Awesome.

December 21st:
MBK gave us  all t shirts emblazoned with the logo of her latest business venture as “early Christmas presents.” Everyone got size appropriate shirts, but my mom’s ‘Peace ‘N’ Love’ Life Coaching tee was four sizes too big. “I guess you’re a lot bigger in my mind’s eye!” Meadow told my mom, with a wink, as if this were a delightful compliment. This time my dad gave her the best ayin hara I’ve ever seen. I hope I did too. My mom killed her with kindness and said, “l guess the mind’s eye adds forty pounds!” but she looked sad after she said it. I hate Meadow.

December 22nd:
RAIN PEED ON MY BED. I don’t mean that I gave up my bed to her for a nap and she is sweet and had an accident. I mean, I walked into my room and she was standing on the bed like a rock star, holding her puffy dress up around her ears, in a full throttle pee-a-thon like the bed got stung by a jelly fish. When I asked why, she jumped down, shrugged, and said, “SOMEbody needed a thicket tricket and yeeeewwww didn’t get one.” I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’ve replayed it over and over in my head and I just want to know wtf it means. Whyyyyy.

December 23rd:
Well shit.
Greg just left. Something about work, I think he said? He has his bag.
The worst part is I walked past the guest bedroom and Meadow was hugging her elbows across her tiny torso and rocking while she whispered “I love myself” over and over.
Shit. I really do not want to feel bad for this woman.

December 24th:
Greg didn’t come back last night. Meadow has been an unstoppable hate monger, criticizing nearly every aspect of our home, lives, and especially every word my mom says. I thought she’d quiet down a little when Greg left–maybe be sad or something, but her fake smile was bigger than ever as she lectured us on repeat about GMO free dog food, and everything else. It’s weird though, the meaner she gets, the worse I feel for her. She is really sad. Up until now I thought sad looking people felt the worst–like in that Depression Hurts commercial, I always thought those guys win at sadness, hands down. But now every time Meadow clenches her teeth into a smile and does her shrill sing song voice about how we aren’t perfect enough according to her, I just feel like she probably feels the worst. I wish she would just say what’s actually bothering her, because I really don’t think it’s us.

…

Okay Greg came back. Some excuse about a fire at work that only he could put out. Maybe it was true, who knows. Meadow is being, well, not nicer exactly, but there’s less high pitched nervous laughter from her. I think this is what she looks like when she’s happy to have Greg back? I don’t know.

“Thanks for being nicer to Meadow today,” my mom said to me, sitting on the arm of my chair.

I looked up from my book, “I didn’t know I was being nicer to her.”

“You were… less quippy. Don’t get me wrong, I love the quips, but.. thank you.” And she went back into the kitchen.

I don’t understand adults. I don’t understand why we have to have Meadow over, or why she even wants to come over if she clearly hates us. Maybe she hates her own home more? I never thought about it. I don’t really want to think about it now. Rain is curled up on the rug in front of me watching White Christmas, not peeing and looking kind of cute with her christmas pajamas that she’s been wearing all day, and her little plate of Molasses Crinkle Cookies. Mom is making dinner and she’s so happy, despite everything,  my dad is keeping her company in the kitchen, and I’m reading Harry Potter. Aunt Clementine and her family will be here any minute and she always brings the most amazing salted caramels, plus a million other delicious things. I don’t know where Meadow and Greg are, but I hope they’re talking to each other. I hope he helps her to be less anxious. But even if he doesn’t help, and even if she can’t stop herself,  Christmas is okay. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s warm, and the house smells good, and it’s good. Even with Meadow, Rain, and Greg in my life, I’m really lucky. I have to remember this feeling next time the “thicket tricket” brigade comes through. I’m going to go back to reading Harry Potter. I think I’m done reporting for now.

Merry Christmas,
Love Josie.

Like this post? Read the first part here: A Thanksgiving Story

We went to a birthday party today- the daughter of some dear friends of ours is turning four. Their house is so lovely- a huge Christmas tree bedecked in bright and shiny ornaments and tinsel garlands, beautiful ceramic houses that double as candle holders, and colorful decorations for a rainbow birthday party. The food was amazing too. There was a whole smoked turkey, lovely sausages with skins that snapped when you bit into them, homemade sweet potato fries with a creamy chipotle dipping sauce, and at the center of it all, two gorgeous rainbow cakes for the birthday girl. We laughed and chatted with our friends while the kids played happily with each other- hide and seek and who knows what else. I wasn’t paying attention but did stop to appreciate the moment of getting to sit at the table and just talk to other adults while the kids entertained themselves. And then it was time for cake. George climbed up in my lap and Henry squeezed in close to me and they waited eagerly for their slices. Henry got the second slice and tucked in right away. He took one bite and made this gagging noise. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. I yelled for Andy to bring me a napkin, but it was too late. Henry threw up. I covered his mouth with my hands, but the vomit was so torrential that it spewed up over the top of them and got all over Henry’s hair, ran down into his eyes, soaked me and George, and splattered the bench, floor, and table around us. So basically, it was the worst thing that has ever happened. The darling little birthday girl was on the other side of Henry and she absolutely recoiled in horror. The hosts were so gracious and asked if we wanted to give the boys a bath, but I just wanted to run out of there as fast as I could. I apologized over and over again while quickly heading for the door. I didn’t even stop to put my shoes on- I shoved them in our bag and drove home barefoot.

I submit this to you as Christmas parable. I know this is a hectic week- lots of shopping to do, things to cook, lines to wait in. If you feel yourself getting caught up in the fray, or upset about how much you have to do, take a minute to appreciate the fact that you were not the parent of the kid who vomited all over a young girl’s rainbow birthday celebration.Who’s ready to talk about food?! Let’s do it.

Homemade Marshmallows. I humbly request that you take a minute to appreciate the pleasing nature of this photograph. The marshmallows are soft and pillowy, yet angular and geometric. The chiaroscuro of the shadowy pockets on the right adds visual interest and draws the eye in. Okay. There are some really bad food photos in the blog this week. Maybe the worst of all time. The dinners are boring. Most of them were eaten while I was holding a sick kid. You can see the shadow of my hand in the shots and the food looks universally terrible. When things get really hairy, just scroll up and look at the marshmallows again. We’ll get through this together.

A taco. So this is maybe the worst picture. We hosted 12 or 13 families of unschoolers at our house on Monday. It was fun! Also exhausting. I set up a cookie decorating station and gave the kids free rein. I massively underestimated how much kids like marshmallows. After everyone left at three it was time to clean up and Helen came over to help, bringing with her a late lunch of Taco Bell. George fell head over heels for her nachos bell grande and ate fully half of them. After a long day, I didn’t feel like cooking anything and thought, well I’ll just look at my menu plan and see if I put anything easy on there and I was excited to discover that every dinner was easy! I forgot I decided to phone it in this week after cooking all the things last week. It was a good decision. We ate potato, egg, and cheese tacos on store-bought flour tortillas and I felt just fine about it. Late that night, George threw up. I hope you guys don’t mind reading a lot about vomit? I heard him sputtering and knew what was happening and managed to get him out of bed and almost out of the room before it happened. Luckily our carpets are horrifying anyway, so a little more throw up isn’t going to make much of a difference. I blamed his sickness on the nachos, because I don’t trust Taco Bell even a small amount, but it turns out he caught a horrible stomach bug. We’ve been dealing with it all week.

Coconut Curried Chickpeas. The last time I made curried chickpeas I made up the recipe and it was massively unsuccessful, so this time I took to the internet. One of the top hits was for a Pioneer Woman recipe, and I thought that was so ridiculous that I decided to go and read it, and actually it ended up being exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. I made it and everyone loved it. Henry ate three bowlfuls! (He still wasn’t sick by this point) and ate the rest for lunch the next day.

Pepperoni Pizza. I think I’ve mentioned it here before, but Henry has a crippling fear of our smoke alarm. Anytime he hears a pan sizzling on the stove he asks me, “What percent guarantee is this dinner?,” meaning, how likely is it that the smoke alarm won’t go off, and I tell him, “It’s 100%! No chance at all of the smoke alarm going off.” For pizzas, you have to crank the oven up as high as it will go- 550 in my case. My oven is dirty and grease-splattered, so it fills with smoke when you do this. I was preemptively opening the windows to make sure air could flow through the kitchen when Henry caught me and asked, panicked, “how much percent??” and I started to say, “Oh, 100-” when the smoke alarm went off. He screamed. A cry of pure terror, and Andy took the boys into Henry’s room and closed the door, and I made the pizzas. Not just two. Four. Because that’s what it takes to feed us plus have an extra for Andy’s lunch the next day- and every time I opened the oven door to slide in a pizza or take one out, smoke would pour from the thing. So I’d dash out of the kitchen, leap onto the couch, grabbing a Magic School Bus book along the way, and desperately fan at the smoke detector to keep it from going off. It worked! And the pizza was good too.

My mother in law comes over every Thursday afternoon and I completely check out from child care duties and do whatever I want to. It is glorious. On this Thursday, I knew I wanted to do the bulk of my holiday gift baking projects, so the kids and I went to Central Market in the morning and held out our arms in the baking aisle and knocked every ingredient into our cart. We came home and made gingerbread cookies, just for fun, and the kids squealed with glee when I made a sad one. They wanted sadder and sadder cookies, and I think I prefer them that way too. There are too many happy cookies in this world.

I didn’t want to take too much time out of my precious baking time to make dinner, so we just had tuna sandwiches. They were fine and utterly unremarkable. I liked the look of George’s sad cookie sitting on a plate, though.

So what goodies did I make? I’m picturing you, dear reader, on the edge of your seat, giddy with anticipation. I made the marshmallows at the top of the post! They’re from Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, and she describes the hassle-level as “negligible, as long as you have a stand mixer.” No way, man. You have to dissolve gelatin in water on the stove, make a sugar syrup, whip egg whites, slowly pour the sugar syrup and gelatin mixtures into the stiff whites, and let the stuff whip around in the stand mixer until the outside feels cool to the touch. I don’t know how long that is, because I let the thing go for half an hour and it still felt warm to the touch, so I just stopped the machine and moved on to the next step. Then you have to dust a sheet pan with a mixture of powdered sugar and cornstarch, spread this impossibly sticky marshmallow stuff on top of the powder, let it cure overnight, and then slice and dust the marshmallows in more powder. How could this possibly be described as a negligible hassle? And the result tastes almost exactly like the bag of jet-puffed ones you can buy for $1.08. But they’re gluten free, and the cheap ones aren’t, so I guess that’s something.

I also made sea salt caramels, and you guys, they turned out like sea salt caramels! I have tried and failed to make caramels like four times in a row leading up to this win. They always turn out rock hard and I have to melt the brick of caramel in a pool of cream and serve it as a caramel sauce, which is good too, of course, but not what I was going for. After the fourth failure, when I had been absolutely rigid in following the recipe, I decided to test my candy thermometer and found that the fucking thing was 20 degrees off- I had been hugely overheating the caramels. My mom got me a new, really nice thermometer for my birthday, and I used it and these caramels are perfect- butterscotch-y and warm, melt in your mouth-y, and delightfully soft and chewy. I’m so happy with them. I don’t like the sound of the word mouth-y, but I’m gonna go ahead and leave it.

And Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups! These are comparatively easy and exactly what I want in a peanut butter cup. The recipe calls for 32 oz of chocolate though, which is so expensive when you buy bars like you’re supposed to do. I bought chocolate chips instead and melted them in a double boiler and they turned out just fine.

Burgers and Fries. George had been intermittently sick all week, but Henry didn’t really get it until this day, Friday. He woke up complaining of a hurting stomach, walked into the kitchen to get some water, and threw up on the floor. That’s the last throw up story this week, I swear. We cancelled all our plans and spent the day reading in bed. We seriously read all day long. In the late afternoon, Henry wandered into his room and somehow fell asleep on the floor, and George was sitting up on the couch while Andy was reading to him and fell asleep in that position. I was gonna just let him sleep like that and got up to start dinner, but then the dog sat down on the couch next to him and licked his face and he woke up screaming, so I had to calm him down and he fell asleep on me and I held him for an hour and a half, dreaming of burgers the whole time and complaining to Andy that my butt had fallen asleep. The kids woke up after seven, I made the burgers and made from-scratch french fries too, while Andy took the kids for a walk to get them out of the house to avoid the drama of another smoky dinner with the possibility of the alarm going off. Andy and I ate, neither kid did, and then we took a long drive down to see the Wimberley trail of lights, since the kids were going to be up forever after their late naps anyway. It was so fun! Everyone seemed to be feeling better and we were all happy to be outside after a long day indoors.

Another not-noteworthy, badly photographed taco dinner. I did make my own tortillas though. This was Saturday and the kids still seemed like they were on the mend. (Not true, as it turns out, but I had hoped!) I got to go to my friend Christy’s house, and my friend Molly came too and everyone helped me with a really fun project I’m working on for Homemade Christmas and it actually turned out almost as good as the inspiration picture we were working off of, which is such a rare thrill. I got to do it kid-free too, again, thanks to my mother in law, Mary. (Mary, you are a dream!). Anyway, it was a good day, after a rough week, and I’m grateful for it.

I don’t want to end this post with this sad taco, so let’s just look at the marshmallows again.

This was not a very Christmas-y post. I think it had too much vomit. But all the same, I will wish you a happy and delicious week and holiday! Stay healthy, dear readers!