On Christmas Eve, the kiddos and I carried out our traditions, along with a couple new ones and some adaptations. A cop's family is all about adaptations.
One adaptation: drive all the way to downtown Santa Barbara to see Christmas lights, instead of staying in our area. We didn't know the good neighborhoods, so I headed to the upscale parts of town, hoping that where there is money, there would be lights. We were disappointed. Good displays were few and far between. It got to the point that we were excited when we saw reflectors on a car parked on the street up ahead!
But driving downtown was part of a master plan: having our traditional Chinese food Christmas Eve dinner. Usually we get Chinese take-out, but this year we headed to a downtown restaurant and had our own Police escort. It was great to have dinner all together, even though the officer could only stay for part of dinner. We enjoyed China Pavilion!
After the fortune cookies, we headed home the back way (still hoping for some lights, and indeed we enjoyed quite a few skillfully decorated homes), and started on frosting the cookies that we had left to cool.
A new tradition: drinking Butterbeer while decorating cookies. There are several recipes floating around for the Wizarding treat, but we used this one: Mix 7 parts cream soda to one part Butterscotch Schnapps. Drink.
Last year, Erin decorated cookies to resemble Harry Potter characters.
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| Can you identify them? *Answer below. |
This year it was the members of her favorite band, The Strokes.
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| Top Row: Nikolai Fraiture; Julian Casablancas. Bottom Row: Nick Valensi; Fabrizio Moretti; Albert Hammond, Jr. |
Kevin and I took responsibility for the rest. We missed having the Squid taking his share, so we got tuckered out. Here are some of our better ones.
When we finished the cookies, it was time to clean up, and suddenly it was nearing 11:00pm. It is traditional for their father and me to wrap the kids' packages on Christmas Eve. In years past, we've had to stay up quite late, wrapping and also doing the requisite assembly duty. This year, we again had to adapt, so we did some together earlier in the day, but in the end there was quite a bit for me to finish up. I worked hard! I was afraid that Santa might bypass us, I was up so late.
By the time I went to bed the clock read:
It seemed like I had just shut my eyes when my hero returned from protecting and serving, and the clock read:
Santa had managed to come though, and the tree looked sooooo pretty!
So, Christmas began!
The Squid brought home the traditional donuts (we had this tradition even before he became a cop!), fresh from Spudnuts, and we woke the family.
Wow, were we ever spoiled! We felt so loved, and there were lots of gifts to love! Here we are with some of our favorite presents.
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| A BB gun. You'll shoot yer eye out, kid. |
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| Hello Kitty sleep gear and a pocket camera for when the SLR is too big to carry around. |
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| Even Pirates love a Snuggie®, the Blanket with Sleeves! I designed the hat: a black-on-black embroidered squid! |
It isn't very usual for the Mom to get a bike on Christmas morning, but I did! Kevin bought me a beautiful nearly-new cruiser!
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| Don't you love how it matches my jammies? |
And Erin had tricked me into driving her to buy a frame for "her friend," all the while plotting to give me this. I love it!
Kibble and Cocoa got rawhide bones in their stocking, and true to form, Cocoa laid claim to both.
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| Photo by Erin |
We all went back to bed about 6:30am, just when the sky was lightening. Here is what we left behind.
We enjoyed Chinese/Italian dim sum for our mid-day meal. Trader Joe's is a wonderful source of goodies, and I found more at the neighborhood Oriental market. Egg rolls, shrimp shu-mai, mini pizzas and garlic-Parmesan pastry bites. We had just a short time before the officer had to get ready to go back to work.Another storm was a-brewing, and by about 4:00 the skies opened and it rained hard for about three hours.
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| There's a storm coming! |
This morning, I woke up and started in the kitchen and didn't stop until about 3:00pm, when we sat down to eat our traditional turkey dinner. We were lucky to have Kevin's girlfriend come to have dinner with us. We had turkey breast, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, rolls, cranberries, champagne, and sparkling cider!
And for dessert: I made my first apple pie! Can you believe I had never made an apple pie? My husband doesn't care for fruit pie, so I have gone all these years without trying to make one. Luckily, my son does enjoy them, so I was inspired to try my hand. I have to admit I used Marie Callendar's® frozen crusts for my maiden attempt. It turned out pretty good! I made a French Silk Chocolate pie, too (definitely not my first!), which was delicious with fresh whipped cream. *burp*
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| My first apple pie! |
All in all, it was a wonderful weekend. I hope you all had a warm holiday full of happiness and love.
*Harry Potter cookies: Voldemort, Serverus Snape, Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter.
