New Year Wishes

Happy New Year!
May 2011 bring joy, laughter and love. 
Have a safe celebration or a wonderful evening at home. 
Whatever you chose to do today, enjoy yourself.

Christmas


We had a wonderful Christmas Eve celebration. Our pilot was home and we had a house full of family with his parents visiting and brother flying in on Christmas Eve. As you have seen Grandma, our son and I were busy baking cookies in the few days before Christmas Eve . On Christmas Eve I cooked a semi traditional Polish meal and on Christmas day we had a tradition American diner.
On Christmas Eve I served a Polish Ginger bread soup called Mocka. It is made on Vegetable base with gingerbread, puréed carrots, parsnip, raisins and almonds. It is an acquired taste so it was mostly for me. We also had a wonderful Minestrone soup, battered and fried flounder filets, filet minions, mashed potatoes sour croute with mushrooms and peas and broccoli. The meal was served with eggnog . After we all enjoyed a wonderful diner I prepared a cookie platter with the cookies we baked and dressed it up with some Christmas Candy and oranges. We sat around and chatted, watched a movie and enjoyed some wonderful family time. Right before bed Grandma brought down a present for our son. It was a lovely bathrobe which he wore on Christmas morning. It is a tradition that she had with her sons and I loved to see it passed down another generation.

Christmas was a mad house as there were so many wonderful presents under the tree for everyone especially the youngest member of the family. When we came downstairs, daddy had the fire going and he was beyond himself when he saw what Santa brought. We opened presents and opened presents and opened presents (as my son described his Christmas morning at breakfast. Breakfast consisted of pork roll (also known as Taylor Ham and my husband’s absolute favorite) and scrambled eggs of course served with toast.
After breakfast we played and chatted and watched the Polar Express movie while the turkey roasted in the oven. For Christmas day diner mom served a turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, broccoli, sour croute, cranberry souse, gravy, fresh baked crescent rolls followed by a wonderful apple pie and more cookies.
We shared gifts, laughter and most importantly most of our immediate family was here to share this wonderful holiday and all of its traditions with us. That is what makes the holidays really special.

Cookies Galore


My mother-in-law and son were baking cookies yesterday. I helped with some of the cleanup and preparation but it was grandma’s show. I really wanted for our boy to have that experience of baking with grandma. He loves to bake and he loves his grandma even more. Continued in Hanger Rats

Family


My parents-in-law are here for the holidays and we are absolutely loving it. Especially my son who is loving the attention and company of his grandparents. I wish our pilot was here to witness the beautiful relationship that our son has with his parents but he is at work. Two more days and he will be joining us. 
It is incredible the bond that grandparents have to their grandchildren, my son is eating his grandparents up they do all kinds of things together. They walk Sally dog, go to the park, paint and today we will all be baking holiday cookies.  It is so much fun to watch him play pretend and assign everyone a character – He is Lightning McQueen and Pappy is King and Grandma is Flow and Mommy is Sally. It is incredible to see how much fun he is having.
Watching my son with his grandparents makes me remember all of the wonderful times I had with mine while growing up. Even though a lot of our family lives far away and some overseas – he has never met that half, I feel so grateful  for the times we do get to share and the memories we get to make. He talks for months about their visits.  The only thing that could make this more perfect is our pilot to join us. Soon enough.

Traditions

 
Every family has traditions. When I was little growing up in Poland my family celebrated a very traditional Christmas Eve with a 12 course meal. Santa came on December 6th and the gifts under the tree were opened on Christmas Eve.  My husband’s family celebrated a very traditional American Christmas where Santa comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve, the big meal is on Christmas Day and that is when you opened presents Christmas morning. Continued in Hanger Rats

Public Humiliation


My mother-in-law 12 and a half years ago said to me: “If I can give you one piece of advice for your years of marriage it is to never humiliate or berate your husband in public”. I took this and my father-in-laws advice not to ever go to bed mad to heart and my husband and I live by those wisdoms. Sure there are times I can think of one when I lost my cool with him in public or vice versa.  I regret the incident because I remember it clearly it was in a grocery store 11 years ago and I was just in a bad mood, not excusable.  I think that the no humiliating in public rule should apply to all members of your family not just spouse to spouse. Continued in Relationships

Santa


I am so excited that my pilot was home for visiting Santa. Santa paid a visit to the library today and we headed over there to visit him. My son was so excited when he first saw Santa he paused his mouth opened and his eyes got huge. He ripped out of my hand as there was no line my boy ran up to Santa and sat right on his lap. Santa gave our little Hanger Rat huge hugs and had talk with him about how good he was all year. Continued in Hanger Rats