Tió de Nadal

Okay, we are now about 3 hours away from leaving for the airport, so this is going to be quick. Just one last Catalan tradition that I thought everyone should know about and think about this Christmas season--Tronc de Nadal, Tió de Nadal, or Caga Tió.

The object in question is a log taken from the hearth and given a face. It is unfortunately a little late this year, but traditional Catalans begin "feeding" the log on December 8 (The Day of the Immaculate Conception), so that by Christmas the food is nice and digested.

Instead of Santa Claus visiting good little Catalan boys and girls, the family gathers around the Tió and chants a little song as they hit it with a stick (here's an example in flash). The idea is to make it give you presents (here is a video). This something is usually a small gift or turron. (Try this game). "Real gifts" like Nintendo Wii don't come until Kings, a week after new Years Day, in remembrance of the three wise men.)

Bon Nadal!

Christmas Bells are Ringing!

We've been slowly putting up Christmas decorations around the house. I admit, I've fallen short of what I intended to do. But, I've been distracted, and considering how much the boys love to pull and climb in general, I'm glad I've gotten anything up. And even more, that it's staying there. Well, mostly.

Grammie got the boys some advent calendars that they have fallen in absolute love with. I was originally going to tack them onto the walls, but the boys are quick studies when it comes to candy related calendars, and they started opening up the doors to get at the chocolate. So, we are keeping them on top of the fridge.

I like the smear of chocolate on Ben's face in this picture.

We also got Christmas stickers for the fridge that the boys had a blast putting up. Sam is politely asking for more stickers here. (Note: I was in the process of making 7 dozen gingerbread cookies, so please excuse the hair. :)

They put (almost) all of them up by themselves. It may not have been as aesthetically pleasing as I may have liked, but they certainly enjoyed themselves. I may or may not have readjusted a few overlapping stickers after the event.

Two fat, fridge reindeer.

And here is our wee Christmas tree! The boys helped me decorate it and have redecorated it almost everyday since its been up. They pull it down, pull off the ornaments, replace them (often of the same branch) and put it all back up. It's an extremely Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

We got the little man ornament in the red hat from Zach's sister, Stephy, who is serving a mission in Denmark. She says its extremely Danish. Thanks, Steph! And thanks to Grandma and Grammie for the rest of our tree trimmings!

And finally, after having been inspired by a viewing of Elf, we put up a paper chain, a shiny, beady garland, and these little reindeer that I made. Loads and loads of fun. The boys will point them out when I ask them about them. It's ultra cute.

We've only got a few more days to enjoy it. So, here's an early, Merry Christmas! And lets just forget that there is still one of those tiny ever-last Halloween pumpkins in the backyard.

Bon Nadal!

In Catalunya (Catalonia for you Anglophiles) there is are some special Christmas traditions everyone should be aware of. One is the Caganer. The Caganer is a traditional figure that appears in the Nativities (or pessebres) of Catalans everywhere. The word means something like the pooper. As you may have surmised it is a little more naturalistic than Americans are used to, but the tradition dates back to the beginning of the 18th century. Which must give it some gravitas (for a man who poops in public).

There are various different symbolic interpretations of the Caganer. One is that he represents the fertility of the earth. Another is that he reminds people that Jesus was born in the real world. I personally think that it was done as a joke once and a bunch of smartalecks legitimized it. Either way, it is a very popular and proud tradition. In 2005, the Barcelona city council decided that the life sized nativity that is displayed in the Plaça de Sant Jaume would not include the Caganer. The protests that resulted won back the beloved Caganer for the Naticity of 2006.

In my internet searches, I found a cut out Caganer so that you could have one in your home without a special visit to Spain. Bon Nadal!

In my next post: El Cagatio (Stay Tuned).

Free at Last! Free at Last!

Big News! I am finally, finally, finally done with school! I took my very last final today! I realized that I have been in some form or other of school for the last eighteen years of my life! Amazing. And almost two of those years where with twin babies. I am kinda amazed at myself for actually doing this. But it is done and I am so very, very happy.

Thanks to all the family, friends, and roommates who made my college career such an amazing experience.

pears a plenty

I could not resist buying this striped pear in the store the other day. It was a combination of shopping while being absolutely starving (a classic blunder, to be sure), a fabulous, wafting pear smell coming from the display, and that adorable little green stripe. So sweet. So festive!

When we got home with it, I took a bite, and sadly, it was a little under ripe. Luckily, Ben didn't mind the lack of ripeness at all and was up to his ears in pear in no time.

Ben dives right in.

Enjoying the sweet tastes of life!

Finally, he had to sit right down in the kitchen and focus all his energy and eating that pear.

The not so picturesque leftovers of "Hollow Leg" Ben.

Nativity

We were able to go to the 20th Annual Christmas Creche Exhibit yesterday. Doesn't that sound impressive? It was very nice, probably the largest nativity exhibit I've ever seen, though Mom's are probably the best. True. There were nativities from all over the world, including several from Catalon, one of which Zach said could be worth several thousand dollars. Good gracious!

Unfortunately, they were not allowing photographs. And even more unfortunately, they had people all around keeping their eyes on us, so I was not able to sneak any. A sad day indeed. Because I wanted to get pictures of the boys with some nativities. I guess, they figured there would be people there like me.

Overall, it was fun. The boys really enjoyed the harp music and looking at all the different animals and people. And making me baaaa like a sheep for them. And they behaved pretty well. Except for when Ben got away from us in the children's room and knocked over part of the cardboard Bethlehem, which started a domino effect and eventually destroyed a third of the village.

Good times.

A little look at November

Holy Free Fabric, Batman!

I was at Enrichment tonight. We tied quilts. I forgot how good I am at repetitive, sudo-mindless work like that. Especially when there is conversation to be had. At the end of said quilt tieing, there were three boxes full of free material. What?!? Free fabric! I am there. And I was. For about fifteen minutes. Picking up a pound or two of free quilt squares and a bolt with about a yard or so of green polka-licious dot material on it.

Of course, it could have been just about anything and as long as "Free" was in front of it, it would be mine. This is how I came into possession of a giant light bulb, a red teddy bear (now named "Rojo" and residing in the boy's room), tons of clothes, and various other things that are not in my immediate eyesight and thus do not come to mind. And tons and tons of those macaroons that they make at BYU catering. Now those are definitely worth sneaking into an event to get. They were still kinda free. I think.

The Giving of Thanks...

The Feast!

In spite of a last minute invitation to dinner, we decided to stay home and have our very first family Thanksgiving. It really turned out fabulously! Zach brined the turkey over night, just like Alton would have him do.

So, So Delicious!

Oh. My. Goodness. It was so freakin' succulent it forced me to seriously consider buying up all the remaining cheap turkeys and a deep freezer and just having turkey for the rest of my mortal existence. Or at least make another one before next year. We had stuffing and mashed potatoes and brown buttered corn and cheesy asparagus and gravy and - oh! It was wonderful! For some crazy reason we made two pies - a pumpkin pie and an apple cherry spice pie. Actually, I made the pies. And they were awesome. I had never made pie crust before, but it was crazy simple.

Zach carves the bird

Ben wants to eat!

So does Sam! (We set the nice-ish plates for them, but they ate out of the plastic stuff per the usual. I've learned my lesson)

I have been baking up a dough filled storm the last couple of days since Zach was home and could try to distract the boys a little. I made a huge batch of gingerbread cookies from Mom's classic gingerbread recipe (holy cow - it made almost 8 dozen cookies! It was a glorious surprise. I also realized I need cookie cutters), the pies, some cheesy calzones and honey biscuits from the back of the Western Family bread flour that we have had since - well, I think the first time we went shopping after we got married.

Apple-Cherry Pie

I have never been much of a baker. When I was a kid and in a Anne of Green Gables or Laura Ingalls faze or something, I would get out flour and water and play with until it went from a sticky mass of revulsion to a smooth ball of dough. I don't recall ever actually baking biscuits from said dough, but if I had they would have been the roughest, toughest bread this side of Mississippi.

But sweet Anola Gay! It seems all I have been doing lately is mixing, rising, punching down only to allow things to rise again. How domestic of me. And delicious.

So, after a long and winding tangent, it was a great Thanksgiving, even if we couldn't be with the rest of the family. And I am thankful for my family, for Zach's turkey, and for the magic and mystery of yeast.

Tag! I'm It.

Sarah, my sister-in-law, "tagged" me the other day. That means that I have to write six things about myself on the blog. So, without further ado:

1. I have been to 49 of the 50 states (I'm coming some day, Alaska!)

2. I am really persnickety about alphabetizing. All of my DVDs and CDs are in alphabetical order.

3. I have a collection of photos of my feet standing in diverse places around the world. I'll have to put them on here sometime.

4. I came up with a series of questions for Stake dances, to avoid awkward, teen silences after the name/ward/school questions had been asked. These included:

1. If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
2. If you were exiled from the U.S. where would you live?
3. If you were stranded on a island somewhere and could only eat one meal for the entirety of your stay there, what would you eat?

There were more, but you get the picture.

5. If I had not gotten into the film department, I was going to get a culinary arts degree somewhere.

6. Zach and I have not spent a single night apart since we've been married.

So, there are six lil' factoids about me. Now, who gets tagged next? Hmmm... How about Meg! You guys have an awesome blog, by the by.

Sam and Ben Strike Again!

Behind the TV

They may not have as catchy a signature as Zorro, but I have found pencil and crayon scribbles everywhere! Besides the more interesting sketches that we've photographed, they have also left their "art" on the fridge, cupboards, floors and in Zach's library books.

On Couch Pillows

Even on me! I thought the pen cap was on so I wasn't even paying attention. Ben thought that this was awesome.

When they first started to draw it was exciting, I thought, Ya! Look at my little Picasso's! Now, unfortunately, they are little Picassos. Darn that avant garde Spanish spirit!

Food, Glorious Food!

Because we are poor, college-type people and because we like to cook, we have made several meals in the last lil' while. I've been taking pictures of all of them, because I keep thinking, "oh, I'll put this on the blog! That'll be fun!" This usually happens right before Zach is about to dish himself up some food and then has to wait for me to take a picture, usually several to get okay-ish lighting, before he can eat.

Unfortunately, the down side to all this cooking is that it takes a lot of time and because it takes so much time, I haven't been putting in the food entries. So, I thought, I'll just do one big food entry. Sounds good, right? I thought so. So, here you go my friends, some yummy things that I made.

Skillet Lasagna

Have I mentioned that we don't have cable? We don't. And because we don't have an antenna either, we only get three PBS channels, two Spanish channels, and one Asian languages channel. One of the PBS channels has a cooking shows morning, that I happened to catch a few Saturdays ago. I saw the good people at America's Test Kitchen make this Skillet Lasagna, and thought it looked like a yummy alternative to layering all that pasta and sauce and such. On the show they said they kept making jokes about the recipe. I guess you have to be a cook to get it.

Meat Pie with Cheesy Potato Topping

This turned out quite well, though it was pretty time consuming to make. I really liked it. It came from Classic Home Cooking, which is full of deliciousness. I've made several recipes from that book. Of course, for this one we changed several of the ingredients, for the sake of convenience and finances, but it was still great. I don't remember ever having something quite like this, so I thought it was especially good. Very hardy. Zach says he grew up on food like this, so it was more of the norm for him.

Pumpkin Seeds

These are the pumpkin seeds that Zach baked from the innards of our Halloween pumpkin. They turned out quite well, especially with a little salt scattered over the top. Yum.

I think my next culinary venture will be a split pea soup and some Thanksgiving-ish pies. I'll let you know how it goes!

P.S. If anyone is interested in actually getting the recipes let me know. I'm not sure I want to commit to another food only blog like the glorious Meg or fabulous Jodi, but if it comes to that, I'll bite the bullet. But only if I really, really have to.

Popcorn Popping

Sam & Ben

It looks like the boys have inherited our love of popcorn. Or rather my love and Zach's obsession. They run into the kitchen when they hear us start our lovely popcorn popper, though it is usually not on the floor like this, just for the record. I was just too tired to hold them both up to the counter to let them watch it all pop. They really, really love to eat popcorn and request it regularly. In fact, I think they use the same word for popcorn, "pop" for all food. In the morning when I ask if they are ready to go down and eat some food, they'll say, "Pop! Pop!" Of course, they could just be requesting popcorn for breakfast.

Also, speaking of Popcorn popping - or rather a metaphorical musical interpretation of apricot blossoms - I've been called to be the Primary Secretary. I really am not sure what this calling entails, since I haven't been in Primary since I was in Primary as a valiant or whatever they are called now, but this does mean that the boys will be going into nursery early. Which is amazing and a little bit scary. Where did my tiny little babies go!?!

Sam & Ben - First Day of Life

halloween: the way it was meant to be...

*WARNING*
There are about a gazillion adorable photos in this here Halloween post. If you can't handle this kind of cuteness go find yourself something a little more mundane.

A couple of weeks ago we went and picked out a pumpkin. Ben thought that this one would be the best and we all agreed. He tested out several others before and this was the only one that felt right to him.

Last weekend our courtyard had a mini pumpkin decorating activity. Very fun. The boys thought the little pumpkins were absolutely wonderful and alternated between holding them, decorating them, and throwing them. It was a good time.

Ben and Daddy decorate a lil' pumpkin

Today, Halloween, we finally set about to the task of carving our carefully selected pumpkin. Ben made sure that it was the one that he had picked out by picking it up and making sure the feel was right. Sam kicked it a lot.

The boys and I started to get at the innards, but then the boys started hurling pumpkin entrails and I remembered what a messy job emptying a pumpkin was, so Zach took over the emptying and I handled the camera for a while.

Sam was quite a lot of help-sticking his ice cream spade in between handfuls of orange goop. Ben helped for a while too...


But then he decided that his talents would be best put to use by running in circles around the pumpkin as fast as he could.

After some input from Zach and I, and a few blunt knife jabs from Sam, the Jack-O-Lantern is complete! I liked it.

Then it was time to get our Diablitos ready for trick-or-treating. That's been Zach's nickname for them for a while now, and we thought, how appropriate. So, we whipped these capes and horns together last weekend and...

Voila!
Our little Devils!

I was worried that they wouldn't keep the capes on through the whole trick-or-treating experience, but they ran around and twirled in them all over the place.

Devil Ben

Devil Sam

We started off with a quick trip over to Todd and Betty's house, to get them warmed up to the whole process.

They started off slow, probably suspicious of why people were just handing out this candy just for walking up to their door.

But they picked it up really quickly. They even started putting their candy into the pillowcase after they picked it out. Well, most of it. Some of it got...lost.

Sam goes in for the kill.

They really got into it, especially Sam. He was running up to the doors! And all in all we made out very well. That's right folks! Two whole Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. Good times.

It was a great Halloween. We got to be out with the boys, who looked adorable and behaved wonderfully. We got to see our neighbors and chat, and get free candy. We were surrounded by other cute kids having fun and dressed up like pirates and fairies and ninjas. It was wonderful, really how Halloween was meant to be.

Earthquake!

We just had an earthquake! Seriously! at 8:04 PM.

Before you get worried, we are all completely fine and so is all of our stuff. And from the sound of it, no one was hurt at the epicenter, either. Good news. It was a 5.6 earthquake, which is "moderate." We were about 20 miles or so from San Jose so we had it pretty easy here.

So, this is how it went down, everything started slowly shaking and then got stronger and then just stopped. It only lasted about 5 seconds or so. We weren't even sure that it was an earthquake at first. We just thought that a big garbage truck was going by or something, but then as it got a little more intense and we thought, "hmm... this is odd." We actually asked each other, "Is this an earthquake?" A little scary for me but Zach was excited. I guess there are supposed to be several aftershocks in the next week or so, but they'll probably be smaller.

So, there you have it, our first earthquake! Craziness.

Sit Back and Enjoy the Show...

Sorry, but you'll have to pop your own popcorn.

The Great Pansy Massacre

It was really my fault. I thought that if I put the big planter box full of pansies on the ground in the sun for a while, there wouldn't be a problem. I just had to use the bathroom afterall. So, I ran upstairs, did my business, and came back down. I heard the boys laughing as I walked down the stairs and thought they were so sweet.

Then I saw the dirt.

The long trail of dirt leading all the way to the front door. From what I can gather, they had been throwing the dirt on each other and then Ben had come in and shaken it all off of himself.

Exhibit A - Sam pulling more dirt out of the container

Just in case some people are wondering if the boys really were involve, and maybe those pansies committed suicide, I give you People's exhibit A.

Exhibit B - Ben flees the scene of the crime

Does that look like the face of a repentant transgressor? No, it doesn't to me either. Though it is a very cute face, to be sure.

In the end I forgave them because I believe it was a mercy killing. The pansies were not doing well. Of course, part of the reason they were not doing well is because the boys had been pulling bits of dirt out of the pot since I got them planted. This is what had originally prompted me to get them up high.

I wonder if they've been planning this all along? Hmm...