Lucky Thursday Dinner

January 3

For dinner we choose a favorite spot not far from the house. Starting with popcorn and beverages, we study menus and order too much food. Again. But we are celebrating a birthday. My familiar salad tastes as good as I remember.

The evening ends with a surprise dessert for the birthday girl, and the waitress brings extra spoons. To present enough chocolate, the pan contains warm brownie, chocolate chip cookie layers, and fudge sauce on the ice cream. Oh my!

This is the last night for all of us to be together. Auntie leaves tomorrow to return to the island. Bittersweet.

Thursday

January 3

Today is the actual birthday of younger granddaughter, eight years old. She begins her breakfast with a bowl of fruit like most days but then has an apple turnover unlike other days. Her class goes on a field trip to the Art Institute, and Auntie is one of the chaperones. Riding the big yellow school bus brings back a few memories for Auntie.

Both granddaughters take birthday cupcakes to share with their classes: carrot with cream cheese frosting for younger and white with butter cream frosting and sprinkles for older. Girls deliver some remaining cupcakes to their teachers from past years.

Pawpaw and I meet older granddaughter for lunch in the school cafeteria. Hurray for the salad bar and fresh fruit cups available to all diners! Soon after that class leaves, younger granddaughter and Auntie enter with the bus travelers. Dessert is carrot cake, and gd hopefully asks if any of us want to share some of ours with her. I guess she didn't get enough of the cupcakes in her classroom, but she says she has a few left to take home.

From school we drive to the hair salon for Auntie and Pawpaw to get hair cuts. At home we have a few minutes to put our feet up and then leave to pick up girls at 2:30 again.

Wednesday Dinner

January 2

Auntie plans the menu for this evening. She and Pawpaw are hungry for beef, big steaks, but weather is not conducive to outdoor grilling. We buy a boneless prime rib roast weighing about 6.5 pounds. What are we thinking? None of us have much experience with meat like that but we have Google. With our time frame there's only one way to do it: set oven to 500, put meat in the oven for five minutes a pound, turn oven off, keep door closed and resist peeking for two hours, meat cooks perfectly to medium rare. Older daughter arrives home from work and adds her doubts to ours. She tapes oven door shut as safeguard. Thirty minutes before cook time ends she notices oven temperature falls below 165. Panic spreads. I restart oven to 250. We feel better, even though cooking requires only thirty more minutes.

Meanwhile granddaughters help to prep mushrooms and stuff them with spinach artichoke dip. Older one rinses all the asparagus and snaps off tough ends. I intended to photo the whole lovely feast right before serving but that didn't happen. You'll have to be content with the images of raw.

Back to School and Work

Wednesday

Granddaughters leave with parents at 7:30 this morning wearing snow parkas to return to school in 2013. Reflective areas of their clothing play havoc with my camera flash and produce some eerie photos, but more like angel glow, which certainly suits my thinking.

Auntie, Pawpaw, and I run errands, shop, and pick up girls at 2:30. We admire the photos displayed in the school foyer of students having perfect attendance in each of their classes. (Can you find our girls?) Next they show Auntie their classrooms and lockers. (I learn that backpacks also have reflectors.)

The dad leaves this afternoon for a business trip to Texas and the mom comes home after a full day at her work. Christmas holidays have definitely ended for everyone in this family!

New Year's Day

Also known in this house as Pajama Day! Granddaughters are more successful at staying in their night clothes for the entire day while adults are in day clothes by our lunch of hearty soup. Weather begins the day below zero and climbs to 20. Auntie reports that on her walk she saw a few neighborhood boys playing hockey on the outdoor rink in the park at the end of our cul de sac.

Turkeys venture over without fear and fluff feathers to ward off the cold air. My camera stays inside so these photos show the grid of the window screen.

Our night meal includes the requisite black-eyed peas and cabbage with pork and corn muffins. Delicious tradition!

The last of the Christmas crackers link the crossed arms of our family circle and pop with one more celebration. The tiny prizes entertain us, and we don the crowns for photos. Tomorrow ends the holiday season too soon with the start of school and the work week.

Happy 2013 to all!

New Year's Eve

Monday night

Tonight we attend a family party at the home of friends. Granddaughters wear sparkly outfits to welcome the new year. Daughters and I do our part. Guys wear jeans.

To support the theme of world celebrations, our family leader chooses Brazil to celebrate at nine o'clock MN time. We research traditions and download bossa nova samba music (the girl from Ipanema Beach will freeze her maracas if she passes by in this frigid weather). The kitchen smells of baking sweets and pork snacks. Our fruit tray resembles Carmen Miranda's headdress. We have flowers to cast into waves on the beach (snow? water?) A bowl of raisins ensures that each guest will have the opportunity to eat seven of them before midnight for good luck. The drink is caipirinha, but instead of Brazilian cachaca we use Tito's vodka for adults and ginger ale for children. We muddle the limes with sugar and realize we must add copious amounts of ice at serving time or risk muddling party brains (use shot glasses? tiny plastic cups?). None of us have white clothing to wear so we ignore that very important piece of tradition and hope for a great year/party anyhow.

Party revelers need little encouragement to participate in our Brazilian time zone. I manage to catch Pawpaw and our younger daughter dancing in the conga line, but speed works against me. That or my iPhone imbibed caipirinha when I wasn't looking.

Children have the basement to themselves and surface for drinks, food, and dancing (girls, not boys).

By evening's champagne end we look forward to a good rest and congratulate ourselves for bringing in the new year together. We are also grateful for the blessings of family and dear friends.

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night!

Monday Breakfast & Movie

Pacing ourselves for this busy New Year's Eve, we begin with breakfast at our neighborhood coffee bar. The owner and his daughter cook breakfasts to order and have a display case full of scones, quiches, buns, etc. all made by them. Granddaughters are especially fond of the hot chocolate topped with a tower of whipped cream.

Granddaughters have play dates and daughters and I meet a friend at the movie theatre to see Les Miserables and lose ourselves in the experience. All four of us have seen stage productions (actually three times for me: San Antonio, Austin, Houston), but this close filming is quite different. How fun is it to be choked up with tears or on the verge for more than two hours? I soon gave up on tissues and just used the hood lining of my coat. The lumps in my throat prevented any chance of eating my usual amount of popcorn chased by Diet Coke. (Whooda thunk that could ever happen?) I might even have shed a tear or two for a couple of the cast that struggled to sing their parts (Russell and Amanda, you know who you are, just sayin') Anyway, great way to spend the day portion of this eve. (Yay, Anne!)

Cupcake Eating

From the outsides to the insides, we thoroughly enjoy devouring every bite of our cupcake selections bought earlier at the Cupcake store in the Mall of America.

My choice was the Mocha with dark chocolate cake and coffee cream frosting garnished with chocolate-covered coffee beans. Three of the group had Caramel and dense chocolate with creamy filling, One had the S'mores with the appropriately browned marshmallows on top. The two guys chose the June Cleaver, yellow cake with chocolate frosting and colored sprinkles (no photo necessary for those).

And of course the birthday girl gets presents!

Birthday Shopping and Singing

Sunday pm

Still at the MOA, we stop at the chef-winning Cupcake shop for each person to select a favorite for the constructed birthday cake later. The display window can apply to anyone not named Claire as well.

Next stop is the hermit crab kiosk where each granddaughter chooses two creatures and a habitat. They have been looking forward to these birthday gifts for some time. I think about the ones their mom and auntie collected on Texas beaches long ago.

The day ends with candles and singing for our girl now ten years old. Double digits!

Sushi Birthday

Sunday lunch

Birthday girl chooses sushi for lunch, so we stay at Mall of America and eat at Crave where anyone not wanting sushi has other possibilities. Granddaughtrs entertain themselves while waiting; daughters and I have adult beverages.

Guys and younger granddaughter do not have sushi, but we remaining four can hardly wait to get our chopsticks into those lovely pieces.

At the end of our meal, the waitress presents birthday girl with birthday cake, deep chocolate with ice cream and fresh strawberry. Granddaughter graciously offers bites to all of us. Yum!