Hello, 2011!

5…4….3….2….1….

Should old acquaintance be forgot and ne’er brought to mind…?

(Um, no?  I should hope not.  I must say I never quite understood how such a sad song became the way we kick off each New Year.)

We rang in 2011 with good friends and a good meal.  The Meyers hosted our little gang for a potluck dinner.  As we ate, we all discussed how happy we were to be in a cozy home with good friends instead of corralled on a cold New York City street with strangers and porta-potties. At midnight, we gathered round to count down for the big drop.  Happy 2011! 

The Six Days of Christmas

On Christmas Eve, we hosted Matt’s parents for dinner and a gift exchange.  I had had a hard time deciding what to cook for dinner until I saw that prime rib was on sale at Harris Teeter, and knowing that was a favorite of Matt’s, decided to go with that.  The day before, I emailed my Dad to ask for directions since it was my first time cooking prime rib.

Or so I thought, until a few days later when I looked back at a post from Christmas last year and saw that was my first time cooking prime rib.

Not only that, but the battery in my meat thermometer died again this year.

Or more likely, I haven’t used it since then.

I don’t know why but 2010 seems to have gone so fast.  Maybe because there weren’t as many hugely significant events this year as last year (2009: buying a house, getting a dog, graduating from med school.)  When I think back on 2010, things like California in March, or going to Utah in January, or running my half in September all seem to have transpired in just a few weeks time.  In fact, it seems like Christmas 2009 was just here, and yet somehow the calendar tells me it was a full 365 days ago.  When I was looking back on last year’s post (and discovering that my memory is not so sharp), I felt like I was reading something I had just written a few days ago. 

Anyways, I’ll save those musings for my year end review post.

I didn’t attempt to make homemade yeast rolls again this year, but otherwise the menu seemed to be quite similar from last year’s: roasted asparagus, roasted sweet potatoes, salad and rolls.  I guess I have a go-to Christmas menu now.  (No one seems to be complaining…)

I also added a new dessert to my repertoire: jam cake.  I had never heard of jam cake, but Matt’s Dad had asked me a few weeks before Christmas if I knew how to make it and said it was something his Mom always had at Christmas, so I set off on a mission to make it.  Matt enlisted the help of his Dad’s former next door neighbor, and she sent us a recipe via Facebook.  Using that recipe, and a few iterations from ones found online to make a brown sugar glaze (heaven), I made jam cake.

I was so excited for my big reveal…. until I learned that Matt’s Aunt Paige had also made jam cake the night before!  She had come across a recipe in a cookbook, so we’ll have to compare notes later.  Anyways, it wasn’t quite as exciting or nostalgic as I had hoped, but Matt’s Dad seemed pleased to have a second crack at it.  After dinner, we did a gift exchange with Matt’s parents and sent them home with hugs for Nanta and Pa, and of course, the remainder of the jam cake. 

Christmas Day turned out to be rather quiet and uneventful.  Matt and Buddy snoozed for most of the morning, so I did laundry and cleaned the house, just like a regular Saturday!

After Matt went to work, I was feeling sort of low that it was Christmas and I wasn’t really doing anything Christmas-y so after far too long reading about other people’s Christmas on Facebook, I shut down the computer and picked up one of my favorite books, Two From Galilee.

Matt had been given this book from Nanta a few years ago, and I stumbled upon it when we were packing him up to move in together.  It’s the story of Christmas, but it’s told from the perspective of Mary and Joseph.  I remember picking it up to read one night when I was looking for something to read before bed, and becoming totally transfixed.  I never had really given much consideration to what Mary and Joseph must have experienced.  I think about the stigma that’s attached to unwed, teen mothers today and imagine that it must have been a thousand-fold worse for Mary.  And for Joseph, to have believed that she hadn’t been unfaithful to him and to stand by her, was incredibly courageous, and then the way he falls in love with his infant son despite it not being “his” is so endearing.  The story moved me the first time I read it, so I decided that it was the perfect way for me to remember that while there’s Christmas (celebrating with family, opening gifts, eating sticky buns), there is also December 25th: the birthday of Jesus.  We celebrated Christmas with Matt’s family on the 24th, and were going to celebrate with mine on the 28th, so this ended up being a perfect reminder of what December 25th is really all about.

My parents and brother arrived Sunday evening, after a harrowing 12 hour drive through some major snowstorms.  We had a nice dinner together, and sadly, an early evening as I had to go to work the next day.  Katie and Dylan arrived on Tuesday, and when I got home from work, we kicked off our Claffey Christmas.  It was an odd mash-up of traditions: Dad wearing the Santa hat handing out gifts one by one (although we always claim he does this to save all of his for the end), opening our stockings, getting a new pair of PJs, laughing and making fun of each other.  But there was much that was untraditional: for starters, that we were celebrating at night time and took a break when dinner was ready.  (Prime Rib, round 2.)  Instead of our breakfast Bloody Mary’s, we had vino and beers that were kept cold in the snow drift on our back deck.  And of course, that we were at our house instead of home in New York in our living room.  But the most important pieces were there: we were all seven together, celebrating Christmas and Dad got a Dilbert calendar.

My favorite gift was to my parents from all us kids.  At home, there’s a picture of the 3 of us – Michael, Katie and I – on the mantel that was taken in 2003.  It’s a nice picture, although Katie doesn’t like it because it was during her Barbie-blonde hair and super thin eye brow stage.  Guess I wouldn’t have wanted a picture from my senior year of high school captured forever on our parent’s wall either: my Fiona Apple middle part hair and penchant for tube tops were no better.  Anyways, my mom has been saying for the last 2 years that she wanted an updated picture, now that Matt and Dylan were part of our family.  (Well, to be honest, Dylan still has 6 more months to decide if this is in his best interest.)  So I enlisted the help of Jamie over Thanksgiving, and us kids snuck off to do a little photo shoot.  Jamie was a trooper, because it was dark outside and there were five of us to round up.  But with a heavy dose of patience, a good use of flash and a little photoshop to lighten, we got a good shot and had it blown up on canvas and framed to give to my parents.  Here’s the pictures we used.  And my favorite, an outtake.

On Wednesday, Mom made her traditional sticky buns and we tried to create some order out of the wrapping paper chaos.  Matt hit the slopes for some snowboarding on Wednesday, so the rest of the clan got ready to head down to Charlotte to spend the rest of the week since I was still working.  We hit the road at the same time, and I waved good-bye to them as I took the exit for 40-East and they went 40-West.  I got a little knot in my throat as I watched them drive away in the rearview mirror, because the holidays were officially over. 

Fast as they got here, the holidays seemed to go by even faster.  I’m thankful that both sets of parents, Matt and mine, were accommodating to our crazy work schedules (mine was the unforgiving one this year!) and were willing to make the trip to see us, or celebrate on non-traditional days.  It was nice to extend our celebrations out over almost a week, and sure helped delay the onset of post holiday blues for a couple extra days.  (Although it does make for one long blog post!)

Merry Christmas, ya’ll.  Hope that no matter what day(s) you celebrated, you were with loved ones!

White Christmas

We actually had a White Christmas here in North Carolina!  I couldn’t believe it when I looked out the window to see snow falling in the mid afternoon… and then it just kept snowing and snowing.  Around dusk, I packed up my camera and Buddy and drove over to Old Salem to shoot some photos of the lovely snow with the Christmas decorations up.  It was quiet and hushed outside, but through windows I could see families gathering, fireplaces light up and Christmas trees winking.  A perfect Christmas evening.

Don We Now Our Totally Awesome Tacky Apparel

Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la…

(Yes I did sing that out loud to make sure I got the right amount of la’s.)

This was our 3rd year hosting our Tacky Christmas Sweater party and each year our friends keep upping the ante with more creative and tackier costumes.  There’s something about celebrating with your closest friends all looking goofier than the next that brings out the merry, merry in everyone.

This year’s oh so stylish looks included: a fu man chu….

an Uncle Eddie get up complete with a homemade dickie and Jamie rocking a turtleneck that I think she went back to 1994 to borrow…

guys proudly sporting vests with festive Christmas kittens, homemade sweaters, and blinking bow ties and reindeer antlers…

a candy cane cane….

… homemade sweaters (Anne getting the award for most time invested in creating her outfit), and of course, our guest of honor, 3 week old Ethan sporting his adorable reindeer outfit. 

My friend Jenny even made the trip all the way from Raleigh to rock out in her Christmas duds and be festive with us.

Matt and I had a great time hosting, and were so thankful that so many of our friends were able to coordinate their residency schedules to have the night off. 

Here’s all the ladies sporting their fabulous apparel.  Sometimes I worry that in another 20 years, we won’t be wearing this outfits ironically. 

And huuuuuge special thanks to Jamie, who took all these pictures and allowed me to borrow them.  Because here’s the only picture that was on my camera the day after the party:

In my defense, the Swedish Fish were pretty important to the success of the party.

Merry Christmas, friends!  Hope your season is merry and bright, and hopefully just a tad silly too.

The Most Wonderful Time

I just love walking through my house seeing little touches of Christmas.  Whenever my house is decorated for the season, I wish it looked like this all year round…. but then it wouldn’t be as special, would it?

Giving Thanks

When I was little, I really wasn’t that big a fan of Thanksgiving.  Probably because it couldn’t hold a candle to that other holiday that comes 4 weeks later that just so happens to involve a whole lot of PRESENTS, and while I’m a big fan of mashed potatoes I could really care less about turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce.  I know, I was a regular Thanksgiving Scrooge.  The older I get though, the more I appreciate that Thanksgiving is one of the few times a year that is really sacred for families.   I don’t know many people who have entire extended families sharing zip codes anymore, so having that time reserved for family get togethers is more important than ever and I’m pleased that despite the busy, work-work-work culture we live in, most businesses continue to give people the time off to gather together with their loved ones.  Of course, we have the added challenge of the emergency room residency schedule that doesn’t always allow for traditional time off!  For instance, this year Matt was working 5:30pm-5:30am the entire week of Thanksgiving, with a day off on Saturday and a 24 hour shift on Sunday.  Needless to say, when he wasn’t working, he was sleeping.  Both of our families have been really awesome about working around our crazy schedule, whether it’s meant celebrating our holidays on days other than the actual holiday-day or making the trip to come see us when we don’t have enough time off to get there. 

This year my parents drove down to Charlotte, where we celebrated Thanksgiving at Katie and Dylan’s home.  I have to confess that Katie and my mom did pretty much all the cooking, while I took full advantage of a lazy day off and read, napped, walked my doggy around Katie’s cute uptown neighborhood, and chatted with my fam.  (Don’t be fooled by that picture of Katie sleeping – that’s after hours of food prep!)  I did contribute a pecan pie, so I wasn’t a total culinary mooch.  Our meal was delicious, and I was super sad to have to leave my family Thursday night but given that either route home from Charlotte involves passing a mall I decided it was in my best interest not to wait until Friday to make the drive.

On Friday, my hubby slept off another night shift and I used the free day off to get caught up on some housework and projects.  Saturday my family came up to Winston, and Matt, Dylan and my Dad spent a chilly day on the golf course while I recruited Mom, Katie and Michael to help me lug Tupperware tubs of Christmas decor out of the attic.  Lucky them.  After the boys got back, the children embarked on a secret mission to obtain my parent’s Christmas present (not telling) and then we reconvened at Riverburch for a yummy, wine-y, happy family dinner together.  It was hard to say good-bye to my fam after what felt like an incredibly short weekend, but I’m thankful to know that they’ll be in just a few weeks for Christmas and that we’ll also get to spend some time with Matt’s family in a few weeks too. 

And with that, the holiday season has kicked into high gear!  Somehow I think that 4 weeks away other holiday is going to be here before I know it.  Happy Thanksgiving, ya’ll!

Christmas Morning

Even though we celebrated Christmas on the 27th, it felt exactly like Christmas with all our regular traditions: open stockings first, then eat sticky buns, then start it on the presents.  Dad passes out the presents, which means he always ends up with a huge stash left at the end.  Sometime in the midst of present opening, someone starts making Bloody Mary’s or Raspberry Bellini’s.  Immediately after opening presents, my brother falls asleep in the wrappings and my parents fix BLT’s or “special eggs.”  (I don’t know why we call them that, they’re scrambled eggs with mustard.)  Turns out it matters not what the date is, but where you are, who you’re with and what you do.   Merry Christmas, ya’ll.

Cline Christmas

Figuring out how to balance two family Christmases, separated by 700 miles, is a difficult task to begin with, but the addition of a less than traditional emergency room work schedule adds just another wrinkle. I think it’s safe to say rare will be the year that we actually celebrate Christmas on the 25th, from this point forward. Fortunately, we were able to work out an early Christmas with Matt’s family traveling up to see us on Sunday – which meant, my first time hosting an official holiday! With the in-laws! Ok, I say that as if the underlying message is “pressure’s on!” but truth be told, my fam-in-law are the sweetest, kindest people ever and even if I burnt the entire meal, they’d probably be all “But your napkins rings look perfect!” (And I’m not just saying that because my dad-in-law reads this. Hi Dad!)

I had fun planning the menu, trying to do a fairly traditional holiday dinner, but not get too in over my head. My favorite thing to make was the homemade yeast rolls. They were super easy, but I felt very Pioneer Woman tossing flour all over the place and pounding rolls into little balls to drop into a big ol’ greasy pan. I won’t go all play by play of the food on you here (holding myself back) but the rest of the meal was quite scrumpty too.

Okay, wait indulge me one more… for my male readers… I’ll mention the meat. My first time making a prime rib! It was perfect. I got a little nervous when I realized my meat thermometer, which has worked faithfully for four years, broke. TODAY. Of all days. Couldn’t have broken when it was just me and Matt and I might be worried about a little trichinosis from undercooked bbq, ooooh no, thermometer you had to break on my very first Holiday Dinner with The In Laws. (Well… at least my napkin rings were pretty, right?) Without any other choice, I just followed the timing and temperature in my recipe (from Everyday Food) and prayed for the best. I breathed a sigh of a relief when Matt started carving and the meat was not still moo-ing. Not moo-ing, and very very tasty. Success! Thank you oven gods!

After we ate, we gathered together to exchange presents and even Buddy was able to get in the goods. (Look at that tongue… Micah knows the way to a puppy dog’s heart.)

I ran into a little snafu handling Matt’s gift. I had gotten him part of one of those heavy duty Craftsmen tool chest, which was very kindly loaded into *his* trunk by the Sears sales guy. I got home and went to get it out to wrap and it, um, well… looks like I need to go back to doing some 30-Day Shred. Couldn’t even move the darn thing. Soooo I wrapped it right in the trunk and prayed that he would have no reason to go into his trunk for the next 2 days. When it came time for unwrapping his gift, I forced my family to tromp out to the garage together. Nothing like the smell of gasoline to get you in a festive mood, right?

We so enjoyed hosting our family… although I must say, I have a whole new appreciation for all that my grandmothers, aunts and mother who have hosted many a holiday (or other family gathering) have gone through before me. The time it takes to get the meal ready, your house all spiffy and smelling nice, and the insane timing of cooking everything…good grief. It’s enough to make a girl put Papa J’s on her speed dial. So if I haven’t said it before, here’s another resounding thank you to all the “been there, done that” women in my families. But I understand why we do it – it is so worth it to have your family gathered around a meal you made, relaxing in your home that you take care of, and appreciating their time together. Maybe the novelty of this will wear off after I’ve done it year after year, but as for now, as 1950s as this might sound, I truly do enjoy homemaking. (Though I hesitate to put this in print…I have a feeling someone might reference this post when I complain the next time I have to vacuum up dog hair tumbleweeds.)

On that lovely note, I leave you with this… Merry Christmas, from the Cline family. May your meat be cooked, your presents clock in at less than 75 pounds and your family be together this holiday season!

Lovefeast

The smell of beeswax lingering on your hands. The overly sweet coffee. The hush of a crowded chapel waiting in anticipation for the opening chords of “O Come All Ye Faithful.”

This is my favorite way to start the Christmas season. Lovefeast provided a welcome respite from studying for finals during college, and it has been a Christmas tradition for Matt and I since the year we got engaged the day before the ceremony. (I confess that that year I sat through the traditional Christmas hymns ogling the sparkly thing on my left hand. Have you ever seen what chapel lights can do to a diamond?!) It’s easy, ahem, to get caught up in the more consumerist side of the holidays. The focus on Black Friday sales, on trying to avoid mall crowds, and finding just the right blow-up holiday decoration have become entrenched in our holiday season.

What I usually get most excited about at Christmas is spending time with my families, our Christmas morning tradition of sticky buns and Bloody Mary’s, evenings sipping hot cocoa by the twinkly lights on our mantel and finding just the right gift for my Dad, who hasn’t gotten overly excited about any of our gift since the late ’90s when we all just burned him mixed CDs.

These are all wonderful things about Christmas, and things that many people hold dear – family, food, giving of gifts. But I often forget that while those are very special traditions to me, that’s not the whole picture of Christmas.

There’s a moment in the service when the lights go dim and the ushers arrive at the end of each aisle with a lit candle. Person to person, candle to the candle, the chapel becomes full of a warm, hushed glow in a matter of minutes. It gives me goose bump.

My mind always goes back to my favorite quote at this moment, by Marianne Williamson.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

As we touch our candles from right to left, I always think of the end of that quote – “as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” I think about how our dark world would be so vividly light up if each one of us just shared a little bit more of their light with every they came into contact with.

Easy to remember in the warm glowing chapel as “Joy to the World” swirls around you. Difficult to remember in the day to day of life that involves work stress, cranky customer service reps, bad traffic, late fees, tense relationships and shouting heads on every major station.

Letting your light shine so that others might do the same – this is what Christ was born to do. Celebrating Christmas is a remembrance of the birth of the greatest life that walked among us, that made a point to gently touch touch his light to everyone he came in contact with.

“I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.” – John 12:46

Merry Christmas. Let your light shine brightly and boldly.

Traditions

What are the holidays for if not shaking the dust off the favorite family traditions? In our family, for instance, a favorite tradition of ours is that someone (Katie*) will always get mad while we’re playing card games and storm off crying. See? Now that’s what family is all about.

This year for Thanksgiving we had some new family traditions brought into the mix, as well as revisiting some old ones. For the first time ever, we didn’t celebrate the holidays at home; my parents and brother actually flew to NC for a below-the-mason-dixon line Thanksgiving. Much to my father’s chagrin, there were no coon skin hats or sawed off shotguns involved.

But despite the new locale, many traditions were kept in place. For instance, Michael turned everyone out and played video games for 12 hours straight and Katie sat on the couch and read. No one said family togetherness had to involve interacting with each other, did they?

My Fam: Social Butterflies.

On Thursday, the family had their “traditional” turkey meal down at Katie’s house in Charlotte while Matt and I spent Thanksgiving with his family in High Point. On Friday, my family descended upon our house for extravagant meal #2. (#3 for Matt + I, if you were counting. My skinny jeans certainly were.) Dad and I went and picked out a tenderloin together, which he and Matt did on the grill. I made a yummy warm spinach salad from Ellie Krieger’s cookbook and stovetop green beans with glazed pecans. Not sure whether those count as Yankee beans or not… stovetop = Yankee, but the involvement of butter + pecans = southern. Could it be that I finally found the green beans that please everyone? We’ll just have to call them Yankee Belle beans. After a near miss when we thought Teeter had run out of canned pumpkins, Dad made his traditional pumpkin pie which coincidentally I am having for breakfast today. Highly nutritious.

I will desperately try to refrain from posting pictures of everything I ate all weekend. I’m prone to do that, you know.

You’ll have spinach and you’ll like it, gosh darn it.

Saturday my mom and I got our hands messy making our family’s traditional cut out Christmas cookies. This is my Grandma Claffey’s recipe that my mom has been making ever since I can remember. However, this year I implemented a new change: I made Mom switch from margarine to butter. I think she was a little nervous, since she’s probably been making them exactly as Grandma’s recipe calls for, oh, 31 years and hey, it would kinda suck to mess up 4 dozen cookies just because I’m a little bit afraid of trans fat. (Ok, a lot bit afraid.) Fortunately, for me and everyone else’s arteries, they were delicious with butter.

I mean, it’s butter. You can’t go wrong, right?

My mom would probably like me to point out that after cutting out the first two dozen, I went and took a nap on the couch while she finished up the last two and then frosted all of them.

Moms are champs, aren’t they?

My brother, Mom and I went to see Precious on Saturday night. (Katie had taken Dad back down to Charlotte for a flight to Florida for a golf trip and Matt was on call.) Precious was INCREDIBLE. I don’t think I can do it justice to describe it, so I’ll just leave at this: go see it. Don’t expect to feel warm n’ fuzzy after leaving it, but expect to be powerfully moved. Maybe the best film I’ve seen in 2009. Don’t tell Edward and Bella.

On Sunday I took the remainder of the fam back down to Charlotte, and Mom, Katie and I went shopping at Trader Joe’s. Not having a Trader Joe’s is one of two faults I consider Winston-Salem to have. (The other is Willard’s cabs.) I loaded up on Prosecco (duh), dried every-kinda-fruit-imaginable, tons of fish, tubs of hummus and the best roasted balsamic butter veggies in. the. world. Not kidding. (PS, I like food. Did you notice?) The rest of Sunday I spent sitting in traffic on I-85 and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

It was SUCH a great weekend having time to spend with both of our families. My favorite parts of the weekend were having Matt’s family over before we went to the big lunch and just having some quieter time with them, waking up every morning to have coffee with my momma and dragging my sister out to the field behind our house to do a photo shoot so I could practice using different camera settings. (She won’t let me post the pictures, but I might anyways. I’ll wait a day or two to see if she reads this.) The weekend went by so fast, but I have a feeling December is going to slip right on past us and we’ll be packing for Rochester before I know it! The holidays seem to do that to ya – take forever to get here, then just whoosh right on by. What’s with that?

The Holidays: Party Naps Recommended.