Category: 2020

The day after Christmas, John and I left for Texas (more on that in subsequent posts). As we neared southern Texas, Christmas disappeared, and all of winter went with it. We had 70 degree weather in Houston! Plus, my in-laws down in Houston don’t celebrate Christmas, so their houses didn’t have Christmas lights and Christmas trees and other remnants of the holiday. It was just suddenly not Christmas anymore at all.

Then toward the middle of January, we arrived back home and I still had my tree up, and my decorations, and my luminarias – everything was still set up. And it was cold! Christmas past came back to haunt me!

I now have the tree down at least, but the the decorations are all still piled on my dining room table waiting to be packed away, and the luminarias are still set up along my entryway.

So in the spirit of not yet having put Christmas 2019 to rest, here are my Christmas morning photos, only 3 weeks late.

Laura and Alex came to visit! Our oldest dog, Kai, has learned through the years that the person with the Santa hat hands out presents, even to dogs. Alex couldn’t figure out why Kai was following him around and sitting in his begging pose. It’s the Santa hats!

Confusingly for the dogs, we had 3 people in Santa hats, although John’s wasn’t a convincing red and white. (That hat says Vikings, in case you didn’t notice.)

And we had one of Santa’s elves on the computer – oh, wait, that was Darren.

Laura turned out to be the real Santa.

First we all waited patiently while John called Monica.

Here’s Darren with his patient look.

Kai didn’t wait all that patiently. I don’t know why he chose this present to tear into. Turns out it was just socks!

Finally it’s Kai’s turn!

The other dogs sort of have the hang of it too.

Passing around fancy candy while Kai waits for another present:

Laura seems rather excited by this tin of chocolates! Yeee-aaah!

Here’s John showing Darren his new fishing rod, all ready for our trip to southern Texas.

Darren got a 23andMe kit. The question of whether we were Irish came up, but according to our relatives, we’re actually Scottish (and a whole bunch of other stuff). I have no idea how it’s possible to tell the difference between Irish and Scottish ancestry. There’s only a little spit of cold water between those two countries. And, crucially to Darren – both countries wear kilts! (LOL.)

Laura got Airpods, just what she wanted:

And a beautiful scarf from Pakistan, where Alex had gone biking earlier in the year.

I got a fake computer, lol, it was made of cardboard! Complete with a background picture. It’s a “promise” of a computer at a later date.

Laura has the real thing, so here we’re checking hers out. (Yeah, you can tell who’s the REAL Santa because the real Santa has a REAL computer and the real Santa wears TWO Santa hats at the same time!)

Here’s Darren’s Christmas tree. I’m not quite sure how a nearly dead snippet of jade plant is a Christmas tree. I guess it has an ornament. An ironically appropriate ornament.

Hoping your holiday season was wonderful, and you’re off to a hopeful start to the new year!

I know, you’re all like, “Christmas?!? Wasn’t that last year sometime?” It seems like a long time ago. But here’s the thing – John and I went to Texas the day after Christmas and we’re still there! Or at least I am. He flew to DC for a business trip. And I’m working with my coaching clients like normal, so it’s a working week for us – just not in New Mexico.

Anyway, I’m a bit behind with the blog, yep, good thing I don’t blog for a living!

Laura and Alex came for Christmas. Here they are at the Savoy Bar & Grill.

I barely got my luminarias up in time to welcome them.

On Christmas Eve my friends came by unexpectedly with Christmas cookies and even sang a carol for us!

Notice the tag says to “Kristina & Vikings Fan” lol! Last time they came over John was trying to recruit their son to abandon his parent’s team and root for his!

Usually I don’t even answer the door when I’m not expecting anyone, but I decided to for some reason, and there they were! Singing! And their little boy had practiced a Christmas tongue twister to recite (adorable).

It’s so uncommon for people to just stop by anymore. My first thoughts were, “OMG, is my house clean? Am I presentable?” I was in my leggings and slippers and not even wearing a bra! (But you couldn’t actually tell what may or may not have been underneath my turtleneck and bulky sweater.) I was a bit flustered, but my second thought was, “This is so wonderful! No one does this anymore!”

I was truly very touched and amazed to have friends do something as simple as stop by. I felt so special to have someone actually show up at my house, knowing that I would be happy to see them. This is how neighbors used to be – before we all started hiding behind our computers and locked doors.

Luckily I had an excess of fudge, thanks to my sister who got kind of carried away and sent us 5 pounds of it, so I didn’t have to send my friends away empty handed 😉

That night Laura and Alex went to see the luminarias in Old Town. Here she is getting ready. Turns out they needed umbrellas! I don’t know why it only rains when Laura visits.

Also while they were visiting they went to see the River of Lights show at the biopark. That’s open the whole month of December except the 24th & 25th. If you’ve never seen the River of Lights, you have to go someday. It’s amazing. I didn’t take any pictures when John and I went this year, but here’s some from previous years. We go almost every year.

We bought a small leg of lamb for Christmas, as is our tradition, but we also decided to try a non-meat plant-based substitute. I had recently read an article about several companies who were developing these new meat substitutes, which are apparently significantly better than early tofurkey attempts (which are probably improving as well; I’ve never tried.)

Laura and Alex were coming for Christmas, and Laura is allergic to soy, so this is a non-soy version.

We had masa left over from making tamales, so I decided to make tamale pie. That’s essentially a stew with something like cornbread on top.

Here’s the ingredients.

The green chilies had been roasted and then frozen. I’d just taken them out of the freezer, which is how I managed to prop them up like that for the photo. The bag to the left contains the leftover masa, which we had already mixed with broth and lard (so this wasn’t an actual vegetarian dish – we were just testing out the Beyond Beef).

It seemed to cook up a lot like ground beef, although it didn’t brown quite as much.

It tasted good! We couldn’t really tell that it wasn’t ground beef, at least not when mixed with all the other ingredients.

Next time I’ll have to make an actual vegetarian dish with it! No point using Beyond Beef with pork broth and lard in the masa.

Ok, I don’t usually just repost news, but this is hilarious. https://www.npr.org/2020/01/01/792902987/trapped-cars-faced-new-holiday-travel-menace-tumblegeddon

5 or 6 cars and a semi-truck trapped by tumbleweeds? That’s what happens when you stop. Just drive, people, drive! Keep on chugging, don’t slow down!

Of course to be honest, I’ve never seen that many.

Still a good metaphor for the new year. Don’t let the tumbleweeds stop you! (Or you’re going to end up sitting on a highway for 10 hours.)