Well 2005 is now nothing but a distant memory, but more on that in a minute.
Dave and Mel's visit is also nothing more than a distant memory. It was a typical visit. Christmas dinner was with my Mom on Friday night. As I have mentioned my Mom tends to go overboard... well with just about everything from gifts to food. This year I was cooking so had some tiny bit of control over the whole thing. We had agreed to having roast beef this year since we'd all enjoyed one turkey dinner at the very least over Christmas. So roast it would be and Mom offered to take care of buying the meat and I would take on the cooking end of things.
Mom had warned us all that this year she was making cut backs in the Christmas department. Secretly, while I hoped she was serious, I really didn't hold out much hope. Of course all things being equal, Mom scaled back is still pretty overwhelming. Well I am proud to say that she did show some amazing restraint, but she isn't 100% reformed.
So back to the roast. Thursday morning she shows up to visit with Dave and Mel and to drop off the roast before she had to go into work. She told me that she would be stopping at her meat shop of choice to pick Abby up some more keilbasa since Abby had devoured the gross of it that Mom had given us Christmas Eve. Well Mom rolled in here with 10 tons of keilbasa. I had just managed to get the sausage smell out of my house, fridge and daughter and here we go again. It smelt like a smokehouse in here the second she walked in the door. I should have gotten nervous when she asked for help to bring "the rest" in. Endless grocery bags began appearing all over my kitchen.
Packed in these bags was bacon of every description, breakfast sausage, eggs, bbq-able sausage, bread, croissants, enough food to feed several families several breakfasts. Oh and let us not forget the roast. It was a roast of epic proportions. It surely must have been carved from some long frozen woolly mammoth because I'm pretty certain cows don't come that big. It was without a doubt the largest single cut of meat I have ever laid eyes on. Weighing in at just a tad under 13 pounds, that's only 2 pounds less than Abby was at 1 year old.
Lucky for me it just fit into my crock pot. I always cook roasts in my crock pot. Never in my household running career have I ever cooked a roast any other way. My fail proof recipe is this... frozen roast in the crock pot with 2 cups of water, 1/2 cup of soy sauce and a tsp of garlic powder. Put all that on in the morning, set the crock pot to low and leave it until dinner. Perfect every time and very yummy gravy to boot, just thicken it with a bit of flour and water.
So the morning of the great grocery drop we all ate like kings and then Mike and I set to work trying to fit everything into our fridge. Somehow we managed, don't ask me how. All that keilbasa was a great fridge alram. Everytime somebody opened the door the smell of sausage overpowered the whole house. Of course after a while you couldn't really tell since they were all eating sausage, myself excluded... not a big fan. So eventually the house just smelt like sausage 24/7.
Come Friday morning Mike and I get up and start getting the roast ready for the crock pot. I mix up my magic recipe, but there wasn't much room for the liquid to go in as well, but I managed to shoe horn the roast in the pot, so I wasn't going to complain. Two hours later I was having a bit of a lie down, Dave and Mel were out shopping, Abby watching a movie and Mike was messing around with the latest acquistion to his RC car garage and Michael happened to notice that our roast beast was expanding. To the point that the lid was off the crock pot. Now the lid being on the crock pot is a very important part of the cooking process so clearly the crock pot was not going to work out. There was some mild panic as Mike got out our turket roasting pan, the only thing the roast would fit into and I quickly perused my Betty Crocker cookbook to try and figure out how to cook this roast in the oven.
Well one crisis averted, and a new one looming. Did I mention that our microwave died Christmas Eve. Not completely, but it was defintley on life support and ready to kick the bucket at any moment. I was going to make squash with dinner, but we were afraid to use the microwave and the oven was stuffed full of roast so squash was off the menu. The yummy chocolate sour cream cake I was planning on making for dessert was also out. Lots of menu changes all of the sudden. Mike and I finally settled on mashed potatoes, broccoli with cheese sauce (sour cream and cheese sauce yum!), corn, pierogies and buns. And horror of horrors I bought a coffee cake for dessert, but Mel and I had homemade cookies between us so I like to think that evened things out a bit. Dinner of course was more that lovely, if I do say so myself. Mel thankfully took over my most hated jobs.. peeling potatoes and chopping vegetables. Just to finish my day off prefectly the microwave gave up the ghost completely while trying to cook the corn. It also started to smell suspiciously like smoke so out in the yard it went. Mike finally got to realize his life long dream of throwing a kitchen appliance.
So with all of us stuffed full of dinner Abby said what we'd all been thinking... "Grandma you've got your coat on go get the presents!" Again I should have been nervous when she requested help to bring it all in, but she didn't need too much help. The living room was still pretty packed, but much less so than prevous years. It was a modest Christmas by Mom standards, but we were still more than spoiled. Abby loved her drum set. Mom bought it for her ages ago and has been excited to give it to her. It's a pretty impressive set, not a toy set in anyway. It came with a tuning key and everything. Lucky for us Dave and Mel, the muscial ones in the family, were here to set it up for her. THe first night it was little more than her banging away on them, but this morning Mike and I both noticed she's gotten more controlled and rythmatic in her playing. I have no musical talent or ability at all, but Abby seems to be a rather musically inclined child. She picks up songs from the radio pretty quickly and has a fairly large library of favourites already. She also sings different words to a song and makes up her own songs to sing. She keeps saying she's going to be a rock star so who knows, maybe she will be. After her first try on her drums stopped playing stood up and started bowing, "thank you, thank you". We have no idea where she picked that up. Before we know it she'll be practicing her autograph.
So another year has past with lots to be thankful for. A healthy pregnancy, Abby being toilet trained, Abby getting rid of her sucky, having a reliable vehicle, having Michael and such an amazing family. Another year begins with much to look forward to. A new baby, even if we can't decide what to name him or her, our 10th anniversary, a year at home with my babies, Abby starting school and so much more we haven't even realized yet.
It all seems such a long way off, but will all be here in no time I know. A Happy New Year to all of you!
We spent a very quiet New Year's this year. Mike was positive I wouldn't make it until midnight, but I surprised him. We didn't have plans to go out and didn't make plans to have anyone over. We had leftovers for dinner. What a pain in the ass leftovers are with no microwave to warm them up. We ended up making plates for ourselves and then heating them up in the oven for 20 minutes or so. Abby watched cartoons and we put away the last of the gifts until it was her bedtime. Mike watched some of the American Chopper marathon on Discovery and then we met on the couch to watch Hitch. We had borrowed it from Jeff ages ago and finally got around to watching. It was a good movie, not as funny as I was expecting, but enjoyable. And that was our New Year's. I know we're party animals!
Finally, Dave has suggested to me that I get myself a Flickr account for sharing my photos. I think I annoyed him with the bunch of Chirstmas pictures I emailed him last week. This is my first attempt at using it. I uploaded some pictures from Dave and Mel's visit this past week. I think you should be able to view them if you click on that adorable picture of Abby up at the top there. Enjoy!
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