Christmas and New Year's Texas Style

We spent Christmas and New Year's in Texas and loved being there for M's baptism. Uncle Zach spoke, Grandpa Bond (Michael) spoke, I played the piano, Morgan conducted and Nathan baptized his boy. A family gig if there ever was one. And such a sweet event. Lots of Denneys there. And Martin had his other grandmother there and two very cute grown-up cousins there from his dad's side of the family. Afterwards we had carrot cake from an old recipe Morgan had with Aunt Naomi in full flower as aunt extraordinaire. Veritably scrumptious!

We swam on Boxing Day! Morgan and Nathan heated up the pool. We had so much fun.  That day was cool but it was never really cold there. And one day it got up to 70 degrees. Such nice, nostalgic Christmas memory for me. I remember Christmases in shorts in  Louisiana. My kind of deal.

It was a great trip as a visit with Momma and Dad and Michael's sister Katie and husband John were part of the trip. But mostly, it was playing with grandbabies and much needed rest for Michael.

Morgan and Nathan treated us to the Dallas Symphony New Year's Eve concert and we even got to drive his slick car. So posh. We walked next door and toured as much of the new opera hall as we could see. It was such a disappointment to have had tickets for so long to the opera and then have to give up our priority seating in the new hall. The symphony was lovely and the young conductor was just charming.

My eternally young parents. Mom is a fashion trendsetter at their retirement village.

Michael's fabulous sister Katie. She's added so much happiness to our lives.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip and it was hard to come back to our home in Pennsylvania. Moving back to Texas has become such a high priority.


We have tons of adorable pix of the grandkids and I've posted a lot of them on my Facebook page.

And take note: The picture at left is both of us at our chubbiest. We are on a diet and are doing great!  New, slimmer pictures to come.

Christmas Treats

Here we come a-waddling! Why is Christmas so tied up with food? Michael and I both could stand to shed a few pounds, but it is the holidays after all.

Firstly, the Christmas party. It was really fun. That's our bishop in the red shirt. Man, has he had a rough few months with all the extra work and strain the flood brought to our area. Nice to see him a little relaxed.

I love living here and I love our ward, but honestly, the folks up here cannot make food like Texans do. It's probably a case of not better, but different. But I do miss Southern cooking. I always looked for the other Texan's food when we had a ward potluck. But she's moved on.

Speaking of food, I always make a little something for Michael's employees. This year, I made cranberry bread again due to popular demand. They came out quite nicely. Recipe on request.

And the inevitable and important sugar cookies. Even though there are just two of us, I needed to make these. So I mustered up a five-year-old to help me. A new addition to our ward family, her family came back home from the Midwest. I think she said about five times "This is fun!". She had a grand time, loved the dinosaur cookie cutters pulled out of Kroger peanut butter jars many, many years ago, and made a set of cookies for her family. She especially thought about the boys which is surprising because she very frankly told me that they give her a hard time some days.
We're off on Christmas Day to see our family in Texas. And there will be more food there, I am sure. And I certainly hope there's some Mexican food in my immediate future.

The Grandparent Tree

It has been very hard to be away from the grandchildren so much of the time. When Catherine was tiny and so far away, I saw a precious little ornament with her name on it in the Denton mall. Buying it and putting it on a tiny little tree I bought made me feel closer to her. Now there are ten tiny ornaments on our grandparents tree. And it's just ten times as hard now to be living far away from them.

It's funny how the personalities match so many of these kiddos even though I picked their ornaments out when they were all infants.

I realized that the grandchildren have never seen our very cool little grandparent tree so what follows are the photos for them. There are a few extra ornaments just for fun but I've included a close-up for each of the grandchildren (not in any particular order) so they can see their ornament:

The grandparents tree

Closer look

For Seth who brings joy to so many folks.

The first one for Catherine that made me think up the tree in the first place. 

Martin, our only Texas grandchild until Miles came along!

For Joseph who is all boy, a couple of train cars

Mischievous Vivi

Juliet who got oodles of the Denney's Irish charm

For cute and sweet Miles

The Littlest Angel who just happens to be Penny

Eli with a pinata in honor of his Mexican heritage

Eliza, our redheaded fairy princess.

Happy Holidays!

Which holidays you ask? In the Wilkes-Barre area, it doesn't matter! Any holiday will do!

Perhaps I have already blogged about the fact that folks don't take down their Christmas decorations here. On the way home from my Boy Scout good deed of the week, I decided to see how many holiday decorations I could spot. Let me put this in perspective. Yesterday was March 2nd and a very temperate 45 degrees. Where I grew up in Louisiana, March was the month when you started thinking about which weekend you could start waterskiing.

And up here in Wilkes-Barre land, Christmas was everywhere. Fake poinsettias in gardens, red and green lights strung on porches, Christmas wreaths on doors. However, this does not stop the flow of holiday decorations. First, the obvious St. Patrick's Day ones. There are lots of Irish around here and the Scranton St. Patrick's Day parade is a huge deal. There's a smaller parade here in Wilkes-Barre as well. So I saw lots of sparkly green shamrocks and even a house decorated with orange white and green banners-a political as well as a holiday statement. Then I spotted a house with an Easter wreath complete with colored eggs.

I was on a roll. (Excuse the pun.) Even though it's been a few weeks, I decided to look for Valentine's Day and hit the jackpot. I found a house that had both Christmas and Valentine's Day decorations on it. Then I got distracted. I hadn't been this route for a while and noticed that the huge lake at Frances Slocum park was still completely iced over. I spotted a guy sitting in the middle of the lake in the very temperate weather, ice fishing. 

I thought I had maxed out the decorations but as I was turning down a road that leads to our church building, I spotted it. The prize of the day.  An autumn scarecrow, probably put up before Halloween!

Just minutes from the house, I spotted some red white and blue sparkly decorations on a door post. I know that patriotism knows no season, but maybe they are just getting a jump on the Fourth of July?

Notice anything different?

Notice anything different about the living room? Okay, I know the poinsettia is a weird decoration for Valentine's Day, but ours always last and last and they are red, after all.

But how about that big red box? I wondered if Michael would spot it. Ha, ha. But something strange happened. Those who know the man intimately are aware that he will not shake a box. So he goes right up to this big box and starts to lay hands on it and says, "Can I shake it?" And the answer is no. Because of what it is and the way it's wrapped, it cannot budge from the coffee table until the moment of unwrapping. I figured I wouldn't have to tell him. Then he sticks out his finger and budges it. He absolutely cannot resist messing with it.

So I asked. "Why do you want to shake this one? You never shake packages!" Truly, his Christmas presents stay untouched for weeks.

He says, "It's so big!"

You have to understand that Michael likes big things. He owns the biggest bass tuba ever made. He fell in love with the Big Boy locomotive on display in Scranton. He zeroes in on the basses in a string orchestra.

Now what I have never understood is why he married me. I weighed 85 pounds soaking wet on our wedding day and I top out at 5'2". Maybe it was my big vocabulary?

Publish Post

It ain't over til it's over

One of the great things about living here in the Wyoming Valley is that Christmas lasts a long time. Folks here love to decorate their houses with lights and put them up even before Thanksgiving. (They just take down the Halloween ones and replace them with Christmas.) And many of the lights are still up. Our neighbor's are all blue. They're new this year. The first time they lit them up, I felt like I was having a UFO experience.

Yesterday was Epiphany which is the day that many Orthodox Christians have their Christmas. And there are tons of Orthodox Churches of every type around here. So they're still celebrating. And check this video of the wildest Nativity scene in America. My cousin found it online. It's in Plymouth where my dad was born and is evidently still running today. I just found out about it yesterday and couldn't go since I had a rehearsal. I'm not sure whether Michael and I will go tonight. I'm afraid I might have a seizure from sensory overload.

So no worries that my tree is still up. Or that the wreath is still on the door. One of my  lovely daughters told me the other day that Christmas was magic at our house when she was growing up. That was the most inspiring compliment I've received in a long time. I cannot take all the credit. Some of the magic came from Michael and his family traditions. Michael's best man contributed the recipe for anise biscotti. It's a family recipe and he asked us never to give it out. But we didn't make them every year. A recipe that takes more than ten cups of flour is a hassle. But these cookies in the photo look very much like them. This is a picture of an Italian bakery in the Reading Station Market in downtown Philly.

So if you need a little Christmas, come on down. We're not done here yet. And we're still doing Christmas music at church on Sunday because my soprano finally came back after being out of town for the past three Sundays. If you're Grinchy or Scroogy, I'd avoid Wilkes-Barre for at least a couple more weeks.

Cinderella shoes at Macy's

While I was trying on shoes at Macy's, Michael took a shot to show what chaos there was at the store that day. I really, really need a pair of brown or beige heels. The pair I wore to GL's wedding wore out (she has five kids now so that's no surprise) and if I wear the pair of Bandolino's I bought to replace them, my feet are bleeding before I get home (this is no exaggeration.) So, unbelievably, they had dozens of pairs of shoes in my size (5 1/2) at Macy's and most of them were brown. You have to understand that most stores don't even carry one pair of shoes in my size. They start at 6. I tried on several pairs but did so quickly, trying hard not to bore Michael. I was looking at the sale rack exclusively, of course. He took pictures of the shoe racks which showed what pandemonium there had been that day at the store. Then Michael handed me a shoe and said, "Try this one on." What a mistake! I don't wear pumps any more because my foot is narrow and I can't find any that fit. I always buy shoes with a strap of some kind. But these fit perfectly. I felt just like Cinderella when they put that glass slipper on her foot. Why was it a mistake? Because they were $89.00 on sale. I have never paid that much for a pair of shoes. Ever. Don't get me wrong. I almost always buy well-made shoes because they fit me better but I always buy them at rock bottom sale prices. I did pay (or Dad paid) $40.00 for a pair of knee boots in 1970. They were beige and I wore them on my honeymoon. I loved those boots. But really. $89.00 for a pair of shoes? What if I wore them twice and they stretched out and didn't fit any more? What if I nicked the toe? So I didn't buy them. I have no real regrets but if they go on a really good sale online after Christmas, those babies are mine!