So after an incredibly warm fall and Christmas, it finally turned cold. We had a few small flurries and an inch or two here and the children turned hopeful gazes toward my own august self and begged for a snow day. I finally told them that taking a school day off for anything less than a foot of snow was at MY discretion and that white falling from the sky did not automatically justify such a day.  I did set a foot as an automatic default of one foot of snow. 

Last night as we left Cracker Barrel from having dinner with some friends in from out of town, sleet had begun to fall.  It continued through the night interspersed with a small bit of snow and into the morning. My children, knowing better than to turn said hopeful gaze upon me for ICE, instead offered a day of cleaning while being read aloud to.  This was a good compromise, especially since at least four inches of snow was in the forecast later in the day and we had an official ‘Winter Storm Warning’.

By mid morning, we just began ignoring the ‘warning’ part of that notice as the weather had finally begun to look like what I thought living in Illinois would look like in winter when we moved here. The sleet changed to snow at long last and we began to watch the snow accumulate slowly while the birds and squirrels kept braving the driving wind and precipitation to chow down at the feeders we replenished twice during the day. At lunchtime I declared an official snow day and by late afternoon the girls were doing hourly checks on the deck to see how deep it was. We had ten inches four hours ago at their last check, right about dark, and the snow has continued to fall.  Tomorrow will be a snow day too… I’ve a feeling it will have long since passed ten inches on the deck and we don’t get that kind of snow frequently enough to deprive them of the rare day off even if it hasn’t.  They’ll come back to their desks rested and refreshed, ready to give me their best once again. 

Sometimes a teacher knows that discretion is the better part of valor…

I was just telling a few friends the other day that the 12 Days of Christmas seem more like the 12 Days of Christmas Clean up.  I’ve been trying to plow the detritus of Christmas to the appropriate location, ie kids rooms, trash can, dish washer, washing machine, etc.  So far I haven’t gotten to grade papers yet… the Christmas lazy’s are still here.  It’s just hard to be motivated to get work done with dh home.

The children love their gifts and it was one of our more successful Christmas’s on that front.  To be home alone, no family or guests, was much more relaxing than last year.  The kinks in meal plans (ie frozen turkey instead of thawed) didn’t even phase us much.

As lovely as the holidays are, I’m looking forward to getting back into the regular routine… and have already started promising myself things about next year…

Five packages of Italian Sausage… enough for Christmas breakfast, Christmas dinner, and several meals later as 3/5 of it is still frozen! Such a simple thing… and yet, it has brought Christmas to my heart.

Today I began to plan out the Christmas menu.  It’s pretty standard year to year, I really should just do it on the computer and save it as the variations are fairly minor.  As I made up the menu, it occurred to me that once again this year, we’d be celebrating without Italian sausage on the menu.  It may sound silly but it made me a bit melancholy. 

Back when I married my husband and we celebrated our first Christmas with his family, the foods were so alien.  The turkey I recognized, and the salad, but that was it.  The dressing wasn’t cornbread… in fact, it had meat and potatoes and stuff in it.  What WAS that anyway? Then there were the fig cookies… Not fig newtons, but a traditional Italian cookie, homemade for the holidays.  I don’t like fig newtons. Then came the Italian sausage… both a treat for breakfast or the main meal.  Italian sausage is a very heavy sausage and quite the different flavor from your typical American fare of bland kielbasa. Most of my mother-in-laws cooking was an instant favorite however, and before a couple of years passed I had learned how to fix them all, including all the traditional holiday fare that had been so foreign to me at first.

Recently my husband and I celebrated 15 years of marriage, and are closing on our second year in Illinois. At this point, Fig cookies, heavy stuffing and Italian sausage are favorites of mine too.  Illinois doesn’t have Italian sausage.  The dried figs I can get. The turkey, and trimmings, can all be pulled together from the local grocers.  The Italian sausage I can’t get, unless maybe there is some spot in Chicago that has it, not that I know of one.

This evening hubby was on the phone with his mom.  She was wondering if we had received the girls Christmas gifts (we had) and when he hung up, he told me she had sent us some Italian sausage, packed to ship in dry ice. I thought I was gonna cry. It was the best gift she could’ve given us.  Just a few links of sausage, but it felt like I’d been given a huge piece of home via UPS.  I can’t adequately describe the lift in spirits, the interior warmth that came from knowing she had gone to the trouble to do that for us. 

So in the next couple of days, I will be haunting my front door amid my Christmas baking and last minute prep… because a bit of Christmas is coming packed in dry ice via UPS… and the Christmas Menu is complete after all.

Easter is here and this year Illinois has pulled out all the stops.  The weather is warm, almost unseasonably so, the bulb flowers are up, the grass is green, buds and leaves on the trees.  We are opening all the windows and bringing spring clean to the house inch by inch, and will continue with that next week.  The girls hunted eggs this morning, cooked hotdogs over a pit fire in the backyard for lunch and then grilled steaks and satay for supper.  All in all a relaxing and refreshing weekend as a family, one we badly needed.

So, Christmas has come… ok, it came last Sunday but there ya go. My mom and step-dad came to stay, bringing lots of food with them to help round out the menu’s. Mom makes these homemade turtles the size of a small boulder and had made a box for each of us. The one for dh and I was as large as a small hat box… and I wonder how I managed to gain 50 pounds of pure cellulite over the past year. (Note to self, get rid of that by next year…) She also brought homemade bread, a three layer carrot cake (to die for), and two pecan pies. (What’s that you say? ONLY 50 pounds? shut. up.)

Our next-door neighbor, Nancy, came over for the day. She’s Jewish and so doesn’t celebrate Christmas really and it was SO much fun to have her come share in our day. She let us wake her at the crack of dawn and came over for the whole early morning thing, and even ate ’stockings’ for breakfast with us. We had a big Christmas lunch with dh’s family recipe for turkey and dressing, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, homemade rolls, oh my word, it was fabulous.

The girls got a karaoke machine and Nancy is familiar with those so she got the girls going and pretty soon we had her guitar hooked up with it’s amp cord into the karaoke machine and she was playing and the children took turns singing… it was great fun. She definitely helped make it a Christmas to remember!

We were all tired and cranky by the end of the day, but it was glorious. I certainly hope we can convince Nancy to spend Christmas with us again.

So the clock is ticking… Thanksgiving and Christmas are sneaking up on me like a kid in squeaky sneakers…