Christmas

Christmas this year was all here in San Antonio for us. Einar told his parents at Thanksgiving that we weren't going anywhere for Christmas and that they should come up to celebrate with us. Which they flat out refused to do. I always kind of get anxious during the holidays because Einar always really hopes that his family will come around to appreciating each other and they never really do. It's just really hard to see him get let down so many times.
Anyway, we had a really cool Christmas in which we did not have to load up the dogs with their kennels and presents for everyone and drive down to Corpus in the wee small hours of the morning between doing Christmas Eve with my parents and Christmas morning with Einar's. We actually got to have a semi-relaxing Christmas Eve! Einar got me a membership to Massage Envy for my present and my first massage was that afternoon. Since I teach teenagers, I feel like my shoulders are attached to my ears most of the time. Consequently when Einar tries to massage my shoulders per my request, he complains that my back hurts his hands. Which, when I told the therapist, made her give a smug snort. But when I was finished with my lovely massage, she did apologize for her snort and told me that my shoulders were so tense that I wasn't getting full mobility of that joint. And I can really feel the difference.(If anyone goes to Massage Envy after reading this, please tell them I recommended it!!)
Moving on, the night before Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve Eve, I taught Einar how to make my family's traditional Christmas cookie, Horseshoe Cookies. They decend from my dad's mom's side of the family that came from Czechoslovakia, and so are really kolaches. They're really easy to make but time-consuming to construct. And then people eat them like popcorn, which prompted my dad and I to invent a quicker way to construct them. Anyway, they're made with one brick of cream cheese, two sticks of margarine, and two cups of flour. My grandmother came down and showed me how to make them one year and what you have to do is, after you mix that together, let the mix cool in the fridge for about half an hour then roll out about a fourth of the dough in powdered sugar in a circle. Then you cut the circle into eighths just like a pie and place about a quarter sized lump of poppy seed on the thicker end. Then you roll them up like a crescent roll. Then they're baked for about 10 minutes at 350. You can see how long these take to make. So Dad's answer was to roll out about half the dough in an oval and put poppy seed down the center, then roll it up around the poppy seed and slice it across the center into cookie-sized portions. This works, it's just not as pretty. So this year since we had more time, I decided that I would make them the pretty way. Einar developed a new fold that keeps in the poppy seed better and the cookies were beautiful. I arranged them in the pretty big red bowl I have and placed them on the counter near the fridge for later transport over to my parents'. No sooner had I finished vacuuming the upstairs, then I caught Phoebe red handed, ahem, white muzzled up on the counter eating one side of the beautiful cookie bowl I'd made! Gave eating the cookies like popcorn a whole new dimension! I had to make a whole new batch after my massage to replace the ones eaten and slobbered on. Ahh, the joy of dog ownership...
But we really did have a fun Christmas Eve with my family. Having our traditional dinner of Alaskan crab and shrimp, playing Cranium(laughing at my dyslexia when I combine words to make bad words--not on purpose!), going to Christmas Eve service and opening presents in our PJs. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with family!