Well, I can't believe its over! One day, I'm shopping for presents, the next day they've all been opened and it's all over. So fast! I do love Christmas but it always seems over in the blink of an eye! Here's our entire family on Christmas Day.
We have a big family, and it seems to grow ever year! This year of course, our family grew by 2, with the birth of Marcus (the cuite pie on my Mom's lap) and with the marriage of my nephew Jamie to Connie. Next year my niece Taren will be marrying Chris, so this picture will have even more people next year. It's a wonderful feeling to have a big family -- our parties are very loud and it's a wonder we can hear what the person we are talking to is saying because there are always at least 3 other conversations going on at the same time. Craziness!
Another thing my family always does is this take lots of pictures (can ya' tell?) -- I swear we keep Kodak in business. And one of the mainstays of a lot of our pictures is a normal picture, immediately followed by a silly face one. Here's what it usually looks like.
Above is the normal pic, below is the silly one.
And this is the silly picture of the first one in this post of the entire family.
If you look real close you'll see that the 4 guys in the top right of the pic failed to make silly faces. Trust it to the guys not to follow instructions. Geez....! I of course shouldn't talk cause it just looks like I'm yodeling.
The other constant in all our family gatherings is food -- and lots of it. In the Philippines where we're from, it's always tradition to shovel food into your guests mouths when they come to your house. It's almost like being accosted -- the minute you enter someone's home the first thing they ask you is "have you eaten?" followed by "are you hungry?" and the food shovelling soon starts. Now you guys know why I have to go to the gym as often as I do! Have a look at some of the food we had this Christmas.
These are Philippine noodles, knows as pancit. There are many varieties of this noodle dish -- this one has egg, shrimp and veggies. To die for -- so good!
It's a bit of work to make this -- lots of cutting, etc, but so worth it -- though I only know from word of mouth, cause I never make this -- I just order it from any one of the local Philippine restaurants around town like this one and this one. In our family we have a built-in Philippine restaurant called OUR MOM. She's the best.
More food here:
This is a salmon dish that my sister made. It is always a potluck arrangement for Christmas, and the salmon was actually the dish I was assigned, but because of the ridiculous snowfall we've had, I couldn't get out of my street -- the snow was just so thick and practically everyone on our street were shut in for the day. So I told my sister that I'd just make pork chops -- I had enough pork chops on hand to cook for the whole family. She of course was horrified, cause there's always some rhyme and reason to the menus in our family parties and there was already another pork dish.....and heaven forbid we double up on the pork dishes -- that would be a mortal sin in our family. So she said that she would just make the fish, cause she had everything on hand to make it. JACKPOT! Not only do I get to partake of the feast, but I didn't have to lift a finger to put it on. Thank you snow. (Though I've had enough of it for now, and want it all to go away!) For Christmas, Doug got me what I wanted on my list -- which was comprised of nothing but workout gear. Everytime we would go to the gym early in the morning, I'd be shivering in the car so he also get me a Yukon Classic Goose down vest here. Love it! I used it for the very first time today when we went to the gym and it's so warm! The weather has turned warmer now, so all this snow should start to melt and the next worry is flooding. We cleared our storm drains in the front of our house, so that we wouldn't have to worry about flooding. Our driveway slopes downward toward the street, so we shouldn't have to worry, but you never know. Better safe than sorry. I spent some time today making this card.
If you look closely, you'll see that the center vanilla panel has the print pattern stamp (harlequing design) stamped in Very Vanilla craft ink. I used this pattern as a placement guide so that I knew where to stamp my flowers. I stamped the flowers in brown ink in between every other diamond shape. Then the middle row are 2 popped up flowers in a contrasting color. To offset the popped up fowers and make them stand out, I used half back pearls for the centers. The colors I used are Sage Shadow and Chocolate Chip.
Your family seems lovely -- thanks for sharing your life. I always check in to see what you are up to!
Mikayla
Posted by: MIkayla | December 29, 2008 at 12:10 AM