Some snappy title about being in Texas for Christmas

Ah, where to begin....
It's been so long since I've written. I'm such a slacker! To be honest, while I was in AZ, I really didn't want to do anything during the break that required using my brain. I read a ton of crappy books on my phone, ate when I felt like it (even if I wasn't hungry), and did as little as possible. It was really quite lovely.  I'll try and keep this short, but will probably fail. 

David and I also kept up the Christmas tradition of seeing the Christmas lights at the Mesa temple, baking Christmas sugar cookies with the Lakes, and making "gingerbread" houses with our dear friends, the Clarksons. Our gingerbread house actually stayed together this time! The secret: hot glue! Yeah... sure.. there's tradition (Tradition!) and whatnot, but as we learned from Fiddler on the Roof, traditions are meant to broken. Or something like that.

David and I take turns celebrating holidays in Texas and AZ. This year David and I celebrated Christmas in Texas for 2 whole weeks. My family tends to stay pretty busy with work and lives so I had to ensure that we had enough projects to keep us busy. My sister asked if I would sew her table cloth, place mats, and table runner as her Christmas gift. I've never sewn anything for anyone else so I was a little worried that they wouldn't turn out well. My approach usually tends to be that I sew sew sew and then fix fix fix. That approach seems to still stand true. Needless to say, I will not be sewing for a while. I think a small part of me died during those few days. 

My (as in David and I) other project was to refinished some furniture. My dad gave us a cabinet and a chair that used to be my granny's. My granny is still alive, but she lives in a nursing home now because she has Alzheimer's & Dementia.  We visited her during the break and I made the textbook mistake of asking her if she remembered me. Not once, but twice! Yes, I totally knew better, but somehow I still found the words coming out. Big mistake Jenny.

So back to the furniture!

Both were looking pretty sad. On the cabinet, the wood coloring was black and some of the wood was starting to split at the ends.  Dad says he thinks the cabinet may be over a 100 years old! Granny has always loved antiques so I wouldn't be surprised. I forgot to take a good before picture of the chair and cabinet. Whoops! With 2 days full of sanding and tons and tons of cans of stripper, we got them done! Dad, being the expert in this sort of thing, and me being busy with the other project on my load, nicely stained the cabinet for us. I have other plans for the chair, though. I'm hoping to paint it a nice muted teal to match our living room. I'm pretty excited about that.  It was quite a bit of work, but I already expected that. I don't know how I would have been able to finish it without the help of David and dad.  The help was definitely appreciated!


Christmas was pretty small this year. Usually we celebrate Christmas with a big dinner and as much family as possible, but for one reason or another it was instead a pretty intimate dinner. I know this may sound weird to a lot of people, but I actually think I enjoyed it a lot more.
David was so excited when he opened his gift and found a shiny new shotgun. He's been wanting one for the longest time. I figured since I came from a home where guns are plenty, I shouldn't deny David his fun or his right to protect us.

After a little work

Before we stripped it down

Time with the parentals also consisted of shopping, family, and food. We were able to see a lot of my dad's family, because yet again we had to attend a funeral.  It seems to be tradition that David and I attend a funeral when we come to visit at Christmas or Thanksgiving.  Part of me really hates funerals. I don't think many people would disagree with me, except maybe morticians. However, it is fun to visit a lot of people that I wouldn't get a chance to otherwise.  My dad kept saying "wedding" instead of "funeral". It's funny how people always get the two confused. Unfortunately I again forgot to take pictures. In my defense, it did seem a little inappropriate to take pictures after the funeral.

 New Year's Eve was celebrated with the Shell family (my sister's in-laws). My parents were party animals! Mom and dad kept us there until after 2 in the morning. On the positive side, I was able to drive my mom's brand new camaro. Mama's got a new pair of shoes!

 

This would have been a good one but David decided to not take it seriously. Poor Ev.

 New Year's Day:
This is the day my abuelita reserved for her birthday.  She's from Colombia and doesn't really know what day she was born. She believes this could possibly be her birth day, but she's not really sure. We treat it like it is, though and always have a big dinner and cake. Mom knows how much I love empanadas, so all the tias (aunts) got together and cooked a ton of empanadas. I love them so much! Colombian empanadas are seriously the best!

Awesome tres leches cake!

The Lakes, Moseses (Mosai?), and Shells got together and had a night in the town! We rode the lightrail around Dallas to see the Christmas lights. It was quite an adventure! 

China we got from my granny:
This china was given to my dad who in turn gave it to us.  We never registered for china, but thought it would be nice to have some. It felt really special to get china that was hand-painted by my granny. They even say Jenny Moses on them! My granny's name is Virginia, but for a long time she went by Jenny, then later went by Ginni. Luckily, she painted almost all of these when she was still going by Jenny. Pretty cool, I'd say!

This is only a few of the pieces. It's a really big set! I don't even know what most of the things are!

Some even have the year she painted them!

 All in all, it was a pretty good trip! I actually got used to being around my family again, which made leaving hard. I love being here in AZ, but I definitely miss my crazy family.

Our traditional stop for good Mexican food in El Paso, Texas. Spicy, but yummy!

David eating an empanada on the way back to AZ