Post Christmas Post

Well the big day has come and gone.  All the presents have been opened, examined, and put away.  It is time to prepare for New Year's day and then 2013.  This might be my last posting for this year, unless I get motivated next Monday.  This posting also sets a new record for me with 50 posts, almost one/week. 

We had our first, significant snow fall - finally - last week catching just the edge of the blizzard that hit central Wisconsin.  While Madison had over 12 inches we came away with just 1-2, although we had a lot of rain.  That meant getting out to shovel the driveway so Jo could get out to work.  Wasn't enough snow to warrant firing up the snowblower so that thrill still remains.  With the snow came real winter weather with the temperatures dropping down into the twenties on average.  So out came all the warm winter clothes and coats.  Time to bundle up until April - maybe May.

Friday was the official start of our Christmas break.  Jo planned to take off the entire week so we are trying to be a little lazy and not do too much.  Friday night we popped some Papa Del's pizza in the oven and settled in to watch a movie afterwards with some nice toasty hot chocolate which felt good with the cold wind blowing outside.  Saturday after our morning run and lifting, Jo headed to brave the crowds in the mall to finish up her Christmas shopping while I did a little puttering around the house.  Later that night we headed to a neighborhood Christmas party.  Sunday morning was yoga and then we turned on our fireplace while reading the paper.  We caught the Packer's game in the afternoon before taking a nice long walk around the neighborhood to see everyone's Christmas decorations.

We continued to enjoy getting our runs over with in the morning on Monday, before walking down to a local bakery, a liquor, and a grocery store to pick up bread, prosecco (for New Year's), and cranberries (for Christmas dinner).  We also prepared our Christmas stuffing ahead of time to simplify the number of things we had to make on Christmas day.  We also decided to try making challah bread.  We found a recipe in one of our many cookbooks and, in my somewhat biases opinion, were very successful making both a great looking, but also, great tasting loaf.  My sister, Cheryl, came up in the evening and before picking her up, at the train station, we pulled out our ice skates (we both have pairs from high school that amazingly still fit, although the sharpness of the blades leave a lot to be desired) to do some ice skating at Red Arrow Park in downtown Milwaukee.  A video of Jo's skating prowess is below.



Christmas day we enjoyed connecting with various family members, many by video chat via Apple's cool Facetime technology, opening our presents, and chowing down on the traditional turkey dinner.  Unfortunately, Cheryl had to quickly head back home after only 24 hours with us due to her work schedule.   But we managed to catch either other up with all the family gossip.  Today we headed out for another chilly run since the wind had picked up and then went to a local running store to buy me some new running shoes.  We have both been running in the same make/model of shoe for over 25 years and we decided it was time to try out some of the latest technology.  So for the first time in a long, long time we will be running in something besides Saucony Shadow series shoes.  Let's hope my knees and ankles agree with the change!

Our best wishes to everyone for a wonderful and rewarding 2013! 

College Graduation Ceremony

Our big event for the weekend was the graduation of our nephew and housemate, Drew.  While not completely done with his student teaching, the Marquette graduation ceremony for December graduates was this weekend.  We were joined by his Mom, Chris and Angela (other nephew and niece), John, and Amy (Drew's girlfriend)  It was nice to seem him walking with his classmates and since it is a smaller ceremony each student was individually announced.  Afterwards, we enjoyed brunch at the Ambassador Hotel.  Another milestone reached and our last nephew/niece on Jo's side of the family to graduate college.  That only leaves Joe, on my side of the family, still in school for undergraduate degrees. 

Jo had a busy week with work functions as everyone has their end of year celebration with something every night since Tuesday.  I was able to join her Thursday affair as it was the annual Northwestern Mutual holiday party for the senior executives.  This year it was held at the Milwaukee Country Club which has quite a facility.  I am told the golf course with it is also spectacular.  It was a nice party, with very good food, and a good chance to reconnect with people Jo works with that I haven't seen since the summer annual meeting.

Friday night we went out for Indian food with Sandy and Scott (Jo works with Sandy and Scott is like me - a stay-at-home hubbie).  We went to Maharaja in Milwaukee which had a incredible number of choices and for at least the four meals our table ordered, excellent food.  I definitely would recommend it and Jo and I plan on heading back.   After dinner we headed to a Brady street bar to hang with the college kids - because you know how cool Jo and I are!  We went to Nomad and managed to find seats in the window (that might be because we were there at 8:00) and enjoyed people watching, drinking beer (Carlsberg for me), and discussing holiday plans.  The younger generation started piling in around 9:30 when we were all ready to head home for some sleep.  There is a limit to our coolness.

We are ready for the holiday and Jo is especially looking forward to some time off as she has had a very busy December.  This post will tie my record from 2009 for yearly posts and if I get energetic next week we will set a new record.

Shopping in Chicago

To break with recent tradition, I'll start with our work week (well at least Jo's work week).  Jo was busy at work as she starts to understand her new groups.  She has expanded her role to take on, in addition to her HR stuff, the facility operations group and the philanthropy group.  That will keep her hopping a bit more, but she is looking forward to the challenges, especially as Northwester Mutual announced this week they will be tearing down an old building and putting up a new one.  I continued my work on finishing up the painting on our storm windows (the screen version of them) and are down to only two left.  This takes a while since each needs some serious patching and repairing of the wood.  My other excitement for the week was getting the main water shut-off valve inside the house replaced.  I had noticed it was dripping around the valve stem and decided since it was a 90 year old valve to not just tighten the nut around it myself.  Good call on my part since when the plumber tried it we promptly had water shooting into the basement.  Fortunately we got the water shut off at the street and the valve quickly replaced.  I'm just glad I didn't try it myself!  The rest of the week was filled with the usual chores for me and our evening exercising for the two of us.

Jo had a business dinner/gala in Chicago on Friday night so we decided to head down early to spend a little time with my sister and do some shopping.  We hopped on the train early Friday morning and after getting in my obligatory nap on Amtrak (trains are excellent for sleeping I've always found) we arrived with the rest of the commuters in overcast Chicago.  We trekked over to my sister's place and then headed out for some breakfast.  Cheryl selected a wonderful little bakery/cafe were we enjoyed chocolate (for Jo) or almond (me) croissants with hot chocolate.  Great way to start off our day.  Next up was Macy's, where my sister works, for some heavy duty clothes shopping for Jo.  As she hadn't been shopping in a while she had a lot of pent up demand and both she and my sister head the discount racks hard.  Meanwhile, I looked for a comfortable chair to sit in out of the way.  As Jo walked out with two dresses and a skirt, I considered a success.  It was also interesting to see my sister in action helping Jo select items since this is what she does for a living.  Also got to meet my sister's boss who had really nice things to say about her.

Since that took most of the morning, we headed out for lunch and then over to the Daley Plaza to see the small shops that are set up for Christmas.  Lots of interesting imports from Germany, Poland, and Eastern Europe but we only came away with two small ornaments.  We were pretty tired by then so we headed back to my sister's to review our purchases and then we were off to our hotel to get ready for our evening event.  This was a celebration for the American College which Jo is on the board of one of their institutes.  It was black tie so I donned my tux and Jo tried out one of her new dresses.  All in all, I would have to say we cleaned up pretty good - although couldn't really figure out how to effectively use my Iphone to take a picture of the two of us.  After the dinner it was back to the hotel for some rest; I was certainly tired from standing around shopping all day.


Saturday we took an early morning Amtrak home as we had a neighborhood Christmas party to attend later in the day.  It was nice talking with many of the neighbors since with the cold weather setting in we don't see as many of them outside anymore.  Sunday dawned rainy and cold so we exercised at home and then spent the morning curled up in front of our fireplace reading the Sunday paper.  After a great dinner of pork chops with peach and mustard sauce we watched the Packers squeak another win out. 

First Batch of Christmas Cookies

We enjoyed a peaceful, although busy, weekend at home.  Friday night we headed out for our Christmas tree hunt trying to find the perfect tree with good sturdy branches, since so many of our ornaments seem to be incredibly heavy, the right size, and the right price.  We settled on a Frazier fir - in case you were curious.  Then it was home to get the tree off the car and into the house.  We decided to try a new location this year putting the tree in the family room so we get to see it a bit more since we spend more time in there than the living room.

Saturday after our morning workouts, we spent a little time in the morning decorating the house and tree.  Part of our house decorating is to put out our small army of Danish Christmas people.  We started this collection with just one and have only added one or two a year, but over 30 some years the collection has really grown - to the point where we struggled to find a place for them.  We had to stop our decorating to focus on doing some cooking/baking.  Jo made home-made spaghetti and meatballs while I whipped up some cornbread and banana bread.  We then turned to the most important event of the holiday season, making the first batch of Christmas cookies.  This year the honor went to my grandmother's (or great-grandmother's, I've sort of lost track) cut-out cookies.  This brought back memories of being in the kitchen with my siblings and Mom as she patiently dealt with us each wanting to select the right cookie cutter and press it into the exact middle of the dough while I'm sure she was trying to get the cookies all made in less than 8 hours.  One nice thing now, is that I'm in charge of icing them, so the icing to cookie ratio has gone way up.  We then headed out for a walk since the weather was so warm before settling into our delicious spaghetti dinner.

Our evening was filled with watching the exciting Badger football game as the won over Nebraska (sorry to the Nebraska side of the family, but yeah for the Wisconsin side).  We went to bed that night exhausted from being on our feet all day, but happy to have the Rose Bowl game enjoy watching on New Year's Day.

Sunday we decided to take advantage of the warm weather and walked down to North Street for brunch (about 1.5 miles, one way) while discussing our holiday plans, part of which included discussing should we be plan on going to the Rose Bowl.  It is amazing to be out walking in December in Wisconsin not wearing any jacket.  After brunch, we put on the Packer's game while we trimmed out the tree doing our usual reminiscing about where we got each of our ornaments.  The tree when all finished looked great in its new location and we decided to put up our artificial tree in the living room so we have a tree in each now.  We then enjoyed chili for dinner with the aforementioned cornbread before turning in for another week of work.