November 28, 2009

Choosing to Enjoy the Holidays

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

R and I have been enjoying the holiday weekend. Lots of time with family, lots of yummy food, lots of laughter. It's been good.

I made a decision this year that regardless of the kid situation, we were going to enjoy the holiday season. We haven't even decorated for the past few years, but this year we dragged out all the boxes of Christmas decorations, dragged out the tree, and started getting into the spirit of the season. Sure, there are things in our life that we wish were different, but this year I feel more capable of joining the land of the living again.

I even entered a holiday pie "throwdown" at work and wound up winning 2nd place for an apple pie I made. I got lucky, because when I repeated the pie for Thanksgiving, I forgot the cornstarch (which thickens all the liquids that the apples release), so the bottom crust wound up being very soggy and goey. And goey pie crust is not an appetizing sight! But fortunately (or unfortunately for them) it was only my family who was subjected to that mistake...

Speaking of dessert, we're now hanging out at the in-laws again for a post-Thanksgiving feast as I type this. Their collection of six different cartons of ice cream served as inspiration for a quick and fun dessert idea: We bought a couple packages of break-and-bake mini chocolate chip cookies, baked them up, and then created mini ice cream sandwich cookies. Yummy!

Time to get back on the weight-loss bandwagon on Monday...