You may all be wondering if we’re still hiking in Pelion … short answer is no but we’ll get back to some posts to finish the Greece and Ireland trip after this real-time post about celebrating Maddie’s 9th birthday earlier this month and Christmas yesterday.
We went to Naperville to celebrate Maddie’s birthday a few weeks ago and had a lovely lasagna dinner with some cake afterwards. Here’s the whole crew, quite a full living room these days especially with Miles home from college and Nana and Grandpa living nearby!
We played a game called Throw Throw Burrito, by the creators of the game Exploding Kittens. The burrito game gets pretty intense with some burritos flying around very fast!
The following weekend we went downtown to have a look around. There are no longer any restrictions about getting up too close to the bean (I think those were about not crowding, but have been loosened and not put in place again).
The winter solstice happened during that week too, here’s a view of the sun coming up on the shortest day of the year, looking east on Augusta.
We finished up work on Thursday last week and did a bunch of shopping for our next few festive dinners. Christmas Eve, we pivoted from having a slightly larger gathering to just the four of us due to some covid concerns. We missed not meeting up with our larger group but all felt it was a good call. We did a lot of cooking, starting with a cheese pie that we cut into small squares as appetizers.
The Christmas Eve dinner was Greek-inspired, with lamb, tomato salad, flat bread a salad and tzadiki (yogurt with cucumber, dill, garlic and lots of olive oil). Miles made a hot drink called rakimelo, a Raki, honey and spice drink. Raki (the liquor) + honey (melo is honey in Greek) = rakimelo.
Miles has a dog feeding gig this week so we’ve been timing everything so that he’s able to be gone for a few hours in the evening. Meaning that we had Christmas Eve dinner very early, which was not very Greek at all!
On Christmas we got to skype with the Brennans and Kennys in Castleknock, then opened presents and discovered a theme – Greek cookbooks! We gifted each other so many, we now collectively have 5! Also, Santa was here and put some goodies in our stockings! There must have been supply chain issues with the chocolate orange but John seemed to like the Lindt orange chocolate bar!
In the afternoon, Nana and Grandpa, Jeff and Maddie all came over (Debbie was on schedule to fly this year). We played some games, including Neanderthal Poetry, where you have to describe a word on a card using other words of only one syllable (surprisingly difficult!) and if you make a mistake another player gets to hit you with an inflatable club. I think we all got thumped a few times. John made a fish pie, and we had that with a salad and some carrots. The fish pie was based on the Italian feast of the seven fishes dish. We had to make a cut and it was actually a feast of the six fishes, but considering how far from seas we are, that’s not too bad.
Miles and Maddie claimed their spots at the table first and Maddie was initially interested in the fish pie, then got in a little deeper and wasn’t as keen on it! Which was totally understandable, it had a lot going on!
It was great to see everyone, and we missed you, Debbie! Merry Christmas!
It has been a lovely holiday season, best ever!