Sunday, December 30, 2012

Moving Around

I'm back in the blog world again!  The holidays are the best at breaking routine and keeping me away from the internet.  Now, I'm back in Chicago and having a good time on my new laptop!  Yup,  I was (happily) regifted a MacBook Air.  There is a pretty amusing story behind it, but the short version is that my mom found out that she was going to get a laptop from my dad that has an arabic keyboard and made it clear that she didn't want it and would not use it.  It was already bought and brought from Dubai, so, with many tears of joy and a melted heart, it was handed to me on Christmas day.  I'd been wanting a new, light, laptop for a couple of years now, so this is a jem.  It will allow me to bring my laptop with me to more places more often.  And it can actually fit into laptop cases and backpacks.  My old laptop is a 17 inch Mac Book Pro from 2006.  It could only fit into one backpack it is so large.  I initially got it for video editing for college.  I still love the big screen and the editing capabilities of course.  It just made it a bit more of a challenge to casually bring it places to do work etc.

 Every Christmas Eve my family visits my cousin's place and we have a Swedish Smorgasbord.  My cousin dresses like Santa for the their kid and we drink hot spiced wine together.  It has become one of my favorite traditions now.  I hope we can keep it up by continuing to visit with each other each year.

Christmas Day begins with a more decadent than usual breakfast, in this case my dad made his famous pop overs and I made vegan pancakes, and moves on to present opening.  We then spend a good part of the afternoon playing with our new gifts and relaxing.  My brother got Halo 4 and he was enamored.  I'm pretty sure he still is.  Then it is time for us to prepare dinner for us and my cousin's family.  My brother bought local lamb leg from the farmer's market and my mom made a traditional yogurt sauce in her middle eastern glory.  I made the lentil walnut loaf, a shitake gravy, truffle mashed potatoes, and a peach, blueberry, whiskey pie.  It turned out to be the best pie crust I've ever made.  I was proud hehehe.

Source
I flew back to Chicago the next day and spent a few days in Woodstock with my boyfriend's family.  They are such wonderful people and made me feel like family.  His step-dad has been working on improving the house with amazing renovations and electrical work for quite a few years.  It looks great and is an admirable project.  Woodstock is a cute town and we were even able to get some vegan chocolate chip cookies! Groundhog Day was filmed there too!  Very cool!

I hope all of you had and are having a great time this holiday season.  I'm moving things forward with the blog and it will be in a new location soon.  More details to come and I'll let you know when it changes homes.  I'm still working on setting up the website.  My brother is an amazing web wiz and he gets all the credit for the move and the ability to do it!  Thanks brother!

Have a very happy new year and I'll see you there!

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