Andy and Darcy’s Blog

We have had this gift going through our Christmas party gift exchanges for several years. I just thought everyone might like to know who got it.

It was Nate. And the neon angel has finally run out of batteries. That is a picture from last year.

He is thrilled, as is every recipient of the neon angel. He wasn’t available for comment.

We celebrated Christmas in January again.

We had a wonderful dinner. Everyone brought a dish and the Aslaksons made a tenderloin.

The food was fabulous. Below is the feta, sun dried tomato, basil, and orzo salad that we made. Also, you’ll see the pie that Alton Brown and Jon make.

We decorated Christmas cookies.

Then we had the gift exchange or gift grab or something like that.

Andy won us a pack of cards…

But we left with a marble cheese cutter. It was a good deal for us!

And the most important thing to know is: who got the angel? To be concluded soon…

As Darcy alluded to in a previous post, we played cards on Christmas (which I can remember winning one game of) and I also took some pictures. I was taking pictures of the many birds outside in the backyard, but then we spotted a fox romping around. I wasn’t fast enough the first time but he came back twice. On the final time he decided to stop in the perfect spot, so I snapped some pictures. Click the picture for all of my pics.

Merry Christmas, belatedly! We spent our Christmas playing cards.

And watching the wildlife. (Andy took some really cool photos. Hopefully he’ll post them.)

And watching this amaryllis bloom.

I’m not sure that I won any of the card games. It was a great Christmas, though.

Below are pictures from a few days before Christmas. We were still in Rochester when these photos were taken. And on this day we wrapped gifts for family in KS, exchanged Christmas stocking with each other, and opened gifts from family in Michigan. As you can see, I’m still letting Picasa do all the work for me.

It always turns out that we are too busy to have a Christmas party in December, so on January 19, 2008, we attended the annual Christmas party at Adam and Amber’s. (Don’t confuse this event with the Greatest Christmas Party Ever that I blogged about a few months ago…that was a Greatest Event Ever with a Christmas theme).

The food was spectacular. We were instructed to eat 2 lbs of ham each, and ha ha…we didn’t do it although some people tried. Andy and I brought spanikopita triangles. And Lee made me realize that I do not, in fact, hate cream cheese. She made a dip, I tried it, and I liked it. And later she called me and told me what was in it. As many of you know, I have an aversion to several dairy products. I may have lumped cream cheese into that general aversion unfairly. Since then I have tried one wedge of laughing cow (the garlic and herb kind), and it wasn’t bad either.

Lee’s dip	Blurry ham	Dessert

We listened to N Sync and other unlikely candidates sing Christmas songs. And then we moved on to the white elephant gift exchange. There were no magnetix this year! And most of the presents were fun.

Pile of presents.	Patrick opens a present.	Lee shakes presents.

Andy stole a weather station from Patrick, something we had been talking about getting for a while. No one else must have wanted it because we kept it until the end of the game. And Lee got the angel. This is the neon angel that has been making it around the white elephant parties for a while now. I’m glad we didn’t get it.

The angel no one wants.	Our weather station.	Patrick’s gift.

I vote for no white elephant next year, if anyone out there is listening.

We were back from our trip to Michigan, we had been to work for a day, and then we were ready for New Year’s Eve! Those few people left in Rochester joined us at Casa de Andar to watch the ball drop at 11 pm, play games, and eat snacks.

And here are just a few shots of the food, and maybe I’m putting these here just because I take too many pictures. There were crab cheese meltaways as well, but I guess those went too fast. On the right is the new tasty treat we tried, Banana Pudding Bites, that we saw on Sandra Lee’s show.

We spent this Christmas in Michigan with Andy’s family. When we got there, everything was covered in snow, but the next day we got some rain that made all the snow disappear. We spent Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa Carter’s house. Below is a picture I took of everyone as they were about to sit down for Christmas Eve dinner. There is also a picture of the popup book-cards that were gifts from Andy’s grandparents.

We spent Christmas Day with Andy’s parents. We gave Andy’s parents a set of Revereware, and you can see them opening that gift in this picture.

It finally snowed again (a more serious snow) on the day we left.

We found Carr Valley cheese at our local Hyvee, but no curds! Maybe someday…

I’ve been thinking about the best cheese curds I’ve ever had for some time now. The problem is that those cheese curds are pretty far away from where I live. However, they are (luckily) on the way to Michigan, our Christmas destination. That destination is in Mauston, Wisconsin, at the Carr Valley Cheese shop on the side of Highway 94.

We’ve driven through Wisconsin many times, and I can tell you that highways in Wisconsin are highly populated with signs that encourage you to stop and buy cheese. But I had never actually stopped at one until Pam suggested we stop in Mauston after our trip to the Dells last summer. And they were fantastic. It was then that I finally found out what makes cheese curds squeaky, and besides that, those cheese curds were made out of really good cheddar. So I’ve been thinking about them ever since, and its like 6 months later!

On our way to Michigan this year, we stopped and bought some and they were fantastic again, just like I remembered. And Andy bought some cheddar that was aged 8 years, which was potent stuff and would make an blue cheese lover ecstatic. So I’ve satisfied my craving for a while now and I just wanted to let you know that if you’re driving through Wisconsin, you should definitely stop here.

We didn’t spend Christmas in Rochester, but we did have our own little Christmas celebration before we left for Michigan. We gave each other stockings, and we took this time to open up a few gifts that were sent home with us by my family at Thanksgiving.

We had an awesome dinner of pizza at our Christmas celebration.

Here is Andy’s stocking. As you can see Santa couldn’t fit everything into Andy’s stocking, but who knew a palm size helicopter would be so big??

Here are a few gifts from my relatives. Our thanks to my parents and grandparents.

And then Andy proceeded to learn how to fly the palm size helicopter. Let me begin by saying that now, as of January 6, the palm size helicopter is broken. But I think Andy had fun. I didn’t actually try and fly the helicopter, but it looked difficult. It was fun to see when it got going, but the landings were usually a little rough.