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.
]]> http://www.andyanddarcy.com/2009/01/26/who-got-the-neon-angel/feed/ 0 http://www.andyanddarcy.com/2009/01/25/another-christmas-in-january/ http://www.andyanddarcy.com/2009/01/25/another-christmas-in-january/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:31:22 +0000 Darcy Koch http://www.andyanddarcy.com/?p=312 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…

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.

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.

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 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 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.