We're back from our Christmas

We're back from our Christmas trip and are prepping the house for some relatives that are going to descend on us today.

Although we planned to go to Ft. Worth on Friday night, that didn't quite happen. Uncle Tim was in town and we took that as an excuse to delay the trip until next day (since we weren't ready, anyway) and went out to dinner with him instead. We had a great time and the food was good, as always.

So on Saturday we finished packing, loaded the Cruiser, got Homer in the trunk (so to speak) and headed to Ft. Worth. We were going to unload at Benny's and then head on to Wichita Falls, alas, that didn't happen since we always found another excuse to wait just a little longer.

So to Wichita Falls we went on Sunday and I got to meet Jennifer's relatives on her dad's side and to help make tamales. I've heard a lot about the Lucio family but all of them (Benny was one of nine kids and most of them procreated) kinda blended together. I've been now able to put faces and personalities to some of the names, but it's still a little confusing. The tamale making happened at Grandma Lucio's house. Grandma Lucio was the matriarch of the family and although she passed away a couple of years ago, you can tell that all her family still are a bit in awe of her. Her house is permeated with her presence and the influence she had on her immediate and extended family. So the tradition of Christmas tamales carries on in the next generation. Apparently her gift of cooking passed on to her daughter Hellen, because the tamales turned out wonderful. Although the preparation of tamales - making the masa, filling and assembling the things - has been traditionally done by the women in the family, I helped by preparing the corn husks and managed to fill one tamale all by myself (during the time I made mine, Martha, who's a pro at those things, made about five).

Besides making tamales, we also helped clean out the refrigerator and freezer that have been mostly untouched since grandma Lucio's time. At the bottom of the freezer was a foot thick layer of solid ice with bags of ancient tamales embeded in different strata representing Christmases past. It tooks us (well, mostly Meredith) several hours to extricate these fossils and clean out the freezer. I'm not quite sure how these tamalosaurs managed to be entombed there, since once the tamales are made (all 70-90 dozen of them) there comences a fierce battle among the relatives for the bounty. I don't know how the allotments are made, but connections are obviously important. While Jennifer and Meredith scored three dozen tamales amongst them (since I'm not a relative yet, I apparently can't make a claim), cousin Debby also sneaked Meredith another dozen under the table. With all that being said and done, the tamales were delicious. They had quite a bite to them, but not so much that it would spoil them for me.

Besides making tamales, we also wemt tp the cemetary to visit grandparents that are there, and on the way back to Ft. Worth we dropped by grandma Karl where Meredith left a dozen of her tamales (of which she then proceded to remind us every single hour for the rest of our trip).

On Christmas Eve day we went to visit Jen's mom Rita. We spend some time at their house and opened presents to and from Rita and Jerry. I scored the Cutco kitchen shears that I once used to have and that I've been missing for years. We gave Jerry a lucky bamboo plant and Rita a certificate to go shopping for a new cell phone. Around three, Jennifer, Meredith and I left for my cousin's to help with her Czech Christmas dinner.

At Hanka's we helped prepare hors d'ouvres - sliced baguette with mayonaise and cheese/ham/salami/egg/pickle/bell pepper toppings. I then got to slice the pork for Wiener schnitzel and delt with the carp. The fish was already gutted and decapitated but I first had to get rid of the scales. Little Kacka pulled her chair next to me and watched with fascination while I scraped the scales off the fish with a fork. I then had to collect the scalles into a bowl for her to play with (she was a bit upset when Ron tossed out the smelly scales later in the evening). I then sliced the fish - bones and all - into several horseshoe shaped portions. These were breaded like the schnitzel and we then fried the whole lot.

After we set up the table, Ron's family arrived and we had dinner. The fish sup was on the stove too long and was a bit thick, but it still tasted as good as any fish head soup. Everything else was perfect and I managed to not get a fish bone stuck in my throat. After dinner we sang carols by the tree and then exchanged gifts.

We left Hanka's after 10pm and headed to Denton for midnight mass. Msgnr. King was saying mass and we hope to get him to officiate at our wedding. We got to church a little early and they did some pre-midnight mass stuff that made me really sleepy. It was misc. readings from the bible interspersed with the occasional carol (which was cool by me) and the choir singing. It was a typicle small-church choir where the women outnumbered the men five to one and you really can tell. The mass was OK - the most memorable was the homily during which Msgnr. Kind several times referred to the "events on September 9th". As he was greeting people existing church after mass every other one pointed his mistake out to him (we, of course, we too cool to do that). Oh, and the best thing was the "angus dei" typo in the church program. When Meredith pointed it out, Jennifer replied that "we're in Texas, after all".

Christmas day was back at Benny's. We did breakfast and started with the gift exchange when Danny got there at 11. Everyone got lots of cool gifts. Jennifer not-so-subtly hinted for me to get off my lazy ass by giving me all sorts of tennis-related gifts. The biggest gift I received was an air-compressor and pneumatic tools - Archie is going to be soo jealous! I really need to get a propper tool box. We'll now need to buy a shed to store the stuff that's starting to accumulate in the garage. I got Jennifer a Dell Inspiron 8100 and some other goodies related to it. It (and the extra RAM I ordered online) made it on time and everything seems to work. I guess the next thing we need to do is make her Windows XP a little more secure. Jennifer and I got Danny a bed sheet set and we got Meredith a Japanese cast iron tetsubin tea pot and some tea to go with it (a very successful gift). And I got Homer a nice collar and leash set. Later that day we got to see Lord of the Ring, which was pretty darn cool - I've started to re-read the book.

Yesterday we hooked up with Rita to take her shopping for her phone. Due to Meredith scary powers of persuasion (although I think she just wore them down) we managed to get a whoipping $130 discount on a $160 phone. So Rita has a nice working phone again. We left Ft. Worth around 6:30 and made it back to Austin and managed even to watch Shrek that Jennifer gave me for my name's day.

Homer had a blast throughout the weekend since he got to play with Jason's dog Duke during most of our stay. Duke is a four month old puppy that's about Homer's color and height (although Homer is stockier). He's incredibly sweet and full of energy and is going to grow up to be one big dog (he's some sort of lab and german shepherd or pit bull mix).