Christmas dinner

What follows is an incoherent account of our Christmas dinner party:

This past weekend, I went to my parents' house to drop Lucy off (since we are going to New Orleans tomorrow) and to practice cooking a pork loin roast. It turned out pretty good at home, and I also spent the rest of the time Christmas baking and doing some last minute shopping with my mom.

When I got home Monday afternoon, we worked to get our house ready for the dinner on Tuesday. I went to HEB to find a pork loin roast, but they didn't have the kind that I had cooked in Corpus. I was really concerned. I ended up going to 3 different grocery stores. The HEB in Bryan had some organic pork loin roast but it was $7 a pound!!! I finally got two pork loin roasts at Albertson's but they didn't look quite the same as the one I had previously prepared....

We put the two leaves in the table and moved it into the living room (not in that order).

Our dinner was a fun time with friends. Including ourselves, we had 11 people around our table, with lots and lots of food and desserts. For dinner we had: pork loin; scalloped, cheesy potatoes (I used my food processor for the first time to slice all of the potatoes - it was great); salad; Andrea brought a side dish of delicious shrimp and vegetables; and Mariann brought a ton of leftover fajita fixings from work. AND believe it or not, people actually liked my pork loin. I think I was unduly nervous about it, because that afternoon, as I was preparing all the food, I actually got sick - it was weird.

Then we had a dessert table with a crock pot full of Keith's famous hot candy apple punch, lots of cookies, and some pumpkin spiced bread that I made in Corpus. We also had Bluebell peppermint icecream - yum. We played MadGab and Outburst before people left for the evening. Then, we spent an hour and half washing dishes and changing our makeshift dining room back into a living room. :)

We didn't really take any pictures - here's the only one with half of our guests:

Christmas time!

It feels like Christmas time! Students are taking finals and are winding down for the semester. It's glorious - except I'm not really supposed to be winding down. I should be working - but sometimes it's hard. When I don't specifically have something that needs to be done by a certain time, it is harder to motivate myself to do it. And when it seems like people are finishing for the semester, it makes me want to finish too. oh, well, I am trudging along with my data, although slowly - with many, many distractions...

Adrian and I are also having a Christmas dinner next week with some of our local amigos and amigas. I hope people have a pleasant time. I am a little nervous, because for this gathering, we are kind of mixing "groups" of friends together, and I hope that's okay. We just wanted to have all our friends who are still in town to come and I am a little lazy and don't really want to have multiple dinners (plus there's limited days when it could be done anyways). I am going home this weekend for a longer weekend and will have a trial run of Rosemary-Scented Pork Loin Stuffed with Roasted Garlic, Dried Apricots, and Cranberries and Port Wine Pan Sauce. I've never cooked a big, chunk of meat before, so it will be a good learning experience. :)

fun weekend

We had a fun weekend filled with Christmas parties. On Friday night, we went to Dr. Popp's house for his annual mineralogists' dinner, where he invites old and new mineralogy TAs and his undergrad technicians. It is always a pleasant, low-key evening with a lot of reminiscing of old geology days.

Then on Saturday night, we had the Christmas party for our Sunday school class. It was fun, with a lot of people, in one of the mentor couples' homes. It was such a beautiful home, out in the country - but not really far from anything - you can still see Kyle Field from the road out there. We had a white elephant ornament exchange that was kind of fun. hee hee, we didn't tell which ornament we brought, because the girl who got stuck with it was not too happy...

Today, in Sunday school class we had a pot-luck lunch to celebrate all the couples who were leaving our class, either due to moving locations completely or moving on to a new Sunday school class to reflect their new stage in life (like the first time parents class).

Then...I went to get my hair done, so that we could take our "engagement/bridal" portraits. But our photographer had to cancel due to rain...so we decide, we're going to try and take some ourselves anyways...Mariann and Shawn were kind enough to help us out (and they are engaged now!!!! so much happiness for those two! =) ). It started out all right - and then it poured on us - and we waited under the library underpass for a spell - and people stared at me oddly...sigh...we might reschedule for later this week for happier weather - because for some reason, I am now fixated on having some photos of the two of us looking nice and wedding-ish. I will post some of the pictures we took here once we look at them. (another problem with us trying to take our own photos is that we have no idea how to pose...).

another switchover

okay, I think I'm going to switch my blog back over to blogspot from my xanga site.

ho hum

I haven't accomplished much at all tonight. Just waiting for Adrian to come back from his 3 hour meeting. I meant to go to the lab and get something done, but I couldn't bring myself to venture out. oh, well, I will be extra-productive tomorrow....