Christmas Fun
December 26, 2008
Well, another Christmas has come and gone, though it joyfully continues to linger in the household. Mr Papa’s World celebrated another great Christmas.
It started a bit more than a week ago when Suzanne’s parents came to town for a visit. They timed the visit so they could be home for Christmas, but more importantly so they could see a couple of performances by Suzanne and the kids. Unfortunately, except for the weekend, I was working most of the time having just taken three weeks off for our recent Transatlantic cruise.
They got to see several Christmas programs of the kids at school, the kids’ Holiday Dance Recital at their dance studio, and Suzanne’s holiday show at a retirement community in Tucson. In addition, on Saturday, I cooked up an early Christmas meal (Turkey and the trimmings) for the group as we celebrated an early Christmas with gift exchanges. It was a wonderful visit.
On Christmas eve we spent some family time watching a couple of movies and getting ready for the big day. I cooked our traditional Prime Rib Dinner for Christmas eve. We usually attend Christmas mass on Christmas Eve. In the past, Christmas Eve mass has been at 6:00 pm which has made scheduling a bit difficult. With a new priest this year, mass moved to 7:00 pm which is actually better for us. We were able to enjoy our Christmas Eve dinner (the Prime Rib turned out perfect once again) around 5:00, go to mass, and return home about 8:30 for our traditional exchange of family gifts, minus the ones we did early with Suzanne’s parents.
My big gift I received this year was a smoker. I am anxious to try it out and will be doing so today as I smoke some ribs, chicken and a pork roast. I will update everyone in another post on how that comes out. I am excited to try a new area of cooking that I haven’t dabbled much except an occasional effort on the grill with some wood chips. Yesterday, I started the curing/marinading process of the meat.
It was after midnight before we got to bed on Christmas Eve as we enjoyed our glasses of champagne. Luckily for us, the kids have not traditionally been early risers on Christmas morning. I remember bugging my parents to get up quite early some years. It was a bit after 7:30 when we finally were awakened in the morning by Savannah.
Its also been a family tradition that the kids sleep in our room with us on Christmas Eve. It was a lot easier when they were smaller! The tradition started because of how our house is laid out with the kids rooms on the opposite side of the house from our room. We didn’t want them coming to our room in the morning and passing by the Christmas tree where they could see if Santa came or not. That was always Mr Papa’s job in the morning to go take a look and get the answer and fire up the Christmas lights. So, the family sleeping together tradition continues except now we tend to bring in a couple of extra mattresses.
Christmas morning, as our family tradition goes, is spent opening the gifts for the kids from Santa. It remains a great family experience. The latter part of the morning is spent doing any assembly required work on the gifts. We also watched It’s a Wonderful Life together.
I had planned to do my smoking on Christmas day as another big feast, but my smoker had been scheduled to arrive on the 23rd, but didn’t arrive until Christmas Eve. So, I instead did my smoker assembly and seasoning on Christmas day and we had left overs to eat. The big feast will be tonight as mentioned previously.
Today will be spent playing with the new games and enjoying some of the new Blu Ray movies the kids received.
Barcelona and Transatlantic Cruise 2008 – Day 3 – Barcelona
November 29, 2008
Day two of our 2008 family vacation finds us still in Barcelona. After a forced long day and lots of walking yesterday, we found ourselves in excellent condition today feeling no jet lag effects.
I awoke about 8:30 and went on a little walk to see if I could find a local store open to get some olive oil or butter. The night before, we had bought some eggs, potatoes, veggies and ham/bacon and I planned to cook a nice breakfast. However, I didn’t want everything to stick to the pans. There was only a few bakeries open despite the late morning for us Americans. In fact, the streets were pretty much deserted save for a few parents starting their kids towards school. It’s definitely a different culture.
Failing to find a place to get butter or oil, I went back and cooked the breakfast anyways. It came out very good and just added to the fun we are having here. After breakfast we all took turns and showered prepping for another fun filled day.
We decided to spend the morning relaxing around the apartment until after lunch. Savannah and Suzanne also decided to do a bit of girl shopping. Savannah bought a pair of genuine Spanish walking boots. Meanwhile, Sean and I relaxed in the apartment and enjoyed a movie. We all grabbed lunch at a local eatery about 2:00 pm. We ate at a local restaurant enjoying one of the Menu del Dia. Basically, it’s a fixed price menu with several choices of starters and main courses, plus a glass of wine. The meal was enjoyable but not quite as good as the very memorable dinner last night.
After lunch we headed out for another days walking and touristy things. First stop was the Sagrada Familia. It’s a huge church in Barcelona that is still under construction. It’s been under construction since the late 1800’s and has another 50 – 100 years planned in its construction. The church is/was the brainstorm of Antonio Gaudi. Despite the construction, the completed parts of the church were pretty amazing.
After walking around the ground floor, we took an elevator up about 20+ stories to areas where you could look out over the town or down into the inside of the church. You were also able to look at various parts of the exterior of the giant church.
Upon finishing our tour up on top, we took the stairs down. That was something I hadn’t experienced before and may have a hard time explaining. The stairwell down was a very narrow, tight circular stairwell. However, the handrail of the stairwell was on the outside on the wall. There was no handrail, wall or anything on the inside. Parts of the stairwell were also fairly dark and hard to see the steps. It all made for a strange descent – not one were you were necessarily afraid, but just a hard to explain feeling as you looked downward in the center of the stairwell.
Afterwards, we head downtown again and walked along the Passeig de Gracia, kind of the Rodeo Drive of Barcelona. The shops were pretty amazing and there were many other very odd architectural designs of Gaudi – one resembling a dragon slain with a sword. It was around 7:00 pm and the streets were bustling as if it was lunch time in a big city in the US.
As we turned for home, we stopped and enjoyed dinner in a nice pizzeria. Again, we had a wonderful dinner and great company with the employees of the restaurant. Along the way home, we stopped at a local bakery and grabbed some breakfast rolls and cakes for the morning.
We returned to the apartment about 9:00 pm, opened a bottle of wine and enjoyed another movie as we plotted our plans for the next day Friday, our last full day in Barcelona before boarding the Celebrity Summit on Saturday.
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