Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Vacation!

I woke up the morning after Christmas with a terrible cold and essentially missed the rest of my mom's stay with us. I slept a lot, though, and got well enough to venture out towards the end of the week.

It was great to have Shaun home for so long. We never get to have him around for so many days in a row, and we all appreciated it. He took the boys on a few "flashlight hikes."



Here are the boys reading their favorite section of their newest magazine. They love to laugh at those stupid criminals together.


Hillary brought us some homemade nocino, an Italian liqueur made from green walnuts. It looked like swamp water (pretty swamp water, if that's possible) but tasted much better, I imagine.


Shaun was on a roll with fun activity ideas; he suggested ice skating at the Lloyd Center, so ice skating (the first time for the kids) we went. I was cursing my wool sweater. Ice skating in a mall is hot. Also I was still pretty under the weather.

Willem here was crazy strong, and able to keep himself up by using his arms. Nels, on the other hand, was just too gangly. I wish we had gotten video of him on the ice. It appeared as though his body was held together by rubber bands. It was like what I imagine Dick Van Dyke would do in a comedic dance performance commanded by the Queen of England to atone for his Cockney accent in Mary Poppins upon pain of death if it weren't funny or crazy enough. It was spectacular.


Afterwards we decamped to Clyde Common for reasonably-priced happy hour food and drink. Willem plopped down in his chair, took a deep breath, and said, "I love this place. It smells delicious." Illness, skating, hunger, and a cocktail had me a little loopy. I have no idea what I thought was so hilarious on my phone in the picture below, or what I'm doing with my right hand. Our hamburgers were cooked to perfection and Hillary declared the Old-Fashioned (her signature drink) to be mighty good.


On Friday we ventured out to Shaun's folks' house and stopped in at Olympic Provisions for lunch on the way. I was very happy to finally eat there, even though my cold impeded my ability to taste things.

My parsnip-apple soup was to die for.


As was Hillary's polenta with Italian sausage.


I don't think I cooked a thing between Christmas and New Year's Eve. I honestly don't remember. Between eating out we enjoyed leftovers and an abundance of cardamom rolls, Christmas cookies, fruit-nut bread and brown rice bread courtesy of the moms in my life. It wasn't a low-carb vacation, but it sure was a delicious one.

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