Santa
We kicked off the weekend with a holiday party at Madison’s day care. Parents were invited for dinner at 5p – the owner cooked for all of us, yummy Peruvian fare, including a delicious rice pudding concoction. We enjoyed our food, child-free, while watching videos the caretakers had put together of all the kids – it was nice to finally see what Mads is or isn’t up to during the day!
At about 6.30 we met the kids in the main room, shortly before Santa made his appearance. Now, Mads hadn’t been too thrilled about strange old men in red suits and big beards and this night was no exception. Even though she saw that everyone was getting presents when they went up to Santa, she refused. REFUSED. to go collect her gift. Once the gifts were handed out and Santa left, the kids just about ripped into their gifts. Being one of 3 girls at day care, Mads received a nice lavender tulle tutu and matching headband. The mom that bought it for her was so excited to shop for a little girl. “It’s so much fun!” she exclaimed. Unfotch, Mads wanted nothing to do with it once she saw that another girl had received a princess dress and was already wearing hers. Mads went to drawer where the dress-up clothes are kept and proceeded to pull out the blue princess dress and asked to put it on. (Oy! I was so not looking forward to a princess phase so early.)
don't touch me
Macy’s
We got a late start to our Saturday, we ventured downtown at about noon, grabbed some lunch, did some shopping and went to see the holiday windows at Macy’s. Together, with the SFSPCA, Macy’s produces some great storefronts with some awfully cute animals in the windows. Mads was excited to see a black kitten responding to her window taps, a cute little puppy just sitting nicely, and even a sleeping black cat!
She wasn’t too thrilled about the SFSPCA mascot, as you can see.
(Yes, we managed to take advantage of some of the sales most of the stores were holding.)
Slumdog
Later that night, S & I made our way to the Embarcadero to see Slumdog Millionaire. Please go see this movie if you haven’t already! It tells the story of a young boy growing up in the slums of Mumbai (Bombay). Though the conditions are absolutely heartbreaking, it’s still my feel good movie of the year.
And here’s a clip f/M.I.A.
Happy Holidays!
(this is not to be confused with the dude that delivers the presents on Christmas Eve)
To begin, though I went to catholic school for oh-so many years, I can’t recall ever celebrating a saint day (S always gives me a difficult time if I forget to wish him a happy saint day).
At this age, I’m finding Mads a bit more understanding of Christmas – at least the material part of it. She’s starting to notice the holiday lights around the neighborhood (“pretty”) and fully understands the concept of presents (“presents”, specifically, “my presents”)! I figure we can instill the moral teaching of Christmas when she’s a bit more receptive.
So, this year Aunt “Keety” and Uncle “Mac” introduced Mads to St. Nicholas. They started telling her a story of St. Nick traveling around with his horses and leaving presents for good little boys and girls. Though Mads seemed more interested in the horses, she ran to her room, grabbed her fancy shoes and two baby carrots. She placed the shoes and carrots outside and listened carefully for the horses.
When it got dark enough outside, we asked her if we should check if the horses and St. Nick came by. Mads seemed happy to see a present, but a bit cautious as to where the carrots went.
And so begins our St. Nick holiday tradition…
Yup, it’s the return of the 3 word weekend…
Halloween
Last Friday, as you know, was Halloween. And, as expected miss Mads…um, preferred not try on her costume at home. So I packed it up, brought it to day care with us and wished them luck. And, as expected, she went willingly into her costume.
only candy could keep her in this costume
After picking her up, our attempt to go trick-or-treating didn’t go well. Don’t get me wrong, she wanted the candy – badly – just didn’t want to work for it. Which is fine for me, since I probably would’ve eaten most of it. :o(
Reunion (kind of)
Thanks to the wonder that is Facebook, I’ve re-connected with a bunch of my college friends and found myself at my friend’s birthday party/housewarming. I haven’t seen S in, like, 6 years, and it was so good to see her and other college friends. It’s funny to see us all grown up with families, homes, husbands – thinking back to Spring Break in Vegas, Wednesday nights in Tijuana or parties at the EX house in DelMar. Sigh. Anyways, it was worth the drive to SanJo in the rain to see my dear college friends.
Madonna
Madge was back in town. Mind you, I was about 6 months preggers when I saw her last. This time around, S was spared, and I accompanied my friend L, who is about 6 months pregnant. Before we arrived, I told her my theory: if the baby is moving around a lot during the concert it’s a girl (or gay boy). She and her husband, B, are also waiting to find out the sex of their child. Anyways, I digress. We had pretty kick a** seats – floor seats, probably 20 – 25 feet away from the stage. Sweet! So we’re sitting around, chatting with the people next to us, Madge is running late, as usual, I’m looking around, OMG! John Legend is, I kid you not, 6 feet away from us! At this point I was cursing myself for not bringing my camera. But then the show started and I forgot all about it (kind of). As you can imagine, Madge (I wonder if she’ll still be called this now that she’s hightailing it out of London) puts on a pretty darn good show. She performed the bulk of her new album Hard Candy, which, imho would’ve been better if Britney had done it. The show was fabulous and am happy to say that I got my week’s cardio in that one night – so fun!
The holidays are upon us…actually, they’re here already.
We had a lovely Thanksgiving with a beautifully brined and juicy bird accompanied with yummy side dishes, followed up with a friendly family poker game.
Mads of course dug into the turkey, not a big fan of smashed potatoes or stuffing (surprisingly), but she just adored the homemade, whole berry cranberry sauce despite it being a bit on the tart side and the pumpkin cheesecake.
Le vendredi noir
I know I’ve been out of it a while, maybe I’m just forgetting things in my old age, but where the heck did the term “Black Friday” come from?!
My plan was to lay low that day, recuperate from the meal, but instead we opted to travel south to the Stanford Shopping Center. Strangely enough, there were parking spaces galore and the mall and shops themselves, weren’t unbearably crowded.
We picked up some things at Crate & Barrel , Baby Gap and Nordstrom and had lunch at California Pizza Kitchen.
Stanford being an outdoor mall, people tend to bring their dogs shopping with them. Mads went crazy after every dog she saw and wanted to follow them, regardless of where we were headed. She got especially excited when she saw another yellow lab and said, “tata” (her word for dog, specifically Lucie, go figure?)
Break out the melted cheese
Since the weather has been a bit chillier, we broke out the Raclette grill and invited our friends R&L and their boys J&J for dinner Saturday evening.
If you haven’t had a raclette dinner, it is the ultimate cheese dinner (I think I like it better than fondue)! Served with various cured meats (Madragne ham and Proscuitto di Parma, come to mind), steamed potatoes & vegetables and cornichons…the melted goodness that is Raclette (which is also the name of the cheese) warms you up and fills your belly. I think that our adult guests, at least, enjoyed it!
If dinner wasn’t rich enough, I followed it up with home made Creme Brulee. (Insert food coma here.)
Mads had a great time with the boys and by the end of the evening, they were chasing each other around the house, screaming, yelling and having such a great time!
Welcoming the Holidays
Our first holiday party was the Sunday following Thanksgiving.
Christmas is by far my friend Katie’s MOST FAVORITE HOLIDAY…EVER! Their home was beautifully decorated and the tree was a sight to behold (fresh orchids and red roses were found amongst the branches). Food, as always, was delicious and plentiful.
Photos originally uploaded by ~elida~
On to the remaining holiday parties, ours included!
(26 december 2006)
i apologize for being absent, but it’s been a busy past two weeks. french grany and granpy were here (tonton et audrey are still here) for xmas. it was seriously non-stop while they were here: out and about and last minute xmas shopping!
mad’s 1st xmas went well i suppose…you’ll just have to ask her. there were SO many gifts under our tree this year and about 1% were NOT for mads. she’s got enough clothes now, so we won’t need to go shopping for a while and enough books (board, cloth and bath appropriate) to last a while. she didn’t get too many toys, but she did get a doorway jumper! grany and granpy (and great-grany and great-granpy) bought her a stroller and a high chair!
it was also a great time for our friends: “Dolce and Gabbana” got engaged right before xmas and our friends alex & claire welcomed their second daughter on christmas eve.
(1 january 2007)
my attempt to get one last post before the end of the year failed. at least i tried, non?
in all the hustle and bustle of the holidays, s, mads and i all caught a cold. yup, mads got her first cold. on top of all the probable teething pain to go with it, she hasn’t been the bundle of joy she usually is. sick babies are no fun at all.
The social butterflies that S & I are (joke, ha ha) we were invited to three New Year’s parties. (We only made it to two – sorry we missed your shindig Dolce & Gabbana – sounds like it was off the hook!) ;o) After some cocktails and appetizers at the Darling’s, we headed up to the (almost) top of twin peaks to Niki/Bill/Tony’s party. Luckily, it wasn’t cloudy or foggy that night and we had (I kid you not) bridge-to-bridge views. S thought that the New Year’s fireworks weren’t as impressive as before because they looked so small from where we were. The “playroom” at this house was somewhat complete: mini dancefloor (Tony’s a DJ on the side) complete with lights and disco ball, pool table and a foos-ball table. It was only at 2am when some of the boys decided to play poker – so Shelley, another poker widow, and I headed back to my house to get some sleep. (Good thing we didn’t stay since S & Adam didn’t get home until after 5am!)
So the last day of my holiday break – I start to feel a little sick: sore throat, coughs, stuffy nose. I go back to work Tuesday, but take off the rest of the week. So that’s how I started off my new year: sick! 😮
Please, sir, may I have another?
I’m finally over whatever I had – but still exhausted. Work has just consumed me. You know you’re working too much when work people and places are in your dreams. When I started this blog, I promised not write too much about work, good or bad, but I’ll just leave it at this: my department is grossly understaffed and all the work that my previous boss was doing was absorbed by, no not my new boss, but by me. Ugh.
THE calendar
Other than that, not much is going on around Chez Rebaud. The latest big hullabaloo was over my Christmas gift from my in-laws. Interesting, very interesting. So, S, their first born son, received a cartoon depicting the history of his name. I, on the other hand, get a calendar. Not just any calendar, but a calendar of the French rugby team. No big deal, right? So S & I open up the calendar, hmm, okay, these men are nude…hmm, this one’s got his hand on his crotch…oh my!…there are definintely more than 12 months in this calendar…what! why are there so many months!!! I was cracking up (I try and look for the humor in life)! This is my gift from my parents in-law? Did his dad pick this up? His mom? S, on the other hand, didn’t think it was that funny and was upset that his parents had sent me a gift like this: “what are they trying to say with this?” So, it turns out that every year the French rugby team puts out this calendar and the women in France go crazy over them and buy them up. Maman Rebaud thought, well, the women in my office are buying them, maybe K would appreciate it. Completely harmless…but funny at the same time. S has asked not to send the calendar on a yearly basis. (The calendar is now in my mom’s hands and the women at her office are just having a blast with it!)
Neighborhood haps
So, our neighbor that puts his trash/recycle/compost bins in the parking spot in front has resorted to leaving parking his rusty old truck in the spot so we don’t use it. What an a**.
There was a nasty accident last weekend a couple houses up from us. I guess someone lost control of their car, jumped the curb, ruined 2 front lawns, totaled a BMW 325i, which in turned was pushed into the house next door, leaving cracks and open spaces in the wall. The most awful part about it was that the people who own owned the BMW were out of town.
That’s about it for now…peace out!
I apologize for being MIA – but it’s been so terribly busy this holiday season – or at least it seemed like that. Was it just me or did the holidays sneak up like…POW!!!…this year? As a result, holiday cards were sent out late and I only baked three batches of holiday cookies (sugar, peanut blossoms, and cranberry/pistachio biscotti)!
Good news to report over the holidays…my cousin gave birth to a healthy baby girl, as did our friend Dani…and our friends Niki and Bill got engaged Xmas Eve! Lots to celebrate!!!
Maybe because we were here celebrating Xmas here and not in France with S’ family – Christmas seemed to laid back, anti-climactic this year. I dunno, maybe it’s me. Anyhoo, S & I scored some nify gifts this year:
iPod mania (I’m sporting a new nano and hell has frozen over and S now has a video iPod)
new snowboard wear for S
frozen yogurt maker
a new timepiece for K
cool French cutlery
and a cozy hoodie for moi
Now that Xmas is over (S + I are off work this week) we’ve been more or less doing absolutely…NOTHING! And I can tell you right now that doing nothing, is quite relaxing. Other than taking Lucie out for a W-A-L-K or to the P-A-R-K, we’ve been holed up in our home watching reuns of Project Runway (even S is getting into it…Santino needs to be slapped upside his head) and I’ve been catching up on The Golden Girls reruns on Lifetime. Tuesday, we actually left the house to run an errand and Wednesday we drove down to Palo Alto to visit with the Saadas. (Since it was muddy outside, poor Lucie couldn’t bark at squirrels and was stuck inside with the two boys.) Of course, all the things I wanted to accomplish this week, I didn’t. I haven’t even looked at my resume (I was supposed to update it this week and have it ready to send out in January), go through and organize my paperwork (ha!)…oy! Of course, I’ll be scrambling around this weekend, cleaning up. S decided at the last minute to go to CES next week, so I’ll have a day or two to myself to get my s*** together…maybe. ;o)
‘uggh. Just can’t get over it.
I haven’t blogged on the house lately, so guess what today’s topic is?
Chez Rebaud has a new roof with fancy flashing, I might add. Had it completed just in time for the coming winter. Though, it’s been beautifully sunny and relatively warm that past few weeks.
In preparing the house for stucco repair and exterior paint and eventual new landscaping, Sylvain decided to start attacking the Aloe plant in our side yard. After renting an electric chainsaw from Home Depot, he managed to take most of it down. I did my part and raked whatever was cut into a huge pile (to be disposed of this coming weekend). Sunday, after taking Lucie for a long walk to Mt. Davidson, we then focused efforts on the bamboo plants. Advice: if you want bamboo, keep it in pots�because it is a b**** and a half to get rid of. Monday, Columbus Day, Sylvain had rented a gas-powered chainsaw to thoroughly rid the yard of the aloe plant.
I’m excited for the holidays this year! I bought the candy for the droves of trick-or-treaters I hope we will have and some garland to decorate our ghetto support post. Will need to buy pumpkins at some point this weekend and partake in some pumpkin carving. Also, looking forward to Thanksgiving and having a delicious and cozy meal with friends and family. And especially looking forward to Christmas, as this will be the first Christmas we celebrate in Chez Rebaud (we were in Paris last year), complete with d�cor and THE TREE!
(Check back for pictures!)
(more…)
Merry Christmas everyone! I wanted to write yesterday, but the jet lag had caught up with me.
Christmas Eve morning, Sylvain + I drove out to Montigny Les Bretonneux to visit our friends, Alex + Claire, their 5 month-old daughter Alice, their dog, Sherlock, and their new home. Their house is quite nice; they had done some remodeling as well – kitchen, bigger rooms, etc. We visited for a while and then we were off to Paris to meet John, Sylvain’s bro, for lunch.
John lives down the street from the famous Moulin Rouge. If you are not familiar with Paris, it is also the red light district: sex shops and strip clubs abound. John recommended an Italian place nearby. Eric, Benedicte, John, Sylvain & I enjoyed a wonderful lunch (well, at least my penne al’amatriciana was good, can’t speak for the others).
Before heading home, Sylvain and I still needed to purchase our white elephant gifts. We walked around St. Germain-en-Laye to find the same Marche Noel that we had seen at La Defense. Nothing really caught our eye, so we wandered further and found a bookstore with some cheap and decent gifts.
Christmas Eve dinner was delicious and filling: foie gras starter, seafood terrine, asparagus wrapped in bacon, cheese (bien sur!), and dessert. (Can you hear my arteries clogging?)
While I wrapped gifts late into the night, Sylvain taught his parents & John how to play Texas Hold’em. ;o)
Since there are no young children on my side of the family, I forgot that Christmas morning is an early rising. I awoke to joyous screams and yells from above. I dragged my a** out of bed at 7.30a to find out that Leo (our 4 year old nephew) had a Santa sighting, or at least an elf that was dressed up as Santa. To preface that, the night before Sylvain’s mom had convinced John to dress up as Santa and run through the backyard to make Leo think that Santa really does exist. Well, the plan didn’t go as smooth as she had hoped. Leo was so excited to see Santa, but he was also surprised when santa started taking off his suit. So, naturally, Leo thought that there was someone in the yard posing as Santa – an elf, he figured. (A tall one at that, John is probably 5’11” – 6′.) He still doesn’t have an idea that it was John and us adults are getting a good chuckle out of it. ;o)
Tonight, Sylvain’s family (his father’s side) came for Christmas dinner: salmon, oysters (a French Christmas tradition), foie gras (more!?), roast pork with a madeira sauce, potato croquettes (as sinful as tater tots), cheese, buches de noel (chocolate & cafe), and endless boxes of chocolates and truffles.
After the White Elephant gift exchange, Sylvain introduced poker to his family. We ended up playing for 5+ hours! (To put things in perspective, his family started arriving at 12.15p, we sat down to Sunday lunch at 3p, and the last family member left at 11.30p.)
Well, that was our Christmas in (large) nutshell. I hope to post some more pictures before we leave for London on Wednesday. Still haven’t gone ice skating yet, hopefully Monday or Tuesday. ;o) And still no snow. My mom is in Texas now, and it’s snowing there.