Twelve dates of Christmas: Date Twelve

On the twelth date of Christmas, my true love, my sister, and I....

Celebrated a wonderful Christmas day complete with gift and stocking opening, a big breakfast we all cooked together, a beautiful program at church centered around our Savior Jesus Christ, having the missionaries from our church over for a dinner of tamales, google chatting with family, etc... It was delightful.

{by Simon Dewey}

It was a special treat to have Kristin here for our holiday! It was a surprise for me and I loved every minute of having sister time. Job and Kristin got to know each other better which was nice. We also had a fun week-after-Christmas which I will proceed to put all in another blog post.
I had a lot of fun with these 12 dates of Christmas. Maybe this will become yet another holiday tradition.
I love those.

Twelve dates of Christmas: Date Eleven

On the eleventh date of Christmas my true love, my sister, and I....

Attended our now traditional Italian Christmas Eve Feast (we went last year too ;).
In case you didn't read last year's post let me paint a picture (since no real pictures exist to document the magic :( )  A 7 course, homemade, Italian seafood meal. Feast of the 7 fishes they call it. I call it amazing.
We fed ourselves silly, sat by the fire, read Luke 2, and enjoyed a wonderful Christmas Eve with friends.

And then invited ourselves back for next year. Can't mess with tradition right?! ;)

Twelve dates of Christmas: Date Ten

On the tenth date of Christmas my true love, my sister, and I....


Went to the New England Aquarium to oogle at our favorite enormous sea turtle Andre, and then walked right on over to the North End for a big box of cannoli from Mike's.

And yes, we then went home and proceeded to eat them all.

No regrets.

Twelve dates of Christmas: Date Nine

On the ninth date of Christmas my true love, my sister, and I....


Made a whole bunch of tamales for our friends! And when I say a whole bunch, I mean it ;) We decided to do that as our little treat for friends this year and it was a fun project! We gave a little packet to each one with pork tamales, bean tamales, avocado salsa, and a few sweet pineapple tamales.
I seriously can't believe we didn't get any pictures of the process, but it included lots of masa, lots of corn husks, some interesting conversation, and some Latino dancing in the kitchen!

Que Rico!

Twelve dates of Christmas: Date Eight

On the eigth date of Christmas my true love, my sister, and I....

Went to see the Boston Ballet perform the nutcracker! They were amazing to say the least, and it was definitely a fun way to get in the Christmas mood.

Before the show we hopped on by Sam LaGrassa's (remember, the world's greatest sandwiches?! :) Did not disappoint, that's for sure.

I mean, come on, just look at that happy face :) I sure love that guy!

Twelve dates of Christmas: Date Seven

On the seventh date of Christmas, I had a sister date! :)

Kristin and I got down to business and made some delicious things for our stockings. Our stockings have a sort of old fashioned theme with fruit, nuts, molasses cookies, etc... (of course ours also included some not-so-old-fashioned things like twix and VS eye shadow ;)

Anyways, baking up some homemade cookies with a good friend is just so fun! And molasses cookies are my new favorite, seriously, give them a try!
We also candied some nuts and found a new favorite recipe which I just have to share. So.darn.good.

I present to you:

Mexican Hot Chocolate Toasted Pecans

{via www.simplyscratch.com}

ingredients:
16 ounces Pecans
1 Egg White
2/3 cup White Sugar
1/4 cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
1-1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Ground Ginger
1 pinch Cayenne Pepper
1 pinch Ground Allspice

preparation:
Preheat your oven to 250 degrees. I lined my cookie sheet with a silpat, but you could also grease with butter or coconut oil.

Mix the sugar, cocoa powder and all the spices in a medium bowl and set aside. Whisk the egg white until it is thick and frothy {small peaks} and add in the pecans. Stir to coat. Next, add the cocoa mixture and combine until the nuts are evenly coated.

Scoop the nuts with a slotted spoon onto the prepared pan and place in your preheated oven for 20 minutes. Remove, toss and place back in the oven for twenty more minutes. After the first 40 minutes, check your nuts to see if the cocoa/sugar doesn't crumble off of the nuts. If it does, place it back in the oven for 20 more minutes, otherwise let cool slightly and serve!

Twelve dates of Christmas: Date Six

On the sixth date of Christmas my true love, my sister, and I.....

Went to enjoy some beautiful art at the Museum of Fine Arts. Boston has a great one and I always love going. The special exhibit going on now is Degas Nudes and many of them were very beautiful (we didn't care for his brothel period however). We also saw the new Jewlery exhibit, the contemporary art, the rest of the impressionists, and some video art. Can I just say, I could spend all day in there!

After getting our culture fix we headed over to our favorite little tea shop for some hot apple cider and herbal tea. Speaking of art, they always show local artist's work in the place which I love.

Now, if watching Job sip his drink from a tiny teaspoon doesn't make me all jolly inside, I don't know what will ;)

Look who's here!!

This girl!!

Who I love so very much. Who I haven't seen for 3 years! Who I have missed terribly. And she's here, for Christmas, and.I.love it.
She arrived on Tuesday night and we proceeded to cuddle up, watch a family Christmas classic (Muppet's Christmas Carol), and talk through the whole thing. It has been great catching up.
For the remainder of our Christmas dates this lovely lady will be joining us. She adds a lot of fun so we are happy to have her along! :D

Twelve dates of Christmas: Date Five

On the fourth date of Christmas my true love and I....


Hit up two, count 'em, TWO ward Christmas parties :) Since Job works with both the Spanish Branch, and our English ward, we were invited to both. Job led the kids at each party in a song for the program.

Nice form!

Twelve dates of Christmas: Date Four

On the fourth date of Christmas my true love and I...

Tried to recover from our previous date that morning!

Shopping wore us out so we rented a movie (the new Jane Eyre-Rachael's pick), grabbed some blankets, and relaxed. Post-date included cuddling in our cozy bed. Now that's what I'm talkin' about.

Twelve dates of Christmas: Date Two

On the second date of Christmas my true love and I....

Attended an adventsingen with our good friends and all their awesome kidlets. It involved food, sweets, friends, candles, singing, and jamming out to a wonderfully wide assortment of instruments. We happen to love all those things, so it was a ton of fun! Creating all that great Christmas music really got us excited for the season. Which is what theses dates are supposed to do so, score! :)

The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Date One

This blog does the twelve dates of Christmas, and really, how cute is that! I couldn't help but take a page out of their creative book and do our own version, Salazar Style and all that.

And so....

On the first date of Christmas my true love and I*....

Saw the Holiday Pops concert! Nothing like some Christmas classics played by a world class orchestra to put you in the Christmas spirit. I just might have teared up while they played "It came upon a midnight clear". Scratch that, I definitely did. So beautiful.

We also splurged a little and got hot chocolate and toasted marshmallow ice cream, and a chocolate chip cookie for a treat during the show. So fun!

Amazing Thai food beforehand only helped make this date more fantastic. This is the first day I am really getting in the Christmas mood, so I am excited for all the fun that is to come!

Stay tuned for date two!


*Despite lack of photographic evidence, I really was on this date with Jobito ;)

It's Christmas Time!

Salazar Christmas Eve Play-by-Play

Christmas Eve:
5:00-Arrived at Bishop and wife's home for dinner. Chatted, got to know the other two couples attending, etc...
5:30-Ate
6:00-Ate
7:00-Ate...
7:30-Ate
This continued for some time until we could no longer fit a single morsel more. Our bishop has Italian ancestry so we had a HUGE traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner. Complete with Bakala (or something. It was a white fish with olives and stuff. So good), stuffed clams, pizza geyna (again, not spelled right. These are so legit I can't even find them on google ;), linguine with clams, stuffed mushrooms rolls, stuffed lobster tails (yes twice in one month, lucky us!!), rasberry salad, a ricotta cheese pie for desert, etc, etc, etc. Seriously, there was tons of food. So delish!

8:00 After dinner we sang Christmas carols, visited some more, and then our bishops wife read the Christmas story from Luke. We then each had the opportunity to share our thoughts about Christ, Christmas, or just anything. It was a very pleasant evening and we are so glad for the kindness of our hosts.

Once we got home we hurried our little selves to prepare for the next morning. I asked Job if I could be Santas little helper so I banished him to his room to call family while I stuffed stockings and put out a few gifts. It was fun :)

Later that evening all the lovely food I had enjoyed caught up with me and ended up out of me if you know what I mean....yuck, vomiting is no bueno, especially on Christmas eve night. Luckily it didn't last long and I was able to get some sleep. (TMI for most of you perhaps but I must remember these wonderful times ;)

The next morning we leisurely awoke and enjoyed a traditional Christmas morning :) I forwent making a big breakfast of Big Pine French Toast as is the tradition in my family. This was because we already felt so heavy from our big meal the night previous and I had just made some yummy organic granola a few days prior so we went with that.

 Welcome Christmas Morning! We sure looked the part with our tired faces ;)

 We had fun opening gifts from family and each other. Job's family sent us a big box of goodies and gifts from Mexico which was a lot of fun. My family also sent gifts. We have never received so many packages at once. People love you a lot when you move far, far away ;)

 Kisses and love sent to our familias y amigos!

The rest of the day we just chilled. Watched Christmas movies, ate, played games, talked to our families A LOT. We both felt the sting of homesickness during this season. This was my first Christmas alone without the majority of my family around so it was hard in ways. But really I have my family with me in Job. He is my family, Boston is our home, and we had a great Christmas together. Talking on skype was so much fun and gave me my "family fix" for the day. Thank goodness for technology :)

I am mostly grateful for this season because of the birth of our Savior. The Spirit of Christmas is simply the Spirit of Christ and so we can feel it all year long. This is something my sister who is on a mission told me in a recent letter and it has stuck with me. I want to keep the spirit with me all year so I can remember Christ in daily life.

Merry Christmas 2010!

Ooh ooh baby, all I want for Christmas is a Hippopotamus and You

Job and I's current favorite secular Christmas songs are Mariah Carey's All I want for Christmas is You and Gayla Peevey's I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.  
Those two songs never fail to make us burst out into song while we are driving in the car :) 
I LOVE Christmas music :)


What are your favorite Christmas songs? Come on, I know a few of you read this blog, I wanna hear! ;)

Christmas Caroling with the Boston Pops

Saturday Job and I were able to attend a wonderful baptism of a man who has been investigating and that Job has befriended. I always love going to baptisms and we are excited to have a new member of our ward :)

After the baptism Job and I booked it over to the Prudential Center downtown. Keith Lockhart ("He is a rockstar!" -Job) who is the Boston Pops Maestro, and members of the Tanglewood chorus led a huge group of carolers in singing Christmas carols in an effort to break the world record for the largest group of carolers gathered in the same place at the same time. The current record-7,514 carolers-was set by singers at South Carolina's Bob Jones University in 2004.
In addition to attempting to break the record, for every participating caroler, the Boston Pops contributed $1 to purchase Holiday Pops tickets for children in under served communities.

We had such a blast!! There was a great group there and we sang our little hearts out :) I am not one to usually sing that much (unless I am in the car ;) but I love Christmas songs and have no problem belting them out :) There was a great mix of both spiritual and secular Christmas songs which I liked. There was also free hot chocolate, an awesome band to accompany us, Santa and Mrs. Clause, Rudolf, the whole gang.

Later that night we checked the news to see if we had won. We had a group of 3,239 carolers so we didn't beat the record but I know that everyone had a great time anyways and trying to break the record was only a part of the overall fun :) It was nice to gather together with community members and was such a fun way to start off our holiday season!