The short of it, before the great purge...

I suppose you need some sort of explanation as to why I've been MIA these past few weeks.  Or maybe you don't as I'm sure you can imagine.  Here's the short of it and then I'll give you the long of it in other posts and you can choose which to read...

1.  Day after my birthday we had a local Kitchen gathering to celebrate the Christmas season together before we parted ways. 
2. We made gingerbread trains.
3. I made buckeye balls and cherry cordials for the first time.
4. Neal made a few batches of La Fuji Mama's toffee recipe. He also had a failed attempt at making peanut brittle due to vital steps not included in his recipe.  He fed it to the squirrels who were very grateful.
5. Aedan caught the stomach flu from previously mentioned Kitchen gathering.
6. We busied ourselves getting things ready for most of my family coming over for Christmas.
7. I made stockings for visiting family using old pj bottoms.  Oh ya, had to fix my sewing machine to do so.
8. Some family came early to beat the weather.  Others were delayed due to weather.
9. We had a fun Christmas Eve fireside of sorts and put kids to bed. Aedan helped set out treats for Santa and his reindeer before retiring for the night.
10. Neal and I stayed up late, to the tune of 3pm, getting things ready.  We still didn't see Santa.
11. Santa delivered while we were asleep and in the morning we had fun opening gifts and playing with all our new treasures.
12. It felt like I cooked all day Christmas Day. I think I did.
13. Neal caught stomach flu Christmas Day.
14. Jackie caught some awful sickness the day after and has not wanted to even think about turkey since.
15. Others proceeded to get ill.
16. Played hosts for a week.
17. Sent off family and took down Christmas decorations and tried to recover our energy and holiday spirit within a day and a half.  It felt way too early to take down decorations on the 29th.  Read on.
18. Drove to Neal's parent's for New Years festivities.
19. Drove back home to turn around and have Neal go in for surgery on his hernia on the 2nd.  I didn't want to handle un-decorating our place all on my own, thus the early take-down.  It is still a little sad.
20. Surgery went well but Neal is trying to recover with a toddler in the home.  Not a good mix turns out.
21. Aedan gets a mild cold.
22. I have started getting together Chinese New Year stuff to send to my nieces and nephews.

Somewhere in all of that I sort of lost the urge to blog and to do some real cooking - both I love very much but that's just what happened.  I'm trying to get myself back on track though and lucky me, getting myself back in order never seemed attainable by New Years for those ambitious resolutions so I've always had Chinese New Year to fall back on.  So just so you know, my focus will be on that for the next few weeks and I've got some fun things planned... I better not spoil it before I'm done purging...