Have You Missed Me??

We have been crazy people since Christmas Eve. Seriously. Well, in truth, I was crazy before that. Our store was thankfully busy this month, and especially in the last few weeks, so instead of baking, I was there. When I was home, I was baking for the Cafe. A couple of TWD posts just didn’t make it – the Buttery Jam Cookies and the Butterscotch Pudding – but I was thrilled that I got all the others done. The December Daring Bakers Yule Log?? Surely you jest. Did you SEE that thing? It had like 400 steps. They’ll probably axe me soon anyway – I don’t know if I will be able to get the January one done or not since we will be in Italy for the biggest part of the month. I am going to ATTEMPT some TWD baking there – but not having my own kitchen and all of my pots/pans/spices/etc…well, we’ll see. But I intend to try. The last time we stayed at the apartment in Venice we managed to blow the breaker making peas on the outdated stove. God only knows what using the oven would do.

So, while I was away from the Land of Blog, I was busy nonetheless. We left Christmas morning after breakfast with my family and headed north to Moorefield, WV to visit Jon’s family. We ate a lot, opened lots of great gifts (yay, a Garmin and the Confetti Cakes book!!!) and shopped in the local stores. We managed to get up in the mountains and visit some friends, as well as visit an old friend and her new husband that we haven’t seen in probably 5 or 6 years!

Seven really enjoyed getting to play with his older cousin Brant, as well as getting to see all of the Christmas Lights at Welton Park. Hopefully Brant’s Mom Keeli will recover from her Happy Holidays Electrocution soon!

We left Moorefield on Sunday and headed south to Harrisonburg for family time in Dayton at Jon’s Nonna’s, and then Seven and I loaded up and headed North to Pennsylvania to visit my sister and her family…she had a new baby, Benjamin, on Saturday! So we stayed at her house with her two older boys, Clay & Nate, (who shared their tattoos with Sev!) until last night when we took advantage of Seven’s bedtime and drove home. Jenn & Ben are home from the hospital and doing great…I wish we had gotten to see more of them, though!