What I did over New Year's break

Last night as we were headed to bed, the husband and I agreed that it has been a nice break the past couple of weeks. We had a really nice visit with my family and the New Year's weekend was fairly nice and relaxing, too.

The festivities started on Wednesday evening (even though I had to work on Thursday) with the Huskers game and the first ever shutout for them at a bowl game - they were on the winning end of it, by the way! While we watched the game, Marxo drew me some pictures:

Those are supposed to be footballs that the players are holding, however, they look suspiciously like ears of corn, which would still be apropos, I guess!

On New Year's Eve, they let us leave from work at around 2pm, so I was home and enjoying some wine and cheese by 4:30. We cooked a nice dinner, watched a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and we were all in bed and asleep by midnight.

The next morning, we slept in and I eventually got around to cooking the Lucky Black-eyed Peas, which is more like a stew than the traditional black-eyed peas that you eat with cornbread. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really look forward to this traditional southern meal of black-eyed peas because this recipe is so darn good. And it's even better the second day!

We went to some friends' house on Saturday afternoon for a kick-off-the New Year get-together and yesterday, we had some friends over. As always happens when we invite people over, we wait until just before they get there to attempt to clean up the house, which proves to be an impossible undertaking, but I was able to organize a small portion of the house next to the kitchen, so at least I felt better about that. This attempt at organization was catalyzed by the fact that the previous day, I organized our tupperware cupboard, so I'm hoping that the reaction will continue through the house for the next couple of months and maybe by my birthday in April, we'll be living in an organized oasis. Baby steps, right?

Anyway, I managed to cook a fairly good meal yesterday for the friends that we invited over. We had beef tenderloin, mashed potatoes, and green beans (which I was particularly proud of because I had no idea how I was going to cook them, but ended up first steaming them and then putting them into a little seasoned oil and semi-sauteeing them and they turned out really tasty!). As the husband and I were trying everything - and marvelling at how it actually turned out pretty well - we had to explain to our friends that we rarely cook, so when something turns out well, we're very surprised!

We exchanged gifts with these friends and as one of my gifts, I received a Tamalera and a promise to come over and teach me how to make some tamales. I can't wait to take her up on the offer!

Before the economy tanked, we had been thinking that 2009 was going to be our "break-out" year. But since that didn't happen, we're hoping for great things from 2010. And I think that's the general mood for everyone these days. Bring on the good luck and prosperity - and here's hoping that the Tiger will protect us this year (when the Chinese New Year finally gets here on Feb. 14!). :)