Christmas 2014, part 1

 

 

     Christmas 2014 has now come and gone.  As ever, the Christmas season was a whirlwind, thus leaving very little time to write about the whole thing. I shall try to do my best to write about the highlights.

    The Christmas season probably started in earnest with Abigail and Imogen's school Christmas concerts.  Abigail had a Madrigal's Christmas concert first, which was absolutely stunning.  Mrs. Fredricks, the Rancho Bernardo choir director, always picks wonderful, classical pieces for her students to sing.  Chorale concerts are great, but Christmas chorale concerts under Mrs. Fredricks are fabulous!  My favorite song, without a doubt, was their arrangement of the Coventry Carol.  The singers were dotted throughout the audience for that song, and Abigail was actually quite near me, so I could hear her singing.  It was very beautiful and very sad. 



 

 

Mrs. Fredricks at the Rancho Bernardo Choir Christmas concert, with Abigail in the background.

     Then, a few days later, the drama department, the dance department, the orchestra and Madrigals choir all joined up for a production of the Nutcracker!  It was an impressive production, and the orchestra especially sounded great.  Imogen was in the orchestra, and Abigail of course in the choir.  Every year I try to take the kids to a production of the Nutcracker and a performance of Handel's Messiah, and Tim insisted that this counted as our Nutcracker outing.  I was about 85% OK with that.

Madrigals singing at the Nutcracker

The orchestra at the Nutcracker

Abigail, nothing if not a performer!

     We went to a matinee performance of the Nutcracker, and then that evening went to our ward Christmas party.  The party had a Bethlehem theme, so there were different middle eastern type market stalls set up around the church hall.  We were encouraged to come in a Bethlehem costume.  Both Tim and I are terrible at costumes, so I had just planned to miss out on that part of the party. But on Saturday morning - before the Nutcracker - Tim found himself in a charity shop buying fabric to make some kind of costume. I kept telling him he was crazy - I can be very supportive like that when the time pressure is on - but somehow between the hours of 3pm-5pm he managed to make several costumes, despite having many troubles with my infuriating sewing machine, which definitely has a mind of its own.

Georgie making oil lamps at the Bethlehem Christmas party

 

     Some stalls at the party ....

Drinks stall, run by the Skinners

 

 

Our friend, Pam McKiernon, with the baklava!

Bethlehem, a la Ramona, CA

     The primary gave a little nativity play; hence one reason for Tim's sudden creative drive to make costumes.  Samuel was the innkeeper, and Georgie, Nelly, and Verity were asked to sing a Christmas song called 'Mary's Lullaby'.

The Bleakley Bethlehem-ites!

Georgie, Nelly and Verity sing at the play

The end of the nativity play

     The next week, I finally finished work for the term!!  Yea!  I simply hadn't had a chance to do any Christmas preparations with the pressure of work.  I finished on a Wednesday, and the next day, Grandma and Grandpa Bleakley arrived all the way from England for Christmas!!
     That weekend, we had our annual Christmas baking weekend.  We bake at the beginning of December to make our Christmas cake, gingerbread ornaments and mincemeat, and then we bake the weekend before Christmas to make treats for our neighbors and friends.  We made pecan tarts, mincemeat pies, jam thumbprints, marzipan, and peanut brittle.  Then we very strongly encouraged our reluctant children to go caroling around our neighborhood as we delivered our treats.

The famous pecan tarts.

Abigail makes the very more-ish jam thumbprints

The Christmas treat plate, ready for caroling!

      A few days later, we had our requisite Christmas chocolate making session - still in our pajamas, I'm afraid.

 

 
     The fun, however, was just getting started. Every Christmas, I try to do something with the kids that will help them reach out to those around them at this special time of year.  Most of the time, we pick a family to get a few gifts for or something along those lines.  But last year we did something a bit different.  We were in Idaho last year, living with my parents.  We decided to put on a little evening of Christmas music for the elderly people at my parents' church, particularly those who didn't have family around.  It was a lovely experience, so we decided to do something like that this year as well.  We ended up having what we called a 'soiree' - an evening of music and food at our home to fellowship with those around us. 
     Well, it was a blast.  It was, actually, a full on Christmas party.  Imogen, Samuel, Eleanor and Verity all performed Christmas songs, as did other people we invited.  Abigail sang 'Baby, it's Cold Outside' with Matt Woolley, and the two brought the house down.  And then, of course, there was the food .....
     Stressful though it can be, I love holiday cooking. This party was the perfect outlet for all that pent up creativity - or greediness?  There was soup - butternut squash; celeriac, apple and stilton; and beetroot and cranberry.  We had all kinds of bread, including a jalapeno and cheddar loaf that was fabulous.  Proscuitto, smoked salmon, and of course my requisite Christmas cheese board, with homemade tomato and pumpkin chutneys.  Mandy Sommers brought wassail, which was very well received.  Desserts included my Christmas cranberry and pear trifle, Nigella Lawson's pumpkin cheesecake and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's chocolate chestnut cake, plus lots of cookies, chocolates, etc.  My favorite dish of the night, though, was a homemade smoked trout pate.  Simple, I know - it was just smoked trout, horseradish, crème fraiche and fresh dill mixed together, but it was absolutely superb!



Part of the Christmas spread - soups, breads, cheeses, and desserts

     Somehow, I managed to only get one picture of something other than food - rather typical, I'm afraid.  Here's proof we had kids dressed up in their finery, ready to perform by the Christmas tree.

     In the meantime, there was sightseeing to be done with Grandma and Grandpa!  Grandpa loves sailing, so one day before Christmas Grandpa, Grandma, Tim, and the three little girls went out a boat in Mission Bay and, reportedly, had a blast.

 

Grandma and Grandpa on the water!

Grandpa in his element - although surely a little warmer than the Irish sea?

Grandma and Verity

Eleanor

Georgiana

Timothy

 





Thanksgiving New Mexico Style

     Thanksgiving 2014 has come and gone, and again we managed to make it quite an event.  Perhaps its from 18 years of living in the UK and therefore being required to make Thanksgiving a Really Big Deal in order for it to happen at all, but this holiday always seems to be associated - in both my mind and the minds of my children - with well-rewarded effort.  Family, friends, food, a holiday with history, and a respite from work - the basic elements of Thanksgiving stack it with a high chance of success. 

     So this year, we went to visit my lovely Aunt Kelly and her wonderful family in Las Cruces, New Mexico.   We went to Las Cruces to see Kelly and Karl. It was great, except for the blasted drive.  10 hours, I think it is.  The kids were really good about it, but still a pain.  I haven’t been to Las Cruces since 1995, so it was fun to go back.  Kelly and Karl have a lovely, spacious home, with a constant fire roaring, dogs lying on the floor, and horses out the front.  Tim said it reminded him of his friend Dale Phillip’s house – a country gentleman’s home, only quite near the Mexican border. 



Me chopping onions for the sourdough stuffing

     Kelly and I cooked ALL DAY on Thursday, as we didn’t eat until about 5pm.  We had the requisite turkey, yams and apples, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie; the biggest mount of mashed potato I have ever seen; sourdough bread, sausage, pecan and kale stuffing; a modernized, upscale green bean casserole, made with bacon, sour cream, provolone cheese and mushrooms; and the ‘all-hail’ 7-up lemon jello salad.  I also introduced the family to the British Christmas speciality of Brussel sprouts served with pancetta and chestnuts, which went down very well. 



A rather large mound of potatoes

 



Roasted and peeled chestnuts for the brussels

 

 

 

The Thanksgiving spread!

 

I made 2 of my signature apple crumble pies, and Kelly made her New Mexico speciality of chocolate pecan pie.  Kelly and Karl live right across the street from the biggest privately owned pecan orchard in the world, and Kelly’s pantry is teeming with huge bags of freshly shelled pecans.  So of course pecan pie was a must for the menu. 

 

 

The pies ...

     Kelly and Karl have 6 children, all in their 20’s or late teens.  There are 5 boys, all of whom are of a rather giant stature.  Several of the said boys play college baseball and/or minor league baseball.  I was worried just about feeding our 8 and Kelly’s crew.  But when we arrived, there was talk of who else was invited to dinner – including the possibility of the New Mexico State baseball team.  In the end, only 2 players showed up, which seemed manageable, plus two other guests, making the grand total at dinner 21.  And by a miracle, there were somehow lots of leftovers, so we got our turkey and cranberry sandwiches the next day.

     On Friday, I got to go to Santa Fe.  Manisha Thakor, one of my best friends in the world, lives there with her huband, Randy.  The last time I saw Manisha was in 2004, when she came to visit me when we lived in Princes Risborough.  Since then, it has been nigh impossible to make our paths cross, especially with me living overseas.  So when we decided to go to Las Cruces for Thanksgiving, I immediately tried to think of how I could get up to Santa Fe. It’s a four hour drive from Las Cruces to Santa Fe, but it was worth the sacrifice! 

     Manisha and Randy took me out to a fabulous restaurant where I had the most amazing crab-stuffed chile relleno. Then we dropped Randy back off at the house, and Manisha took me into Sante Fe, which is the second oldest town in the US (after St. Augustine, in Florida).  But since we hadn’t seen in each other in so long, sightseeing just took a back seat to all the catching up we had to do.  We sat in a beautiful cathedral, and talked.  We walked around the old streets, and the old town square, and talked.

     When we were in college, Manisha and I spent three weeks touring Europe together –the cheapest way possible.  So we had very long train rides together, and very long walks around places like Paris, Seville, Madrid and Florence.  We talked A LOT on that trip. And last Friday, it really was as if nothing much had changed.  We just picked up right where we had left off.  The sign of a true friend, I think.

     While I was in Santa Fe, Tim and the children went with the Koepers up into the mountains to chop down a Christmas tree.  There was snow there, apparently, which was really nice for the kids.  We don’t cope so well with the wonderful California weather, especially in the autumn or winter months. 

 

     Karl spoiled us by giving each child, plus Tim, a ride in his private plane.  The lovely Kelly, always in good form, also spoiled the younger girls by giving them a morning with the horses.  Eleanor, especially, was in heaven!

 

 

     On our trip we also got to see the fabulous Jemma and Rob Kennedy and co in Phoenix.  They always make us feel so welcome when we come, and we always have a blast.  This time it was a lovely ham dinner, a Downton Abbey fest, great conversation and chili scrambled eggs for brunch.    

Verity with Sophie and Emma Kennedy

The Kennedys and the Bleakleys - next generation

 

     This week, it was back to business as usual, except we have Christmas coming up, so it’s all go.  We are slowly but surely getting our Christmas presents purchased, and this week we got our tree and Christmas decorations put up.  Our living room has very high ceilings, so Tim and I developed some sort of delusion of grandeur and decided to get a big tree to go with our high ceilings.  I think the tree is about 9 feet high or so –beautiful, but, admittedly, rather expensive.

 

 

It's Christmas, even in California.

For the first time EVER, we have Christmas lights on our house!

 

Chopping the nuts for the Christmas cake

     And we have started our Christmas baking!  This weekend was the traditional making of the Christmas cake, with everyone involved, except Imogen got out of it this year with an irresistible invitation to go ice skating in the rather exclusive La Jolla.

Grating the nutmeg

 

    

Creaming the butter and sugar

I made my ‘traditional mincemeat’ – meaning, mincemeat made with real mince, as they did in Tutor times, and we also made our annual gingerbread Christmas tree ornamets.  On Friday we also had our annual viewing of A Christmas Story.  It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and the kids are so excited.
  

Tim does the annual wrapping of the cake in a brown paper bag

The cake - to be stored until Christmas!

Gingerbread ornaments for the tree

     Yesterday Georgie said to me, ‘I love everything about a lot of things, but especially everything about Christmas!’  A wonderful time of year.

Staying at Home, and Going Back to Work

Last month, a major life changed happened.   Verity, my youngest - my baby - started school.

 

     Here she is, on her first day of school.

    

     I’ve been waiting for this for years.  Abigail was born in 1998, which means I have had at least one   preschooler in the house for the last 16 and ½ years.  I’ve been a stay at home mom for most of that time.  I don’t regret that one bit.  The problem is that I’m not a natural stay at home mom.  It doesn’t come easy to me.      

     When Abigail was a toddler, I really struggled with two very conflicting desires.  Part of me wanted to plow ahead with all my career ambitions.  But another part of me knew that option was not best for Abigail.  I felt very strongly that I should be at home with her, but at the same time, I didn’t feel that I was suited to being at home.  Beyond all this internal conflict, however, I felt that God had called me to be at home with her. 

     So I centered my life around my family, rather than around my work.  I knew it was the right thing to do, but it was still a huge challenge for me.  I wasn’t a particularly patient person.  I had a hard time with the repetition involved in being with little children day in and day out.  Money was always very, very tight on a single income with a growing family, and we struggled.  I watched working parents give their kids all the latest electronic devices and take their kids on exotic holidays, while we forewent the electronics and took our kids camping in Cornwall, or hiking in the Lake District.    

     Moreover, I harbored a constant longing to get back in to full-time academia.  So some days in a fit of tearful frustration I would vow to go back to work, starting the very next day.  But when I prayed, God’s message to me was always the same:  Not yet.

     So I watched friends get promotions and pay rises.  I watched them take business trips to places like South Korea, Rome and the Ukraine.   When they would call me, they always had exciting news.  They had just presented something at the UN, or they were writing a new column, etc. 

     My news was, well, not as exciting:  Imogen has a solo violin recital coming up.  Samuel just built a huge Lego model by himself.  Abigail is finally starting to read chapter books on her own.  I can’t get Georgiana to eat dinner but we’ll get there some day.  The older kids keep fighting and its exhausting.  I’m trying figure out a way to get the kids to do their daily chores independently.  I’m reading the new Harry Potter book to the kids and they love it.  No, I haven’t finished that academic article yet which I’ve been working on for a year now; and so forth.

     And I waited.  I waited for God to tell me when it was time for me to go back to work.  In a sense, I felt like I was waiting for life to start.

     But that’s where I was wrong.  You can only wait for so long, before you start to think deeply about what the purpose of the waiting might be.  Slowly, eventually, I began to see that my life had started.  Life with my small children was life. It was a season of my life, one that wouldn’t last forever, but one that I had to get right.  Sometimes I really wanted the season to end.  But other times I would catch the vision of what I was accomplishing with them, and I would feel a deep peace come over me that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

     And when I say ‘what I was accomplishing with them’, I don’t mean that my children were becoming child prodigies in music or art or math or chess or French.  They were just ordinary kids, a fact that sometimes I filled me with dismay.  I did my best to help them succeed in school, the arts and etc., but eventually I started to see that the main thing I would accomplish with my children was, simply, my relationship with them.   

     So being a stay at home mom was really just about building a strong relationship with my kids.  It was a humble goal, but it turned out to require all the energy, patience, time, spirituality and love that I had.

     And then, the same month that Verity started school, I got an email.  Would I be willing take on a teaching position at the Department of Philosophy at the University of San Diego?  This time, considering employment was different.  I felt God smiling on me, telling me that it was time.  I could start devoting more attention to pursuing an academic career.

     So I guess it’s the end of an era, the end of a season.  In a way, I’m relieved.  But mostly, I’m just grateful.  Being a stay at home mom has taught me more about myself, and about the human condition, than I could have possibly imagined when I started on this journey.  So many days I felt like I was staying at home only for the benefit my children.  But looking back, I can see how transformed I've been by the whole experience.  In a good way, I might add.  And that transformation is going to affect how approach my work outside the home.  I can see that I am coming back to academia with a completely different, and much deeper, perspective than I ever had before I cared for my children.

So to Abigail, Imogen, Samuel, Georgiana, Eleanor and Verity:  thank you for an incredible 16 and 1/2 years.  I'm raising you, but you all are raising me, too.

 

 

Autie Kate's Visit

 

     The summer roles on.  We have been consigned to San Diego for most of the summer because Abigail has summer school, and because Tim doesn't have much time off of work.  We've been trying to make the most of it.  We still try to do our hikes regularly, and we have some hiking buddies:  the awesome Sommers family.  Here we are on a typical hike, with the typical, beautiful scenery around Ramona:  

 

 

     We've also finished our baby quilt, finished reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as a family, and had a lesson in pie making. There is something about being back in America that has made me rather obsessed with pie making:

 

     We've also finally started gardening! I know, I know, July is rather late to start planting things, but I have been told that California has a longer growing season than other places.  This year will have to be an experiment, I'm afraid: 

Samuel, Georgie, Eleanor and Verity finish planting the vegetable patch





     We had another British visitor recently:  one Arnie Kitsell!  We were so excited to have him. We knew him when we lived in Brampton, near Huntingdon.  He knew him through our church congregation there, and he was assigned to take care of our family when Tim was deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2010.  Arnie is one of the nicest men I know, very unassuming,  and very funny.  He was in town on business, and he came for dinner.  I served him something I have been dying to make, a hazelnut meringue cake with chocolate and raspberries.  It looks a bit saggy, but it was amazing!

The fab Arnie Kitsell, with Imogen, Abigail, Samuel, Tim, Verity, Eleanor and Georgie Bleakley
 

     A few days later, Auntie Kate arrived for a two week visit!  Kate is Tim's little sister.  She lives in Australia, but goes back to the UK every year.  She stopped in San Diego on her way back to Australia from the UK.



     Tim had a day off of work, so we decided to take advantage of the time off and Go Somewhere.  Going Somewhere in America is not quite the same project as Going Somewhere in the UK.  It's very spread out here, you see, so Going Somewhere usually involves a lot of time in the car.  We did the best we could and took Kate to see one of the wonders of the world, the Grand Canyon, which is a 6 hour drive from here.  Well, Phoenix is a 6 hour drive from here, and we had an invitation to stay with some old friends there.  But Phoenix is another 4 hours from the Grand Canyon.  So it was quite a time investment to go up there, but it was definitely worth it.  The kids loved seeing the canyon, and we had a great time with the Kennedy's, our very gracious hosts.

Samuel, Holly, Verity, Imogen, Eleanor, Abigail, Tim, Georgiana and Kate Bleakley, all perched on top of a very high cliff



Abigail and Imogen with Josh Kennedy

Samuel and Eleanor under a cliff

Imogen, Abigail, Georgiana and Kate with Jemma and Josh Kennedy

Tim was quite taken with the condors of the Grand Canyon

A view of the Colorado river

The Grand Canyon at sunset

      Verity made a new, lifelong friend on the trip:  Emma Kennedy.  These two were absolutely inseparable:

 

 

     They walked around the Grand Canyon like this most of the time:

 



 



 

 

The Tim and Holly Bleakley family, with auntie Kate, enjoying the sunset

 

     We drove back down to Phoenix that evening.  We were presented with a lovely brunch the next morning - eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes, fruit, orange juice - and then went to church with the Kennedy's.  We were having such a good time that we decided to throw caution to the wind and stay as long as possible in Phoenix.  Samuel and Abigail had to be back in San Diego the next day for summer school and soccor camp, so we decided that if we left at 9pm, that would get us home at 3am, just in time for a few hours sleep.  That gave us time to enjoy the company, have some lovely bacon butties, and roast marshmallows over an open fire in the Kennedy's back yard:

     A lovely end to a surprisingly relaxing weekend.  A change really is as good as a rest!