Holiday Weekend

I have a hard time with holidays.  I don't like that someone decided 'here is how you should spend your money'.  Candy for Valentine's, baskets at Easter, flowers for Mother's Day, ties for Father's Day, fireworks and BBQ for July 4th, anniversaries come with a list of what to buy for each year: tin, paper, bronze, sugar, wood, crystal, clocks, silver, gold...

Then there's Christmas. It's practically a hemorrhage of money.  Decorations, food, travel, gifts and gifts and gifts and gifts.  It's no good unless everyone gets the exact same amount and more than last year and equal values and more than they need.  Dig in and SPEND, it's CHRISTMAS!

If Jesus is the reason for the season, I'd be pretty pissed if I were him and got nailed up for a cause and everyone decide celebrate my life and death with debt and excess and a passing thought with a token phrase.

Jesus was born and died in the spring.  You know who was born on Christmas Day?  Issac Newton.

It's not that I am against spending money on food or people I love, I just don't like the herd mentality of an arbitrarily assigned day. Or the insane amounts people are willing to spend on "things", having to miss out on experiences the rest of the year.  Their kids have so much stuff they have to kick a path to the bed, yet have never seen snow in the mountains or a manatee at the beach or put their feet in a hot springs or any number of other amazing things out there waiting.  The debt-based consumerism of our country saddens me, I can't celebrate that.

Matt has the whole week off, so we started out Saturday with a long walk and picked up a few groceries for the weekend.  I had been hoping a couple things would arrive in the mail, but nothing came.  Speaking of things in the mail and rampant consumerism, we got gift cards for Macaroni Grill last week.  From...unknown sources!  We were planning a trip to the art museum this week anyway, so, yay!

Saturday night, we opened our stockings, which had everyone's personal variety of favorite candy and a small goodie or two.  Ben's had a couple Lego minifigs, Chandler made an owl for me and Matt got me a little pig.  Jake had a disguise kit and a new Papo figurine, I found a set of colored pencils made from twigs for Chandler.  Matt got his beloved tea candy and Black Jack gum.  We sat around munching on Japanese gummy candy and watched Emmit Otter's Jug Band Christmas.  It was fabulous, I loved it as a child, but it was still amazing as an adult, puppets in a boat on water!  Birds that flew, puppets driving cars...it is a 35 year old movie!  Jim Henson was an astounding man.

This was/is my latest project, to walk 3.66 miles a day until I reach 550 miles, which will take around 5 months.  I have managed to get in not quite 3 weeks.  LOL  I still have a while to go!  550 miles is the stretch of the Appalachian Trail the kids and I would like to hike.  I wanted some idea of how much walking it would take. 7.8 days of solid walking at 3.3 MPH!

We have been trying out new stuff, above is mini spring rolls, mochi and pomegranate seeds.  Well, I eat pomegranate a few times a week, the rest is new.

Udon soup, so yummy!
I make it with chicken stock, eggs, onion and then add the noodles.

Yesterday we made 15 bean soup, it was an 10 serving recipe and it lasted one meal.  Eep!  Glad beans are good for us...

Matt has been into blogging about our recent fascination with the Far East Market in Huntsville, but we really have been having fun trying out new things.  Green bean noodles were a mixed hit, we have sweet potato noodles to try next!  The best part is that everything is about 1/3 of what we have been paying at Kroger!  Yay!  And no corn syrup.