For the last 7 years or so, my family and I have been priviledged to enjoy a tradition set up by a good friend of mine. Rather than spend money on gifts that may or may not be appropriate, or for that matter even worrying about getting the gifts, he treats his friends to dinner at some restaraunt. He provides the locale, and pays for everything, including the drinks. This makes for a very pleasant evening for all. The rest of us... we bring the gifts, more recently for the kids as we all now have at least one child. Some bring stuff for the adults, but mostly we're here for the grub...

Times are tough all around, and this has made the annual Christmas Dinner a slight bit different. Our friends have managed to get married, adopt a child, and buy a house all in one year. So this year, Christmas Dinner will be pot-luck at the new house. Chances are my friend will supply the full dinner (including the alcohol), and everyone else will bring the sides and desserts. Either way, we'll be well fed and watered...

This brings me to the " wrong " part of the title. I said in my last post I was going to be doing the Christmas cookies next year. Well, this morning I made a batch to be done for the next weekend of Christmas Dinner . I figure it'll be practice. I don't really have as good a set of presses as my mother's, but I have a few good ones that I used last year, so I'll do those. I'll bake tomorrow and if I have more time, I'll frost tomorrow as well. This will give the frosting time to harden to it's necessary consistancy. Then I'll wrap and bring. It won't be as ornaments for the trees, but the kids will like them.

I have to say that I missed the whole of the cookie making process this holiday season. I did make a round of Tollhouse chocolate chip, but that's kind of a cop-out for Christmas cookies. I usually do peanut butter blossoms (with the Hershey Kisses in the center, or a variation using Mini-Reeses cups), a batch of chocolate chip-oatmeal (from one of my mother's recipes called "cowboy ccokies"), and a batch of the Mailänderli. At least I'm giving myself some continuity for next year. I'm definitely going to color my heart out for this set, and I'm going to try to out do myself as far as range of color. Maybe I'll post when I'm done...

Time for another family Christmas party...

EDIT: added Cookies!

Hope you had a Merry Christmas.
Notice the dichotomy in the title and first sentence? I believe strongly that one should celebrate the holidays as one knows best. Political correctness aside, I will say Happy Holidays but personally I mean Merry Christmas simply because I'm not Jewish, don't celebrate Kwanzaa at home, and I certainly don't ring in the holidays like most Asian countries. Still it is the holiday season, and as such we tend toward those sayings that come most familiar.

My mother was Japanese. It didn't mean that we spent the holidays "cleaning the old year away to start fresh in the new year." This is a very Japanese custom. My mother was in her own way stuck between 2 cultures and she didn't care. She wanted her family to be very American in appearance as this was her adopted nation. She still bought omochi (a sticky rice-cake) and prepared a few other Japanese delicacies around the holiday season, because, as I mention above, it was what she knew best. But she baked Christmas cookies, particularly those from Switzerland ( Mailänderli , a kind of shortbread cookie) as that is where my father grew up, and did the tree and the presents for us kids. It was the person that she was.

My children will grow up cross-cultural if I can help it, but they won't know it until they are older. I still have many things that I do, that are based on my parents and growing up. I take off my shoes upon entering a house. Not because they are dirty, but it was the way I was raised. I must admit it does keep the carpet cleaner. My oldest son is consistantly told to remove his shoes after coming home from daycare. He does it without much thought anymore, but we still remind him. He refers to my father as Ojii-chan (Japanese for Grandfather) as this is how we referred to my parents (my mother was Obaa-chan, or Grandmother). This was more for differentiation than anything else. When you have 3 sets of grandparents (my wife's parents are divorced), you have to distinguish them when your children are at a young age so that they don't get too confused. My mother started the Obaa-chan custom, my wife's mother was Grandma, and her step-mother is Nana. It integrated pretty well with my oldest and he knows who we are talking about when we refer to them as such. He changes them around, but he knows better now. My youngest is starting to get to know the names now...

This is the first major holiday season without my mother. I'd like to say that I weathered it well, but I'd be lying. There were some things that just couldn't be avoided. My brother baked the Christmas cookies this year. Next year will be my turn. He managed to acquire the cookie presses that my mother bought long ago to do the Mailänderli. I'll get them from him next year. We have an Angel, Santa, a Christmas tree, and a snowman. My mother would make the dough, press out the cookies and take a straw and make a hole near the top. She would then frost the cookies in good colors, cover them in plastic wrap making sure that there was a ribbon in the top hole, and distribute the edible ornaments to friends and family. It wasn't the same... I think that next year I'll be crying into the dough and frosting, but I expect that...

My mother was an artist at heart, and I think that this is where I get my mad skillz [grin]. My brother complained that it took so much time and effort to get them done. I suppose he may be right, but he also does other things at Christmas, such as home-made English toffee. I did 3 dozen Mailänderli last year and frosted them in about 4 hours, assembly-line fashion. While my back and neck were a little sore, I felt a deep satisfaction at the looks and compliments that I got for doing it. A tribute to my mother I guess. Next year, I'm going to outdo myself with the coloring, and I think that she'll be proud. Her cookie presses are a good deal bigger than mine. I'd better start in October...

In closing, parents, don't be too worried that your kids are being commercialized by the holidays. Unless they grow up in a remote corner of the world with no access to modern conveniences it's bound to happen. And if you think that they get too many gifts, blame family. You have no control over that. Just make sure that they appreciate what they do get, and what they have. That's the most important thing in this case. As for how to celebrate the holidays... take a tip from my mother: The best way that you want and know how to...

Just a little tidbit o'ken...

I found something out... I'm not alone in this part of the world. Not the real world... I'm never alone here. Not the virtual world... there are too many to count and one can be sure that they can find a partner to level in an number of MMOs out there. No, I speak of my blog. I seem to be sharing bandwidth with people who are too limited to create their own graphics... let me discourse...

I created kenzden.com about 5 years ago. Not much more than a collection of webpages that I put files for the world to see and, if they want to, use. I've expanded since then with a couple of blogs and a forum, but the original webpages still exist. These people are NOT using my files, but rather my bandwidth. They are linking my file(s) to their webpage when they create them. This shouldn't come as a surprise to me. I'm an artist and sometimes people ask me for art. This I understand. If I post it on the web, I expect it to be viewed, copied, heck even plagiarized (not that I tolerate that... I'll go after folk if I think it's worth it). These guys have the nerve to link their Style Sheet Background code to a file named Black640x320.bmp... That's right a BLACK BITMAP ! Nevermind that anyone with half a brain can open up Microsoft Paint, set the properties to 640x320 pixels and fill it in black. It irked me... thence lies the tale...

So I check my logs for the first time in 5 years... just a simple one-day log and I notice something that I've seen in the stats page I have, but never really investigated. I have several pages putting GET requests for Black640x320.bmp . The stats page shows that Black640x320.bmp is a popular file, but I just figure people are using and downloading my tutorial. But there were entries for Swedish blogs in the referral sites... aLOT of hits from them. So when I'm checking my logs I see these GET statements and that starts to cheese me off... I start to plan my revenge...

I take a 640x320 bitmap (black, of course) and add a little bit of text to it. Something like "Don't link to my graphics. Make your own Black bitmap." I run off to the blog sites and sure enough... there they are! I monitor the logs for the next couple of hours just to see if these sites are visited frequently. Sure enough there are more log entries for the sites. One of them drops from the log and I go visit. They have nicely removed the link from their style sheet. The others, not so much. I take a new bitmap and add " This file is no longer available. " We'll see what happens.

It's not so much that they were using the image, or even really stealing my bandwidth so they wouldn't have to take up space on their precious sites. It's the fact they they didn't have clue that they just needed to set their background style to #0000000 and it would put a purely BLACK background on their site, which was what they were after (I checked their sheets, and yes, that was what they had set for). It's script kiddies that don't understand what they are doing that irks me. Take the time to learn a little about what you are setting up. It was A BLACK BITMAP ! Not even an image, just black...

Talk about thick....

My sons are a very big part of my life, from the time I wake up (or get woken up as the case most often is), until the time I go to bed (which is usually in the chair in my older son's room).

Most children sleep until 8 or 9 in the morning maybe take a nap midday and are asleep by 8 pm latest. I don't believe that my older son is a normal sleeper, but we're not what America considers a "traditional" family. Normal by current American definition, but not traditional. Both my wife and I work earlier in the day, this means that we are up and around by 5:30am, which is probably why my son is able to be up and alert that early in the morning. I suppose it IS normal for him. When he finally decides to go down at night, it can be as early as 7:30pm and as late as 9:30pm. Most of the time it is about 8:30pm. I guess that makes it look normal. His naps are steady during the week when he is at daycare. He gets about 2-3 hours midday... at daycare. On the weekends we're lucky if we get an hour or so out of him. When we don't, he goes to sleep a little earlier, but that doesn't happen often. A more likely scenario is that he takes a nap at around 2 or 3 and wakes up around 5 or 6. This sets up for the fact that he doesn't want to go to bed around 8pm... which is why daddy falls asleep in the chair while older boy sleeps in his bed.

This brings up a funny situation... one that I'm sure will be repeated again. My son fell asleep at 4:30pm coming back from gramma's house. I carried him into his bed and let him sleep, figuring that he'd sleep all night. He's done it before. At 9:45pm he comes into our room, awake and wanting a story. I read one (Clifford, the Big Red Dog), get him a glass of water (on the edge of our bed) and walked him back to his room to go back to sleep. He settled in, as did I, and we both started to sleep. I vaguely remember him getting out of bed and coming to see me. When I next saw the clock it was 1:30am and as I got out of the chair my son was nowhere to be found. I went into my bedroom and there, on my side of the bed, he'd fallen asleep, probably not long after I dozed off. Stinker had decided that "mommy&daddy's" bed was the place to be and daddy could well just stay in his room. I now make sure that I try to stay awake until I'm sure he's down for the count... not that I'm sure that I'll stay awake, but I'm going to try.

My son's 3rd birthday party was today. Nevermind the fact that it was 4 days after the fact. When you are working parents and so are all your friends, birthdays never mean much until the party happens. Yes, we celebrate the day with a little cake and song, but the party occurs on a weekend whether it falls on one or not.

He had a bounce house... a dragon. One that, while he stood on the balcony at gramma & grampa's, rose to glory right in front of him. We planned it that way, my father-in-law and I. Side-effects were that my son didn't really want to play with the dragon, 'cause he didn't want to get eaten. That lasted until our friends got here and all the "big kids" (that would be the other dads and I) took over the dragon and just sat inside batting a couple of balls around to each other. Then he and the other kids came in full force and joined in the fun getting bonked by the flying projectiles... much fun to be had.

You want to make sure that your children have the best possible time and have the best memory possible of their birthdays. New parents don't kid yourselves... this time is for you, not them. Your kids won't remember. Just get lots of pictures and you're covered for the future eventuality that your kids will ask about their parties.