7 Days: Day 3 (The Tamales are Tamales!)

I decided to make tamales for Yule this year, but during the process I became quite worried as to how they’d turn out. The husks didn’t cooperate at all, I think they needed to soak longer maybe. The process required a lot more cuss words than I’d been prepared for. But when it came time to eat them they were not bad at all. They aren’t the prettiest tamales ever, and some on the edges of the crock pot got crispy (mmmm…. crispy…) but they generally resembled tamales and were declared to be delicious by everyone, even my picky six year old.

I found the recipe here and it was fairly easy except for the part which was difficult (the assembly).

On a side note, I took this photo, was disappointed that my hand didn’t make it in the shot, and then realized that my torso totally also counts as me. And then I realized that my other hand actually did make it in the shot. Thank god I’m cute.

7 Days, Day 2 (Yule Morning)

Every Yule we wake to watch the sunrise. In recent years we’ve been going to Balboa Park, but this year we decided to try Bethany’s Snail Mountain. I’d been told it would be too crowded there, that everyone goes there to watch the sunrise on Yule, but it wasn’t bad at all. In fact when we arrived we were the only ones there. And the view was completely worth it.

I packed a breakfast of things I could cook in the oven really easily (bacon, hash brown patties, warmed-up muffins) which we ate in the frosty air. Bacon outdoors on cold mornings smells like camping. Lovely.

Our friends arrived and suddenly my kids who’d been so cold they wanted to leave or hide in the car were too warm to wear jackets (too bad for them, the jackets stayed on).

And then the sun rose.

And it was holy.

If you want to see more of the kids and/or our nerdy holiday celebrations, click here to go to the homeschool blog.