A Couple of Traditions...

So it seems like there has been 2 different cooking traditions that have become a part of my Christmas season--Tamales and Gingerbread Men. :)

We decided to attempt to make the tamales all by ourselves this year (in previous years, I have just helped someone out that does them) so I enlisted the help of my wonderful (and very willing and helpful for this event :) ) mother-in-law, Helen, since she makes tamales. There were about 10 of us that headed to my mom's house the day after Thanksgiving to give the tamale making a try. We started at 10am and had previously decided on making 3 different kinds of tamales--pork, turkey and cheese. So we began spreading masa and wrapping tamales by the dozen...and I do mean by the dozen! Our grand total by the time we ended at 7pm was around 32 dozen tamales! The day was a lot of work but was actually really fun. I guess we will see how fun it really was next year--wonder if anyone will want to attempt it again! :)




Did I mention that we also had 2 babies to entertain while we did this? Lot's of toys and rotating babysitters seem to do the trick. :)




Jeff on babysitting duty...Rylie was pretty interested in the Guitar Hero he was playing!


Lunch Break!




Some of our finished product.

My mom and I started our gingerbread men tradition last year and this year we invited my brother's fiance, Laura, and her mom to join us. Right as we were about to start, my mom brings out these great Christmas aprons with little gingerbread men on them for all of us. The best part is, she even made one for Rylie! We had a blast making our gingerbread reindeer and all of the people (I say people because we always make us...like I made a Brandon gingerbread guy, a me gingerbread girl and a Rylie gingerbread...you get the idea). I love this tradition and will be on the lookout for what we can add to it next year! :)




Rylie and I with our "aprons"


Our reindeer gingerbread :)




Some of our finished products


The future bride and groom :)


The Juarez Family :)


So I gave Rylie her gingerbread to get some photos of her with it...and of course it went right to her mouth (like everything else she touches).




After getting a pretty good taste, she spit it out and made a hilarious face! Apparently, Rylie does not like gingerbread!