I can hardly believe it’s almost 2010! I still need to get my blackeyed peas for January 1st, unless they magically appear in my cabinets.  The past few weeks have been a little crazy for me, with things going in fits and starts and days of practically zero activity. First, all my grades finally came in and, against all odds, I came out with an A in three classes and a B in Linguistics. (I didn’t get much of a chance to study for the final and that grade pulled me down to a B.) I was both relieved and excited. I can’t believe I did so well. It was such a difficult semester, but it made me feel like I had made the right decision to stop working in time to make it through finals and writing all my research papers.

Also, I got to meet almost all of Ricardo’s family on Christmas Eve and Day, which was completely awesome. Most of my family knows I was incredibly nervous because, well, these people are important!!! I also discovered that they’re all wonderful, nice to frightened girls who come in with relatives of theirs, and they know how to cook the kind of food that makes you not care if you gain twenty pounds in two days. And, personally, I’d like to adopt Ricardo’s mom and take her home with me. I’m sure, having spent most of his life with her and been on the disciplinary end he feels differently. Still. I’ll take her.

Not that my mom isn’t awesome, too, but hey, why settle for one when you can have two? (Or in my case three since I was raised by my dad’s mom!)

So, despite some scary weather, Christmas was wonderful! I’m also planning to start asking the women in the family how to make those completely awesome tamales and flautas we had for dinner. (And I need to figure out what kind of coffee his sister-in-law buys, because it’s delicious!) So…yeah. Christmas. Was. Great.

I also got my gifts from my mom in the mail yesterday! I got some pretty cool stuff, but the highlight for me was, I think, the bamboo cutting board. A good cutting board should never be underestimated. We had a really cool square wooden cutting board at my grandma’s when I was a kid (her brother carved “Where’s the beef?” into it).

After leaving for college I lost the comforts of a familiar kitchen with good equipment. Now, I’ve been away from home for about five and a half (almost six!) years and all that time I had no cutting board and mediocre equipment. Well, now thanks to a friend I have much better cookware, a blender (squee!), and thanks to my mom, a totally awesome cutting board. That, for anyone who likes to cook, is much more essential than I thought it to be. I will love it, and pet it, and name it George. o.o Now I just need a bigger kitchen and a bigger grocery budget. (And maybe a small tv for the kitchen that gets the Food Network, or alternatively, every show Alton Brown has ever done on  DVD.)

So…yeah. I also got socks, which I have desperately needed because all my other socks had disappeared into the Universal Sock Vortex of Doom – so I was excited about socks. Children everywhere will be shocked, but it’s true. I got socks for Christmas and I loved it. Also, a nice blanket, some awesome cuddly jammies, and a froggy Christmas ornament. And, stocking stuffers! My mini-m&m’s are long gone, and I doubt my mini reeses will last much longer. The nerds may survive a while because they aren’t as high up on my list as chocolate, but they will definitely be eaten.

So…I hope you all had a Christmas as wonderful as mine and I wish you all a wonderful year for 2010!