Christmas is coming!

So yesterday was the beginning of Christmas traditions, we spent the day making tamales.  It was quite the feat.  It all began Friday afternoon when I realized that this weekend was my last free time before Christmas.  So, I decided to drive to Santa Ana when I got off work at 5:30 to go to La Grande (the Mexican store that my Grandma Ortiz has always shopped at).  This was a bad decision on my part first because the 55 freeway at that time of night is like a parking lot.  Secondly, because I did not know where I was going.  Let's just say that by the time I found a store (La Grande closed at 2:30 in the afternoon) and bought all the ingredients for the tamales, and got to my mom's house to drop everything off, it took over 3 hours.  After the night of stressful events I indulged myself in 2 pieces of Mexican bread and felt much better.  Moving on to Saturday, we started the assembly around noon.  About 3 hours later we had made about 150 tamales.  For the most part it was just Anna and I, until Renee showed up and demanded that she wanted to spread the masa.  That was short lived, she did not even make it through one when she decided to switch to the easier part of the assembly and added the meat.  Fyi, since I know Kim is the only one who reads this, if you get tamales without olives, that is ALL Renee.  So sorry about the bad luck she is sending your way.  Other than that, it was a great (long) day of tamale making, only to end in a defeating trip to the mall where I bought not a single Christmas present.  Skipping all the unpleasant details of the night and moving on to Sunday morning, Anna and I went to church (which was a great service), treated ourselves to some In and Out, and then off to attempt the Christmas shopping task again.  Once again, SHOT DOWN.  We went to Color Me Mine which is a ceramics shop to realize that painting a coffee cup would have cost more than $30!  Ridiculous.  Off to Nordstroms Rack, yet again, nothing.  We gave up after that, and headed home.  All in all, it was a good yet defeating day.  But the night got better as Alyssa Fenton arrived and brought her usual cheery spirit.  Not much later Anna's friend Rachel arrived.  We have a full house for the night, but it is quite welcomed.  We do love visitors.  By the way Kim, we are fighting mom for part time custody of you and the babies when you come in February.  We simply stated we have a nicer apartment and that it was not fair.  She did not put up too much of a fight.  We will see how it goes as the time grows closer.  Anyways, enclosed is a picture of the tamale assembly process (thanks to mother's great photography skills).  You were greatly missed Kim!  Although I doubt you would have been able to reach the table to help much!