When Amy was about 12, we had the opportunity to see Beauty and the Beast (the stage show) at the Music Center in Los Angeles. (At that time, Lucy was only 2, but that's not important right now.) I remember the show being so breathtakingly beautiful. And I remember my surprise that the Disney animated film could translate so perfectly to the ...
Cuban Christmas
Enjoy these Cuban Christmas traditions, Cuban recipes, and stories from my family to yours. Wishing you and your family a very Merry Cuban Christmas!
Everyone’s Invited!
I can't remember when this started, but as long as I remember we have been making invitations for our Nochebuena Celebration on December the 24th. It's always the same people (with a few added guests). They all know when and where the party is because we have been discussing it for weeks. And, Duh! We do this every, single year. But ...
The Luza Gift
As you know, we Cubans celebrate Noche Buena on December the 24th. In my family, December the 25th, or Christmas Day is the day we each celebrate with our individual families. Usually, my oldest sister, Ofelia will take Luza (my 96 year old mom) with her to enjoy Christmas morning with her grandkids (my mom's great-grands). Besides the ...
“Making Christmas?” or “Resolviendo”?
Our home is small. You could say it's freakishly small, but I prefer to call it cottage-like. (That makes it sound so much cuter.) So hosting my big, fat, Cuban family for holidays is often a challenge. We have to move furniture around to make room for everyone. Can I just add right here that even though it's kind of a challenge, ...
The Christmas Card Photo Shoot of 2010
It will go down in family history as The Year We Hauled the Red Chair Down to the Park. Here's how the whole thing went down: Eric and I went on a pre-Thanksgiving cruise (on Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas, which I still have to write about, but that's not important right now). That very same (pre-Thanksgiving) weekend, my son, ...
Lighting the Menorah and Spinning the Dreidel
One of my favorite things about the holiday season is the parties and celebrating with friends. What's different is that not all of our friends do Christmas Trees and Nochebuena. Tonight, my son will be wearing a yarmulke and my daughter will help light the menorah.There will be a wonderful matzoh-ball soup made by a Genuine Jewish ...
Fambook – like Facebook….but not…
My big, fat, Cuban family is made up of a ton of people. As you can probably imagine, we ditched having every single family member buying Christmas gifts for every other person a long time ago. The only exemption to this rule is my mom. Everyone buys her a little something. We tried drawing names, but after a couple of years, we ran out of ideas ...
Where are you now, Gaspar, Melchor, & Baltazar?
Back in the day, (that would be Cuba, 1961. After Castro, but before he canceled Christmas) my family, like most other Cubans (and Puerto Ricans and others of Hispanic descent) celebrated El Dia de Los Tres Reyes Magos on January 6th. The Day of the Three Kings. The evening of January 5th, we kids would get ourselves to bed early and look forward ...
The Best of MBFCF in 2009
Everywhere you hear about and see the flashbacks, the nostalgia, the reminiscing about the past year. Well, today I look back on this blogging year and some of my favorite posts. (Yes, I do have favorite posts and lots of others that make me wring my hands and wonder why I do this in the first place, but that's not important right ...
The EPIC Mr. Don’t Touch the Banana
The following post was written by Kikita, whose appreciation for bananas has led to endless laughter and entertainment. I can't tell you where or how it all started, but it started. I can only guess it happened on facebook because that's where most things happen these days.Let me be clear about something . . . I am not particularly fond ...
