We hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year! For the week leading up to Christmas, there was a cold front that brought a lot of rain over Belize (we’re talking 5-6” of rain and 56°-75° temps) which made it seem a little more like Christmas down here. By Christmas eve and Christmas day everything cleared up nicely with lots of sunshine and temps in the 80’s, which made for a wonderful Christmas day.

As some of you know, Kelley always bakes a lot of cookies around Christmas and we usually have prime rib on Christmas eve and Kelley’s famous eggs benedict on Christmas morning. This year was no exception!

Kelley started making cookies about a week before Christmas, making four different kinds plus peanut brittle. Once the cookies were done we played Santa and delivered plates of cookies and candy to Ruben’s family and to Antonio’s family. We also gave them each a ham and some of our homemade bacon and sausage for them and their families to enjoy.

We usually have our Christmas dinner on the 24th because we never really know what will happen or who will stop by on Christmas day. This year our friends Ron and Rhonda (from Mexico and the states) joined us for the holidays. Of course, Kelley cooked up a wonderful feast consisting of a seven bone prime rib with horseradish and au jus, potato artichoke gratin, homegrown green beans wrapped in homemade bacon and for dessert a key lime pie made with fresh Jamaican lime juice and some homemade Rum Popo to top it off. And yes there was also some wine, what would a meal like this be without a couple bottles of wine.

After letting all that good food settle and a good night’s sleep it was Christmas morning which meant eggs benedict and mimosas. This year we managed to round up all the right ingredients for eggs-b, right down to some Thomas English muffins. This is a once a year treat for us and it is well worth the wait every year.

On Christmas day about a dozen of us got together at our place for food, drinks, and a white elephant gift exchange. Everyone brought desserts and appetizers and I cooked up a big pot of lobster-clam chowder with sourdough bread. I usually make just a clam chowder, but clams are hard to find here sometimes. I didn’t have enough clams to make it clammy enough so I added a couple of lobster tails to make up for it. There was nothing wrong with that.

While I was making the chowder, Kelley was busy making her very cute penguin appetizers. The penguins are black olives stuffed with cream cheese and carrots for their beak and feet. They seemed to be the star of the day as everyone had to have a picture of them. Of course, there was some day-drinking going on, after all, we started with mimosas and it was Christmas day.

It was a great way to spend Christmas day in the jungle with friends, good food and plenty of sunshine.

Ron and Rhonda have been driving all over Belize checking out different beach towns in search of a piece of property that they can someday call their own. We’re not sure how their search is going, but they are definitely getting a good feel for all the different areas of Belize.

One of the days while Ron and Rhonda were here we took a quad ride up to Pacbitun ruins which is just about a mile from our house. Every year archaeologists come out for about three months and excavate a little more and document it. Once they leave they have to bury everything they have uncovered and return it back the way they found it. I was up there about six months ago when they were working on it and there were a lot of sections exposed. This time it just looked like no one had ever been there, but they should be back in May and start all over again.

After checking out Pacbitun, it was on to the Malfunction Junction for a couple of cold beers. It has been almost two years since the Junction had closed, but now there is someone else running it and they say they will always be open and possibly even start serving a little bit of food. This is great for us because it is only a couple of miles from us and we can take the bikes up there and have a couple cold ones.

While we were at the junction, a truck came by selling homemade cheese, so of course, we had to get some. They had two types, regular and pepper, of course, we chose the pepper. It was a crumbly cheese loaded with habaneros and it was so good, especially with a cold beer. Each round of cheese was about a half pound and the price was…….$3.00 BZ that’s $1.50 US. Now that we know that they sell this delicious cheese we will be stopping them on the road every time we see them.

New Year’s eve was the chance for one last hoorah of the decade. Our neighbors decided that we should have a party, that way no one wouldn’t have to drive all the way into town to celebrate. This was great for us because we didn’t have to drive anywhere. Everyone brought food and drinks and we had the grill going with some sausages on a stick. Most roadside grills here serve sausage on a stick and it’s just like it sounds, a sausage on a wooden stick and then grilled.

After a while, we all wandered over towards the garage and broke out the Jungle Jenga game, which kept us entertained until we rang in the new year. It was a fun evening and a great way to bring in a new decade.

Now that the holidays are over and all the desserts, rich foods, and drinking has stopped we have vowed to only eat bananas and other things that come from our garden until we feel good and healthy again. But, like most other New Year’s resolutions, I’m sure that will last about a week or so and then there will be a big ole steak or something back on the grill. What can we say, we will have tried.

We had a great time with Ron and Rhonda here and we hope they will be back again real soon.

We hope everyone had a great Christmas and here’s wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous 2020.

If you are still looking for a New Year’s resolution, resolve to check out Belize this year. We’ll be waiting for you.