One of my favorite things to do when the weather is chilly outside is to make hot cocoa for myself and my kids.   We make it with milk, of course!  We sit at the kitchen counter and sip our hot chocolate, usually not much is said because we are all enjoying our drink.  Sometimes we take our hot chocolate and drink it outside in the backyard.  The kids climb into the play structure and drink it up there while I sit on the patio and watch them.  Really, it seems like for a little while as we enjoy our drinks that things are calm and quiet.  With four small kids in our home, it tends to be a bit noisy around here! I don’t know if drinking hot chocolate with their family will become part of my children’s favorite childhood moments, but they do bring me a little peace and quiet!

However, I think that great childhood memories can come from very simple moments.  One of my favorite memories from my childhood is centered around milk and takes place in México, in the very small town where my parents were born. My parents made sure that we visited as often as we could, so we took many road trips in my childhood from our home in Chicago to this small town in México. I loved seeing all of my relatives, but my favorite person to visit was my grandma, mi abuelita.  She is pictured in this photo, the woman on the left side in the blue turtleneck, with of my favorite tías on the right.

I used to sit on mi abuelita’s porch with a cup of warm milk in my hands, in the late evening, and she would have her cup of coffee (with a lot of milk) – un café con leche.   She would sip her coffee and I would drink my warm milk. Sometimes mi mama would add a dash of canela to my warm milk – yum!  There were many evenings when we had the best conversations and others when we just sat, not talking too much, just enjoying our warm drinks.

As I got older I graduated from my glass of warm milk to a cup of coffee, like mi abuelita - this was a big deal!  As she aged, our those conversations moved into longer periods of silence.  To this day if I have warm milk or a café con leche the way mi abuelita made it, I remember those evenings.  I miss her.  I wish that I could have seen her more often and enjoyed those evenings even more. Nothing really remarkable happened during those moments with her on her porch, but I get incredibly nostalgic when I think about them...simple moments, warm memories.  Just like the ones I have now with my kids and our hot cocoa breaks...

It's probably the Thanksgiving season, but I am feeling pretty grateful for so much goodness in my life, past and present.

Disclosure: This is part of a sponsored campaign with the California Milk Processor’s Board and Latina Mom Bloggers.  You can learn more about this campaign with The Master of the Glass Half Full on Facebook or follow El Maestro on Twitter.