Baking

I don't usually bake very much because I eat too much when I do. At the holidays I do try to bake some Christmas cookies and some other treats to help make the season special. This year Galen and I baked spritz, lemon cream cheese spritz, chip & dip, and Russian tea cake cookies. I also baked Fruit Cocktail Pound Cake and Kuchen. Kuchen is a pastry that has a sweet dough crust with a custard filling and you can add fruit to it also. I make peach and apple and we usually eat it on Christmas morning. The Fruit Cocktail Pound Cake was my mother in laws answer to the traditional fruitcake that so many people don't really like. I will try to add photos of the pound cake and kuchen later.

Holiday Time

Like many people, we have been busy during this holiday season. We started by celebrating Thanksgiving with my mom and then my sister and her children joined us for shopping and gingerbread house and cookie decorating. My children have also made paper snowflakes of many shapes and sizes, so that we could have snow inside the house as well as outside. One of our annual traditions at this time of the year is to go out and cut a christmas tree. Although it has become an expensive tradition, it is one that holds a special place in our hearts.

Busy Holiday Season

I am finally able to grab a few moments to post about how the rest of our December and the first part of January went and is going. After celebrating Christmas with my side of the family, we helped with a teen Christmas party, celebrated a birthday, cut down and decorated a Christmas tree, finished up our Christmas shopping and purchased our new laminate flooring, went to our friends' Christmas Concert, moved my mom to her new apartment (on Christmas Eve Day), had my sister, her family and my mom stay over night Christmas Eve and open gifts together on Christmas morning. Due to illness, we were unable to have our friends up for our traditional pizza dinner. The day after Christmas we started ripping up carpet and linoleum to prepare for our new laminate flooring. A good friend from church came up on Thursday and Friday and helped my husband lay 300 sq. feet of laminate in our diningroom, kitchen and breakfast nook. Our boys helped tremendously in the demolition and the men did a beautiful job in laying the laminate. It was a huge job and my husband says that it is my Christmas present for the next five years. We celebrated New Years Eve at friends along with many other friends - it has been a busy few weeks and we are capping it off with two of our sons catching the stomach flu. My husband went back to work today to rest from his vacation.

Happy Holidays

This past weekend we celebrated Christmas with my side of the family as we do every year, with dinner and gifts, watching the Seahawks game and fellowshipping together. This year we added a bit of a twist and it felt so good. Instead of buying each other gifts that we don't really need, we all brought gifts to donate to toys for tots. Instead of opening gifts we spent the time playing Apples to Apples and Nintendo Wii. It was great fun, probably the best gathering that we have ever had together.

Life around Here

It has been quite awhile since I have written anything here, it may be that the few readers I had have given up on me. It seems that time just flies by and I am not sure where it all went. Lets see, we have done pretty well with keeping up with school. I am very pleased with how the boys writing is coming along. We have been using video courses from the Institute for Excellence in Writing. I am not confident in my writing abilities and was not sure how to help the boys develop their skills, this course has lifted a heavy burden from my shoulders. We are plugging away at all of our subjects and learning much. All of my boys are reluctant learners and reluctant writers and reluctant readers. This can be trying at times, especially because they are more than able - but just don't have the desire. It has helped that we use the Ambleside Online booklists for literature suggestions - the boys, though reluctant, enjoy the books.

Along, with plugging away at school our oldest son is working his first job at a local fast food restaurant. This has brought more changes into our family life. The job has been a good experience for him as he is learning time management skills and responsibility.

With the coming of fall, came Thanksgiving. We were supposed to go out to my sister's house, but our son ended up having to work and so we had a quiet Thanksgiving dinner at home and played games as a family. My mom joined us for Thanksgiving and spent the night with us. The day after Thanksgiving, our daughter, oldest son and I went shopping a little after 5 am. We went to two stores and purchased some clothing, a couple of games and a few items for Christmas and treated ourselves to our first Peppermint Mocha of the season at Starbucks. It was the first year in several that we weren't able to join my sister for our shopping expedition and she was missed. After our shopping trip, we took the boys and my mom to see The Bee Movie. Although it was cute, I would say wait until it comes out on DVD. Fall is speeding by and now we are almost at Christmas.

We are now in the midst of the Holiday whirlwind and I feel like I am being swept along with it. We are making some changes in how we celebrate the holidays this year and I am feeling good about them. We are trying to scale back on some of the activities and the gifts. My side of the family is having our Christmas Dinner on the 9th and this year we are bringing gifts to donate to Toys for Tots instead of giving gifts to each other and I am excited about that. Well thats some of what we have been up to over the past couple of months.

Traditions With a New Twist

We have the holiday tradition of decorating gingerbread houses and have always had fun doing them, usually spending that time with other friends or family. The past several years we decorated them the weekend after thanksgiving, thus having some of them for decorations during the Christmas season. This year we weren't able to do them that weekend and it looked as if we may not do them at all. They didn't seem all that excited about any of the usual craft making holiday traditions that we have had. Our boys aren't as into holiday tradition, memory making as I am, or so I thought. The week before Christmas they started asking about our gingerbread houses and when were we going to make them. Then my 8 year old nephew started asking and so my sister and I decided to get together the Friday before Christmas and decorate away. My two older sons, 16 and 13 decided to make a WWII scene with bunkers and boats and soldiers. They made templates, mixed, rolled, cut and baked gingerbread, enough for everyone. We ended up with a very large WWII scene, three houses and a Christmas tree of gingerbread between all of the cousins. They all had great fun and it was a lot less work for me, now that the boys are old enough to do the baking themselves.

Tis the Season

Yesterday, after worship service, we went to get our Christmas tree. Our family has the tradition of going to a you cut tree farm to cut a tree and we usually wait until a couple of weeks before Christmas to do this, but our schedules this year dictated us doing it this weekend or not everyone would get to go. It had been snowing a little in the morning on our way to church, but then it turned to rain and by the time we were heading out to get our tree, it was fairly pouring. While we were walking around the tree farm the rain started turning white and by the time we were leaving with our tree, it was snowing very hard. We were all very excited, you see we don't get much snow around these parts and so it is almost like a holiday when we do! After we got home, the boys played out all evening even though we only had about an inch. This morning when we woke up, there was about 8 inches and the boys have been out all morning. It is beautiful! Our backyard is still untouched, except for a few footprints along the side fence where boy #2 went to knock the heavy snow off of our little tree for me, we already had a branch break off of our rhododendron in the font yard from the weight of the snow and we didn't want the new little trees to get damaged. We are in a winter wonderland!

Black Friday -

It has become an annual event for my daughter, my sister and myself to go shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving evening we plot out our route for the next day and then we get up early in the morning and work our route. Fred Meyer is usually our first stop - they always have socks half price, plus many other items that we might want to purchase on sale. This year we were at Freds before 6 am - and there were quite a few people - but it wasn't too bad. They were prepared with all checkstands open and the lines moved very quickly, plus they serve free donought holes and apple juice and there is also a Starbucks in it, so we were set. We moved on to the new Target store and it was fairly empty, I guess everyone went on to the mall store. After that we went to the outlet mall not far from us and got a couple of good deals before bringing daughter home so she could scoot off to work. Sis and I headed to the new Kohls store and that was chaos, it was my first time in it and I couldn't believe how long the lines were - we just toured the store and then left and headed back to the outlet mall. The mall was now VERY crowded, but sis was able to make a couple of purchases and then we headed back home for lunch. We don't take the shopping too serious and have fun with it. When all was said and done, I had made some needed clothing purchases for my boys and sis had done a bit of her Christmas shopping - it was a pretty good day.

The Dinner that almost wasn't . . . .

This year we decided to use the roaster oven to cook our turkey, thus freeing up the oven to cook other items. This roaster oven is a family heirloom, it was my grandmothers and it has been around as long as I can remember - 40+ years. Well . . .this was the year it decided to bite the dust. Our turkey was only partially done at 5pm, the appointed dinner time, so we had to quickly shift other things out of the oven and put the turkey in and so we had dinner at 7pm instead of 5 pm. It did turn out well in the end and all 14 of us had a wonderful dinner and it was one that we won't soon forget.

Deck the Blog some more . . .

Here are a few of my favorite ornaments. The balsa wood star came from a little touristy town called Leavenworth. Hubby and I bought it early in our marriage. The glass ball is very old, I have a set of six. The balls have a small piece of garland in them and they were made in Germany. These balls came to us from my grandmother's Christmas decorations when she passed away in 1980. The little stained glass house was made by my mother in law. One year for Christmas she made a set of these from a craft kit and gave us this one. She passed away 18 years ago - so this one holds special meaning to me, we have since been given several more from the originals that she made. As you can see, it is not so much the ornament, but the sentiments and memories associated with them that make them special.

It's snowing . . .

Not really, but inside it looks like it.
Here are a few of our new paper snowflakes and also some paper plate snowmen/women that we made a couple of years ago.

Decorate the Blog

Even though I wasn't tagged for this, I liked the idea and so decided to post a few of my favorite ornaments and holiday crafts. This year we haven't really done any crafts outside of our Gingerbread houses. We have had a good couple of weeks of family members being too sick to care . . . My children did decide to make some paper snowflakes last night and put them up on the dining room wall. I think they are beautiful.

Santa Claus has come to town!

Our family tradition has been to get a picture with Santa each year. It started out when our eldest was just a baby. Cruel parents that we are we have insisted on Santa pictures each year, whether the children wanted it or not. Luckily for the younger children, they have always had at least one sibling in the picture. The past several years we decided to do it as a family with hubby and I in the picture too. Santa is great! He has been coming to our little town since before we moved to the area 15 years ago, We have seen him here for about 13 years. He made us promise that we would never get to old to come and have our picture done with him!

A side note on "Black Friday"

It saddens me that people would behave so badly as to fight over "things" or "places in line" such as has been reported in the media. It does not help you to feel good about your fellow man when you hear such stories. That said, I must report that I witnessed no such incidents yesterday. I did have somebody take my cart when I stepped away from it in Fred Meyer, other than that minor irritation, yesterday went very smoothly for us. I did not see anyone hurt anyone else nor did I wait in line for hours anywhere and I went to many different places from variety stores to toy stores to a major mall. For the most part, other than dealing with being in crowds, it was a fun experience. I think we need to remember that for every bad incident reported, there were many more normal shopping incidents that went unreported. Remember, the media tends to focus on the negative, that which will get attention. I am not trying to defend shopping on "Black Friday", it definately isn't for everyone, especially those who can't deal with crowds, but it is not as bad everywhere as the media made it out to be.

Our Holiday so far . . .

Thanksgiving day was very nice with good food and fellowship with family. My 92 year old grandmother was able to attend with my dad. My mom, sister and her children also attended. Our family is a bit unusual in that my parents are divorced, but can spend a pleasant holiday together and for that, I am very thankful. After parents and grandparents departed, my sister and I assembled gingerbread houses, trees and trains in preparation for decorating the next evening.

Unlike many of my friends, I enjoy going shopping on "Black Friday". I enjoy getting a good deal on items I am looking for but don't take the sales very seriously, unlike some people mentioned in the articles posted on the Common Room. My sister, daughter and I have gone out early in the morning the past three years to do some Christmas shopping. We have gotten some good deals and also watched people. We usually have lunch out together and have some great girl time. We come home very tired and ready to relax. My hubby is great to take care of the 6 other children while we are gone. This year we came home and relaxed for awhile and then we helped the children decorate gingerbread houses. They had a great evening and so did we.

Today we will just relax. My sister has packed up and departed for home, daughter is at work, husband & son #1 are working on our new Star Wars jigsaw puzzle, sons #2 & #3 are outside playing in the remains of the hail that fell earlier today. Christmas music is playing on the CD player and the day is good.

Thank you, God, for our family, our warm home, good food and most of all for your Son.

Our Thanksgiving Holiday

This year we will have a action packed holiday weekend. It all starts with the family dinner. My grandmother, father, mother, sister and her children will all join us for food and fellowship. My sister and her children will stay for a couple of nights to visit with us. Very early Friday morning, sister, Plant Lover and I will join the crazy people and go shopping. This has become an annual tradition for the three of us, it is great girl time. Then, after a crazy morning, we will come home and decorate gingerbread houses with hubby and all of the children (7 children, age 7 - 20). This year we cheated and bought kits, when they were on sale at Target. I usually bake them for everyone, but with baking rolls and pies for Thanksgiving, I just couldn't do the gingerbread too. Decorating gingerbread houses has also become an annual tradition with our family. We will spend Saturday morning recuperating from all of the fun. On Sunday, after church, we will gather with friends for lunch and for the children to share their Washington State History projects with their dads. This weekend will be full of great company and much activity.