And It's Over...

We love Christmas at our house. We like to do it big. We have many traditions from my family and Todd's and some that we have started with our boys. There are some things that just can't be missed (according to Ryan) like making Peanut Butter Balls. We make them every year, and every year only about half actually get dipped in chocolate. They are so good cold out of the fridge! But for many years we have only made BALLS. This year, the boys friends (who are familiar with our Peanut Butter Ball tradition) were here on Christmas Eve and they all put their own twist on it. They made, PB rings, slugs, caterpillars, snowmen, and kebabs. Ryan put way too many toothpicks in his creature. The boys just had a ball and then they were surprised when I just let them eat them up. Hey, it's Christmas!

Another one of our food centered traditions is making a Gingerbread House. We've done one almost every year. One year we tried a Sugar Cube House, which was fun to try, but a little tricky for impatient "helpers". Of course, the making of the House is really just cover for the real fun - loading up on 27 different kinds of candy and then popping pieces into your mouth as often as you can without Mom catching you. (1 for the house, 1 for me. 1 for the house, 2 for me....) I didn't get any pics of the house building, so you can't see, but Ryan was the House Man and therefore got to make the dough, design the pattern, roll the dough and cut out the pieces. He also went with me to pick all the candies. He thinks this gives him rights to said candies. Well, enough of them made it onto the house. I think it's one of the best we've done!

And here's what our real house looked like after Santa left:

And here's another Christmas tradition: After we open presents, but before the boys scatter with their assorted loot, I make them pose for a picture with their presents piled up around them. They are usually good sports, unless I start the posing too late, or I find a gift that didn't make it in the first shot and everything has to be reposed and reshot. Why? Do I really think that in 70 years it will be very important for them to remember everything they got? Kind of. But it also helps me remember who got what so that in a few days (or weeks) we can get Thank You notes out to the right people.

I love Christmas. I love the busy-ness, the food, the presents, the family & friends. I love thinking about and celebrating the birth of Jesus. I love seeing Christmas from my boys perspective. And the food and presents. And now I don't want to go to bed and have it be all over. Can't it last just a little longer?

Ho, Ho, Ho!

Hi folks, Santa here! I thought while I was here at Todd & Teresa's, I would take a break from all my chimney sliding and give her the gift of a blog update! The boys are sleeping and the adults are almost there. I just need to get the gifts under the tree and the stockings on the fireplace. The house is sure decked out for Christmas! They have three trees! And nativities on every table! And red & white peppermint candies! And painted houses! And Advent calendars! So much Christmas stuff! Check out these pictures! (Emily's idea to post pics of her holiday decor have inspired Teresa to do the same. She likes to show off.)

The boys were at the top of my Nice List so there's a pile of gifts for each of them. It will keep them busy for days. Todd will be getting some standard Dad-type things, but I have a few surprises in my sack for him. Teresa already has everything she needs and lots of stuff she doesn't, but since she loves Christmas sooo much I'm sure she'll be thrilled with whatever she gets.

Well, I've got to get off to the next house. Sure wish the reindeer and I could go somewhere warm!

Merrryy Christmas to All! And to All a Good Night!!

Apples, Apples, and More Apples!!!

Someone donated a ton of apples to the church and the Bishop's Storehouse left 8 bushels of them at our building for anyone one who needed/wanted them. Todd gave away 4 boxes. I gave away another 2. That left 2 that no one else wanted. And I couldn't just toss them so I kept them. They had spots and worm holes and were not pretty for eating, but they were pretty good for cutting up and peeling and making things with. I've been wanting to learn to can food, and my calendar was clear, so I figured it was time. On Monday, I bought jars and I borrowed the equipment and some good advice from my friend Shenai. Then I spent all day Tuesday up to my eyeballs in apple making mess. It's a lot of work! I can't imagine having to do canning for days and days in the summer time with lots of kids running around - it was hard enough trying to finish up 2 bushels (that's about 90 pounds!) before the boys came home from school. So here's what it looked like in my kitchen this week.

Sunday's Apple Windfall

Apple Pie - I don't make good apple pie, but this one was OK. We actually ate the whole thing.

Apple Sauce - This batch just got put in containers in the fridge. Justin is our only apple sauce eater, so he will have lots to snack on for a few weeks.

Apple Butter - I had never tasted apple butter before - It's basically boiled down condensed apple sauce. Shenai says it's very good on Ritz crackers with cream cheese. I bought those today so I'm looking forward to trying that for a treat.

My first batch of jars in the canner -

More apple sauce -

Four Flavors - I made Sweetened Apple Sauce, Cinnamon Apple Sauce, Red Hot Apple Sauce (my favorite), and since I don't know when to stop and just leave a good recipe alone, Caramel Apple Sauce (not so good, but I'll make bread with it).

This is the food mill I borrowed that squeezes out all the yummy juice and pulp and spits out the seeds, skins, and stems. It saved me hours of straining hot mushy appples!

Apple Pie Filling - While the sauce was cooking or jars were processing, I peeled, cored, & sliced tons of apples for pie filling. I used a recipe for freezing it. I hope it tastes good.

Apple Jelly - After I used up all the apples, I still had a few jars left so I made Cranberry-Cider Jelly. That was the easiest and fastest thing I did!

And here's my whole day's work all sitting in one little pile. I think I could have saved time and money by just buying all these products at the store, but I feel good about teaching myself a new skill! I have grand dreams of planting a huge garden and putting up mountains of produce next year. We'll see. In the meantime, guess what you all are getting for Christmas...

GOAL!!

Just minutes ago I finished indexing my 12,000th name on the Church's Family Search Indexing project!! That's about 1,000 a month for the year! I did a range of records from Massachusetts Marriage indexes, Irish Birth Indexes, Canada Census, Washington Death Certificates, Olahoma, Florida, Massachusetts, & Illinois State Censuses, and even a batch of marriage records from England that were written in latin! It's kind of interesting and I like to imagine what the people were like. For some of the more recent ones, I wondered how many of the chidren have grown up and have families and if they are still alive somewhere. I think I'll take a break, but I will do more. It's an easy thing to do while I'm half watching TV. Yay, me!

What the Ooobleck?

The boys didn't have school on Wed. (the day before Thanksgiving) so they came up with some unusual entertainments. Tyler made a cornstarch and water goo called ooobleck. When you have the right proportions, it is a solid when you hit it but a liquid that can ooze through your fingers. When Ryan & Justin found out what he was doing they had to make their own. All three boys spent a long time playing in the kitchen (making quite a mess) and using up all the cornstarch in the house. They giggled and laughed and grossed me out. They liked rolling it hard in their hands and it would be a solid ball, but as soon as they stopped rolling it changed back into a soft runny liquid and spilled over their fingers. It was really weird concoction and they are begging me to buy more cornstarch. Who knew it could be so fun!

Have A Holly Jolly HALLOWEEN?

Ryan decided the day before, that he did want a costume for the ward Trunk-or-Treat party so we went looking for something cheap. There were very few options at that late date, but since the Christmas merchandise is out in all the stores, he found a Santa hat and we decided to make it work. We bought a red sweat suit and trimmed it out with furry fabric. And I made a beard and a belt and added fur to his Frankenstein boots from last year. He really liked the pillow stuffed in his clothes to make him fat. At the party, he won the award for Most Original Costume. Ho, ho, ho!

Justin wanted to be a pile of money like the one on some TV commercials. It follows the people around and its funny. So I looked for play money all over Kansas and couldn't find any. Well, I found some, but it was pretty expensive fake money! So we went back to our old stand-by costume, and Justin went as a Martial Arts Guy! Thanks to Cody for the hand-me-down uniform!

Tyler decided to not dress up this year. He is too old. He can't have hard or chewy candies because of his new braces. So he helped pass out candies at the ward party and then at home while Todd took the other 2 boys around the neighborhood.

We have waaayy too much candy. Fortunately the good stuff is almost gone. And after muching on it for 5 days, even the good stuff doesn't taste good. The thing I like best about Halloween is that when it's over, it's 2 months of getting ready for CHRISTMAS!! I guess Ryan was on to something!

Beautiful Boys

I rebelled against the school pictures rip off this year. I decided to not pay $40+ per boy for pictures I don't love, and took them to get pictures taken on Friday when they didn't have school. The down side is it took over 1 1/2 hrs! The upside is I like the pictures they took and with the package I bought, I got the CD of all the pictures! I Photoshopped some of them and I might use them for a Christmas card. Aren't my boys looking great? They are really great kids and we are soooo lucky and blessed.

I Don't Feel Good

I have a headache that hasn't gone away since Wednesday and I have spots on my scalp that hurt. The doctor says I have SHINGLES! Again. I have medicines that should help but the one for pain sure doesn't seem to be working. I'll try to go to my regular doc tomorrow and hopefully start feeling better soon. It stinks being sick while Mom and Dad are here. I feel like a sick party-pooper sicko. At least shingles on my head isn't hurting as much as I remember shingles on my waist hurting. That's something. It's just depressing to be hurting all the time. And now I'm done whining.

You Got Ta Move It, Move It!

Saturday was Tyler's first Stake Dance! He was so handsome! He says he danced with 6 girls and he had a lot of fun and he'll probably go again next month. I can't believe it. My baby boy went out dancing with girls!! When did he grow up? (And can I embarrass him anymore?)

Cupcake Heaven

I had heard great things about a cupcake shop here in town called Daddy Cakes so Mom & Justin & I went and bought 6 different kinds to sample. We divided them into quarters and shared with Dad and Ryan and Tyler. They were pretty good! Too pricey to have very often, but maybe we'll try to recreate some of their flavors. We had Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup, Pumpkin Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint Grasshopper, Chocolate Cupcake (like Hostess cupcakes), Lemon, Cookies & Creme. They were all very tasty.