Merry Christmas to you and yours

Since there's a nice stack of mostly ready Christmas cards sitting on my counter here . . oops, here's some virtual Christmas Wishes from us to you!

Sledding Mountain

The other day EH and I were discussing the need to find a good sledding hill. H having overheard us offered a serious four year old's suggestion. "How about Mount Everest?"

Mary is back

Last year I posted about a book that I love to read this time of the year by Francine Rivers. Well I'm at it again and this time I didn't have to cross my fingers and hope that it wasn't checked out at the library, I have my very own copy. Thank you mom. xoxo

When the shepherds arrive to catch a glimpse of their savior, it is so simply powerful tears stream down my face. A short bit later in the book, still the night of Jesus' birth, the author has Mary waking and standing at the opening of the cave and pondering all that has happened. She prays "Lord Most High, Creator of all people, you who dwell in heaven so far above us, you who are holy, I love you. . . . I adore you. There is no other like you in all the universe." Then after she returns to sleep "Outside, God's sentinels stood guard against the one who would destroy the child. Finding no way to enter into the humble sanctum, Satan turned away in a cold blast of fury. 'I will find another way to kill the one who threatens my domain!' . . . Dark laughter echoed in the night while Mary and Joseph slept. Only Jesus awakened and heard."

That gives me the chills - "Jesus . . heard". I know this book is one author's way of interpreting what the actual events could have been like but what if he did comprehend his mission even as an infant. He was/is God.

Bonnet

Here's a belated post to display a fun project I did. I purchased the bonnet pattern from Angry Chicken and just love it! I ended up making two, one for each of my sweet nieces.

E's creative side

He woke up early from his nap and decided to explore the drawers of the desk we thought he couldn't open







After the magic eraser. I love these things!

Frog and Toad

H experienced his first visit to the theater. Frog and Toad was the play and it was very well performed. Auntie P arranged everything with her homeschool group and we got to bring her two oldest along with us while she watched Little E and her youngest. I assumed that Frog and Toad would be wearing some type of frogish face or feet so I was slightly put off when they didn't. It wasn't until I was absorbed into the show that I realized it didn't even a matter. The actors were so good at becoming their parts with mannerisms and voices alone.

There was one intense part where Frog is telling Toad a scary story. I had my eyes on my youngest two kids. They were faring pretty well until in a split second H launched himself out of his chair and into my lap. In another scene some teasing critters pull open the bottom flap on Toad's '20's style swim suit revealing brown froggy skin. My H was mortified that someone would even consider doing that to someone and couldn't figure out why they wanted to see Toads bottom. So many questions and endless discussion on the topic ensued. Thankfully he seems to be over it now.

The day of the play also happened to be the day that we received large amounts of snow. So after about a total of 5 hours of snail pace travel through the snow and passing a dozen or so cars in the ditch or smashed up I was so grateful to be home safe and sound. The kids did great in the car amusing themselves with books, songs, radio theater, and the alphabet game.

It came!

My Deceptively Delicious was delivered from Amazon this last week. It is an awesome cookbook about getting your kids to eat good food - it's everywhere in blog land. Pictures accompany most every recipe which is so appealing to my visual self!

I have already tried out two of the recipes - a cookbook record for me! We tried banana french toast (since E won't eat bananas unless they are chips), YUM! Next up was the pumpkin oatmeal. A thumbs up by E and I but H was big NO while EH just couldn't process eating something like pumpkin pie for breakfast. If you're a fan of pumpkin pie and the time of the day you eat it isn't a problem this is for you! It's warm spices, thick and smooth tasting.


We made our first batch of Christmas cookies this week. In honor of my Mennonite German heritage (and because they are very kid friendly) we made peppernuts. They look like tiny pillows of bread covered (excessively by two eager helpers) with red and green sugar sprinkles. I'm excited by the ingredients substitutions I was able to make with little to no taste variation. In place of the shortening I used coconut oil and in place of the sugar I used Xylitol. I'm going to try this on a few other recipes and see how it goes. I revel in desserts so being able to eat something that I don't have to feel too guilty about is fabulous. Yes there was still white flour in the recipes, which I try to avoid, but some things just don't work with whole wheat flour. We've begun to use some white bean flour in recipes that call for flour but I still need to do some experimentation with it. It seems like a great alternative and also a good source of protein.

My "other" work

I don't think I've ever written about my work - probably because most of you know that it lurks behind the scenes of my daytime life. By night I transform into Super Transcriber! The "super" part may be a bit of an exaggeration but at least my son thinks I type like lightening.

Prior to giving birth to children I worked as an administrative assistant at a college. My office was the Center for Distance Education. I loved that office - still do. When the opportunity came along for me to pick up some work hours transcribing their courses from home I jumped on it. I have spent hours absorbing Old Testament Archaeology, Psychology, and oh yes who could forget . . . Math for the Liberal Arts, Algebra and Precalculus! I just finished Precalculus and I think we'll have to sand out the finger nail marks I left on the desk. Just ask any math teacher that I've ever had the privilege of tormenting, they will walk far far in the opposite direction of me. I am happy to announce that I will soon be starting a new, lighter course - Christian Theology. I say that sarcastically but I really am looking forward to it, anything that's not math!