Christmas Morning Menu

Christmas morning is the special time for just our immediate little family.  After pillaging the floor beneath Christmas tree we wonder back to the kitchen for something to fill our bellies (besides the treats that were in the stockings).  Here is our menu plan:

Cinnamon glazed scones - click the links for the recipe

Chocolate Banana Bread - click the link here too for the recipe
(Just going to add here that Money Saving Mom has the best recipes!)

Big bowl of fluffy scrambled eggs

Bacon - we're going to be luxurious and bake up two packages in the oven!

Grape juice - juice is a rare treat so this is also greatly anticipated.

Mmmm!  I'm pulling up the recipes today so we can make the chocolate banana bread ahead of time and freeze it.  I'm hoping to make some additional mini loaves so we can have some to pull out for Shortcake's birthday tea party next month.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas 2012

One last photo before I really must go sew Shortcake's stocking. :) We usually run up to our local Ace Hardware (I know, really romantic!) for our Christmas tree. Here we are with our tree. I love making memories!

School in December

We're taking school pretty easy in December. The two big boys each have a clip board with a few items listed on their to-do lists. Mostly we're wrapping up phonics, some math, handwriting, and reading. We're keeping ourselves busy with baking, crafting, more reading, math stations, our Europe review, wrapping presents, and Christmas prep. This will bring us to the end of our second semester! And, thanks to MACHE and HSLDA I no longer have to send in a report card for Agent H - that makes me a happy girl!

Christmas Lights Award

This is not my original idea, just another wonderful idea someone out there wrote about on the wonderful internet to inspire us all to have a little fun. I bring you . . . the Christmas Light Awards! We piled the kids (in their PJs) and picnic dinners into the car and headed out looking at Christmas lights. Each kid picked out the house that they thought was decorated the most fabulous and presented that homeowner with a decorated movie size box of candy (dollar store variety). The first home we picked out belonged to an adorable grandpa and grandma who were thrilled and had to send us on our way with some yummy homemade Christmas cookies. The other homes were just as surprised and happy to be singled out. It was one of those things where you don't know who was blessed more - us or them.

After handing out our awards, we went to the drive-thru nativity in New Brighton, which was wonderful. Short but wonderful! I hope we've created another Christmas tradition.












Why post a picture of them all posed when this one shows nicely what life is really like?

And just because they will want to remember. The first photo is Agent E's house, second is Agent H's, the third is The General's.







































In case you've wondered who that is driving around with the Christmas lights in their van - well yes - that would be us. That's my husband's little Christmas fun!

Advent books

We get to open one each day. Each red & white package contains a different Christmas book to read. It's going to have to be a tradition - the kids adore it! Here are some of the titles included in our stash (some were books I had requested from the library, some were last minute thrift store finds, some salvaged from my childhood, and many are gifts from over the years.


The Legand of the Christmas Tree

Little Benjamin and the First Christmas
Usborne's Farmyard Tales Christmas
The Littlest Angel
The Little Fir Tree

Barbar and Father Christmas
The Legand of the Christmas Stocking

Mooseltoe
Legends of the Faith: Issue 4

The Littlest Magi

The Donkey's Christmas Song

The Little Mouse's Wonderful Journey

Three Presents for Baby Jesus

Cranberry Christmas
The First Night
The Little Matchgirl

The last ten or so are still wrapped up but I think they include a book about The Chrismas Carol, a chapter marked from Uncle Wiggily, and a chapter marked from James Harriots Treasury for Children. I'll try to post them once they are opened.

Update:
The Pine Tree Parable
Raggedy Ann and Andy Help Santa Claus
Diane Goode's American Christmas
Bright Star Shining: Poems for Christmas

A Christmas tradition

Making peppernuts is a German Mennonite tradition in our family. No year is complete without baking up a good supply with my mom. There is some serious sprinkling going on there!

Christmas ornament crystals

As soon as I saw this on Crafty Crow I knew we'd be doing it. Our first batch was finished after about 5 hours during the afternoon so we put in a second batch to let sit through the night. We got icy blue color results (although in the pictures they look white) with about 20 drops of blue food coloring. Rather than using individual jars, we tied them to a ruler and dipped them in a full pot. We tried to do a second batch in the same concoction and they didn't seem to grow as much but they still got some nice results.

Music enrichment

Sunday evening was spent at Edinborough Park for a concert by The 1st John Philip Sousa Memorial Band.

The conductor told jokes over the kids' heads but Agent H laughed anyway and gave me a funny quizical look.

We folded and threw paper airplanes from our seats to the stage.

We munched on bags of peanuts.

The band was dressed in black & red and played Christmas music. It was festive and just the right atmosphere for Agent H to observe all the happenings and for his little brothers to be squirrly in the background. Oh, it's free the last Sunday of every month.

EH tells me these photos needed tweeking before they get published, so if you don't think the color is just right, you can blame me cause I don't understand all that nifty computer editing.

Homemade Christmas 2008

Christmas is usually my excuse to indulge in my love for making homemade goodies. This year I didn't manage as much as I had hoped but the chance to let a few creative juices flow felt oh so good!

For my new sweet niece - a set of felt envelopes with button closures. Laminated cards with "Happy Birthday", "Love you!", etc. can be passed around to the family or kept in their little case. Auntie P don't look too close in case one of these ends up as a birthday gift for G Love.

And here is an assortment of note packets I made for the homeschool co-op teachers.

Here are last year's homemade goodies.

Fireplace & floor

Look what happened in the last week! A fireplace mantle and a lovely wood floor. Many heartfelt thanks to my father, FIL, and EH for their very hard labors and late nights. It was so nice to have it done in time for hosting Christmas!






















Please excuse the five year old stuffing his mouth with muffin - you can kinda see the floor there. I love it, love it, love it!

Unveiled

Around this time of the year I usually pull out my copy of Unafraid, Francine River's version of what being the Mother of Jesus could have been like (click here for my post about it last year). This year I'm going to back up in Jesus' lineage and read again about Tamar in the book Unveiled. Tamar's husband dies and she has to marry her brother-in-law, then he dies and she has to marry another brother-in-law, then . . . I'm not going to spoil the ending, unless you remember how it ends from the Bible. Gesh! I'm glad I wasn't a woman in those days!

Right on the money

I spent lots of time pondering what to get H for Christmas this last year. I hoped to get H something that he would get hours and hours of pleasure out of and to inspire creative play. I think it worked. As a little girl, I always wanted those cardboard building blocks that are about the size of Kleenex boxes. I wasn't sure if I was just trying to live out a childhood dream so I suggested this idea to EH, but he seemed to like it too. So, we bought them, wrapped them, tucked the "big" gift behind the Christmas tree and waited. The wrapping went flying and EH set to assembling them all. Building with these blocks has become and almost daily activity now - he's always saying "wanna build something Mom?", I'm sure many of you have been asked as well. Here is a list of the things we have built (many of them H's ideas):

* A fire station and fire fighting gear
* An Island complete with water, boat, hut, fire-pit, palm tree and of course a buried treasure
* A zoo
* A pet shop
* Library complete with card scanner
* Store
* Fort upon fort upon fort
* Mazes
* Towers
* Quick towers for E to crash so he won't crash the "real thing"
* and many more to come . . .



P.S. H got an additional box of blocks from his Ga so he can really have fun!

A good read

A personal tradition this time of the year is to read Unafraid by Francine Rivers (my favorite author). It's a short book about Mary that helps lead my heart back to the tenderness of the season. Mary, the mother of Jesus, who were you? A very young woman of uncommon faith. The unlikely chosen to birth God's plan for reconciliation to His creation. Thank you precious Father for perusing undeserving me.

Merry Christmas . . . see you in court

The boys were tucked in their beds this afternoon snoozing their nap-time zzzzzs. So far, no one had thrown-up and there had been no major coughing fits for the day (amazing!). I sat down next to EH for a bit to flip through the mail in anticipation of Christmas cards. One, two letters and then I saw it . . . something about the words "Jury Commissioner" in the upper left hand corner made my insides cringe. I suppose I shouldn't feel dread but rather pride in the fact that I've been called upon to serve my county . . . maybe it will come later. Rather I feel inadequate to step into the shoes of justice defender. I'll be "phoning-in" the end of January. In the meantime, I'll be filling out the qualification questionnaire so that I'm not guilty of a crime.

The big mall

We took a trip to an indoor mall yesterday. H has had little opportunity to explore the wonders of 100+ stores with all the Christmas glitz and glimmer glowing. He was fascinated to say the least! As we approached an escalator H viewed it with a bit of fearful fascination. On our way down he awkwardly clung to my hand/arm, tried to grasp onto the side as it slid past him and maneuver his feet so he would stand on one step rather than two. I prepped him to jump at the end to get off and he did wonderful. While waiting for Grandma to make a purchase we found another escalator and went up and down, up and down, up and down again. As we were leaving the mall, without any hesitation, he declared the escalators were his favorite!

Move over Rachel Ray. . . I have just discovered the joy of whacking a garlic clove with the side of your knife to get the peels off. Aahhh, the power hiding in the heel of your hand!

H is singing his very first memorized cartoon theme song these days. It's the theme to Wonder Pets - one of his favorites! EH's trying to find the lyrics for me so I can try to memorize it too (we'll post them when we locate them cause they're adorable!). H tried and tried to get me to sing it right today but the poor boy doesn't know what he's up against. I have the great ability to remember about 5% of the words to any song - then I just hum the rest or repeat what I do know.


Little e took three steps last Friday! In the week since, he's been practicing off and on. He took four steps by E yesterday. It's wonderful fun to see how excited he gets over it. He has a total of four teeth up top now and there are two more (for a total of four) trying to break through on the bottom. I sure do hope he gets a teething break after these ones are through - he's had to work sooo hard and long for each one.

P.S. H has taking 3 naps this week!

Post Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dishes are nicely packed away, the folding tables waiting to be stored and the left overs almost all polished off. We hosted EH's family and many of my own this year. One look at all those tables and chairs organized on my main floor told me we were going to have to either refuse our family second servings or move the tables down to the basement where we could sit comfortably. We opted to move the tables. So we sat to dine with wedding china and borrowed goblets surrounded by our newly sheet-rocked walls. What a joy to have walls and not 2x4s and insulation! EH has worked diligently these past weeks to finish off the family room. Bless his heart and his hard work - I can hardly wait to practice summer salts with H on the freshly installed carpet . . . not sure when that's happening but I look forward to it! I'm grateful for sheet-rock - and the hands who labored to install it (our dads and good friend R)!

Thanks to the Internet I think I can say I'm over half done with my Christmas shopping. What an enjoyable way to shop! And Amazon's super saver free shipping helps me to not feel guilty about shopping from my seat versus hauling my little guys around a store having to visit and revisit and revisit items waiting for me to make a decision on what I want to finally purchase. This way I can take all the time I want and feel no pressure!

I have lots more family updating to write about, but this is all for now.

I leave you with H's comment this morning at breakfast - it was very dark and thunder-storming:
"I see a streetlight pretending to be Mr. Sunshine!"