Christmas Treats

Treats we made this past month...

Peppermint Bark

We made this for playgroup one day. It turned out OK.

Cookie Dough Sundae

This is pure temptation. In a bowl.
French vanilla ice cream with homemade cookie dough on top.

Fortune Cookies

These were way more trouble than they are worth. I thought there would be lots, but as it turns out, but I only got about a dozen good ones, so they all went to Rachael's preschool teachers at Building Blocks.

Jam Thumbprints

A perennial favorite. I made these for Ryan for a potluck at work, and for Rachael's preschool teachers at Little Hands.

Christmas Tree Cake Pops

Fun with cake pops! I found a cookie cutter just the right size for tree pops. I also tried stocking pops, but they didn't turn out as well.

Sugar Cookies

Of course. Can you think of a better use for sprinkles?

Fire Pole Elf

Tonight we were watching the movie "Elf," and we were at the part with Miles Finch and Buddy calling Miles an elf. Buddy says something about how Miles is an angry elf, and maybe he is from the South Pole. Rachael had her own suggestion... "maybe he's from the fire pole."

That might explain the angry, anyway!

Girls Day

Rachael and I decided a girls day was in order. It was a fun way to spend time with my favorite girl before Christmas. We had pizza for lunch, then went out for a movie and some shopping. (I even managed to pick up a stocking stuffer on the sly, thanks to a really helpful and quiet store clerk. yay!)

We took in the latest Disney flick. I know there has been some controversy with lots of points in this movie, but Rachael loved it. She thought Tiana was a great princess and even the voodoo witch doctor wasn't too scary for her.
New shoes! Size nine - wow. What's a proper girls day out without either a new outfit or new shoes?

We had a great time. I didn't get a single thing done around the house or anything ready for Christmas but it was still an entirely worthwhile endeavor.

I'm here

Usually when I have neglected the blog for more than a couple of days, one of two things is true: 1) I have run out of ideas of things to blog about; or occasionally, 2) I'm just way too busy. In this case the latter is true!

The past two weeks we have been Christmasing, decorating, baking, wrapping, shopping, practicing the piano, and then babysitting, working on cards, finishing gifts, then followed up with a birthday party and a temple trip. Busy but lots of fun. Here are a few things I have been thankful for the past couple of weeks.

New babies: Many congratulations to three of my friends who welcomed new babies in the last week or so. Two were the first children - so fun to see new families being created.


The apron: I used an apron Rachael has to make a pattern so I could make Alex an apron for his birthday. (Isn't that construction print fantastic for a 3 year old boy who loves to play in the kitchen?) I made a couple of modifications over the original and I'm quite pleased with the result. And Rachael really wanted to pose with it for pictures... silly girl!

I Spy: At the party we talked about how much Rachael likes to play "I Spy," at the grocery store, so she launched into a few "I spies" for us. I love the way she cheers for you when you get the right answer. And I especially love the way she stares right at what she "spies," making it really easy to guess. But the best one of the night was when she said, "I spy with my little eye... something that is small and difficult." Sorry Blake, we're on to you.


and Fingerprints: My friend Amy blogged about her not-so-perfect house last year. I loved the post - she is a great blogger. When I saw these sticky fingerprints at the top of the stairs it made me think of that post. I was curious about sticky fingerprints because I don't let Rachael take food upstairs. Here's what she had to say: "Well, my friend (who will remain nameless to protect the guilty) brought a candy cane upstairs and she hid it under my bed. It was sticky. Then I ate it. Then I had to hold onto the wall to go downstairs."

I guess I can't argue with that logic.

Thanksgiving

Ah.... Thanksgiving. The one day of the year that the gratitude journal is just begging for an entry. So I rounded up a few of my favorite quotes.

"An ungrateful man is like a hog under a tree eating acorns, but never looking up to see where they come from.” -Timothy Dexter

“A grateful heart is a beginning of greatness.” -James E. Faust

"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others." -Marcus Tullius Cicero

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." -John F. Kennedy

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it."-William Arther Ward

"I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose." -Woody Allen

I'm thankful for all my blessings, for all my trials, for all my friends, all my family, especially for my husband and daughter, and the opportunity to reflect on something I am grateful for every day.

What are you thankful for?

Good Friends

It's good to be crazy once in awhile. (Although you will notice we weren't quite crazy enough to go at midnight. Just enough to go opening day.)

Sun and Fog

How often do you get low-lying fog under blue skies and sunshine?!
(And yes, we still have green grass in November.)

Clean Up Time

We have Clean Up Time every night at 7:45 - quite possibly one of the best ideas I have had in a long time. We set a timer for 10 or 15 minutes and everyone does something to help clean up. Rachael usually picks up her toys, and Ryan and I either help her or do things like unload the dishwasher or fold the laundry. When the timer beeps, we are done, even if the job isn't completely finished.

I put up a piece of paper with a clock at 7:45 so Rachael could help remind us when it was time for Clean Up. She decided she wanted her own reminder page, too!

Williams Sonoma

Today was my day to drive Clark and Rachael to preschool in Lexington. To occupy my time while I was in town, I went drooling [shopping] at Williams Sonoma. They had all things Thanksgiving around the store, and I even got a sample of some pumpkin pie and apple cider.

Wouldn't stuffing look beautiful in this copper au gratin pan? One day I would love to have an entire kitchen designed around using copper pans. (And while we're dreaming, let's throw in that $3000 refrigerator I found a few years ago, with embossed copper leaves on the front).

Something beautiful for the pumpkin pie...

And a cool new way to do the mashed potatoes - with a potato ricer!

Finish up the preparations by decorating with this pretty Thanksgiving tablecloth:

I'm coveting these to drink my hot chocolate on Christmas morning:

In the end, I picked up the one thing I went in for: Turkey Brine. Scrumptious! Bring on Thanksgiving.

Kitchen Helper

I know Rachael helping in the kitchen makes regular appearances on my blog, but she is just so much fun in the kitchen! Earlier this week we made breaded fish, and Rachael whisked up the egg all by herself. I was surprised!

Today she requested jello. I'm not sure how complicated she thought that would be, but she was kind of underwhelmed with the whole process. Or it might be because I told her it wouldn't be ready to eat until tomorrow. (We didn't start until 6:30 pm).

She has high ambitions, though... here is a picture of what she wants to try for Thanksgiving. I just wish she was old enough to try it without me...

Good Weather

What did you do with your beautiful Saturday afternoon?

Ryan spent a couple of hours stringing up the Christmas lights on the outside of the house.

It's a hard tradition to break, I guess: the first Saturday in November with decent weather (that is not otherwise already scheduled) we put up the Christmas lights.

Hooray for the holidays! Thanks sweetheart.

Service for Solomon

My friend Becky gave birth to her beautiful son Solomon four years ago today. He was born with HLHS, a congenital defect of the heart. He lived for 18 days before passing on to the next life. I'm touched by his birthday every year. Rachael is just a few months older, and it is a significant reminder of what a blessing she is in my life.

To honor Solomon, their family does 18 days of service from November 12 to November 30th. I'll be thinking of ways I can render service myself in the next three weeks.

Happy Birthday, Solomon!

Christmas Shopping

It's holiday shopping time! I'm so excited.

We're aiming for a debt-free Christmas and we are well on our way.

Happy Holidays!

A Night Out

A friend of mine managed to get tickets to a performance of "To Kill A Mockingbird" at the Norton Center in Danville. It was really good! I was surprised at what a nice facility it was. And we had amazing seats - orchestra section!

Her husband teased her about having a "date" with me but it was totally worth it. Thanks for a fun evening!

Baptism

This morning we had the opportunity to attend a baptism for someone in our ward. He decided that rather than be baptized in the font in the building (in warm water), he would like be baptized in a lake, with the sun coming up over the hills. It would have been a really great idea in August, but this is November, and it was 51 degrees outside. Brrrr!
Having said that, it was a beautiful service. And a very memorable occasion.

The worst part? Not the 51 degree air, not the freezing cold lake... it was after the two men were out of the lake and drying off, when they were informed that Brother Casseta was not entirely immersed and the ordinance would need to be repeated. In the lake. In the COLD. Back in they went - and the second time was thankfully a good one!

Good Health

A toast to all the healthy and happy years we have had and will continue to have!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Auntie Lorie!

Now that we have been to visit Aunt Lesley,
Rachael wants to know when we are coming
to California to visit.

Soon, we hope!

Hope you had a great day!

Sunrise

Knock Knock

Have you ever heard two four year olds tell each other knock knock jokes in the back of the car? It goes something like this, courtesy of Rachael and Clark...

Knock Knock
Who's there?
Egg
Egg who?
Aren't you glad I didn't get dropped on your head?

Knock Knock
Who's there?
Banana
Banana who?
Banana orange pickle.

Knock Knock
Who's there?
Apple
Apple who?
Apple juice!

And so on. One day one of them will tell a joke correctly, and it won't seem nearly as funny.

Sisters

We had a really nice visit with my sister Lesley and her family. It always throws their normal routine to have visitors, but they made us feel welcome and comfortable. On top of everything else, Rachael had potty training accidents in her costume, and Lesley washed that dress not once but twice while we were there. And she loaned me two different pairs of Halloween socks!

I wasn't entirely selfish - we sent her and Chad out on a date for their 11th wedding anniversary.

Thanks so much Lesley!!

Speech Therapy

Kira gave me some speech therapy lessons while we were visiting. They go like this:

Kira: Butterfly.

Me: Butterfly.

Kira: nods in agreement.

I passed, I think. She has been in speech therapy for a long time so I'm pretty sure she can give lessons. Other favorites: dinosaur, cookie, elephant, and computer.

So fun!!

My Favorite Tree

This is a picture of my favorite maple tree at Million Park. It turns a beautiful orange gold color every fall. This picture is from last year. (You can see what a dry year we had... the grass is barely green).

Earlier this year we were hit with a massive ice storm that damaged nearly every tree in the county. I didn't get a chance to take a picture of this tree covered in ice because the park was closed, but you can imagine what it looked like. This summer I took a picture, and you can see that it lost a limb or two.
And here it is again this fall. It's already starting to recover; the hole is smaller than it was this summer. And it's still a beautiful shade of orange gold.

More Photography Fun

I had the opportunity to take a few family pictures of a friend of mine in the ward. She has a beautiful family... so fun!

Cupcakes

I had the opportunity to host a baby shower for a sweet girl who used to live in our ward. She just lives in Nicholasville now, but it was a good chance for her to catch up with old friends.

I decided on a cupcake theme - and it was a perfect chance to try out my new giant cupcake pan!

Prepped and ready to go:

Right out of the oven:

And the finished masterpiece:

A few of the other treats I worked on: pink vanilla cupcakes with cherry filling, cupcake pops (with red velvet cake), double chocolate cupcakes, and the newly christened "belly button" cookies. (Rachael was watching me make the indents for these cookies and said, "Are those belly button cookies?" They are now!)

And the finished table...

Food

It seems like all my posts lately have been about food... well... no change here.

We made pretzels for playgroup today. Some regular shaped ones, but the fun ones were the pretzel people we made. Isn't she a charming girl? OK, well, at least she was yummy.

Chicken Soup

Roasted the chicken, picked it clean, made chicken broth, used carrots from the garden, made the egg noodles from scratch. And homemade french bread to boot.

I'm golden for the rest of the month... or until someone else gets sick.

Recovery Disc and Backups

My computer tried to eat itself yesterday. One minute it was fine... the next it rebooted itself... and never came back. Fortunately for me, I have a very technically capable husband, and between the two of us we managed to back up all of my data onto an external hard drive.

Then with some imagination we found a website to create a recovery disc, which if you have Windows Vista, you might know that a recovery CD does not come with the computer when you buy it. We were able to download the necesary files and burn a DVD.

I lost a few internet bookmarks, but other than that I can't tell I have lost anything critical. More frequent backups are on the horizon and now we are sure we have a working recovery CD.

Happy computing. And thanks for your help, Ry!

Practice

I had the opportunity to attend a wedding last Saturday. I wasn't the photographer, but I had my camera along anyway and took as many shots as I could, just for practice. Unfortunately I didn't put the flash on (it was spooking the horses) so most of my shots were too dark, but I did get a couple I liked.
This one below is my favorite snapshot: it's the groom and his sister. She got married the day before. This is a picture of the two of them just before they all walked down the aisle - it was cold outside and he was keeping her warm.

Blue Skies

I snapped this picture this morning... the sky is rarely this color blue here. I think it's probably the lower altitude, but one of the things I miss the most about Denver is the sky so blue it hurts your eyes. We have had lots and lots of wind lately - and this is the happy result!

General Conference

Every six months I am so thankful for the opportunity to hear from our prophet and other church leaders. We watched pretty much all four sessions... a first for me in a long time. I especially loved the Saturday morning session. My very favorite musical number was the choir singing "O Divine Redeemer."

Baking

Fall officially started a couple of weeks ago, which means it's time to get in the kitchen and start baking. Till spring.

We started with pumpkin blueberry muffins that we made for playgroup. Rachael mixed the dry ingredients and Alex mixed the wet ingredients. It took about three times as many dishes to make them but the kids had a really great time, so it was worth it. Plus kids will eat nearly anything they help prepare, and the muffins were no exception.


It was my friend Jenny's birthday so I made her a cake. A Double Decadent Brownie Torte, to be more specific. I misunderstood the directions, though, and really whipped the eggs for way too long, so the cake was kind of airy instead of dense like a torte should be. Still tasted good. (In my defense, the recipe isn't very well written. It has you melt the chocolate and a couple of other things together, then beat the eggs with some sugar, but at no point does it ever say to combine all the ingredients together. I did manage to figure that part out on my own).
More cupcakes. Because we can. These are made with yellow cake that I colored half yellow and half orange, then frosted with green buttercream. Yummy.

Can't wait for pumpkin bread... cranberry bread... and Thanksgiving!