Christmas 2011

Do you remember the days when they couldn't stand each other?  Now, Thick as thieves these two. I truly believe being polar opposites is the salvation of this relationship.  

 We had a super marvelous low key Christmas..  Just the 8 of us!!!

Last year I mistakenly only bought 1 gingerbread house...This year we had 3 teams of gingerbread house builders, and I think we found the problem...see the focus

They are on a full fledged constentrating on their candy constructing

These two also...full on  tunnel vision for the perfect gingerbread house

 Then you have these guys, the weak links..up to their eyeballs in shenanigans and goofballing around

 I mean like- grossss me out....

 What the girls are doing....

 What the boys are doing...

 I love having Collin home...he is a foodie like me. He said he would take over Christmas eve dinner and I would do Christmas...This is what was on his menu...  Sauteed shrimp with butter and lemon sauce..

 and our families favorite crab cake recipe...served with a salad and big crusty bread...yumm-o  .  So fun to have my boy in the kitchen with me!!!!!!

 My favorite part of Christmas Eve is that we all sat around the computer and found our Compassion Int'l sponsor child.  The cutest little 5 year old boy from Haiti, that just melted all of our hearts in about one second flat!!!

 Jack read the Night before Christmas...

 and I read the story of Jesus' birth from the Bible

 all while we had the yummiest hot cocoa ever made ....I will have to post the recipe sometime...dangerous!

 Does anyone else think I should fear the teenage years with this one...cause I'm skeered

 Finn,  open your mouth and close your eyes...

 yeah, we are such a mature and posh family...

 We started a new tradition this year of hiding a "pickle" ornament in a tree, the first to find it gets to open the first present...  Only one child was focused enough at 6:00 a.m. , the same child that was waking me up on the hour every hour since 3:00 in the morning... giving me a full 2 hours of sleep Christmas night.  arrrrrgggggghhhhhh

 Collin's favorite Christmas present...a dolphin pillow pet... i know he's a freak, he knows it too so he won't be offended that I'm telling you.

 He also got a money tree, doesn't every college kid want a money tree over a pillow pet???  His response..."did you see this on pinterest Mom? "  he's a freak and a brat... but he loves to help me in the kitchen so I loves him...a lot

 the carnage

 Christmas dinner, grilled leg of lamb, tabouli salad, roasted potatoes, grilled asparagus, tzatziki sauce...all made while still wearing my jammies...made it taste so much better :)

 Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture???

 yeah, neither do we :)

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!!!!!

Crafting fail

The kids and I had thought we found the perfect DIY Christmas project to give Papa and Grandpa for Christmas.  They both love starting a nice warm fire as evidence of Grandpa here...

We had seen this craft all over pinterest and blogs.  So we figured we would give it a go.   

One thing I have to say to all those bloggers who posted their how to steps on this is... SHAME!!!! While we are pleased with the end result of this project...getting there was wayyyyy harder than anyone had led on.

The step by step calls only for Pine cones, candle wicking, wax and cupcake liners.  We feel like we are pretty crafty folks so we decided to add coloring and a Cinnamon scent as well.

Please note that this is truly the only step of the process that a child can and should help you with.  Placing already wicked pine cones in cupcake liners, it takes all of 2 minutes...Then they must vacate the area as they will most like be scalded with hot molten wax or possibly over hear you using foul language under your breath. 

This child, my super crafter, is using a super sharp butcher knife to cut the huge blocks of wax into teeny tiny pieces...don't worry this step only takes an hour or two...

You melt the wax, in 15 separate batches, (it takes about 45 minutes per batch)...and hot wax and water will splatter all over your stove and floor and may possibly singe your skin when you try to move it or turn down the heat.  

Once you have braved melting the wax, pouring it into the cupcake liners, searing your fingertips, and making a total wreck of every available surface in your kitchen,  use a butter knife to scrape off wax and reposition the pine cones so you set them up for another go around.

Keep pouring the wax until the bottom of the wick is covered with wax, otherwise...reposition all wicks and repour...again..

Try to ignore all of your other children when they ask if you are ever going to be done with this project, so you can feed them and they can actually get out of their pajamas by lunch time and maybe have a small chance at interacting with you at some point in the day..

6 hours later, when you are finally done...show off your biggest and smallest creation and act like it was all worth it.

They did turn out nice, but do not be fooled, 5 hour project with at least 1 hour of clean up... pots and pans that had to hit the trash rather than deal with hours of scrubbing...  If you decided to try this one...don't say you weren't warned :)  

Today we will be doing our annual cookie bake off and we are expecting much better results :)
Merry Christmas!!!!!!!

Holiday Horse Show

Kobi had the cutest Holiday Horse show at the barn she takes lessons at.  I love how it was a "fun" show, no pressure.  Her class had a farm animal theme so she (and by she, I mean "I") had to make a costume for her horse... The thought stressed me out but we pulled it out.  

He turned out super cute, for a sheep...but doesn't he look like he is just a bit humiliated to be wearing such a get-up :) 

Here is a video I made of her class, I know no one will think it is as cute as her mama and papa does but I figured I would put it out there :)

HORSE SHOW HOLIDAY 2011 from amy on Vimeo.

Fun times!  Hope you all are enjoying the holidays and soaking up the season.  Next week is the mad rush of 3 of the littles birthdays and MY biggest  BOY is coming home for a few weeks.  I vow to soak up the family moments and not to get obbsessed with all the to do lists and expectations of this glorious season.

Thanksgiving in FL.

We took a trip to Florida for Thanksgiving....

Oh the sunshine, it feeds my soul.

We are the dorkiest tourist, even when we are in our old stompin' grounds...

Finn cracks us all up... She decides to try to give the passerby's High-five's from her front row seat...

She quickly realized that Florida people are not usually as friendly as our fellow Northernerns, but she was quite proud when she could get someone to join in her shananigans.  She is so funny...

So our trip took a pretty crumby turn... Right as we were headed to my Mom's house, she called and said she wasn't feeling well.  She ended up in the hospital having an emergency quadruple bypass heart surgery.  So we spent most of our trip at her house, even though the little kids didn't even get to see her.  We had to do a quick impromptu Thanksgiving dinner...and I am so thankful that my biggest boy flew in the day before...  I couldn't have pulled it off without him.  He is so awesome... This is probably the worst picture ever taken of me...but my boy is so stinkin' cute...and helping me in the kitchen..i couldn't resist... 

Even with the worry over my Mom, we made the most of our trip. 

I don't know why, but I have always loved sea turtles...

This big guy has a shark bite injury...  poor little dude.  

Great memories are built crashing on the floor of Grandma's house with a room full of cousins :) 

Cousins,,,

Friends,,,

Uncle's

more cousins,,,

and even more cousins...    We miss them all....I had to leave you with fun easy yummy dessert the girls and I made.  We were craving some banana pudding after trying some at a hometown diner last week...so we looked up this recipe and it turned out super yummy for how easy it is... big time family hit.