Happy Birthday Alan

Happy birthday to Alan. We've kind of been spreading out his celebration over a few days. Yesterday we went to the movies, today we had his cake, and this weekend we'll have his dinner. The kids made him a fleece Air Force blanket. Great time had by all.

Christmas Eve Pictures

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  I don't think we have a single picture from Christmas Day but we did take some on Christmas Eve.  Can't say we did anything fancy this year. Most of the cookies and such are still waiting to be made.  Very few cards went out. Even fewer were received.  Dinner was finger foods and fending for yourself.  The kids enjoyed the yearly tradition of little boxes of sugar filled artificially colored hard to call it food cereal that they get every year for Christmas. The can of spray cheese made it's yearly appearance and much rejoicing was heard from the children. Several kids got new sleds. One got new cross country skis. All in all, I'd say we had a good time.  Hoping the same could be said for your homes.

The House the Kids Built

Here is the house built by the older kids. They said they tried to make it look just like the one on the box.

Gingerbread House

The younger kids love making gingerbread houses each year. The tradition started when a friend brought over graham cracker houses to make with our kids a few years ago. Now the kids insist on it every year. But my trick is that I always buy a pre-made kit to keep things simple.

Gabe has been begging to make their house for a week.

The younger kids all worked together on this one and the older kids are now putting the finishing touches on the second one.

Pictures from Our Week

Having a Hot Chocolate Party

Ellie's New Hat

A Find from the Thrift Store that Reminds us of our Youngest Girls

The BBQ Pizza Gang

Don't ask.  I can't explain their thinking.  But I found these 3 in the dining room dancing and singing about being the BBQ pizza making gang.  Ignore my hair in the pictures. I was trying to snap the pictures before the kids realized I was taking them.

Play Doh

There is something about play doh that keeps young children entertained. And in one place. And happy. For a very long time.  I whipped up a triple batch of kool-aid scented play-doh last weekend with the kids and it was played with for 3 days straight.  Seriously. For 3 days the children sat at the kitchen table, were quiet, busy, and occupied. It was amazing.  I will have to remind myself to make a fresh batch of play doh every few weeks.

The recipe I used this time was 2 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of salt, 2 packets of unsweetened kool-aid all mixed with 2 cups of boiling water and 3 tbs of oil.  And it does make a difference if you don't let the water come to a full boil.

Cinnamon Ornaments

We made ornaments with the kidlets today.  Everyone but the older two. For some reason, they decided they just were not interested this year.

It was a simple project and the perfect gift to give to friends (so act surprised if you get one).  Easy enough for the littlest ones to do, you just have to make sure they know not to eat the dough as that much cinnamon would be enough to make you sick. This can also go on the list of frugal family friendly ideas to fit into your holidays this year.

We started with a one to one ratio of applesauce to cinnamon and ended up with closer to a 1:1.5 ratio. Bake in the oven at 300 for about 30 minutes to dry them.  Enjoy.

Boy Scout Stuff

The court of awards was last night. Each of the boys earned at least a few badges.  The younger ones behaved rather well. There was actually enough food this year.  Good time had by all and now we get to enjoy a break for a few weeks.

Family Picture

Since I've decided we are not sending out photo cards this year for Christmas, sharing the family picture here. Grandparents and such will get a copy but I've realized over the past few years that in many ways, we are wasting money on Christmas cards (ask me about that conversation I overheard between my Aunts right after we'd mailed ours out to the family one year talking about how Christmas cards were rather silly, stupid, and a waste of money and guess how many people got cut from the list the following year).  So here's the latest picture for those who are interested.

Happy Birthday, Kieran!

Kieran turned 12 today.  Seems rather hard to believe. I mean 12 is just so serious.

He planned out his birthday several weeks in advance. Orders were put in for breakfast pizza, pizza pockets for lunch, Applebees for dinner, and banana cream pie instead of cake. I hesitate to admit that I bought frozen pies rather than make them because our day was just a wee bit busy.

We went ice skating and everyone had the day off from school.

Happy birthday Kieran. You are a blessing to our family.

Happy Birthday Ellie!

Ellie turned 3 today. We celebrated with her cake and dinner yesterday.  Today we all went to the play museum. Everyone had a great time. Our spunky 3-year-old also decided to cut off even more of her hair sometime before we went for family pictures on Sunday afternoon. I swear that girl is never going to have a decent amount of hair.

Happy birthday Gracie Girl!

Advent Candles

If you can think to plan ahead next year, head over to Illuminated Ink and order a Bees Wax Advent Candle Making kit.  The kids love making these each year (ok, probably every other year in recent memory) and I love having a project to signify that Advent has begun. If you do decide to use these candles, just keep in mind they burn for about 4 hrs each (depending on how tightly rolled they are) so you may need to order more than one set if you burn them every night.

Day 30

Thankful for a guy who insists on making the pizza dough entirely from scratch while the stand mixer is broken.  Yes, he refused to use the hand mixer and did not even consider getting the bread maker from the basement.

He even fixed that giant gapping hole that has been in the kitchen ceiling for the past few weeks.

Day 25

Thankful today for kids and art projects and a husband who will do them with the kids while I am gone.

Day 22

Girl time.  Enough said.

Day 21

Silly surprises. That is what I am thankful for today.  Like yesterday when I heard Ellie's muffled voice coming from behind a door and found her sitting in the pantry on a cooler, neatly crammed between the wall and the shelf, shoveling cereal into her mouth as quickly as possible. Notice I did not say as neatly as possible.

And tonight when I was getting ready to leave for karate and I looked into the pantry and saw this.

How can you not smile when you see things like that? And shake your head and wonder what the heck your kids are doing when you are not looking.