‘Tis the season

Did you know that tomorrow is December 1st? Crazy! I had so many ideas and plans for the holidays and now I find myself scrambling, as usual. I’m in a bit of a cleaning frenzy because I have to have a clean, uncluttered house before I can get out box after box of Christmas decorations. Lex and I are negotiating on what to do with his artwork/wallpaper currently cluttering… er, I mean decorating the walls of the dining room. I haven’t even told the kids (or hubby for that matter!) my rearranging plans for the living room. Need to get a tree in there somewhere… not sure how it’s all going to fit. We may end up losing a toy shelf or recliner chair. No one will be happy! Just kidding… mostly… major furniture gets priority over a Christmas tree. I’m hoping to get the cleaning done this week and do some decorating this weekend. Lex loved decorating the neighbor’s trees. Not sure when we’ll get one of our own. I can’t believe we used to wait until Christmas Eve!!

Speaking of Christmas Eve… I started playing Christmas music the other day (and singing it and I love that the kids love to hear me sing!) and every time a song says “Christmas Eve” my little girl says “Christmas EVE?!!?! I’m not Christmas!” I tried to explain that “Eve” is her name and a word with another meaning, but she still giggles whenever she hears Christmas Eve. :) I love her!

Happy Thanksgiving (a few days late)

We were in Franklin for Thanksgiving and I was unmotivated to blog. If I were a serious blogger I would have had a post all lined up and scheduled to post on Thanksgiving day. Did you know you can schedule a post to go live some other time? I’ve never done it. I’m not a serious blogger :)

Anyhoo… we were in Franklin this year. We had fun. The kids love the country and I love that the kids love the country. It’s so nice to have a country home to go to. We took a long walk on Thanksgiving day and relaxed and played and Lex made placecards for dinner and we all ate and life is good. I had a much snazzier post written in my head, but it’s gone. Maybe some pics will help.

Today we went to a holiday party at the neighbor’s house. The first holiday party of the season. We are already exhausted!

Letters to…

Josie! We had our friends over a few days ago and Lex drew a picture for Josie. When they left she forgot to bring it with her. Lex was pretty unhappy about that. Tonight he decided that we need to mail it to her. He got an envelope and did his best to write her name and address. The name takes up the whole envelope and he got bummed that he ran out of room for her address. I wrote it in tiny letters underneath. Eve also wanted to send them a picture so she got herself an envelope and went to work decorating it and “writing” the address.

Lex writes a letter

Lex writes a letter


Eve writes a letter

Eve writes a letter

And Joyce! Later in the evening they decided to make Thanksgiving pictures for Aunt Joyce. I have a picture of the final card Lex drew, but I think I’ll hold off posting it for a few days. Joyce, check your mailbox on Wednesday!

Eve draws a picture

Eve draws a picture

Simply Perfect Pancakes

If anyone is looking for a pancake recipe (a fantastic pancake recipe!!!) this is for you. We like pancakes around here and I’ve tried many, many recipes. I made these for breakfast the other day and EVERYONE was in heaven. I made a double batch and froze them. We had pancakes for breakfast yesterday and today, and for dinner tonight. Alan said they were the best he’s ever had. I did half plain and half with blueberries and the general consensus is that blueberries are yummy, but the plain ones are just perfect. Simply perfect!

Simply Perfect Pancakes from King Arthur Flour (who else?!?)
Ingredients
* 2 large eggs
* 1 1/4 cups milk
* 3 tablespoons melted butter or vegetable oil
* 1 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
* 3/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 2 tablespoons sugar OR 1/4 cup malted milk powder (I used sugar)

Directions
1. Beat the eggs and milk until light and foamy, about 3 minutes at high speed of a stand or hand mixer. Stir in the butter or vegetable oil. (I was too lazy to get out the stand mixer, so I just used a whisk for a minute or so.)

2. Whisk the dry ingredients together to evenly distribute the salt, baking powder and sweetener.

3. Gently and quickly mix into the egg and milk mixture. Let the batter rest for at least 15 minutes, while the griddle is heating; it”ll thicken slightly.

4. Heat a heavy frying pan over medium heat, or set an electric griddle to 350°F. Lightly grease frying pan or griddle. The pan or griddle is ready if a drop of water will skitter across the surface, evaporating immediately.

5. Drop 1/3 cupfuls of batter onto the lightly greased griddle. Bake on one side until bubbles begin to form and break, then turn the pancakes and cook the other side till brown. Turn over only once. Serve immediately.

Check out the King Arthur Flour recipe page for photos and tips including a cool one (that I’m trying next time) about how to make blueberry pancakes.

PS. Grandpa Tom, I was telling the kids about world famous french toast and they are now excited to try some of that next week :)

Baby Zig

Baby Zig

Baby Zig - 12/17/04

Probably no one but me will care about this, but I just imported the Baby Zig blog into this one, so now all of my blog posts ever (well, family related blog posts anyway) are here and searchable. Cool, huh?! I think so :) Someday I’d like to go back through them all and make all sure everything works perfectly and tag everything and blah, blah, blah, but for now the posts themselves are here and the pictures and that will be good enough. :)

Fastachios

On our nut-binge-grocery-trip the evening after Eve’s allergist appointment I grabbed a big bag of mini-Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups (YUM!!) to make cookies that I had been drooling over for many months. We made the cookies, ate too many, ate even more peanut butter cups, and made more cookies. When they were finally gone Lex was very sad and asked me to buy more at the store. I promised him I’d buy him a treat, but silently committed to NOT buy of those candies because I eat way too many of them. Put me in a room with chocolate and peanut butter and I loose all control. It’s really quite sad. Anyway, Eve and I picked up a big bag of pistachios at BJs instead and Lex, my darling Lex, was even more excited about them than the candy! He eats pistachios (and calls them fastachios) at every meal and every snack. Every. Single. One. Can a kid eat too many pistachios? I hope not! I have trouble resisting those too, but not as much trouble and I figure at least they are healthier than candy.