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Crazy Saturday
We had a busy day today! I’m exhausted! Alan went to an energy conference all day so the kids and I decided to do some holiday activities. Starting with a Gingerbread Festival! I hear about this every year, but this is the first year we’ve actually made it. People donate fully decorated gingerbread houses that are auctioned off for a local non-profit. There’s also a silent auction, craft booth, and tons of a kids activities. It was fun, but totally chaotic! We bid on one gingerbread house when we first got there and another one at the end, once we saw we’d already lost the first one and I wasn’t willing to bid more than $30 for a gingerbread house! I suspect we didn’t get the second one either or else I think they would have called by now. I also bid on two items from the silent auction… but again, I’m assuming no call means no win. Oh well.
There were some pretty awesome gingerbread houses on display…
This one made me laugh. Occupy Candyland.
This all white one was just amazing!
Decorating gingerbread cookies, donated by KAF. Yum!
It's 10:30am and this is her second holiday cookie of the day! Can you tell?! :)
Holiday story time
After about an hour and a half of that chaos we decided to head to Panera Bread for lunch and a few errands over that way. I’m not sure where my brain was when that decision was made! Saturday in West Leb is never calm, but when you add in the whole holiday thing, it was just more chaos. The line at Panera was out the door, but we waited and luckily it moved quickly. Then we went to Home Depot where they had nothing I wanted and Jo-Ann’s Fabric which I’m super excited is now open and expanded! We got lots of things there and lucked out because the line was insane when we first got to the store, but there was no line at all by the time we got around to checking out. That balances out the Panera line, right?! :)
This is how we roll these days.
Eve was initally mad that she doesn't get to use the kindle in the car too, but she's eventually resigned herself to old fashioned books again (which I think she really prefers anyway!)
Lex found a train set at HD that he really wanted. I told him to write a letter to Santa. He left the store in an existential crisis. :) (just kidding... kind of!)
When we got home were were all EXHAUSTED! I was so tired that no only did I set aside my to-do list (ha! like I’m that organized these days!) and sat down on the couch to read for an hour, but I actually dozed for 15 minutes! I haven’t done that in a very long time. Lex came down from his quiet time and announced that he had four blog posts he wanted to make. :) Late afternoon passed by with some blogging, some crafting (Eve made gingerbread necklaces for the nativity characters), and some dinner. Then bedtime! Yay. Now it’s bedtime for me. We are all looking forward to a DO NOTHING day tomorrow! I hope to read the paper. That’s my big goal :)
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… (or Friday at our house)
We did some decorating yesterday. The kids were super excited! They helped me carry down the boxes, eagerly set up the nativity scenes and then got lost in the books. Think we have enough Christmas books? Seriously! I’ve also already bought two new ones this year and there’s a book fair at Lex’s school on Monday where I’ll probably buy more. I have a kid book addiction! :)
Nativity scenes line our hearth.
Books, books everywhere. These kept the kids quiet for well over an hour!
After dinner I had a laugh when Lex grabbed the Kindle and settled on the dining room floor, and Eve grabbed a soft Christmas book and snuggled on the couch. Such opposites. :)
That's his "Kindle touch" finger :)
Snuggle bug on the couch.
Later that night we watched Alan on TV for a few minutes, then Alan and Lex played Macala (or beads and buckets as they like to call it) on a homemade game board.
Proud Alan! He was interviewed about energy commission stuff a few weeks ago and it aired last night.
Beads and buckets... and blocks!
snowplow
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- whole snowplow
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- side plow
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- front plow
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- dumper part
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- cab
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- back wheels
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- front wheels
Chocolate Peppermint Drop Cookies
These things are outrageous! Seriously. You know about peanut butter blossoms, right? They might be one of my favorite cookies. With that in mind I’ve been thinking about chocolate drops with peppermint cookies. Sounds yummy, right? I searched my cook books and the Internet and couldn’t find a recipe for this idea, so I made my own! Starting with a chocolaty chocolate cookie, we decided to double the recipe and add some dark chocolate and mint. So good I can’t leave them on my counter for long! Today they were either packed in a box destined for the other side of the world, or packed in the freezer for another day when there are more people around to help me eat them! If you will not be on the receiving end of the aforementioned box or at my house for Christmas I’d highly recommend you make these yourself. Have I mentioned they are delicious?!
Ingredients
* 2 cup butter, softened
* 3 cups white sugar
* 4 eggs
* 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 2 teaspoons peppermint extract
* 4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 1/3 cup Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder
* 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
* 2 10oz bags Hershey’s Peppermint Kisses
Directions
* In large bowl, beat butter, sugar, eggs, and extracts until light and fluffy.
* Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt; stir into the butter mixture until well blended.
* Mix in the chocolate chips.
* Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls (or a small cookie scoop) onto parchment paper (or ungreased) cookie sheets.
* Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in a 350° preheated oven, or just until set.
* When they first come out of the oven gently press a Peppermint Kiss into the center of each.
* Cool slightly on the cookie sheets before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.
I ended up with 123 cookies!
* I’m sure there is lots of room to experiment here. Perhaps KAF Burgundy chunks instead of the chocolate chips, tweaks on extract proportions, etc. Feel free to play around. I don’t think I’ll make them often enough to fine tune the recipe. That would not be good for my waistline!
In case you were wondering, this is how we cook around here. It’s a wonder anything ever gets done.
This, however, is a favorite job that always gets done. Eagerly. With a bit of sampling along the way.
Apparently I didn’t actually take a good picture of the cookies. How unlike me. The little image above was cropped from this one. It will suffice, but I prefer this one with his smiling face :)
Happy December!
The countdown begins…
December started with chocolate at 6am
and a fun new toy.
I hope your morning was equally sweet.
One more thankful…
I slacked off a bit on the daily gratitude posting last week. Travel. Life. You know. Today however, on the final day of November, I want to add one more thankful. Today I am thankful for this smiling face:
I paid her a quarter to smile for the camera. Ha!
She drives me crazy on a near daily basis but I couldn’t imagine life without her. She is funny and silly and sweet and cheerful and encouraging and motivational and so perfectly Eve. She cheers me up when I’m down, she supports me and encourages me when I’m feeling nervous, and she keeps me on task with my eating and points. When she slips her soft sweet hand into mine, my body fills with happiness. All she asks for in return is cuddles, stories, and back rubs. I feel so blessed to have a daughter, a friend, a buddy, a confidant. I look forward to many, many more years of happiness with my sweet girl.
Cookies
Get excited!!
Woo hoo!!
Happy birthday to me!!!!
Swimming update
The kids are rocking in the swimming pool. Rocking! Suddenly they are practically independent! Lex can get around the current pool all on his own. Eve can too, but she makes me a bit more nervous so I still stay close to her. It seems like just yesterday they were clinging to me in the water, now they are fairly indifferent if I’m even there. Sob. Kidding, kind of. They like having me there to play with them. It’s just so amazing to watch them grow!
While they had lessons today (and most days) I swam laps in the competition pool. When I came back to the lesson pool I found Eve getting a private lesson from Molly, who runs whole the lesson program. On the way to lessons Eve told me she hoped Molly would be her teacher again today and I was confused because Molly isn’t her teacher. I guess two weeks ago (when Alan had them at lessons) and today Molly took Eve aside to help her practice her kicking. As I was watching I couldn’t really tell what was going on. Lex’s lesson got done at the usual time, but Molly and Eve kept working. I asked the regular teacher if Eve was doing ok in lessons and she said yes. I wasn’t sure if Eve was getting special attention because she wasn’t keeping up (the rest of the class is 6yr olds), but her teacher said she was doing just fine. So then I began to wonder if she was getting extra attention because she’s an advanced swimmer! I was super curious! About five minutes past when the lesson was supposed to have ended Molly and Eve swam over to me and Molly explained what they were doing. Apparently Eve does her straight leg kick with a very straight leg. Toes pointed and knees locked. Molly has been trying to get her to loosen her legs just a bit. To me it seemed like an odd thing to be focusing on, but they were working hard at it. Eve is either floppy legged or straight legged, that subtle in-between seems to escape her. After a few more minutes of Molly explaining to me and working with Eve I asked if this behavior was unusual at this age. Molly seemed perplexed and intrigued while working with Eve. She said yes, it is fairly unusual for young kids to have such straight legs while swimming. I have no idea what to make of that. Good, bad, indifferent? Maybe it’s all just a ploy on Eve’s part. She does love swimming lessons with Molly, and getting the teacher’s attention all to herself! Eve is a crafty one ;)