S'more about Christmas

You've never had a s'more until you've had a s'more like this. Okay so I admit, I wasn't entirely in love with my homemade marshmallows until Christmas night. We ran with E's idea for a Christmas fire and decided it would be fun to roast some marshmallows. We used the ones I'd made and OH MY! SOOOOOO GOOD. They get really really melty and the outside brulees instead of burning. Seriously people. You have to try it some time. I don't think I can go back to normal s'mores. We may have just found our new tradition.
I guess I jumped to how our Christmas day ended and skipped right over the other highlights. When I last left off it had started snowing. Well, it snowed pretty much the entire Christmas Eve. Despite having to dig our way out of our driveway and seeing all the stranded cars on the road we decided to brave the weather and take our pots of tamales, red chili sauce, queso, and guacamole over to our friend's house where we'd been invited to share in their Mexican feast Christmas Eve tradition. It was great company and oh so tasty. It was so worth risking getting stuck in the snow (especially because we didn't).

Christmas morning was so fun. Both E and A were super excited. We there was going to be no way to compete with the train Santa brought so we just bought E some things at the dollar store. Turns out it was Miss A that really wanted to open presents. Unfortunately we figured she was too young and wouldn't care so we didn't really get her anything. After we finally moved past E freaking out about A trying to play with his new stuff the morning was really nice. Br cooked us a yummy breakfast and we relaxed pretty much the rest of the day.

The quality family time continued the next day. Br helped E make his first snowman (yes E is licking the snowman in the picture). After the kids were in bed, Br and I went for round 2 of s'mores. Still amazing!
Today we're spending even more family time since church was canceled (after Br and I had planned our lessons) due to the snow and ice. Yes it is the same snow that fell three days ago. I think it is safe to say that OK is not equipped for snow removal. In the mean time we'll just be hanging out here waiting for you to come over and have the tastiest s'more you've ever experienced.

It's coming

It's been probably close to a month since E sprang from the living room where he was watching a Glade holiday scent commercial and exclaimed " CHRISTMAS! It's coming!"

Since then we've watched every Christmas movie or special we own, have DVRed or is free "On demand" about a billion times and have had to go through every Christmas isle in any store we go to so E can get his fill of bells, and reindeer, and ho ho, and snowman, and snow, and trains and ornaments and "crackers" (nutcrackers). He's excitedly looked forward to his "Christmas chocolate" from his advent calendar everyday. We probably only had a week of meltdowns before he finally got the concept that he only got one each day no matter how many times he said "more please".

Our tree still just has lights (which E plugs in nearly every day) on it since E refuses to allow an ornament to stay on it. I think they call to him... "I'm so pretty and so festive and am shaped like a ball. Please take me off the tree and throw me around."

He's gotten me caught up in the holiday excitement and I've had a really good time making holiday treats with him. For the first time ever we made treats to take to the neighbors. You've never seen a kid so excited to give away cookies. The cute old couple next door invited us in and E had a blast looking at their ginormous decorated tree. Now every time we pass their house he insists on going in. I don't know for how much longer he is going to buy my excuses of "their not home right now" or "I think they are asleep".

We've also tried to find every inexpensive preschooler appropriate Christmas activity we can attend. For weeks, and potentially months, I'd been planning on taking the family on the Christmas train that was in town last Saturday. I called and asked if I needed to buy tickets over the phone and then assured me there were still tons of tickets for the noon and 3 o'clock trains. We pulled off a minor miracle to get to the train station well before noon so we could buy our tickets and get on the train. Thing was when we got there, there was no train and the station was locked. Silly me. I had just assumed we would board a train at the train station. Not so. Of course we had a screaming E when we got back into the car without riding the "Chrismas Twain".

We bought some time at the Winter Wonderland at Bass Pro Shop and a quick trip to Target where we divided and conquered to get presents for each other. At around 2 we were finally on our way to the Train museum (apparently the actual location for the train). I called to get directions and just before hanging up I confirmed that they still had tickets. "Nope, we're all sold out". AHHHHHHH. We still had a yelling 2 year old and no "Chrismas Twain" to take him to. As a last ditch effort we took him to this huge Christmas store that we heard had a tiny train for kids to ride. We take him in, somehow managing to maneuver him through all the shiny breakable ornaments to the back of the store where the train was. We finally found a Christmas train but we also found an "Out of Order" Sign. AHHHHH! Just our luck. Surprisingly E accepted that the train was broken. Despite the train debacle we had a good afternoon as a family (although I'm not ready to make it a tradition).

The final sign that Christmas is indeed coming was the snow that began to fall this morning and has begun to make a nice little blanket in the yard. I think this is a Christmas miracle brought about by the enthusiasm of my little elf. I think he might have been a little disappointed if things didn't play out like in the aforementioned Christmas specials that are now ingrained in his mind. I would have never guessed we'd have a White Christmas in the middle of OK.

I'm looking forward to tonight when we have the "Chrismas Fire" E has requested. I hope to be able to relay the real Christmas story to my little dude. Merry Christmas to you all!

It made me laugh

Here's a snapshot of all of my mom and dad's grandchildren elfed. Aren't they cute? Check out ElfYourself. It cracked me up!

One last post for the day

I know, I know, I've been posting in flood and famine form. Let me get one more post out of my system and then I'll spare you for a few days. Last weekend we went to a winter wonderland thing. For a $2 you could go to the community center and do about a billion different crafts, have your face painted, bounce in a bounce house, see Santa, have popcorn and drinks, and best of all play in melt proof snow. We made the mistake of going into the snow room first which meant we didn't make it to any of the crafts, face painting, etc. It was filled with about a foot of packing peanuts, white balloons, and paper covered boxes. It really did feel like you were out in snow but without the soggy cold. E even did some snow angels unprompted. When we first walked in I turned to Br and said "would you kill me if I tried to do this in our house next year?". I don't think he thought I was serious. Lucky for him I saw what a pain it was to clean the stuff off of E and realized that cleaning up the entire thing was going to be near impossible (so I've decided for now not to do it). At the end we were able to convince E to leave when we saw Santa walk down the hall. We had practiced telling Santa what he wanted for Christmas earlier in the day with his Santa potato head. He walked up and told him he wanted a "twain" then sat on his lap for a picture. The whole time E emitted glee and excitement. Overall I'm so glad we decided to take a little time out of an incredibly busy day. It was so worth it.

It's been a fun and exciting 6 months

During the time of non picture posting, our baby girl turned a half year. I had to suppress my desire to throw a party for her. Although the kids keep me on my toes I wouldn't trade them for anything right now. Her huge belly laugh when her brother is crazy has taught me to find a little humor in his high energy and antics. How could I not be happy when I look at this face all day and how could I not find enjoyment in having the nutty little boy around that brings this smile out?

Filling the hours of the day

So December 1st I got layed off after working part time at home for the past four or so years. Don't be sad for me though since I've been trying to quit for the past 6 months. The funding that paid my salary ran out in November so my boss finally had to give in and let me go. This is probably just a temporary retirement, but I think I'm going to enjoy the break.

I've been doing all kinds of projects to try and keep myself busy. It's not that I have tons of spare time, it's just that I'm not used to not being extremely busy. Aside from trying to keep my house cleaner, play with the kids and having more structured activities for them, and attempting to make dinner every now and then, here are a few of the things I've done to fill my time.

Magnetic paper dolls of my niece for her Christmas present. (I'm hoping to be able to put some together for E too).
E, A and I hosted playgroup at our house last week and decided to make little gingerbread houses for everyone to decorate while they were here. It was super fun. Somehow the pictures I thought I took with all our friends here didn't make it on the camera, but I did get a few shots of E decorating his after everyone had left. At first he would pick up candy, tell me where it went and then I would put a dot of icing and he would put the candy on. After a little while he realized that he could do it all himself. I was super impressed with his attention span, focus and the thoughtfulness in his decoration. I actually had nothing to do with the design (although I did help a little with a the execution of a few of the design elements). I'm working on a house too. Well it's more of a train station. One of these days maybe I'll finish it.

After making the house he wanted to make cookies. He selected the cutter, rolled them out, cut them, then decorated them himself. I'm the one that burned them. I think I might have a partner for a future decorating business.

While I had a mess in the kitchen, and the oven was going, I decided to make some cookies, marshmallows and experimented with a couple types of brownie pops. I had never made marshmallows or brownie pops before but they both turned out and were super easy to make. You should try them. I found the marshmallow recipe here. I sort of just winged the brownie pops but they worked. I made them as follows:
1. Bake a pan of delicious brownies. You can cheat and use a mix if you want to... I do sometimes.
2. Let them cool a little and then cut them and form the balls. To make it a little easier I used a round cutter to make little brownie round and then carefully molded them without smashing them. They don't have to be perfect because the chocolate will fill in some of the imperfection. Using the cutter also make them all the same size.
3. Put them in the freezer to set up a bit.
4. Insert sticks in the balls. Use some melted candy melts on the end of the stick to keep it from moving around or poking all the way through.
5. After the stick is secure, dip them in melted chocolate or vanilla candy melts. You can stick them in Styrofoam to harden or rest them stick up on parchment or waxed paper if you want them to go that way.
6. Decorate them however you want to make them pretty or just eat them the way they are.

Pictures--Finally

So guess where the camera cord was -- in the camera bag. I swear I looked there about 10 times before Br finally found it.

Unfortunately for you all, I took a lot of pictures in the last month so brace yourself for a few really long blog posts.

The second half of November was filled with lots of family time. First Br's work took him down to Houston for a class. Whether is was a good idea or not we all went with him. We spent the majority of the time with Br's family, which was nice, so I apologize to our Houston friends we didn't get a chance to visit while we were there (I promise we still love you...I hope you still love us).




We were home only a couple days before we stuffed the kids back in their car seats to head to NM for Thanksgiving. My brother got home from his mission to Germany and Austria on Thanksgiving day so the whole family, including my dad's dad and mom's mom, got together for the holiday for lots of family time (so sorry to our ABQ friends we neglected. We love you still too). You'll see that I don't any of the classic pictures at the airport and that's because my brother's flight was early and we were running late so we sort of missed his actually arrival. Sorry Sam.

The rest of the weekend can pretty much just be summarized by saying "we ate a lot and played a lot". Thurs after the airport we went back to my sister's house for soup and cake. Yum. I've included a picture of the first cake I made for the homecoming just to prove that not all (actually most) of my creative attempts end well.


Friday we had Thanksgiving observed. My hat goes off to my sister who planned, prepped, and cooked the dinner. It was no small task.


After dinner we had a little kids karaoke and jam session. E got really into singing and wanted to be the rock star whether he knew the words or not.

On Sunday we took advantage of the family gathering and blessed little A. It was so nice to be able to have so many member of my family take part. I guess what I was most thankful for this year was family. Love you guys!

Note; I put the rest of the pictures in a slide show.