Woo Hoo! Post 150!

According to blogger, this is my 150th post. Wish I could make it more exciting, but this is what you get. We had a pretty good Christmas. The boys got what they had been wanting.

We didn't get them too much else. I thought that the one big gift would probably be enough. I think we could have gotten away with just getting them the Wii and nothing else. :-) They've played it ALOT since they got it. Actually, they're playing it again as I type this. It is getting them up and moving. I played Wii Boxing today and ended up winded! It's hard work!

My parents and sister were here for Christmas too. It was fun to have family here for Christmas. This is actually the first time we've had family here on Christmas day. Last year we were up in Indiana, and the two years before that we were here by ourselves. I got a Honey-Baked ham for Christmas Dinner, (Manna from heaven is all I can say) and my mom made her Cheesy potatoes. Yum. We spent the day relaxing and watching the boys play Wii games (or playing them ourselves). Matthew is good. I mean, REALLY good. He beat all of us at pretty much everything. He has a lot of hand-eye coordination, and he picks up the games very easily. Even Nathan started getting the hang of the games. He has a tendency to get frustrated if he doesn't get something right away, but he was very patient and worked his way through it when he was stuck. I was very proud of him!

Hope that you and yours had a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Cookie Time!

Today is December 12th. In exactly four weeks, I will be taking my Praxis exam on the Foundations of Special Education. I also have a Literature Review that needs to be done in a month. Plus, my school bag weighs close to 1000 pounds from all of the papers I have to grade before Friday. But did I do any of that today? No, of course not! I made these:

and these:

and even whipped up these for supper:

It's Christmas baking time at our house! Matthew helped me with the Chocolate Cookie Sandwiches while Nathan was at choir practice for the Christmas Eve service (http://www.christmasevegwinnett.com/ if you're interested in coming! You won't be disappointed!).



And both boys helped with the cut out cookies. (For a while at least)





Yes, that would be Andrew's hand you see at the bottom trying to sneak a scrap of cookie dough. He's very much like his mom! He was our little helper.


I finished by making potato latkes. Two other teachers and I served them yesterday to our classes to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah, and they were fantastic! I picked up some potatoes when I was out grocery shopping today so I could make them tonight. They were almost completely traditional, right down until the point when I served them with bacon. Not very kosher of me. :-)

Finally got everything cleaned up. Just in time to make my cinnamon swirl bread I always make for Sunday morning. Tomorrow, I'm going to make caramel macchiato thumbprints and biscotti. I've never made biscotti before, so wish me luck!

Come Back Tomorrow. . .

and see the pictures that I'm planning on taking as Matthew and I attempt to make cut out Christmas cookies together. It should be something to behold.

It's Up!

Amazingly enough, it's only December 5th, and I have my Christmas tree up. If you know me, you know that it's something I put off every year. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas. A lot. What I don't love is getting out all of the decorations, putting them out, and finding a place for all of the things that are displaced because of the Christmas decorations. If I could go to bed one night and have little elves come and decorate my house, I'd be thrilled. But Matthew and Nathan have been bugging me to do it, so we got the three out, and got the lights and garland on it. We're going to put the ornaments on tomorrow. I even got lights on one set of bushes out in front of the house. I don't think they'll win any decorating prizes, but at least we don't look like the Scrooge family anymore.

Satisfaction

We reached that point today. You know the one where grandma and grandpa have headed back home, and the boys have decided that they have been together for four days, and the house is beginning to fall apart at the seams? Yeah, that point. Plus, with all three home for the last four days, the toys had started to migrate to every part of the house (plus I think they're multiplying while we sleep), so I needed to do a major cleaning. Sounds easy, right? You don't live with Nathan. It's impossible to clean with him around. He refuses to let me throw away a single toy. Even the ones that are broken or just downright weird. But because I am a problem solver, we figured it out. Jeremy took Nathan to the park (Matthew said he was TOO tired), and I attacked their room. My children have more junk than any human should have. Most of it being McDonald's Happy Meal toys. I'm sure that says something about my parenting, but let's not linger on that too much, OK? I tossed all of the toys that were broken, and the ones that were still in good shape? I'm taking them to school for my treasure box. They can be some other parent's problem.

I'm sweet that way, aren't I?

Thanksgiving!

I did it! Or, I should say more accurately, we did it! The first Thanksgiving that I've ever hosted is over, and the food was all edible (except for the rolls, but we can't all be perfect, can we?) Thanks to my mom's guidance, the turkey came out wonderfully. I was pretty confident that I could handle everything else, but turkeys frighten me. I guess I've just heard too many horror stories about how the turkey ended up dry, or undercooked, or burnt to a crisp, and I didn't want any of that to happen. I had thought about brining it, but that just proved to be a much bigger deal than I wanted to take on, so we just put it in a cooking bag, stuffed it with onions, celery, and sage, and rubbed olive oil, paprika, and pepper all over the skin and shoved it in. Four and a half hours later, it was perfection. I stayed pretty basic with the sides. I figured rather than have 15 small sides and stress myself out, I'd make 3 or 4 things and make them really good. We had the old standbys of mashed potatoes and stuffing, and I added roasted vegetables (butternut squash, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, parsnips, and carrots), steamed green beans, and a cranberry salad. I was so worried about having enough food (for the 8! of us), that I made WAY too much. We have a ton of leftovers. I'm going to be eating turkey 15 different ways before I get through it all.

I think this Thanksgiving, while fun, was also hard for me. I remember the Thanksgivings when I was a kid where there would be 20 or so of us at the table at my grandmother's. I think having just my parents and my sister come down seem to really emphasize the fact that those days are gone. Plus, we just passed the anniversary of my grandma's death two years ago, and today would have been my grandpa's birthday. I think having all of those events come together this year has just really cemented it to me that those days are gone. While I'm happy for the memories, and I love making new memories for my own kids, there's a part of me that wishes for those days back. Life just seemed so much simpler then. But now I'm the one making the memories for my own kids. They won't be the same memories I had, but I'm excited to see what memories we'll make over the Thanksgivings to come.

Thanksgiving Week

We have quite the week ahead of us. Monday is Andrew's 2nd birthday. We don't have a whole lot planned for that day except a trip to McDonald's (more for Andrew's older brothers rather than Andrew). My parents are getting here on Tuesday, so I think we'll have a celebration for Andrew and his 60 year old grandfather on Wednesday evening. I don't think Andrew will mind sharing his cake with his grandpa.

Thursday, my sister is flying in, and I get to cook my first Thanksgiving meal! We're going pretty traditional, and I'm hoping I have enough room in my oven. I thought about buying a turkey roaster to free up room in the oven, but I'm also lacking counter space. So, I'm sticking with the oven and hoping the timing works out.

Friday, we may do some shopping at Target. I know I'm not heading to the mall. I'm not crazy enough to venture out to a mall in metro Atlanta on Black Friday. Some people may find that exciting; all it gives me is a headache. Who knows? Maybe we'll even get the tree up this weekend! It would be the first time I've had a tree up before December in. . . ever?