Little bits of life

Elijah got to celebrate his birthday at school last week.  Since his birthday is over the summer, and his half birthday is over the New Year break, we just picked a day that would work.  He was so excited to take in a treat to share!  We made little dirt cakes - he helped make all of it, but particularly enjoyed adding the gummy worms. =)

Finn wearing the pumpkin hat that Bobbi made - Molly was a little older when she wore it!

 

I made a very special (*interesting*) dinner for Patrick - he found a recipe for a casserole called Flying Jacob in a magazine, and really wanted to try it.  He loved it!  The kids said that they liked it, but didn't end up eating very much, so I'm not sure what to make of that.  I'm not sure we'll make it very often, since it involves bacon, which is banned from this house.  My sister-in-law, Lorrie, very kindly cooked the bacon for me at her house and gave it back to me cold, and mostly un-stinky, so I could make the casserole.

Handsome little man

Love those baby smiles!  Finn is half-weaned from his swaddle now, but having that one arm in still seems to make a big difference, so these great (big!) swaddling blankets are still a necessity around here.

Some days, Molly's style is still pretty quirky. =)

Love those silly boys!

What we ate

I spend a lot of my time planning, making, eating, cleaning up and shopping for food.  A LOT.  I make three meals a day nearly every day of the year, and we are now re-entering the stage of baby food, so ... yeah.  Lots of food.

(Random aside - Patrick found an article somewhere that talked about the differences between cooks and bakers, and I found that I am neither, apparently, just a person who spends tons of time making food for other people to eat.)

I often find myself feeling uninspired and burned out when I sit down to plan our meals for the week, and sometimes we get into ruts of eating the same meals (especially at lunch!) over and over.  Lately, I've been glad for Pinterest and new recipes to try out and add to my giant recipe binder.  Some of the recipes have been great (we LOVE these chicken taquitos), and many have been pretty good, once we've tweaked them to suit us.  Once in a while we have a total bomb, but you'll have that with new recipes.  I hate it when dinner fails, but I guess the risk of trying new things is worth a few fails.

Anyway, last night we had a Pinterest dinner.  I made Rotisserie-style chicken in the crock-pot, and this broccoli.  The chicken was really good, and it was an easy way to make a whole chicken.  Now that I know that it makes good juices, I will make it with rice and use the juices to make gravy.   We have plenty of leftover meat and I am making stock today - I love making whole chickens because it provides so much good food!  The broccoli ... was not the best broccoli of my life.   I like broccoli - it is one of my favorite vegetables - but this was way too lemony and sour.  The kids and I really struggled to eat it.  {Three of us were eating with our faces all twisted up in a super-sour squinty-face, and Patrick just calmly ate the whole pan.}  We'll try it once more with half the lemon juice and see if it is any better.  It seems like it might be great just straight out of the oven without the additions afterward.  We'll see.  Now I've gotta go start on tonight's dinner.  Anyone have any new recipes that they love?

Merry Christmas!

We have enjoyed celebrating Christmas this year, and we aren't quite done yet!  On Christmas Eve we made some special hot chocolate with fun peppermint stir sticks, (so rich and yummy) ate some cookies, and read the Christmas story in the kid bibles.  The kids each got to open one book, one fun gift (they got pillow pets from Nana & Grandpa) and their stockings.  It was such a fun time!  The kids were very excited about everything.  Afterward we went to the Christmas Eve service at church and then got the kids to bed! 

The kids were up at their normal early bird time on Christmas morning.  We went in to get them a little earlier than normal so that we could open presents without rushing around.  Molly totally forgot what day it was!  But they were both so excited when they got downstairs and saw the presents. =)

We read Luke 2 and then had a fun morning opening gifts, and the kids got some special Cars 2 cereal for breakfast, and then we headed out to church.  Finn slept through the presents, but the big kids very nicely opened his gifts for him.  The kids had a great time playing with their new stuff all afternoon.  It was a pretty quiet day - so nice! 

Opening gifts in their Christmas jammies.

Cute baby - almost too big for his jammies. =)

Playing with gifts - Elijah's cowboy cap guns and holster, and Miss Molly showing off the hat to her southern belle dress up outfit.

We have also enjoyed spending this week celebrating and being together and eating some yummy special treats.   We made cinnamon roll pancakes (totally over the top, and crazy good) one morning and had fun snowmen milks another day.   Merry Christmas, everyone!

So thankful

I  really like Thanksgiving.  I'm not sure why I like it so much - the food is great, but I wouldn't choose turkey and all as my favorite meal or anything.  The meal prep is always a little crazy at the end, but maybe the chaos of too many cooks in the kitchen is part of the goodness - it is certainly an integral part of all my Thanksgiving memories.  Maybe it's just the being together, celebrating, and enjoying good food without much agenda.   I love the attitude of the day - being thankful, encouraging our kids to be thankful, and loving our family and friends who are gathered around.  I love that we have to use our grandmothers' recipes and that everyone has a favorite dish that they look forward to, and that even the jello has tradition and memories and meaning.  I love that both of our extended families celebrate with love and a lot of laughter around the table.

We got to host this year, and we were so excited to put in all the leaves for Great-Grandma's dining table and use our wedding gift dishes and the giant roasting pan that Patrick gave me years ago, when we still lived in tiny places that didn't even have an oven big enough to roast a chicken, let alone a 20 lb turkey, in expectation of being able to do this someday.  i was a little nervous about being in charge of the important stuff - turkey, stuffing, gravy - but it all came out great.  And even though getting ready was a little hectic (especially after Finn was mysteriously very fussy ALL DAY the day before) it was so nice to be home during the day - Molly got a reasonable nap in her own bed, and I could take care of a still extra fussy baby in his own room when I needed to.  And it is just so fun to have a crowd of people that we love in our home. =)

I didn't take many pictures - sorry!  But we had a great time and great food.  I am thankful for lots and lots of things.  We were thankful for my mom's help while she was here, helping us get ready even though she didn't get to stay for turkey.  We are thankful to be so near Patrick's family, and to get to celebrate with them.  I am thankful for Patrick, and Elijah and Molly and Finn.  I am thankful for all the many blessings God has given us this year, and for a day to celebrate being grateful.

Our dining room, ready for Thanksgiving, with the new light Patrick put up.

Making our first turkey -the giant bird goes in!  We made a 27 1/2 lb turkey.  I was surprised it even fit!  And it was so yummy.

Molly and Elijah made lists of things that they are thankful for - I thought they were fun.

Molly:  I am thankful for Finn, Mommy, Daddy, Elijah, my"friends" in my bed (her stuffed animals and baby dolls), and Jessie, my toy (from Toy Story).

Elijah:  I am thankful for Nana, my turkey, Mom, Finn, Dad, Molly, God and Jesus, Love, (his friends at school), puppies and kitties.

Thunder Cake

Yesterday, Elijah, Molly and Nana made Thunder Cake! Elijah has been anxiously waiting to make the cake from the recipe in the book, and Nana was excited to help them, since it is one of her favorite books. The kids got to help with the whole thing, from shopping for the ingredients to putting on the strawberries. They had a great time - and made a fun memory!

A fun visit

On Sunday we had a wonderful visit with my brother Cameron and his wife Amanda. They came up from Virginia for the day - we didn't do anything exciting, but we had such a good time just spending time together and catching up. The kids were very excited to have Uncle Cameron and Aunt Amanda here to visit, and played hard all day. I'm not sure who got more worn out by the end of the day, but everyone sure had fun! Patrick made really yummy burgers stuffed with cheese for lunch and we all ate until we were stuffed! We're really glad that we could spend some time together before Cam & Amanda move to Japan this summer!

Playing with chalk - love those chalky jeans!
(It was really humid, and the kids got pretty sweaty playing outside.)

Loving Uncle Cameron

Elijah reading for everyone.

Thanksgiving and my assistant bakers

For Thanksgiving this year we stayed in PA and celebrated with Patrick's family. I had a couple of assistants to help with the baking this year. We were in charge of desserts, including a birthday cake for cousin Evan. For the grown ups, we made key lime cheesecake. (Wow - it was intense!) We have been trying out some fun non-traditional recipes for the past few years because some of us don't like pumpkin.

They love to help!

We also made a chocolate cake and then made a batch of cupcakes - I needed a little extra cake to build some ramps for Evan's monster truck cake. Here's what we did with the rest of the cupcakes:

(not my photo - I forgot to take pictures of them)

I made Evan's cake the night before, and set out everything to finish assembling it when we got there. Unfortunately, when we got to Diane's house for Thanksgiving, we realized we had everything with us EXCEPT the cake! I knew my kids were looking forward to celebrating Evan's birthday, to say nothing of poor Evan's disappointment if we didn't have a cake for him, so during all the craziness of preparing Thanksgiving dinner, I also made another cake and did my best to replicate the original with the supplies Diane and her helpful neighbors had on hand. I didn't get a picture of either version of the cake, but I will try to get the video up here sometime soon.

Dinner impossible ...

Well, I thought I had a great plan for dinner tonight.

I've been trying to think of an easy, yummy dinner to make for a friend who just had a baby and none of the old stand-by recipes sounded good or fun this time. When I checked out the schedule (check out this cool site where you can make a meal registry! wow - what crazy practical idea will they come up with next?) I was laughing to myself because no one is making a lasagna. Poor old lasagna - almost always yummy, freezes well and most people like it, so it's the perfect meal to bless someone else - except that the blessed people usually get about 14 lasagnas and are so thoroughly sick of it they never want to have a baby again! Anway, that made me realize that we haven't had lasagna in ... years? It sounded good (something different!) but when I thought of what a pain it is to cut up all the pasta layers for the kiddos I almost dismissed it again for a few more years, and then I remembered the lasagna-style dish that I used to make when I was a nanny. Basic, yummy, lots of cheese, and layered with smaller noodles (I like bow-ties because they lay kinda flat) instead of the lasagna noodles - perfect for kids. I can't believe I haven't made it for my own kids yet! I don't even remember exactly which recipe I started with back then, but I think I found one looks right. So I was excited to try it out, and thought we could even manage it tonight, with a super-quick run into the grocery store right after nap.

Then Molly didn't go to sleep until after she usually gets up from her nap. Grocery store - out. And I went back to the freezer (after a very cursory glance this morning for ideas) to get out the ground beef and realized that it was cubed beef instead.

Oh well, starting from scratch now. Maybe I can manage some steak tacos instead. If I do get to the store someday, I'll try to post the kid-lasagna recipe after we see how it tastes. =)