Ten Reasons I am Glad It's the Day AFTER Christmas

1.  My husband--that is, I get to see him again.  I don't just have to figure out how to muddle through.  He gets to be daddy and he gets to be around.  He still has odd days off and he still works weird shifts, but that's okay.  Sweet Girl won't be sending any more letters to Daddy like this for another 10 months!

2.  Even in the midst of the insane Mama's-alone-with-four-kids-before-Christmas schedule, Sweet Girl participated in our church's Christmas Concert.  This was the best song in the whole concert!  (this video is not that long since I just recorded the kids' verse!  And seriously, this was my favorite Christmas song this year--yes, I've heard it in the past and it was always good, but this year it was that much better being that Sweet Girl was involved)

3. I was able to have a modified Ugly Christmas Cookie Party.  (we had friends over, and to keep things moving smoothly we decorated the "State" Cookies I had accidentally intentionally made)

4. I will always have the memory of my sweet peas and buddies crawling all over my brother and watching him and my sister-in-law loving on my kids!

5.  We don't have a fireplace, but we found a great place to hang our stockings!  After we pounded in the nails, we are good to go for as long as we live in our house!

6.  We don't have to do another gingerbread house for another year!  Yep, not really caring to do that again for another year.  My word for this Christmas season was "SIMPLIFY" but we may not have wanted to simplify on this!  It was quite disgusting.  Even the sweet peas and buddies didn't want to eat any of it.

7.  One of my favoirte parts of the Christmas season is the Cubbies Nativity parade we do.

Our shepherd staffs we large plastic candy canes.

There's no rhyme or reason.  We just wander around the church.

Our Angel wanted to carry a "staff," but there were none left.
 Sooo I grabbed an umbrella.  He was fine until he wanted it opened.
 He wouldn't stop, so I finally opened it. 
Then, he was happy as a clam.  And he had the rest of us cracking up!



"Mary" celebrated her half birthday--that's why she has a crown.
Our Mary was always trailing behind....waaaaayy behind.



8.  My favorite gift from sister to sister. "It's boat pieces!"  And that top piece is the country the boat sails to!

9.  Open presents everywhere, but who cares when Dad FINALLY let us play with his phone!

10.  Spending Christmas day worshipping Jesus who was born to save us!

Ps  It was 52 degrees here in Minnesota on 12/26/11.  It's a Christmas MIRACLE!

Somebody Likes Himself His Cookies

I must apologize to all of my neighbors for the cookies, or the lack thereof, that we are intending to bring to you. 

You see, it all began when my brain went into super hyper drive and quadrupled our recipe.   I didn't mean to.  I meant to simply double it. 

Quadrupling a recipe takes a lot of dough.

Both green and edible!

When you quadruple a recipe, this is what the end result looks like

The cookies just keep going.  There is no end in sight.  I counted 145--That's 12 dozen!  TWELVE dozen cookies! 
Sure some of them looked like various states.

 I see Florida, Idaho, Nevada, West Virginia, Oregon, Kentucky.  What do you see?
But no matter what, that's a lot of cookie.  It would have been a good day for Cookie Monster to be visiting my house!

Oh, I am going on a tangent.  Back to my apology.
So to my dear neighbors, I would like to extend my sincerest apologies for the cookies--or if you may, the non-cookies--since I am quite sure you would have received abundantly more if my son did not see each and every cookie as an invitation for him to indulge.

The young man decided that he personally needed to taste every cookie he could get his hands on.  I tried to stop him--believe me I tried!  But what I wasn't anticipating was that he would be so fast! And when I would yell, "STOP! Put it DOWN!", he would cry.  Imagine!  He knows what is better for himself than his mama! 

So therefore, my dear friends and neighbors,  I not only am giving you a mighty small Christmas gift, I will most likely be bringing my darling Squirt to the ER to get his stomach pumped later tonight.

But let not the small gift or the trip to ER deter us from wishing you a very joyful Christmas for we shall be at your doorstep tomorrow singing, "We wish you a Merry Christmas!"  Even if it means I will drag my children to every house on our block!

Merry Christmas!

The Ordinary Adventures of an Everyday Mom

Today I was planning on baking and baking and baking.  And baking some more.  Suddenly it was 2:00 and my house didn't smell like ANYTHING! Not a anything.  It didn't even smell like the Calico beans I had put in the crock pot for supper!  So my day of baking was a bust. 

At 2:30, I decided that I was going to at least try to make some cookies, so I searched my entire house for my friend Amanda's famous sugar cookie recipe.  I had been looking for this recipe for a few days.  And do you know how I finally found it? 

By accident!  Complete and utter accident.  I opened my binder today and viola!  There it was.  We won't mention how many times I had already looked in the binder!  So at 2:30 today I decided to make her cookies.  I want them for our neighbors-treats that I like to do every year. I need a lot because I want to give them to 12 different families.  Maybe it's 14.  Okay, so it's probably more like fourteen.

So I had to make a lot of cookies: at least 14 dozen (plus an extra dozen so we could decorate ugly Christmas cookies for our own family!)  Amanda's recipe makes 3 dozen if you really stretch it, so at first I decided to increase the ingredients by 6 times.  When I realized that it was already 2:30, I decided that I needed a reality check and surmised that I should only double the recipe.  Sure I probably wouldn't get a dozen for each of my neighbors, but we would at least start.  As of now, I wasn't going to give any neighbors a treat bag.  

Deciding to double it took a lot of pressure off of myself.  So I looked, and the first ingredient was butter.  3/4 cup of butter.  Oh, that is a cinch to double!  So I put in what I perceived to be 1 1/2 cups of butter.  Quite suddenly in the middle of my tootling along in this escapade, I realized that I had put in two and a half cups of butter, not 1.  I hadn't doubled it;  I had tripled it, but I was still short a half cup.  So I added it.  I immediately called Amanda to laugh about my brillance! 

Now, Amanda is truly my friend but we haven't actually spoken for like a year and a half.  In the past year, she has had a baby to make her household a 4 children household, has been homeschooling, has been writing a book, and has been baking until her head pops off! All I can say is that I have four children and I'm trying to live the perfect life.  Man, the perfect life is a lot of work!   So to say the least, we haven't had the chance to connect very much. 

So she was caught unaware by this freaking out, laughing lady who was trying not to go into hysterics.  She helped me to calm down, we caught up for a few minutes, and then I got off the phone so that we I could concentrate. 

But I wasn't ready to concentrate completely yet.  So I called Dacia.
Oh, good ol' Dacia. 

Me--Hi!  What is 3/4 cup doubled?
Dacia-- A cup and a half?
Me--Right!  And how many sticks of butter would that be?
Dacia-- Three.
Me--Right!  How many sticks of butter did I put in?
Dacia-- Oh, no!
Me-- Oh, yes!  I put in FIVE!  Five sticks of butter.  And then I added the sugar for a doubled batch and couldn't figure out what was wrong.  I realized that I didn't double the recipe I tripled it, but not quite so I added another stick of butter so that I would have 3 full cups of butter.  So I effectively TRIPLED the batch.
Dacia--laughing
Me--Oh, no.  I didn't triple the batch, did I?  I quadrupled it, didn't I?
Dacia--So how much did the original recipe call for?
Me--3/4 cup of butter!
Dacia--And you put in 6 sticks equalling 3 cups?  Yep, you quadrupled it!
More laughing!
Me--So now I have to add another cup of sugar, 2 more eggs, more vanilla, more flour!?  I don't know how I'm going to mix this all together!  My bowls are big enough!
Dacia--laughing (do you see how much help she can be?)  You are going to be rolling out cookies all NIGHT!
Me--Oh, no.  No, I will not be.  I will roll them out once, cut them into squares with the pizza cutter, and be done.

As we were talking, I started to combine the creamed ingredients with the dry mixture and had to give up on the spoon sinking my hands deep into the mess.

Dacia--do you need me to send over Andy (her husband) to eat some dough?
Me--Well, now that I have cookie dough all over my fingers, all I need him to do is eat that, but I am not okay with him eating off my fingers!  Yeck!
Dacia--Oh, he would figure a way to get the cookie dough off your fingers so that he could eat it without doing that!

Pause

Me--Dacia?  I can't hang up the phone.  It's in between my shoulder and ear and I can't  get this cookie dough off my hands.  Eventually, you are going to need to hang up, but I won't be able to.  So I will be stuck looking like I'm talking to you without anyway of fixing this problem!
Dacia--laughing

Yeah, she's a helpful one!  That one!

To say the least, my cookie dough is still in my fridge chillin'. It's a little intimidating!  But fear not, I will not let cookie dough get the better of me! 

I SHALL SUCCEED!

I'm joining Heather at The EO.

"I invited lots of people to my birthday, but nobody came!"

That's what my Storygirl, now turned 5, told her Awana Cubbies teacher.
Talk about stabbing a mama's heart and then twisting the knife.
We never said we were having a party.
We even told her that she wasn't going to have a party.
But did that stop her? 
No.
No, it did not.
In fact, she had been inviting everyone the entire year.  EVERYONE!

Maybe we didn't handle that exactly the right way.

She told me she wanted a chocolate fairy cake.
So since she wasn't going to get a party, I decided that a fairy cake was GOING to be made if it killed me!
This is what she got.

It was kind of fun.  A little bit stressful, but it worked a 100 times better than Sir's Lego cake. 

Since Chris had to work ON Storygirl's birthday until way late into the evening (read 1:00 am), we decided that we would celebrate the day after with her choice of supper, cake, and presents.

Simple. We have a big enough family that we have a party every night!

Did you know that when you can't find your birthday candles, you are willing to use anything for the birthday girl to blow out?

Check out what we used!

Those are tea lights spaced around the outside of the birthday cake.
Chris found a $6 fairy to put on the top of the cake.
$6?
That's because it is a REAL toy.  A real figurine.  Not just a chintsy cheap plastic thing. 
This fairy?  It has feet!
I almost shrieked when I saw them!

Here is the happy birthday girl.

Oh, how I love you, Storygirl! Watching you grow and blossom warms my heart.
5 reasons why I love you (not limited to these only)

1. You are funny!  You make me laugh all the time!  That is when I'm not frustrated!
2. You are so good at memorizing your Bible verses and you are willing to humor me by saying them over and over again.
3. You love your sister.  You love your brothers.  And you love mama and daddy without any hesitation!
4. You don't demand attention:  although you want it.  Especially when you have something important to say.
5. You can read and add numbers already.  You are a sponge of knowledge.  You soak up everything your sister brings home from school!

I am looking forward to how God is going to work in your life this year. 

'Tis the Season Gift Insecurities

There is so much stuff on my desk that my computer is smashed into one little corner. Nothing is piled up into neat organized bunches either. Papers are haphazardly lying covering catalogs and my Bible and a book I'm reading.

 Christmas lists upon christmas lists as well. None for me. These are pages of scattered Christmas gift ideas that I was thinking about. And then we started getting lists from our family. Nothing that I had intended to purchase or already have purchased really fits on those lists. That sunk me into a mild depression. Do I not care about these people? Do I not want to get them things they are looking for?

 I am not a good gift giver--unless it's to my mother-in-law and I have recently been in a car accident in which I was traumatized with a brain injury. However, I cannot claim that I was traumatized being that I had no idea what was going on. Everyone else? That's a different story.

Oh, my poor family and co-workers...everyone. They couldn't figure out what to do with me except to get me away from the patients.  So they moved my desk.  I'm so glad they let me keep my job!

But that is neither here nor there.  Back to my insecurities: on those occassions a head injury does happen, I go hog-crazy and buy gifts for my mother-in-law completely forgetting that I have already purchased her gift yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that. You get the picture! She got some great gifts for 3 or 4 years in a row.

 Some people on the other hand are great at giving gifts! But it always stresses me out. I could have done better. I could have been more creative. I could have not listened to my husband when he said that this was a great idea. I could have been more generous.

This year, I told Chris that I wanted to give everyone a gift that I was proud to give them.  I didn't have to give them a lot or spend that much more, but I wanted to give gifts that I was pleased to say, "Here!"  And smile and be excited as they open it.

Why does it take a brain injury to make it happen?

I'm joining Heather at the EO for Just Write.