What do you get a wookie for christmas ( When he already owns a comb)

This little Christmas gem come to you highly recommended by my nerdy daughter....you KNOW who you are!

Christmas Afternoon Skiing

Mike and I went cross country skiing with all our children this afternoon. It was so much fun! There is a marvelous park 5 minutes from our home that offers tubing, sledding hills, and groomed cross country skiing hills. There were only 3 other people in the park this afternoon, so no one felt self-conscious as we learned or practiced our skiing skills.




Steve, Joe and Madelyn soon left everyone in the dust as they raced up and down the hills. They would backtrack to see how everyone else was faring throughout the afternoon. All three of them want to return again tomorrow for a longer time period.




Paige, Amy, and Katie made up the second group of skiers. Paige fell frequently, but was undeterred by her falls. She quickly jumped back up and moved forward to the next hill. Katie was pretty proficient, but waited for Amy to keep up. Amy fell on the first hill and was a little stiff and nervous on the remaining hills. She ended up sore, but trudged through the afternoon. Because she's such a good sport, I know that Amy will be willing to go again, but cross country skiing isn't her first choice for entertainment.




Mike, Allie and I made up the last group. Not because Mike and I couldn't keep up with the younger children, but because Allie was a lot slower than the other children. She did a great job. I was so proud of her perseverance. Each hill provided another challenge for her. Sometimes the hill was difficult to climb and she would fall several times before reaching the top. Other hills were more difficult for her to descend without falling. She was a little intimidated going down steep hills and tended to fall over, before she wiped out. Allie made it through the entire trail without giving up and said that skiing was "the best Christmas afternoon ever."




We'll probably do quite a bit of skiing this winter. I may try to break us into two different groups that I take skiing, so the older children don't need to wait for the younger girls.

Christmas Plans

After much fretting and thinking, we have decided to stay home for Christmas this year and have an immediate family celebration. My oldest daughter and I are singing in a quartet for the Christmas Eve service. After church we will return home to watch A Christmas Story and eat Pork Pie, Swedish meatballs, and other yummy foods.

Christmas morning we plan to attend the 9:00 service and then come home for cinnamon rolls and present opening. I had made some tentative plans for Christmas afternoon, but Mike and I decided that it would be to costly this year. Instead, Mike came up with a fun family afternoon.

We have several pairs of cross country skis, Mike has been searching the second hand stores and managed to snag pairs for the remaining family members. We have skis to fit everyone!!! There is a nearby park with groomed trails and several tubing/toboggan hills. Snow is predicted over the next few weeks, so we should be able to spend the afternoon working off our Christmas dinner.

Mike and I have been cross country skiing several times, but we haven't been able to go as a family in a long time. I'm really looking forward to teaching the younger girls how to ski and trying to keep up with my older kids. This could end up to be a great family activity for snowy afternoons this winter.

Christmas night marks the return of Dr. Who on BBC with the annual Christmas special. We are huge Dr. Who fans and will all enjoy watching The Doctor while sipping hot chocolate in front of the fireplace.

What are your plans? Are you going with tradition or shaking things up this year? I'd love to hear about your celebration.

Christmas is Almost Here

It's official. Christmas is almost upon us. I know because years of experience have taught me that when one of my children gets sick, the holiday season has arrived. Paige came down with a fever last Saturday. She didn't have any other symptoms, but her temperature did get quite high for several days (around 104.6.) The fever became much lower on Thursday, so I thought she was recovering. Today, she complained of a sore throat and still has a temperature around 101.5. We took her to the doctor and she has strep throat.

At some point she will probably need to get her tonsils out, but the antibiotics should make her better fairly soon. I wonder who will begin the second round of medicine. Our normal family pattern is to take an illness and pass it slowly through each child, finally ending with mom and dad in bed for several days. Pass the throat drops and Merry Christmas.

Wasting Time on Pleasure

Thanksgiving is almost here. My house isn't ready for the holiday activities and decorating that begin next week. We did manage to put up the outside lights during the warm spell last week, so that's off my to do list. Sewing Christmas presents and housework was on the agenda for today. Some of the housework was accomplished, but the sewing didn't happen. Instead, I worked on making rubber stamps. Two of the stamps were needed for a recipe exchange that I'm doing that requires the use of a hand carved stamp for each recipe. One stamp is a secret santa gift. So they did need to get done, but the sewing projects are looming overhead. Several days will need to be set aside to accomplish all the sewing projects that are supposed to be Christmas gifts.

Time to stop procrastinating!

Christmas is Right Around the Corner!

Our many huge maple trees began to drop a lot of leaves today and I realized that soon it will be Halloween. I haven't started my Christmas preparations! Four of my children have birthdays during the last 6 weeks of the year. Two of them are between Christmas and New Year's Eve. Normally, I spend August and September sewing clothes for the children to give as Christmas presents. The bulk of the non-home-made gifts are purchased in October and I am finished Christmas shopping by the day after Thanksgiving. The birthday gifts are purchased the first week or two of December.

It seems like I'm to zealous with getting the purchases done early, but I've found that the birthday celebrations, family gatherings, Christmas program rehearsals, holiday performances, and parades make November and December pass too quickly. I get irritable and loose my enthusiasm for sledding, decorating, and cooking when I've over-tired. (Kind of like a toddler.)

This year, my normal method has been scrapped. I spent way too much time in August, September, and October walking/hiking in the woods. My crafty time has gone to creating stamps for letterboxing. I've been selfish. The terrible part is that I'm not even repentant. I would do the same thing again.

Unfortunately, now I will need to get myself in gear and get going on my sewing projects and shopping. Some "wish lists" were taken from some of the kids Sunday on and I'll begin my shopping tomorrow. This will be the first year we have Christmas in our "new" home. Places to shop are not as plentiful in this town as in the last city where we lived. I will need to spend a lot more time driving this year. Bah Humbug!

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year

We had a nice Christmas. Went to my mom's house in the afternoon and were home at a reasonable hour. Took down the trees and Christmas decorations on the 26th and I developed a major migraine headache. The 27th was Joe's 13th birthday. My "baby" boy is growing up too quickly. He is now taller than Amy. I spent the 28th and 29th in bed with my migraine and took way too many pain killers. Yesterday was Stephen's 15th birthday. I felt good enough to do some birthday shopping, but still ended up in bed by 9. Today, I woke up without a headache. Hopefully, the migraine has run its course.

Mike left this morning to work on the floor and walls of the other house. I'm supposed to spend the weekend painting Madelyn's bedroom and the remainder of the stairway.

I'll be spending a lot of time packing the next few weeks as we prepare to finally move into the other house. We're hoping to find a carpeting sale soon, so we can get the upstairs carpeting installed. Blog posting may decrease as we do the big push to complete all the smaller projects on our list.

Wishing everyone a blessed new year!

Odds and Ends

The boys were gone all weekend, so the girls and I put up the big Christmas tree, baked 1 batch of cookies, and watched chick-flicks. It was a nice way to ease Amy back into family life. She came home from college on Friday.

My youngest four children have wonderful eyesight! Hurrah! Allie has an eye that sometimes looks like it doesn't track with the other eye. The eye doctor spent a long time checking her and said that it's not an issue. He thinks that it only happens when she is extremely tired and advised me not to do reading with her then. He recommended that we return in 6 months if I still notice it occasionally.

We have been watching/listening to The Nutcracker DVDs. Katie brought home 6 various Nutcracker movies from the library. My favorite is this one. My least favorite two are the Barbie version and the Wonder Pets version. Paige and Allie love both of them. Yuck! I was disappointed in the older Bolshoi version. We've all been enjoying the musical scores.

Mike took the 2 youngest girls to a discount store 1 hour from our house to compare the price of carpeting for the upstairs bedrooms. They were well behaved throughout the traveling and shopping, so Mike took them to Taco Bell for lunch. When they returned home Paige was telling me about the great food at "Taco Bill's." Nineteen years ago, Amy used to love "Taco Bill's." Listening to Paige, brought back memories of Amy's youth.

Mike is taking vacation time this week. He plans on spending most of the days at the other house installing the dry wall in the family room. We're getting pretty close to having the house in a live-able condition. I'd like to move in mid-to-late January. Two heating bills are getting expensive.

Christmas Recital

Madelyn is on the far right waiting for the music to begin.



Allie (on the left) and Paige on the stage before the recital.

The youngest three girls had their Christmas dance recital last night. The dancers were supposed to arrive at 5:00 pm; the dance began at 7:00 pm. A large majority of the students are 4-7 years old. Am I the only one who recognizes the problem with this schedule? My 6:30m, the youngest children were hungry and very bored. There were several other organizations participating in the recital. One group was a local community choir with about 100 participants. Another group was from a local elementary school that had approximately 40 participants. The recital venue had seating available for 250 people.

The venue coordinator wanted all the dancers to sit at the back of the facility and walk down a hall to enter from another door on the side. There were no adults sitting with the dancers. After a brief run through, the dancers were told to stretch their legs and return to their seats 15 minutes before the performances were scheduled to begin.

As the facility began to fill with audience members, it became noticeable that there were NO where near the number of seats needed. Many people took the seats that were "reserved" for the dancers. When I took my two youngest girls to relocate their seats, we realized that the dancers were sitting 2-3 to a chair. The aisles were blocked with standing audience members. The stage entry was blocked by audience members. I ended up taking my girls back to where our family was sitting and had the girls sit on our laps. Well over 500 people wanted to see the recital.

Paige got nervous as the auditorium filled and the noise level increased. People were pressing on us from all sides. For a short period of time, I didn't think that she would participate in the recital. Thankfully, the choir members and their parents left after their portion of the show was completed. Eventually everyone was able to get a seat. The recital progressed and eventually ended at 9:30 pm.

The dance studio's normal Christmas recital takes less than an hour, so we had promised to walk through the downtown light display after the program. Paige and Allie didn't want to go get dinner, until they had seen the lights. We made a compromise and walked through a very small portion and promised to do the full display Sunday evening.

The kids began a game of tag in a nearby playground, so the whole family chased each other around the park and up the slides. It was so much fun! Mike took a spill in the snow when Joe tagged him, but that was the only casulity. We returned home around 10:30 and had a "healthy" dinner of scrambled eggs, sausage, bananas, waffles, bagels, and donuts.

Gift Cards

Madelyn and I spent a couple of hours on Saturday making gift cards. She would really like to begin making greeting cards and I wanted her to start on small projects. We made 70 assorted gift cards for Christmas. Madelyn learned some stamping techniques and I have a good start on my tags for next Christmas. We're hoping to spend some time next week making more gift cards and then begin to make gift bags.

I never have time in November or December to make gift cards. I usually just write the kids' names on their packages using a felt tip marker. The already completed tags are in sheet protectors in my holiday notebook. It feels wonderful to have some Christmas crafting already completed!

Easy Christmas Treat

My children are giving each other treats from the kitchen as presents this year. This morning Allie and Paige made Chocolate Covered Pretzel Rods as their selection. We had planned on using white chocolate. Did you know that white chocolate seizes up if you add 1 tablespoon of butter? I didn't. Both girls sampled their creations and declared them delicious.

Christmas Cookies

Every year we make these delicious Toasted Pecan Toffee Bars as one of our holiday treats. Today, Madelyn and Joe made a batch for dessert.

2 Cups all-purpose flour
1 Cup packed brown sugar
1 Cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 Cup Chopped pecans, toasted
1 Cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large bowl, combine flour, sugar, butter, vanilla, and cinnamon; beat until crumbly. Stir in 3/4 cup pecans and 1/2 cup chocolate chips. Press into greased 13x9x2" pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven. Immediately, sprinkle with remaining chocolate chips. Let stand 5 minutes. Slightly swirl chips as they melt; leave some whole for a marbled effect. Sprinle with remaining pecans. Cool completely in pan. Cut into bars.