New Year Interviews

Gingerbread Houses

One of our favorite traditions in December is to decorate gingerbread houses. The past two years we've invited our friend the Roberts to come join us. I make all the houses, something I love to do. Then we start the afternoon with lunch and then we finish with decorating. All of the kids are big enough to do it on their own. We had them some icing, a house, and then send them to the kids' table. It's lovely.



Just our houses.


Ollie's. I have no words.


Rhett's.


Right before the New Year's Eve destruction. I have no "after" shot because I went to bed.

The BEST* Christmas Eve

Having Christmas on Monday was pretty darn good. But having Christmas Eve on a Sunday was the BEST. I'm just sad we have to wait six years for this to happen again.

Saturday: We were done with all shopping for gifts, so we saw a movie ("Wonder") and then went grocery shopping. We went to the "special" grocery store because they have bulk candy and we love buying it that way for our gingerbread houses. For dinner, we went out for Chinese. My family used to go to Benihana on Christmas Eve and Chuck's family loves this local Chinese restaurant, so we compromised and did Chinese on Christmas Eve Eve. (Of course, our boys ate pretty much nothing except the won ton soup crackers.) That night was a movie and then sleeping by the tree. It's also the night Chuck and I get all the presents from their hiding place and put them under the tree. The way the boys couldn't keep their hands off of them the next morning told us waiting until Christmas Eve was the right decision.


Sunday: This day was my FAVORITE. As church was reduced to only one hour, we opted for the earliest (8:30) ward in our building to get it done. (I was disappointed in the service however. They had two talks. WHAT?! Why weren't we just singing Christmas hymns?! On the plus side, this ward served bread with gluten, so we forgave them.) We invited our friends over for lunch (we served this delicious chili and fried plantains) and to join us in our gingerbread house decorating. So. Much. Fun. I have to admit that I love actually building the homes, not just the decorating. This year Chuck and I designed two more houses so that we had three houses in the three different styles. I seriously love everything about this. And having our friends over made it so much fun everyone. The kids had fun; the adults had fun. It was great.


The boys helped divvy out the candy. Ollie is one snappy dresser.


Plus, we have these incredible centerpieces now. I just love them.


After our "party," Chuck and I cleaned up while the boys watched some Christmas shows. Then it was time for...LUMINARIAS! We did this at my house in Sandy and I love them. I loved setting them up with my Dad, and I loved driving home from Benihana seeing them lit. Even though we were going to be the only house doing it, we did it. Of course, I didn't get the right candles and they didn't last long, but next year I'll do better.






Then it was time for dinner, another movie, and then bed. Chuck and I fell asleep before 9. Ha. It really was the best of days.

*Why the asterisk? Because poor Ollie got sick. He puked twice, scaring my guests who were silently terrified that their kids were going to be sick. Thankfully, he woke up feeling fine and ate plenty of candy to assure us he was better.

December Happenings

As usual, we had a busy month filled with our advent activities. Some highlights are below:

Playing reindeer games. This was "Pin the Nose on the Reindeer." Ollie drew the reindeer. :)


Decorating cookies that only kids could like.


Decorating a gingerbread house with our family friend, Edna.


Decorating gingerbread men. Lots of decorating going on this year.


Annual "sleep under the tree" night. You can't see it, but we're projecting the movie "Elf" on the wall. It was a lot of fun to watch it that way.


There was also lots of driving by house lights, reading Christmas books, watching Christmas movies, and shopping.

We also had a bonus Secret Santa night. We made some treats for our ward Christmas party one Saturday, and the next Tuesday a friend put out a message looking for the bakers of that dessert because they wanted the recipe. I thought we do could better than that: we could make them a fresh batch (which would NOT be over-baked like the ones I brought to the party). So that we did. I was able to get them done right when the boys were going to bed, so we all piled in the car and doorbell ditched those suckers. :) The boys had an awesome time doing it and LOVED that by the time we got home, our friends had already thanked their "Secret Santa" on Facebook. That might have to happen again next year.

Pumpkin Day

We also made it to a pumpkin patch. This year we had another family join us. They're new to our area, and they have two boys our boys' ages (plus they have another little girl) but the boys get along really well. So it's fun to have them around.



The boys "let" me make shirts this year! Of course, they immediately turned into pajama t-shirts, but I'm totally okay with that.

Destruction of the Gingerbread Houses

And on New Year's Day (or New Year's Day Observed), we destroy those beautiful gingerbread houses. But not before we salvage all the good stuff off them, like the caramel chimneys, or the airhead ice rink, or all the sour patch kids.

And this year we destroyed mine by sitting on it. Not my most attractive moment. But still.


This is what everything looked like at the end. Another year, another tornado.

Gingerbread Houses

I love making gingerbread houses. This year Chuck and I constructed them in advance so we didn't have to spend that time on Saturday doing it. I was really impressed with Rhett's stamina and skill this year. He had some really creative ideas. I also think it was Ollie's first year doing his own, and he is the king of putting jelly animals on his house. And because I made all the parts and had some leftover dough, I tried to go BIG this year. I won't make that mistake again, even though I liked it. I might, however, try to create something of the same size, just different architecture. I should enlist my brother's help in the design.

Ollie. Gummy sharks, gummy butterflies, gummy worms, gummy...


Chuck. I want to eat that caramel chimney.




Rhett. Notice Santa's sled, coke bottle reindeer, strings of Christmas lights, Santa going down the chimney...


dynamite (three vanilla tootsie rolls) with a lit fuse. Because he's an 8-year-old boy.


Erin. I experimented with stained glass this year and love how it turned out. So easy.


I may used up all my ideas before I got to the back of the house.

Christmas

I gotta say, I love Christmas on a Sunday, especially with 8:30 church. We got up (some earlier than others, ahem), did stockings, ate breakfast, then got ready for church. Sacrament meeting was 50 minutes then we were back home and into pajamas and ready to open presents. It really stretched out the day, especially compared to last year when we were done opening presents by 8:00 a.m. (no lie).

We lazed around the house playing with presents. Some of us napped because some of us were up until 1 a.m. And then Chuck's brother and family joined us for an easy Feliz Navidad. I love easy Christmas dinner.

Gift highlights for Rhett: German nutcracker, camera, Guinness Book of World Records (he seriously loves this book), new Harry Potter book.

Gift highlights for Ollie: stuffed Piggie and Gerald, spooner board, magformers, pinpoint impression thing (he seriously loves this toy--I think it was the last thing I added at Target).

Gift highlights for the adults: trampoline for the boys. Seriously. They spent so much time out there. I know I'm going to love it. Unfortunately it has yet to result in sleeping in, no matter how worn out they get on it. But still. I even showed them a few things! That is, before I started peeing my pants from all the jumping.





Oh. They kept telling me how cold their faces were. So I made them some balaclavas.

December

This was a hard month. I really want to blame it all on the boys' school schedule. With them not getting home until nearly 5, and with a 7:15 p.m. bedtime, it didn't leave much time for family Christmas activities. We were realistic and cut out a lot of stuff we normally would have done, but that didn't mean I didn't feel guilty about cutting them or that the boys didn't continually ask why we weren't doing things.

We did do some things: temple lights trip, cookie decorating, sleeping under the tree, cutting snowflakes, blah blah blah. But it was hard.





This restored Rhett's faith in magic. All because of the physics-defying balanced pancake.

Pumpkin Day

These pumpkin days are all starting to be very similar. I think next year we go simple: pumpkin patch, pumpkin food, the end. These patches are getting out of hand. They almost all have the same things and are always filled with people. Can you tell I'm worn out on pumpkin patches? Maybe I'm extra tired this year because Pumpkin Day was the morning after we camped, so I was exhausted already. But all of the boys were out of school/work for Yom Kippur, so it just made sense.

We did a maze, duckie races, slides, climbing things,


more slides, building log cabins with child-sized Lincoln Logs, dug around corn pits,


finally picked out a pumpkin, ate delicious apple cider donuts, pumpkin bread,


and finally got to go home.

Pumpkin Day 2015

After our first date was rained out, our second date was too hastily scheduled, we found this past Monday perfect to celebrate our 7th Annual Pumpkin Day. As it was a school day, we couldn't spend all day at the pumpkin patch, but maybe that was better...for the adults at least. Last year it was a tame Pumpkin Day, but I ramped it up just a bit this year.

The day started with the presentation of breakfast: pumpkin mini wheats! Of course they didn't taste like pumpkin, but instead, all the spices that make pumpkin-flavored things delicious. The boys were also presented with their Halloween shirts. One boy has grown out of wearing them in public, but I can respect that (even if I don't like it). Then they were shoo-ed off to school. At school they were surprised with pumpkin bread in their lunches. On the way to the pumpkin patch, they got special rice krispie treats dyed orange and shaped like pumpkins with a tootsie roll for the stem. Yum.

Then it was on to the pumpkin patch! We did all the usual stuff and the boys had the usual great time. I even brought this tortilla pumpkin soup (although I called it pumpkin chili since my boys like chili and it looked like chili). In fact, their hearty approval of the soup was probably the best part of my day. (The worst part was finding out there were no apple cider donuts.) We had beautiful weather (if not even a touch too warm) and the boys went home exhausted. Success!















Pumpkin Days of yore: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014.