A Valentine's Day Celebration

Since the girls had no school on Monday, I decided to take the day off work and put together a little party for some of Natalie's friends.  It worked out well because I got all the decorations on the sale after the holiday.

The kids decorated cookies, made a candle and played a game of Valentine's Bingo.  It was short and sweet and they all seemed to enjoy it.

Hope you had a great Valentine's Day!

Day Three-Hundred and Twenty-Night: Give Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here are some scenes of our stay with Joel's parents during Thanksgiving.  I did not take too many pictures this time.The day was low key.  Joel's mom always does a great job with the food, and had actually made most of it before we got there.  So there wasn't too much to do on the actual Thanksgiving day.

The girls lounged around all morning, watching TV and holding squirmy kittens.

Kaitlin and Natalie with Ben and Callie

We got together around 4PM for Thanksgiving dinner and the rest of the evening was spent watching TV.  Not the most exciting thing but relaxing enough.

Natalie and her uncle Brett

Tomorrow, Joel and Natalie are planning on attending the Nebraska vs. Colorado game.  She is really looking forward to it.  Kaitlin went when she was four years old and the noise and excitement was so overwhelming for her she promptly fell asleep for most of the game.  I have a feeling things are going to be different with Natalie.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving day with your loved ones!

Easter Recap

I figured I should do an Easter recap before too much time goes by.  I still need to work on our Spring Break one.  Life is just getting in the way of blogging.

Traditionally all the cousins get together on the Saturday night before Easter to color some eggs and play together, but our Saturday this year was too busy and we decided to postpone the get together until Sunday morning.  In reality, it was past 1PM when everyone finally came.

I thought six and a half dozen eggs would be enough, but the kids went thorough them in less than half an hour.  I guess no matter how many eggs they get it will never be enough.  They could do this for hours.

After the egg painting everyone took off to tear up the house and pull out as many toys as possible.  The older girls entertained themselves by decorating a gingerbread house. 

 Around 5PM we decided to move the festivities to my sister’s house (wanted her to have the opportunity to have her house raid by eight sugar high kids). 

Of course, as it is normal in Michigan, around the time we wanted to do the egg hunt outside, it was raining, so the kids had to settle for doing it inside.  Not that they seemed to mind.

Hope you had a great weekend!

Christmas 2009 – A short recap.

The month of December is always such a whirlwind! I love the holidays but I’m glad when things wind down again. Here is a quick recap of our holiday celebration.

Dec 21

We met with my side of the family for an early celebration and the much anticipated Secret Santa reveal. This is our second year doing this and the kids (as well as the adults) love it. We draw names about three weeks before Christmas and send each other little notes or trinkets. The kids have a great time trying to guess who their Secret Santa is.

Dec 22

We drove to Lincoln, NE to spend the holiday with Joel’s side of the family. This is what the back of our car looked like!

Dec 23

Spent the day hanging around the house. We got hit with a huge snow storm that dumped 8-10 inches of snow. Natalie helped grandma do some baking.

Dec 24

Joel's family does not normally do much on this day.  We had dinner and just hung around playing games.  At bedtime the girls each opened a gift with their Christmas Pajamas.  We stood around the tree admiring the mountain of gifts and trying to guess how many there were.  Joel's mom always has a prize for the person that guesses the number closest to the actual one.  This year I won with a guess of 181.  I believe the actual number was a little higher.

Dec 25

Christmas Day!  The girls were so excited!  Normally we wait for Joel's brother to arrive before we start the gift opening.  However, he is usually two or more hours late, so this year we let the girls open their gifts from us first thing in the morning.  They were both so surprised at what they got.  Kaitlin got a laptop and Natalie the American Girl she wanted.  Both items were at the top of their Christmas List, but neither thought they were really going to get them.  

Once everyone arrived, the festivities continued. We all got some very nice and generous gifts and had a good time sharing with each other.

Joel's brother always put a lot of effort into his gifts and a lot of them are "interesting", if not very practical.  Every year he chooses to highlight a gift, which he normally wraps with extravagant decorations and even Christmas lights. To give you an idea of the nature of this gift, one year I was the recipient and inside I found a huge feather duster with the handle made out of bull pizzle.

Since Kaitlin has been in the picture, she has been the most common recipient of THE GIFT. When she was younger, I used to worry because a lot of the time the gift was not very child appropriate or turned out to be a joke that would leave her in tears. Through the years, she has gotten smart about it and now looks forward to seeing what crazy thing her uncle comes up with.

This year Natalie decided that it was not fair that Kaitlin is always the one getting THE GIFT. Joel must have talked to his brother, because this time THE GIFT was for Natalie. She was so excited to open it! Inside she found about 53 pounds of assorted candies!

For her part, Kaitlin won the “Most Ironic Gift”: Ten pounds of Jelly Belly Beans inside a big box of Crest Toothpaste. Got to love that McArthur humor.

All in all our Christmas was a fun one and a reminder of how truly blessed we are to be surrounded by wonderful family and friends. I hope it was also a wonderful holiday for you and yours.

Thanksgiving Scenes

I should probably post some of our Thanksgiving celebration pictures before Christmas gets here.  We had a nice time together as a family.  As most families on this day we ate too much and moved very little.  The plan had been to play some football before dinner, however, the weather did not cooperate.  It was just too cold to be outside playing. 

So we sat and ate and ate and sat.  It was festive in a low key kind of way.  So very thankful we can all share these special moments together!

Thanksgiving is Here... Again

Here is Thanksgiving again bringing the “holiday season”. The year has gone by so fast! I think I had such a rough start this year that the months have just gone by in a blur.

However, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It feels festive without the whole commotion that Christmas normally brings with it. This year my side of the family is getting together at our home {insert half-joking half-serious cringe}. In all seriousness, it should be fun.

I decided to bake the pies tonight. Things looked promising at the beginning. We were moving right along, Kaitlin was helping and we started baking the pumpkin pie. I made more crust for the apple pie, and started cleaning around the kitchen and setting up the table for tomorrow. I checked on the pie after 45 minutes and it looked firm enough but when I inserted the knife, it was still coming out dirty. I left it in for 10 more minutes and just took it out before the crust would start getting burned. I kept looking at it from time to time, because it just had an odd texture. All of the sudden it dawned on me what the problem was. I decided to give it a taste, and sure enough, I had used flour instead of sugar!! Panicked because I had only bought one can of pumpkin this year, I sent my husband to the store to get some more pumpkin. He came back with two cans and said those were the last two cans on the shelves! I remember reading in the news that this year they are having a pumpkin shortage.

So here I am at 1:30AM waiting for the second pumpkin pie to be done baking so I can go to bed.

{Update:  The pies were a success, although I'm not sure worth the going to bed past 2AM}
While I wait, I figured I would share with you our menu this year.

I found this recipe for Apple Pie that I tried a couple of weeks ago and it turned out very good. The part I enjoy the least is making the pie crust. I’m not very good at rolling it and it being one whole piece. Mine looks more like patchwork. However, it tastes very good.

Since the above pie turned out so good, I decided to try the Pumpkin Pie recipe at the same website.

Tomorrow I am going to try to make this Unturkey. This one should be interesting. I have never dealt with gluten or nutritional yeast flakes and the likes, but I am going at it with low expectations and hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised.

{Update:  This Unturkey was a total failure.  I'm glad I had a backup plan!}

We are also making some Green Beans with almonds. I am going to be following this recipe.

Finally, a favorite dish for everyone is Candied Sweet Potatoes. I use my Mother-in-Law’s recipe and it always comes out delicious.

Here is the recipe:

3 cups of Mashed Sweet Potatoes (drained)
1 Cup of Sugar
2 Eggs Beaten
¾ Stick of Butter or Margarine (melted)
¾ Cup of Milk
½ tsp Cinnamon
½ tsp Nutmeg

Topping:

Mix
¾ Cup crushed corn flakes
½ Cup Chopped Nuts
½ cup brown sugar
2/3 stick of butter (melted)

Bake sweet potatoes on greased baking dish for 20 minutes at 400. Add topping and bake an additional 10 minutes.

And that's just me! The other two families are also bringing some dishes.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Blogging is Hard Work - Labor Day Weekend Recap

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post. Keeping up a blog is hard work.

Having just survived a long weekend that included:

1. Driving to a campground over five hours away.



2. Camping in a very crowded and loud campground.



3. Struggling to build a one-room tent while my sister managed to build her three-room one in record time.



4. Being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

5. Enjoying beautiful weather and interacting with nature.

6. Being stressed every time a fire needed to be started.

7. Lots of goofing around

8. Eating yummy camping food.

9. Beating the boredom with bubbles and rocks.

10. Sleeping uncomfortably in sleeping bags.

11. A nice day trip to Mackinaw City.



12. Whining from a girl that hates camping.

13. Whining from a mom that hates camping.

14. Spending more money than you should on a camping trip.

15. Driving back home in horrible traffic.

16. Building a dirty laundry pile taller than me.

I guess I am ready to return to my normal routine. How was your Labor Day Holiday?