Making lemonade...

Along with many others in the area, we were 'snowed in' over Christmas weekend, unable to drive to my grandparents' house for our annual get-together with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. It was pretty sad to miss out but we had to choose to be safe. I think it was my cousin Jen (also snowed in in Lawrence with her hubby Jason) who suggested we still attempt our annual Trivial Pursuit game via Skype. We traditionally play men vs. women and had a good mix of guys and gals on both ends of the computer. It actually worked really well. They controlled the rolling of the die, questions, game piece moving, etc. and we helped our teams answer questions!

Here we are mid-game...

and here they are mid-game, propped on a high chair...there are my Aunt Janet, Grandma and Papa! (Tom, Debbie, Dale, and Tim were not shown at the moment...)

And the ladies won!! Here we all are (notice the other gals on the screen). As my sister-in-law Elizabeth said, "talk about making lemonade with lemons." This will definitely be a year to remember!

Uncle Time

Whee! James has absolutely loved his "uncle time" this past week. My brother Jeff has returned to his college hometown after the weekend but my brother Joel (doing the 'airplane' with James) is in town with his wife Elizabeth for the entire week. Joel was Super Uncle on Tuesday and watched James during the shower I was hosting for Elizabeth.

Merry Christmas!

A few pictures from our Christmas celebrations. We've been having a great time with family--Mark's and mine both. As you can see from the pictures, it's snowing a great deal here! We are sad not to be with my grandparents, aunts and uncles today, though. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Treat #2 - Danish Kringle

An annual tradition in my family is to eat Danish kringle Christmas morning before opening gifts. My grandmother is 100% Danish, making me 25% Danish. Several years ago my Aunt Debbie taught me how to make the traditional pastry and a few years ago my mom learned, too. Each year my mom and I set aside a day to make kringle to freeze. We then have several (12 this year) to thaw later and bake. The process is involved and pretty tiring but the results are amazing!! I'm not going to include the recipe here because it's lengthy, but if anybody is really dying to know how to make it, I could type it up.

a key ingredient in our Danish kringle--butter!! There's butter in the dough and the traditional cardamom filling!

Here's the dough, rolled out, after three cyles of rolling, folding and chilling. Picture here is the almond filling, a new favorite!

This is the cardamom & currant filling. It's my favorite. Cardamom=Christmas! Cardamom is a not-so-widely known Scandanavian spice...it's found in a lot of chai tea spices.

The final step of our prep day: a kringle ready to freeze and enjoy later!

Christmas Treat #1 - Lemon Lover's Cookies

Last week I decided to dive into some early Christmas baking because 1) it was too cold to leave the house again and 2) we had a neighborhood open house coming up and I needed to have some treats to put out. Here's our 'kick-off' picture. Don't be fooled by the wooden spoon James is holding. It was merely a prop for the photo. :) The following picture shows the limit of his involvement in baking treats this year...

Treat #1 = Lemon Lover's Cookies. Here's the recipe. James just goes nuts when he sees lemons...he loves to suck on the juice, silly boy. I guess it doesn't surprise me too much, as Mark LOVES lemons also!

This dough does require some chilling in plastic wrap--which I didn't have, so I used wax paper. Worked just fine! I used one lemon for the entire batch, you use the rind and juice for the dough and icing.

slice-a-dice (that phrase is for my dad)

And the icing...

This is a very shortbread-ish cookie. It's very crumbly and buttery. It's actually not my favorite cookie. A week later, I still haven't eaten one (I did enjoy a few licks of the icing, though). However, Mark and his family really enjoy lemony sweets so it's worth making a batch!

Nearly 15 Months

James is nearly 15 months and keeping us very busy. What parent of a pre-toddler/toddler doesn't say that, though? I'm assuming it comes with the territory...although I will add that I truly believe James is extra active. :) We love him that way, though! Last week I was thinking of how fun it would be to do something Christmas-y every day leading up to the 25th! That thought lasted about an hour. What can you do with a one year old? Maybe I'm just not imaginative enough. I'm just SURE next year it will be easier to do simple crafts, etc. Anyway, while I was thinking along those lines, I thought, "well, maybe he can color..." So I drew an outline of a tree for him to color. He thought the puppy I drew was much more exciting. This was, however, the first time he has colored without immediately shoving the crayon in his mouth!

Excuse my miserable rendition of a dog. And is this little guy going to be a lefty? We'll see...

Mr. Mischief himself had actually climbed under the end table and behind it, wedged between the lamp and the wall. What a monkey! The funniest part was that it didn't bother him a bit that he was virtually stuck.

After some coaxing and prying him downward, he made his way out. I have to keep a chair blocking this open shelf because he's still trying to climb back there daily!

The many faces of James...what a squirt. Mark commented a few weeks ago that he's seen a big change in James in the past few months. He's really right. James is becoming such a big boy (in a few ways). He LOVES being humorous and nearly always chimes in with a corny laugh if he hears anyone else start giggling. He's also started communicating more with words: dada (his favorite word), mama, papa, gaga (grandma), more, and his own variation of: hot, cup, banana, apple, chicken, all done, all gone, and come on/let's go. He also has become much more responsive to verbal requests of ours and I think tries really hard to obey (sometimes) ;). And that active side I mentioned is also definitely developing. His favorite game to play with Mark is "chase." They chase each other around the living room/kitchen circuit until they're both exhausted! I've also caught him climbing up on anything to make himself taller or to enable him to reach things high-up: bottom shelves, toys, boxes, laundry baskets, oh my! But I'm so thankful that he still loves to have books read to him and has continued to give kisses and hugs when requested!

This is his response to me saying, "I don't know!" Shrugged shoulders and palms up...I get such a kick out of it!

I dove into a big storage bin the other day and found several of Mark's special clothing items from when he was about James' age. I found this robe! What a hoot! (and thanks, Kristen, for the piano...he has been LOVING it, animal noises and all!)

Pink, Pink, Pink!

Our friend Amy (the tall blonde one :) is expecting a baby girl at the beginning of February! This sort of kicked off a series of showers I will probably be co-hosting in the next several months...and I just LOVE it! Because I have a boy this was definitely an outlet for all things pink!

"the" cupcake bites. same story as the ones I made in October. but these are pink!!

my first diaper cake; Andrea made one for James' baby shower a few years ago and we thought it was SO cute that we wanted one for Amy's shower, too!

these two little cuties were the gift bearers for Amy...they also claimed to have given her most of the gifts she opened and were just as excited about them as anybody there!

a few guests (Amy's mother-in-law on the right)

chatting online with our dear girlfriend who lives too far away to have made it to the shower...we love you, Susan!

Amy with the three co-hostesses (myself, Andrea, and Kelly)

Thanksgiving #2

James just has a blast playing with his 12 older cousins but we took him outside to roll around the yard a couple of times by himself in the wagon. He also loved pushing the wagon.

Mark's parents purchased two big rolls of carpet to put down in the garage when the family is all home to have a warmer place for kids to play....and sleep! There really is room elsewhere for the kids to sleep but it was an exciting novelty thing I think. Nine kids (plus Mark's parents) slept out here one night!

No pictures of our big main meal (a yummy soup dinner with homemade bread bowls Lois made) but all the men were in charge of breakfast!

I guess I didn't get as many photos of the Thanksgiving festivities while we were there...we also fit in a small-town downtown Christmas 'window opening' festival, a ride in a surrey, a quick trip to the dollar store to find James pjs (because we forgot to pack his suitcase in the car--oops), and a pie-eating-palooza....more pies than you can even IMAGINE--apple, pumpkin, cherry, raspberry cranberry, key lime, and sour cream raisin!

Thanksgiving #1

It's always such fun to have the whole family together!

In an effort to communicate more, James says, 'oh!' and points excitedly at EVERYTHING lately (dog, tree, truck, food...)

James loves Duncan and was hoping he would share his ball with him.

Duncan was a good sport and let James have it, hoping to play a game, I think. This picture makes it seem like James has quite an arm, huh? Well, I'm pretty sure the ball didn't go more than a foot or so.

I thought this picture was so cute. My dad is a cyclist....that's why he's wearing spandex.

Our friend Natasha introduced us to an outstanding turkey rub recipe, in case anybody is interested. Between that and brining the turkey a day in advance and roasted garlic in the mashed potatoes, we're slowly but surely 'perfecting' Thanksgiving dinner!

An annual occurrence at our Thanksgiving is celebrating Joel's birthday--Happy Birthday, bro! We fished around and actually found a 2 and 5 candle...just perfect! We stuck them in a pie I made....Crunchy Caramel Apple Pie...I may do another post on that pie sometime soon...

Just too sweet not to post...James just doesn't usually stand still long enough for a hug...glad I caught him loving on his Aunt Elizabeth!

Family photo!! It's been a long while since we've had a good picture all together. Next year we'll have a new baby girl to add to the photo! (can you tell how excited I am about my little niece arriving in February?)

Lights

Mark, James and I bundled up to see go see Christmas lights downtown Thanksgiving evening. We parked blocks away to avoid crazy traffic and bundled James up in his stroller. Here a balloon artist is making James a balloon bear!

I'll be honest; Mark and I are NOT sure where this little smile came from because James was pretty cranky at this point, but he flashed a happy face at just the right time!