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!
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!
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!)
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)
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!
