February Highlights in Pictures

Busy days...I'm thankful for our large table.  

Lily is stitching on a dress design, Noah is weaving with yarn, Josiah is assembling some paper models of geometric solids, Tansy is playing "library".

February brought more cold weather and a blustery snowstorm.  A sunny Saturday afternoon called for a little family sledding time.

The more the merrier on the 6 foot toboggan! 

 A little snow tasting...

 Baby Azalea bundled up on her mommy...watching the fun.

Tansy enjoyed a couple rides, too. 

 This is the great dad who pulled the sled back up the hill every time.

 Snow, snow everywhere.

 Sometimes you get snow in your face... but it's still fun.

 The looooong hill is fun for rolling down, too.

 Toboggan doing double duty as a snowboard.

 Sunday afternoon nap.

 Azalea is now sitting up enough to join us at the table in her special chair!

Valentines Day...for Eight.

Today we ate pink heart pancakes with berries...slipped sweet handwritten notes for each other into little tin mailboxes...and nibbled from the bowl of pink and red m&ms on the table.

After heart shaped grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, there was a quick get-a-way coffee date with my man.  (a rare, wonderful treat, indeed!) 

Hope your Valentines Day was simply sweet, like mine!

Baking: for Eight

Temps topped out at 13 degrees today so it was the perfect day to get some baking done.  

12 white buns

21 honey wheat buns

2 honey wheat loaves

3 1/2 dozen oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

1 apple pie

The kids snatched a few of the buns and cookies before I snapped the photo.

Half the pie was gone by bedtime.

Hopefully the rest of this will last till the end of the week!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve at Our House

is hors d'oeuvres night.  

(Next year I will want to remember what I served this year~ so this post is for my records, but you can read in)

 

This year it was 

a veggie platter with home made ranch dip

chex mix 

clementine oranges

hot spinach artichoke dip with various chips and crackers

strombolli with pizza sauce for dipping

baked potato skins with bacon, cheese and sour cream

 cookie tray

eggnog

hot cocoa with fresh whipped cream  

Christmas Cookies

We have a little tradition of each kid choosing a Christmas treat to make with me in the kitchen.  Each kiddo has kind of "claimed" a cookie as their own to be in charge of making...which has been fun.  Noah is the master of Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies~ perfection!

 (When the boys are cooking, this is how they like to store the oven mits~ for easy accessibility, I'm guessing?  It brings a laugh, anyway!)

Tansy made Pretzel Buttons, which were just right for her.  She loved placing pretzels on the tray, unwrapping chocolate kisses and putting them on top of the pretzels, then gently pressing m&ms into the melty kisses.

She was so proud of her treats when they were done!!

Dahlia made Snow on the Mountains...her favorite.

Phil wanted to make a treat, too...He used fresh eggs from our chickens to make eggnog! I have never been an eggnog drinker, but THIS was yum.  Really so much better than the store variety.

Josiah made spritz cookies and Lily made sugar cut out cookies...but they were eaten before I remembered to take pictures.  Cookies sure go fast around here!

Thoughts on Thankfulness

“Cultivate a thankful spirit! It will be to thee a perpetual feast. There is, or ought to be, with us no such thing as small mercies; all are great, because the least are undeserved. Indeed a really thankful heart will extract motive for gratitude from everything, making the most even of scanty blessings.” -J. R. MacDuff

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,” ~James 1:2

“I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.” ― Charles Spurgeon

“And the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes, and when the Lord heard it, his anger was kindled…” ~Numbers 11:1

"In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus." ~ I Thessalonians 5:18

"Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise;
    give thanks to Him and praise His name. 
 For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations." ~ Psalm100

Dressing Up

 The children at our church are invited to come in costume to the annual fall festival.  Some years we have great fun coming up with theme costumes...this year~

 meet the Flinstones! 

A few old t-shirts, a couple of new t-shirts, and some scraps from the stash pile...a little snipping, a little hot gluing, and a wee bit of sewing...
It was fun and the designs were so forgiving because the more rustic looking the better when you are from the stone age, right??  And t-shirt material does not need to be hemmed so that made it even more simple.

Even the baby got to be Dino...though she could have cared less.  But the big kids wanted her to be included.
Such fun...and great memories.