Happy Multicultural Day!

Happy Multicultural Day!  What? You celebrate Christmas not multicultural day?  That's odd.

Jenna's school does not celebrate Christmas or have a holiday party of any kind. They celebrate multicultural day. 

Really?

Multicultural day can be celebrated any day of the year, Christmas falls on Dec. 25th and a holiday party would just be nice.

Even so, Jenna had a writer's workshop in which she had two speaking parts. She was very excited to have two speaking parts.  She read some of the things she wrote this school year and even gave an introduction to the workshop. She read very quickly. It is something she enjoys doing - surprising me by reading like a 15 year old :).

Jenna's first speaking part: the introduction to the workshop

Jenna reading her individual story

At Sarah's preschool she did have a Christmas program and she sang "Go Tell it on the Mountain" and "Jingle Bells". She had been practicing at home so she would deliver the song with proper tonation. Sarah is on the end in the white dress.  They all wore cute reindeer headbands.

She looks so serious!

On Saturday Joel and Megan came to visit. We had so much fun! We played a lot of games, ate lots of food, went to Starbucks, ate Jenis and Graeters ice cream and went to see the Fantasy of Lights. All in just 1 1/2 days. We had a blast! Jenna also decided to make Joel beautiful (really, is there any hope for this?). You can see from the picture.

Joel with a beautiful headband

Before Joel and Megan came to visit, my friend Jen came by to give me a Christmas present. This Christmas present was the most AWESOME thing ever!  Check out this clock below. It has really improved my time keeping.

Awesome clock of awesomeness!

77 points on Quiddler today!

Cookies and Flour - yum

 Every year we bake lots of Christmas cookies and this year is no exception.  My favorite Christmas tradition is making and decorating cutout cookies. The girls were very helpful this year with the cutouts.  And for some reason they started eating flour and really love it?

They may have eaten more than they actually "cutout"

Decorating cookies with the help of Jenna's friend Paige and our neighbor Anna

 Every year our church has a Christmas smorgasboard with a kids program.  Last year they all dressed up and Sarah danced while dressed as a sheep. This year they didn't dress up as sheep or angels, but they did sing (or somewhat sing as Sarah shows us here).

Kids Christmas program



 Scruffles and Matthew like to hide beneath the tree.  I see you!  Often Matthew is chasing Scruffles around. That poor cat. He can't ever catch a break.

Hiding beneath the tree

 I like to give cookies as gifts to teachers so yesterday I made snickerdoodles, peanut butter cups and brown butter sea salt cookies. Yum!  It was a delicious day.

More Christmas baking!

In other news:

1. Love Wins by Rob Bell is an intriguing book.  I hope what he says in the book is right. Since we really don't know what happens after we die he could be right. Of course he could be wrong too. I'm hoping Erik will read it so I can talk to him about it.
2. The Hunger Games is a book you really can't put down.  I'm glad we are reading it for our book club.
3. Last Saturday I took a First Aid class through the Red Cross.  I learned CPR and got to practice on plastic dummies. While the class was interesting, I really wanted to learn more.  Basically it was a class telling you to call 911 in almost every circumstance.  I already knew to call 911.  I want to know how to do something real (broken bones, emergency surgery, tourniquets, etc).
4. On Tuesday we had our small group Christmas party.  We will break for Christmas and then pick up again in January. We are still studying Heaven by Randy Alcorn. I really love this study however it is making me want to study more eschatology.  Unfortunately I'll be teaching on Tuesday nights next session so I won't be there for the rest of the study.
5. Check out this video of Matthew jamming to Led Zeppelin - he is so adorable!
6. Today was a horrible Quiddler day. I got stuck with a j,u,u. That was a lot of points I lost!

Santa and the new TV

You can probably read the word written here below.  This was not written by Jenna. It was written by Sarah - yes she is only 3 (she'll be 4 soon) but I was pretty impressed!

Can't tell if that's a picture of a unicorn above the word or not?

On Black Friday while everyone was storming the malls, Erik and I bought a TV for our living room (online of course - who wants to actually go shopping?). Our projection TV was 14 years old and was getting fuzzy. Erik couldn't read the scores on the football games (so sad...).  This new TV will be wall mounted and will open up some space in our living room. (maybe so I can buy more things to fill it??)

Matthew and Jenna helping Daddy wall mount the TV.

Last Saturday I took the girls to see Santa Claus at a church near our house. He read them a story and they got to sit on his lap. They also did a lot of Christmasy crafts (the girls LOVE crafts) so they had a fabulous time!

Santa reading to the kids

Jenna and Sarah on Santa's lap

Erik finished mounting the new TV on the wall which you can see in the picture below (he had a lot of help from everyone). 

If you look closely you can see an orange fluffy cat under the tree - he is not a present. Matthew is sitting in our wood rack too. I think Erik has told him not to sit in it approximately 10,000,000 times but Matthew loves it.  And he doesn't listen to us AT ALL. He will be a handful when he hits the terrible twos.

This is the "before" picture of our TV. We are excited to have the new one!

In other news:

1. Our Coo* book club is reading the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I really wanted to read it since I've heard so many good things about it.  There will also be a movie coming out soon, and I want to see it. I was number 220 on the list at the library to get the book but I suggested to/hoped for/coerced our book club to read it next :).
2. I am reading the Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. This book has been on my list for awhile and so far I'm really enjoying it.
3. I just picked up Love Wins by Rob Bell from the library. This book has a lot of controversy surrounding it. I wanted to read it for myself to see what it's all about.
4. I am also still reading the Sword of Shadows series from J.V.Jones. I'm in the third book and love this series!
5. Since we bought the TV, Erik and I decided we wouldn't spend much money on each other. He bought me two books for Christmas and I got him only two things as well (a game and a new pair of shorts). However I'm going to sneak to Half Price books when he is not looking and get him a surprise book (I don't know what yet but it will be a surprise!)
6. 75 points on Quiddler today

Mushroom Delight!

Today we checked our box of mushrooms to water them and WOW! Sarah is holding one of the mushrooms. It was huge and delicious!  I sauteed the mushroom in butter and we ate it for lunch.  Sarah was so excited to eat the mushroom we grew.

Sarah with her prized mushroom

This mushroom is getting big! This is a picture in its intermediate stage.

Besides growing mushrooms, my session off has been really good and gone by really fast. Next session (starting in January) I'll have 2 new classes and 4 classes total. This will be tough for me especially since I'll be gone Tuesday nights which is the night we have Bible study at our house. It's difficult for Erik to lead the study and set up the dinner when I'm not there. I always make the dinner ahead of time, but he still has to set everything out (and keep the kids from destroying the house).

Last night I made tropical fruity chicken. I wasn't sure how it would turn out since it had maraschino cherries, raisins, and madarin oranges in a sweet sauce mixed with chicken. However it was really good. I'll have to remember this one.

Tropical fruity chicken (I served it over rice)

In other news:

1. I finished reading the Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. It is a good book, very well written showing the problems with both capitalism and communism.  While it is a good book, it wasn't one that I couldn't put down.
2. I also finished reading Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees for our Coo* book club. This book was interesting but I didn't really get into it. In fact, I didn't care about the characters at all. You really need to empathize or at least somewhat care about the characters to get into a story.
3. We had a fabulous Thanksgiving with my parents. We left the kids (all 3!) Thursday night and picked them up on Saturday morning. On Friday we slept in until 10:30. Yipee!!  Then we went on a date to Tumbleweed and then to Panera to drink a mocha and sit by the fire. That was so nice.
4. My friend Lynn made me her secret recipe chocolate chip cookies. They even won the Medina County Fair!  They were really delicious and warm right out of the oven. I think I need to do another chocolate chip cookie test.
5. 54 points on Quiddler today. I made the word "tolling" but lost a "j" with 13 points at the end so it wasn't a good Quiddler day for me.

20 Life Skills I wish I had

I wish I had skills. And not just nunchucks skills, real life skills. 

I've compiled a list of 20 skills I wish I had and maybe someday I'll develop these skills.

20. Wear makeup.  Never really learned how to apply it properly but I know I would look prettier if I wore it.
19. Pick a lock.  My friend was locked out of her house and had to kick the door in, then she threw her back out.  All because she didn't know how to pick a lock.
18. Scuba diving.  Would love to see the undersea world close up.
17. Hot wire a car.  This seems like a good thing to know in an emergency or if I wanted to be a car thief on the side.
16. Program an Arduino. There are so many cool things you can do with an Arduino and from what I've read, it doesn't sound like it's that hard to program.
15. Shoot a bow/archery.  I'd love to be able to hit a target with a bow and arrow. Then I could be like Legolas!
14. Fencing and swordplay.  To go along with number 15, it would be awesome to know how to use a sword properly.
13. Sew.  It involves a needle and thread...beyond that I'm lost.  Sewing is a useful skill though.  Someday I'll learn how to sew!  Maybe I'll make some clothes for our family.
12. Have a poker face.  For some reason my emotions are always written on my face so plainly. I wish I could have a poker face so no one would know what I'm thinking. And so I could win at poker!
11. Add an electrical outlet.  Erik has added many electrical outlets in our basement. I watched him but never did one myself. I'd like to learn how to do it without electrocuting myself.
10. Canning.  I'd love to can the vegetables we grow in the garden. This year the extra tomatoes we had ended up going bad and we had to throw them away. I knew we couldn't eat them all in time but I didn't have a way to can them.
9. Whistle.  I was so embarrassed in 5th grade when I was the only kid in class who couldn't whistle. I still can't whistle.
8. Fishing and then clean, gut and filet the fish.  How rewarding it would be to fish for your own food and then cook that food yourself.  I would love to do this.
7. Play guitar. Much to Scruffles dismay, I would love to learn to play the guitar.  Scruffles hates the sound of my playing so much he runs away at the sight of my guitar case.
6. Speak Spanish.  I would love to know another language. Knowing and thinking in only English is limiting.  Of course, I'd need to find someone to speak Spanish with.
5. Write a useful Android App.  I've gotten so far as to install the Android development kit on my computer to use with Eclipse.  The next step is Hello World.
4. Get the kids to go to bed on time. Seriously, tonight it was 10pm. GO TO BED!
3. Know directions.  I'd like to be able to know which direction I'm facing, how to use a compass and map properly and generally know how to get anywhere.  I'm terrible with directions in real life and in MMOs. I always need help getting around.
2. Grow food.  We have 3 gardens and while they did well, they could have produced more.  We have a lot of ideas for next year (tying the vining plants to a stake so they vine up rather than out) that will hopefully help us grow more food.
1. First aid.  I wish I had some first aid skills. Especially since I have three kids, two of which are crazy climbers (Sarah and Matthew).  I'm actually taking the Red Cross First Aid course in a few weeks so hopefully this will give me some knowledge.

That was my list.  What skills would you like to have?

Mom and Dad: 40 years



Surprise Mom and Dad!



For months my sisters and I have been planning a surprise 40th Wedding Anniversary party for my parents.  I was sure they knew about it - turns out they didn't! It really was a surprise.

We planned it for the same weekend as Missy's birthday so they wouldn't suspect. Then we sent invitations to their friends and planned the party all on the sly.  I'm so glad they didn't suspect :).

Friends at the party (wearing red was the theme since 40 years is ruby)

The wedding party (Dad, Aunt Elaine - Maid of Honor, Mom, and Denny - Best Man)

Mom and Dad 40 years ago!

 It was a fantastic weekend; however now we have to top this for their 50th anniversary!  The pressure is on.

Why does this stool have shoes?  Oh... we have 3 kids.

Matthew after eating a cupcake with red frosting

93 points on Quiddler today

36 hours of cookies

I have found it!  The best chocolate chip cookies in the world.  I've seen many blogs referring to the 36 hour chocolate chip cookies printed in the New York Times. I've never made these cookies (because really, who wants to wait 36 hours for cookies?) but decided to finally try them. The dough must chill for 36 hours before you can bake them (this just meant Erik ate dough out of the refrigerator for 36 hours).

These cookies were fantastic!  Really fantastic!  My friends Tricia and Andria tried them and thought they looked like cookies you'd buy at Starbucks or some other coffee shop (although mine were yummier!). 

Wait!  One is missing!  Where could it be?

Aha! Here is the missing cookie :).  Erik ate the cookies as well as the dough.

This summer we went swimming at the Lifetime pool every Wednesday.  Due to the fact that Sarah would indiscriminately jump in the water whether she could touch or not, I thought she should have swimming lessons for safety reasons.  The girl has no fear!

So both girls are in swimming lessons and are loving it.

Jenna is wiping her face with her hands

Sarah practicing kicking (she is in the blue)

Erik was gone last weekend to a church conference in Minnesota.  He learned a lot and loved the conference but was exhausted when he came back.  To celebrate his return I made a nice dinner served on our china and made salted caramel espresso brownies for dessert. Below is a picture. They tasted so delicious, but my salted caramel sauce was too runny. It had only half a cup of heavy cream and half a cup of water in it so it didn't have too much liquid.  I think I'll have to keep experimenting with this recipe though.

Bummer.

Salted caramel dark chocolate espresso brownies:: Taste Perfection

Matthew trying to steal candy from the candy bowl.

The little rascal!

59 points on Quiddler today

Matthew and Scruff: Prison Escapees!

Erik took the girls trick-or-treating and we left Matthew at home. We thought "he is too little and won't enjoy it anyway."

That was a mistake.

Every time the doorbell rang he escaped. He cried for 2 hours straight because he couldn't go with the other kids.  If Matthew wasn't escaping then Scruffles was escaping.  My night was spent chasing kids and cats back in the house.

Jenna and Lauren at her school Harvest party

The kids after Trick-Or-Treat (Jenna is a Spanish girl, Sarah is Giselle, and Matthew wants to leave)

Matthew eating a hershey kiss. He loves 3 musketeers and m&ms too

Matthew dressed as a dog chewing on Daddy's shirt

The girls and I made little witches out of Marshmallows.  I snapped the picture before they made a huge mess.

In other news:

• Our Coo* book club just finished Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians. This book was so much fun to read.  I laughed so much - it was such a fun read.  I'm looking forward to the next book in this series.
• Now our Coo* book club is reading Lud-in-the-Mist. This book is funny too but I don't think it was meant to be funny. Erik and I laugh sometimes at the odd language the author uses.
• I also finished A Fortress of Grey Ice by J.V. Jones. I love this series! I can't wait to read the next one.
• Speaking of reading, Jenna is reading so well. I'm amazed at how far she has come. She is reading her children's Bible all by herself - she even knew the word Bethlehem!
• Jenna is also doing well with Math. Yipee!! They are studying money and her teacher said she was at a second grade level with knowing and writing the different denominations of coins.  Maybe she will be a banker or an accountant (we are still hoping for engineer!)
• Sarah is also flourishing with school. Sarah can write her name now (although she gets the S backwards a lot) and is doing well with her letters and numbers.
• Matthew is still not walking.
• Now that Sarah has preschool at 12:30 I can not go to my hip hop class anymore since it starts at 11am. There is not enough time to get Sarah lunch and to school after the class is over. Bummer! I have been doing spinning classes though and that is fun!
• I got on the scale and am 3 pounds away from my preferred weight of 123. (for no health reason - I just like the numbers 123). It has taken a long time to lose this weight after Matthew. While I weighed in the 110s in my 20s I would have to eat no chocolate to see that again. And that is NOT going to happen.  In fact...
• Leftover Halloween candy is good but really not peanut buttery enough. Erik thinks I have a problem. I get a spoonful of peanut butter and dip the candy in it.  Reeces cups, snickers, twix (I ate all those by the way), any chocolate covered goodness!  Yum!
• 89 points on Quiddler today

Iron Chef: Corn

 Today was a corny day. Corn was my secret ingredient in Iron chef today and it was a successful iron chef.

I made:

1. Chicken corn tamales and corn cake.  I put chicken, cheese, corn, and tomatoes in corn tortillas and fried them in oil. The tamales were pretty good but a little dry. The corn cakes were yummy and sweet.
2. Spicy corn dip. This dip was delicious. The corn flavor really shined and I mixed taco sauce and cream cheese and put it in the food processor until it was smooth.  I dipped peppers and chips in this yummy dip! Even the girls loved it.
3. Corn, shrimp, and black bean quesadillas. These were delicious!  I put a spicy sauce in the quesadillas as well.  Yum!
4. Carmelized onion, chicken, and corn pizzas. The carmelized onions made this pizza awesome. This pizza was the best thing I made - so many flavors that all worked well together.
5. Corn and raspberry cheesecake. I almost didn't serve this.  I made it but wasn't sure if it would be good.  Wow - this was really good. The corn and raspberry worked well together.  I was suprised but it was really good and even Erik liked it.

Erik rated me as 15.2 and I rated myself 14.9.  The girls even helped. Jenna poured the corn muffins in the tin and Sarah chopped nuts for the dip. They were my little sous chefs.

Last night we went to a Halloween party at the house of one of the kids in Jenna's class. I put on my Princess Leia costume but couldn't get my hair to do the cool bun thing. So I was Princess Leia on a bad hair day.

82 points on Quiddler today

Halloween Parties

This week has been filled with Halloween/Harvest parties at school.  Sarah's party was on Thursday where she trick or treated all around the preschool.

She is my little duck.

Jenna's party was on Friday and I was the party coordinator for her room. In half an hour the kids ate donuts, did a craft, and played a game. We jammed a lot into their party but they had fun. 

Jenna is the Spanish girl and Mrs. Rucker is a blue crayon.  I don't know who those older people in the back right of the picture are.  If I was super talented I would photoshop them out.

But I'm not.

And I'm lazy.

My Mom knows about Sarah's love of mushrooms so she sent Sarah this mushroom growing kit. Every day Sarah looks at it and asks if we can eat mushrooms.

Not yet Sarah!

Sarah's favorite song is Your Hands by J.J.Heller.  Here is Sarah's rendition of it. Not quite a perfect rendition but still pretty good I think.

When I do projection at church I often come extra early and practice along with the band.  Matthew LOVES music and here is a video of him dancing during the worship songs.  The band loves him too.

Of course Matthew is not limited to dancing with worship songs. Here he and Jenna are dancing to Bon Jovi :)

I loved my first week off.  It was glorious!

Basically I'm spending all my previous time grading watching Battlestar Galactica.

Here is a top ten list of my favorite characters in Battlestar Galactica

1. Starbuck

2. Everyone else

I love Starbuck's character.  She is awesome!

This break from work should be wonderful (reading, eating, baking, and watching TV). Of course I'm taking 2 classes towards another masters degree but I'll still have a lot more free time than usual.  Still haven't figured out what my focus area of this masters degree will be yet.  I just can't stop doing school :).

62 points on Quiddler

My Rant on peanuts

Sarah and I had fun making candy corn fudge for her school snack. Sarah carried the fudge into her classroom all excited to share and her teacher looked at it and said "we can't serve this" and gave it back to me. 

Huh?

Apparently some candy corn is made in a facility that has nuts (bag didn't say anything). Her preschool is a nut free facility.  Seriously people - this is going a little too far. I'm not serving nutty peanut butter nut-bars, I'm serving candy corn on vanilla fudge.  Candy corn is pure SUGAR (and some food coloring). 

I understand that peanut allergies can be dangerous. Sarah started crying because we couldn't serve the candy corn fudge.  I felt so bad.  Jenna's first grade class can not have any food for birthday celebrations either. 

In addition, they discourage homemade treats at Sarah's preschool.  Yes - makes perfect sense to me.  Preservative-laden storebought food is much better than homemade!

Nuts! Nuts!  Beware!

Evil Mr. Peanut touching Candy Corn! Muhahahahaha

Switching off my rant now to something much more exciting. I have discovered a chocolate chip cookie recipe yummier than my previous recipe - I'm always up for new recipes. Brown butter and sea salt chocolate chip cookies.  Oh wow! These are soooooooooooo good.  Even the dough was spectacular.  I'll be making these more often.  Not for preschool but just to eat.

Yum-O

Only 30 points on Quiddler today because I got stuck with no vowels at the end. However I made the word "equaling" probably my best word ever!

The Halloween Spirit

As promised I'm posting some pictures from our Halloween camping trip. We went camping at Cross Creek Camping Resort which is nice and close. It was our last camping trip of the year and we had an awesome time!

Matthew eating (what else does he do?) at the picnic table. You can see the 4 trash cans full of kindling behind Matthew.  Our neighbor cut down their tree and gave us these trash cans full of sticks.  I thought it would last all weekend.

Nope.

It lasted 3 hours!  4 trash cans of wood! So we had to get some bigger pieces of wood.  We needed fire.

We stuffed ourselves with smores, pizza pies, brats cooked on the fire, not to mention candy!  The kids trick or treated all around the campground. We brought a huge bag of 120 pieces of candy from Sams and ran out halfway through trick or treat!  The kids got good candy too (aka chocolate, not sweet tarts, tootsie rolls, or dumdums).

Several of the campers decorated their campsites for Halloween - some went all out!

Like these people.

And these people.

We put orange lights around this tree.  Go us! 

The campground had a picture frame Halloween craft for the kids.  The girls loved it.

There was also a costume contest.  Matthew was a little unhappy.

Matthew and Daddy enjoying the fire.

This was a great camping year for us. We had so many good trips - hopefully next year will be even better!

67 points on Quiddler today!