New Gifts

 Merry Christmas!  We had a fabulous Christmas and New Years. We spent a week in West Virginia with Erik's parents and visited with Joel and Megan and David and Becca. I forgot my camera so no pictures will be forthcoming. Bummer.

We found out really exciting news over Christmas though. We will have a new niece or nephew next July! Yipee! 

Dave and Becca are expecting a new little one next year. They were very sly about telling everyone too. We had no idea until we were unwrapping gifts. Becca casually (I could never pull this off by the way) handed a gift to my Mother-in-law and when she opened it, there was an ultrasound picture inside.

How cool is that?

For our next baby I'll use that tactic.  Of course, there needs to be another baby for that to happen :).

Instead of a new baby, for Christmas this year we spent a lot of money on a flat screen TV we mounted on the wall and a wood stove. Here I have before and after pictures (although you can't really see the TV in the after picture).

Before



After

Our wood stove is so amazing! It is warm and cozy to have a beautiful fire in your living room. Now we actually have a hearth! Erik gets to be manly by chopping wood in the backyard.  Bonus! Now he is always on the lookout for dead trees to cut down for our stove.  Hide your trees!

Since I can not stop modifying recipes. I've decided to modify the brown butter sea salt cookie recipe I've been using. I added cocoa powder, sugar and cut the flour and salt to make dark chocolate brown butter sea salt cookies. They tasted fantastic but Erik thought they were too puffy. I'll be cutting the cake flour in the next batch and see how that works.  When I get it right I'll post the recipe.

Dark Chocolate Brown Butter Sea Salt Cookies

 On Dec. 23 we celebrated Sarah's  4th birthday. We had a bumblebee themed party complete with bumblebee suckers, coloring pages, and crafts. Everyone had a blast and Sarah received tons of polly pockets as gifts. Now we can suck up polly pocket items in the vacuum play with polly pockets to our heart's content!

Happy Birthday Sarah!

An action shot

Bumble Bee craft we did at Sarah's Birthday party

94 points on Quiddler today!