Look what I found

I would say it was a Christmas miracle, but I have been looking for them for over a month. I have spent hours searching for them. I had looked in just about every nook and cranny. I had opened almost every box in our house. I ordered new ones in hopes that once I did that I would find the old ones. It worked! It made me determined to find the old ones so I can return the new ones. Yesterday the new ones arrived at the store and I got an e-mail that I could pick them up and yesterday I found the old ones. Wahoo!

So, where were there? Yesterday I made Chad look with me. We each took different rooms in the house and then we moved out to the garage. We went through almost every box, again. and And then in the last possible place I was going to look, there they were. In an IHC luggage bag. I couldn't believe my eyes and a whooped with delight. I don't whoop much. But it was definately warranted.

Mmmmm

Don't you love all the sweet things that are part of Christmas time?

Cookies

I have a sugar cookie and a buttercream frosting recipe that I absolutely love, so the kids and their cousins decorated cookies one night.

Candy

Once again I made penuche and pecan logs . My grandma has been making it for 50+ years. I will probably end up doing the same thing. Penuche is a big part of Christmas to me, penuche runs through my blood.

I had my own little sweat shop going this year. The boys bagged the pecan logs, Chad sealed them.

Gingerbread Houses

Why exactly do we have kids decorate Gingerbread Houses? They want to destroy them as soon as they are built.

I made my boys wait three days to eat their Gingerbread Houses. It was torture for them. And then yesterday I let them attack them.

I thought it would be fun to drill a hole in the side of the Gingerbread house and throw in a firecracker. Hmm, probably not a good thing to show little boys. And Jack did just fine destroying the Gingerbread House on his own. (Actually with a little help from his brother. Ben's train is just fine. Brothers can be kind of mean sometimes, huh?)

I love all the sweet things, but I am a little sugared out. How about you?

The case of the missing stockings

Last year around Christmas time I decided I wanted new stockings for my family. I wanted to make them and decided I was going to start right after Christmas in hopes that it would be done before Christmas this year. (It takes me that long to get projects like that done. I lose interest because my attention span is short when it comes to things like that.) Anyway, right after Christmas I decided to research some ideas on the internet. I wanted something simple but then I saw these cute whimisical stockings on JCPENNEY.com and knew the kids would love them. They were $4.99 and I think I used a coupon code so I got them for $4.00 each plus shipping.

(This picture is JCPenney's stockings this year. Last year's version was very similar, but a little bit different.)

I knew I couldn't make stockings for that cheap, so I bought them. Wahoo, my project was done!

They sat in the bottom of my closet for a long time and then one day I thought I put them away with all the Christmas stuff. Thought I did. But when I pulled out all the Christmas stuff this year they were no where to be found.

I am a fairly organized person. Okay, let's be honest - obsessive at times. It is driving me batty that I cannot find them. I have looked almost everywhere and for some reason I have this strange feeling they might have accidentally been sent to DI.

The kids are so sad that we don't have stockings up yet. They have similar ones on JCPenney.com, but they are $9.99 each. Still an okay deal, but not $4.00. Blasted! I hate misplacing things.

Christmas Candy

This year I made a bunch of penuche, four double batches. I used some of the penuche to make pecan logs, and for the first time in a long time I didn't overcook the caramel. I also tried making almond nougat. It kind of worked, not too bad for a first attempt. I've wanted to try it ever since Chad bought me some almond nougat from Avenue Sweets.

Jack and Ben loved helping roll the penuche into balls. Jack had fun, Ben was very useful.


He can roll really good balls. He had to concentrate pretty hard. It was fun to watch him roll his bottom jaw around as he rolled the balls.

Lots of times I will make candy for neighbors and friends and then when it comes to delivering the candy, I don't do such a good job. I just don't get around to it. We end up eating some of it and then the rest sadly goes to waste. This year I did a pretty good job getting it to people. Pretty good, but I didn't get it to everybody I wanted to, including people in far off places like Florida. Maybe next year :)

Mommies and Babies

The past couple of months Jack has been obsessed. Obsessed with mommies and babies. He will take a chip, a piece of bread, a piece of paper, a stick, anything and break it a small piece and a big piece and call it the baby and the mommy.

When my aunts took him to the Build a Bear workshop, they said he was carrying around the basket and trying to decide what animal to get. The lady at the store showed him a dog that came with a puppy. The mommy dog and puppy hook together. The mommy has a magnet in her mount and the puppy has a magnet in the bandana around his neck. When the lady showed Jack the dog and puppy he said, "put that in there [his basket]."

This year we got a Playmobil nativity set. It has tons of little pieces, but it's awesome. Since Jack still puts things in his mouth and Ben puts things in his nose they had to play with it supervised, but we still played with it quite a bit.

Jack especially loved Mary and Baby Jesus and carried them all around the house. I'm suprised we didn't lose them.

In addition to the Playmobil nativity set we got this year my mom also made us a really cute set of felt nativity puppets. (I need to take a picture of them.) Of course Jack had to have Mary and baby Jesus.

Christmas Day 2009

Christmas Day this year was a bit more laid back than other years because we visited with Chad's parents on Christmas Eve. This turned out to be especially nice, because both of the boys ended up especially sick. Jack woke up Christmas Eve morning feeling quite under the weather and coughing like a smoker. By mid-afternoon it had hit Ben. They were both running high fevers.

Christmas morning they slept pretty late. We carried Ben out into the living room and it took him 10 minutes to realize that it was Christmas. In between the moments of feeling especially sick, the boys were excited. (Ben is sans shirt because he was soooo hot from his fever.)

They loved their remote controlled cars, monster bath towels, alien shirts, and pistachios. Ben also got a camera.

After Christmas morning festivities we went up to my parent's for the traditional omelets and scones.

By mid afternoon Ben was exhausted and fell asleep on the couch with my brother.

We ended the evening with dinner at my grandparents house.

In addition to the fun of giving gifts we were spoiled with gifts. I asked Ben what his favorite present was. It was a Hotwheel car, blue with flames on it, that he got in his stocking. Something that cost $.79.

Houses of Gingerbread

This year I decided to try to bake a gingerbread house. I am generally pretty good with stuff like this, but I miserably failed. Okay, I didn't fail, but I never, ever want to bake a gingerbread house again. It was way too much work. I didn't even end up using the gingerbread house I made because I never got around to melting candy in the windows.

I ended up buying a gingerbread house kit right before we got together with our neighbors to decorate gingerbread houses. I let Chad and the boys decorate the house while I just watched. It was hard for me to do, but I didn't want to be a perfectionist about it.

The boys of course didn't last too long. They ate a bunch of candy and then got bored. And then spent the rest of the time doting over our friends cute baby girl.

We decorated gingerbread houses again a couple of days later with my sister's kids.

Madi put some candy on the outside of her gingerbread house, but then discovered she could put candy inside the gingerbread house. When my sister and I weren't looking she filled her gingerbread house.

Can you tell she has had a little too much candy?