Photo Dump

As always May has been busy.  We've done a lot and here are the pictures to prove it.

Observant Girl

We have read "A Wrinkle in Time" to the kids and started the second book in the series. Last night the teacher was telling Meg to "not be afraid." Naturally, A pipes up and says, "That must be an angel. In the Bible angels are always telling people to "not be afraid."" Go A on reading her Bible and getting some cross references.

Sweet Boy

Gman desperately needed a nap today. He is way too big for naps though at 4. We told him that Mommy wanted a nap and could he please go be a heater for her? Okay sure. At the end of the nap he wakes up and says, "Mommy I don't have any more heat to share. Can I get up now?"

Butter Cookie Recipe

At church we are having a cookie sale next weekend. In talking with another baker she told me she was making butter cookies. Since it has been a while since I made cookies I asked if she would share the recipe so I could bake it. The recipe is simple and is for a fairly traditional Dutch butter cookie.

1 C Sugar
1 C Butter
2 C Flour
1 tsp baking soda

Cream butter and sugar. Add in flour then baking soda. Bake @ 325°F 12-15 min. Will be light in color but don't overbake.

While warm they literally melt in your mouth and fall apart. While cool they are yummy as well. Chris says they are too good for the kids to try. Though since the recipe only made 2 dozen he may also eat all of them before tomorrow.

Church Nativity

On the side tables at church they replaced the normal bouquet with a white porcelain nativity scene. GMan realized this as we were singing and went running up to see it. He stopped and started patting the different pieces. He's also looking at them with huge wondering eyes that only kids can get at Christmas. They feel a bit different than ours since we have plastic little people ones and he probably didn't know porcelain existed until now. I'm watching from the sidelines wondering how I'm going to get to the falling one before it smashes into 100s of pieces. He runs back to me nearly knocking me over and tells me that Jesus is in the manger so it must be Christmas! (He keeps asking if everyday is Christmas as we go through Advent this year. We have all the Jesus pieces from our nativities held back until Christmas Eve. They are able to play with them and move the pieces around as much as they want. Then the full nativity is out for play until Jan 6.) He then gives me a super long sweet hug. He asks to go back and see some more. I tell him he can go but he has to not touch. He then places his hand over each piece but doesn't touch as if he's counting each one and making sure that it is there.

Yay for Advent. I'm also super excited about him being more concerned with Jesus being in the manger and that meaning Christmas. We may not really understand everything yet, but at least that seems like a good first step in the whole, "Christmas is when Jesus was born" conversation.

Rum Bum Bo

Today we did a fair amount of cleaning and prepping for putting up Christmas tree. We put on Christmas music. GMan succinctly put it, "We are listening to Rum Bum Bo on the iPod so it must be Christmas." He's certain today was Christmas and tomorrow is Christmas...

Rum Bum Bo is what he calls "Little Drummer Boy" by Mercy Me. He's really into the song and requested it until July I think.

Thanksgiving at the Garden

Since we didn't go anywhere for Thanksgiving this year I took the kids to the Garden while Chris made tamales.  Only Chris didn't make tamales as he didn't have the appropriate corn husks.  We had some quite yummy pulled pork though.  We will make it into tamales once we get the husks.  The kids and I had a great day at the garden.  The garden trains were out so the kids were fascinated by them.  GMan was very concerned when one wasn't running.  He kept telling the people who worked there that the train wasn't working since he wanted to make sure it wasn't malfunctioning.  Since there weren't a lot of people around I let the twins crawl around on the ground.  They liked looking at the poinsettias up close and getting a non-stroller view of things.  Everyone gave them wide berth and mentioned how cute they are.  We also watched "Grinch" at night and everything seems to be going to put up the Christmas tree tomorrow.  We finally got a new one.  Chris decided that he wasn't putting up the old one again.  It is the one we got the first year we got married.  The lights on the pre-lit tree haven't worked for years and the limbs are falling out.  I think we got our $200 worth out of the tree though.  It was a good one and went to Arkansas Illinois North Carolina and Missouri.  :)

Here are the pictures for the garden day though.

GMan concerned that the Thomas under this tree wasn't running. 

Four (well 3) calling birds