Dear Santa

Conversation yesterday morning:

Me: Bekah, what will you ask Santa for when you see him today?
Bekah: um.....
Me: Last year we talked about this. You can ask him for something you're hoping we'll give you on Christmas. What are you hoping you'll get this year?
Bekah: Last year we asked for a Leapster cartridge. Will he have any this year?
Me: No, that's not the point. He won't give you any of these things today. He's just asking so your parents hear what you really want for Christmas. So what would you like to ask for?
Bekah: um...
Me: What did you ask Auntie Charity for last week?? You could ask him for that.
Bekah: Oh! An Ariel doll!
Me: There you go!

Who had any idea this was such a complex concept??

So...off we went.

See all that lovely sunshine?? It was gorgeous, until it started to hurt. Today is day two of having to avoid the sun, and all noise, in hopes of avoiding a full-blown migraine. I lost the battle yesterday and am nervous that I'm not doing so well today, either.

...but it makes for cool pictures.

(I really wonder. if I ever live in Florida, will I be nearly so obsessed with sun flare? is it just because I live in a place that sees so little sunshine...54 days of sunshine, 103 days of partial sunshine. That's 157 days seeing any sun at all. And 209 days with overcast days. According to this site)

Wow. I'm seriously all over the map today.

So back to our Santa trip.

It was bitter cold, like it always is when we go see Santa.

 The line wasn't terribly long, but it's slow-moving.

Almost as slow-moving as a caboose on a track barely longer than the train car.

Do you ever feel guilty when you're letting your child do something, another child tries to join them, and his mom yells at him to come back?

I do, ever-so-slightly. But then I knew my kids weren't doing anything unsafe, and it made for good pictures, so I just felt bad for that kid.

Closer to inside the caboose...

And finally inside, where it was a bit warmer, and thankfully out of the wind and intense sun.

(those little Christmas lights are lanterns. How cool is that in a caboose??)

(Have I ever said I love cabooses?? Ever since I can remember, I loved seeing cabooses on the back of Dad's model trains. They just look so happy and cute, and they say someone was paying attention to the fact that it was the end of the train. I love them.)

Then on to Santa's lap. Our kids are some of the only ones who dress up, so every year he and his elf/photographer ask if we're going to a party! They close the door so the kids don't freeze for the picture, since we take off their coats for the picture.

Jasmine and Bekah did tell him they wanted the dolls they asked Auntie Charity for. But then he threw a curve ball...what else did they want?? They weren't ready for that question, so he asked if they wanted to be surprised. They thought that sounded good.

Are we the only family in the world who doesn't have their kids write long "wish lists" every year??? Between not watching any TV, not getting catalogs, and just not shopping unless we actually need something, none of us knows what's available out there. It's lovely!

Anyways.

Last night, we went to the County Fairgrounds to see the light show/activities there. Last time we went, Hudson was still in my belly and Bekah rode in a stroller. And probably slept.

This year, they all loved it.

They had a chance to write a letter to Santa. Again, the normal thing to do is write out the list of what they wanted. Here's what Bekah narrated (she wanted to write it but didn't want to take the time, so she finally let me do it)

I love it!!

Hudson insisted on writing his own...

...but eventually let me add a note. If you add their address, they'll get a letter back at some point, so I didn't want him to be the only one not to get one.

Bekah was quite concerned that it didn't come back out the bottom of the mailbox. It took awhile to get her to realize that this is the only way Santa will be able to see it!

Totally unrelated to Santa at all, I promised Charity that I'd add this picture to the blog so she could see it. Learning more techniques with Christmas lights :)

Rockaroni Pizza

Hudson loves to eat. But there are a few things that top his list.

1. Rockaroni
(well, to be completely true to his speech, it's "wockawoni." But I like emphasizing the "rock")

2. Hot dogs

3. Pizza

4. Eggs

One of his favorite lunches is boxed mac n cheese with hot dogs chopped up in it. He would happily eat it multiple times a week. Being as unhealthy as it is, though, I'm not going for that plan.

Recently, he suggested a Rockaroni Pizza. Dinner was already in the oven for that night so his idea didn't make it, but I did put it in the back of my mind.

And today, tired of the normal lunches we eat around here, I decided to give it a try!

It wasn't perfect, but I know what I'll do next time to make it have that status!

So here, without further ado, a Charla/Hudson Creation!

Rockaroni Pizza

Ingredients:
*Pizza dough (or Naan bread, or pitas, or whatever else you can think of for the crust. We went for Naan bread because I had it in the house and it was already lunchtime when I started)

*2 Tablespoons flour

*5 Tablespoons butter, separated

*pinch ground mustard

*1 cup milk

*2 hot dogs, warmed up

*2 cups sharp (or exta-sharp) cheddar, shredded. Or half shredded and half cubed, if you want to be like me

*breadcrumbs

*half a package of broccoli, cooked and drained, and put in a blender/food processor until it's a meal-like consistency.


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put Naan bread on a cookie sheet, or pizza dough onto a pizza sheet.

2. Melt 2 T butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and mustard until bubbly and thick.

3. Add milk, heating and stirring constantly until boiling. Add half the cheese (the cubed half if you were like me), the chopped hot dogs, and the broccoli, and stir until cheese is melted.

4. Melt remaining 3T butter, and add enough bread crumbs to make it the texture of brown sugar.

5. Pour cheese sauce on crust(s). Top with remaining (shredded) cheese and then bread crumbs.

6. Cook 6-10 minutes, until cheese is melted and bubbly.

7. Cut, serve and enjoy!

Toes

I love baby toes.

My kids are all too old to be considered having baby toes, but I still love this picture!

Mom says I have an unhealthy love of feet. No...once a person is over the age of 5, I want to see shoes on the feet.

I guess I have an unhealthy love of shoes, though.

Anyways. Feet. This is one of my favorite pictures from this year. Aren't they the cutest feet???
I'm pretty fond of the kids, too!

This photo was entered into the I Heart Faces photo challenge – www.iheartfaces.com

Funnies

Things heard in this house today:


Hudson: me want to play with Bekah *mumble mumble mumble* please, Mommy?
Me: What?
Hudson: Me say it louder?

"The reason I use the bit bike instead of the bullet bike [on Mario Kart Wii] is that it has excellenter handling." (Jasmine)

"I devoured [my dessert]." (Bekah)

25 days of pictures

The girls and I are working on taking a picture a day that's at least somehow Christmas-related each day of December. We're using Debbie Hodge's list  to keep the ideas fresh :)

Yesterday, December 1st, was "red."
Here's my take:

And Jasmine's:

Bekah did one too:

(Jasmine said this was too pink, but I said it was cool enough to call it red :) )


Today is "list." I'm the only one to do one, at least at this point!

And it's the perfect segue into our fun project from yesterday:
We came up with a new version of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

I won't write out the whole song...you know how it goes.
But here's the list:

12 marching penguins
11 Pookie answers
10 children sailing
9 veggies bailing
8 tweedle beetles
7 silly eaters
6 sweet princesses
5 Chompo bars
4 signs from Aslan
3 hungry bunnies
2 bad mice
...and a pigeon who must not drive the bus!!

Today's Surprise Picture

Today features my beloved middlest child.

Isn't she the cutest??
And no, I did nothing to those eyes. They really do sparkle!!

Surprises

Don't you just love when you go back through pictures, deleting shots that never should have been kept, and come across one that takes your breath away??

I have an incredibly beautiful daughter.

She has two incredibly cute siblings, too. But today this is the picture that took my breath away.

Christmas Tree, Part II

We celebrated Thanksgiving early with Josh's family, and a day late with my family. So the day of, we decided to go look for our tree.

And can I just tell you how glad I am that we didn't choose one of the less-than-ideal ones we saw last weekend??
Because it was perfect. A tad chilly, and more than a little muddy, but a huge selection of beautiful trees.

We ended up with a Concolor Fir, we think. It looks pretty green in the house, but compared to the other ones at the fam, it's much more blue-gray. And it smells like citrus!! It's gorgeous!

(picture taken by Charity with my camera)
And, um, huge.

(picture taken by Charity)

We found out when the farm owner helped us get it on the house: he had a chainsaw. Josh didn't need to cut it down by hand. We just look at it as his exercise for the weekend!

(picture taken by Charity)

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And now, a brief commercial break 

I've decided to join in on the "Small Business Saturday/CyberMonday" sales going on, and put my entire etsy store on sale! Everything is 20% off. Feel free to tell your friends!! And if you're not already, you can like my Facebook page and hear about new products, since I rarely think to mention them here!!

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We are now all decked out. I haven't found a place for the beautiful nativity from Josh's grandma, but everything else is out!

The tree grew when we got home.
The angel has less than an inch of head room. The tree takes over the entire section of the room. It's HUGE!! You really lose perspective when you're outside among so many trees, even though we tried to compare it against Josh's height.
But it fits, and it's beautiful. And the house smells GOOOOOOD!!

So now to find new owners for our old artificial trees!!

Searching for a Tree...Part One

We've decided to get a real tree this year.
I'm excited. I've never had a real tree. We've always been an artificial tree family.
Josh grew up with real ones, but we always had pre-lit artificial trees since we got married (he's not a fan of dealing with strings of lights. Needless to say, we don't put lights on the house, either).
But the tree we had last year was, well, missing some lights.

So we decided to try a real one this year!

All the nurseries in our county don't open until the day after Thanksgiving. Which would normally be fine, but we're celebrating Thanksgiving on Friday, so that puts it one day later. And since it was warm this weekend, it seemed like a good time to get out and look for a tree. So we found a place online that was out of the county but not too far away, and decided to give them a try. Cheap, easy-going, and they had free-range eggs and some vegetables advertised as well.

We invited Charity to come with us on our adventure and headed out. Off to find a tree...

....and make friends with a "meow"...

Hudson found a cute one. It will be a nice Charlie Brown tree in about 5 years!


So we kept walking.

And we walked.

And walked. And walked.

We went through their whole property. There were some lovely trees that would have put Clark Griswald's to shame. Wisely, we kept looking.

(Look at that sunflower, Mommy! It's the biggest flower I've ever seen! It looks like it's showering on me!)

Tired, hat-haired, and out of luck, we all decided we would be better off waiting and going to a more official nursery next weekend.

so...like all good "part one"s...this is...

To Be Continued

Dear Emma Grace

Dear Emma Grace,

I met you one week ago.
And my life was forever changed.

I'm not exactly sure what our relationship is (first cousin once removed, plus a marriage in there). But I know you've found a place in my heart that will stay yours forever.

I've known for months that you wouldn't have long to live. I watched your mommy learn more about all the things that weren't going right in your body, and I prayed for you so many times.

And maybe it seems like my prayers weren't answered. But I know better.

You breathed. You heard your parents tell you they loved you. You cried.

You lived.

Not as long as you should have, but you lived. And that was a miracle. A beautiful, God-given miracle.
And now you're dancing with Jesus. You are whole and complete (like your name, Emma). You get time with your wonderful great-grandparents.

I'm so honored that I got to see you for those few minutes, and that I could be the one to take your pictures. You taught me to be thankful for the time we have with those we love. You taught me to treasure each breath.

Your beautiful mother taught me so much about faith. She showed me (and everyone who knows her) that faith really is strengthened in times of testing. She's been through the fire and has come out purer, stronger and more beautiful.

I hope you don't mind that I'm going to keep crying about losing you for awhile. It doesn't take away from my understanding that you're with Jesus, and that you are whole and perfect. It just means I miss the opportunity to get to know you better.

Love,
Your "cousin" Charla

School

This is a cheap cross-post. Charity mentioned that it's nearly impossible to find a link from this blog to the homeschooling one, so I thought I'd mention that one occasionally, especially when I'm planning on continuing this being-online-less thing.

So here are a few new pictures of school this week!

And since this isn't my school blog, here's something else, too!

(an outtake picture from Vivian's senior picture shoot 2 1/2 years ago :) )

Enjoying the Journey

I'm finally disciplining myself and spending less time online. And I love the feeling. I feel so free! My house is staying cleaner. We got the week's school done in 4 days, and I think all but one day it was done before lunch. Which is good; tomorrow we'll start in on some of next week's school, since we have outings three days next week!!

But I did manage to get a few pictures :)

This was Monday morning's pile. One morning.
And yes, we got it all done!

Yeah, I know. It's a sandwich.
No, it's not a gun.
She recognized that the shape looked familiar: she matched it on her puzzle and proclaimed it Oklahoma!
Then she ate it, saying things like "I just ate a big church!"

Playing with the abacus after finishing her worksheet.

Bekah, proudly showing off her work.

Happy end of week 21!

Pictures of Letchworth

Pioneer Woman wrote a few weeks ago about a photo shoot that wasn't.
I had the same thing happen...well, it happened differently, but with the same results.

We went to Letchworth State Park on Sunday. The weather was absolutely perfect. (well, on the cold side of perfect). I got family pictures in front of the waterfall, with a rainbow behind our heads.

I wasn't completely thrilled with the picture because I'd forgotten to hide my hand with the remote in it (which is kinda sorta the reason I had it on "Remote Plus Timer" to give me time to hide that hand) and we were all squinting from the sun. But it was still good and I was planning to use it as our Christmas pictures.

I'd love to say that's why I'm not showing it here...to keep it a surprise.

But unfortunately, I can't show it. It's gone.

I put the memory card in the computer, hit "import," and walked away. And either I touched something, or Josh did, and it made it stop importing.
I came back an hour later, grabbed the card from the computer without looking first, put it in my camera, formatted, and then sat down at the computer.

Only to find out that something had stopped the import.

So no Christmas pictures from Letchworth. No adorable pictures of the kids throwing leaves on their heads. No video of Hudson throwing leaves at Josh.

Just a lesson. And I must say a good one to have gotten from that day and not the evening before, when I took pictures of Josh's sister and her husband!
So here's a picture from that.

Button Letter

We have a lot of buttons.

Thousands and thousands of buttons.

See, when my sisters were little and my mom spent too much time at antique stores, she would bring home a small container of antique buttons whenever she saw them. It was her way of giving the kids a collection of something fun, something they didn't know existed or could ever actually use.

Sorry, Mom. I mean, she bought them something they spent hours playing with. They really did. They're the ones who organized them all into color order. Makes me happy to see them that way.

But now those sisters aren't so little, so they donated them to our homeschool room.

About once a year, I think of a project that uses "a ton of buttons" and ends up using a couple hundred. At this rate there will be "only" 5 jars left when I die.

Unless they start buying me more.

I bought the kids their initial letter at Hobby Lobby a couple months ago. They were cheap (under $2 each) and they had all three. I knew we'd eventually use them...

So today we tackled them!

First, they put on their adorable smocks.

Then they each colored their letter with whatever paint they wanted. Hudson almost wanted pink but eventually settled on dark blue.

After lunch, they glued buttons on the surface. And I covered the whole surface with a ton of aerosol hairspray. There would be too many tears if the buttons started falling off right away.

Then I took pictures and the glass out of three of our 8x10 frames that were on our wall, and put the letters in the middle.

At some point tonight I'll figure out something strong enough to hold it there to put up on the wall. But for now, I'm too lazy to do anything more I wanted them to have plenty of time to dry.

They love the final result, and I think they'll look great on the wall!