Unexpected Christmas

Christmas 2009 has definitely been one for the record books. Oklahoma City recorded over 14 inches of snow on Christmas Eve. Because of all the snow, we were not able to pick Emily up from Nanny and Poppa's house yesterday. She'd spent the night on Wednesday night to help decorate Christmas cookies and ended up having to stay two nights instead.

Santa came to our house anyway. He brought lots of presents and left a stocking full of goodies too. He ate some cookies and drank some milk and left Emily a letter saying that he's sorry he missed her. She'll open her presents as soon as she gets home.

The first thing Emily told Nanny this morning was that she was ready to go home. We're going to try to make that happen today. Mike has been out working on getting the car out of the snow drift this morning. He has made good progress. It would be very helpful if we had an SUV or a truck or something a little higher than a car.

Since Emily is not here to open presents, Mike and I decided to go for a walk in the snow. I wish I had taken my yard stick with me to see how high some of the drifts were. The south and east sides of the house were some of the deepest areas.

Someone had been walking in the snow before we got there. Maybe a bunny?

The snow collected on some of the cedar tree branches. The snow and high winds broke off the top of one of our small trees in the front yard.

It was so so cold outside this morning. I think the TV news guys said the wind chill was something like 7 degrees. So we did not stay outside for long.

We came inside and warmed up. Not much we can do until Emily gets home so I thought I would write a long, long blog post to take up some time. Ha!

This is really not how Christmas was supposed to be. Mike and I had it all planned out. We have some nice surprises for Emily and cannot wait until she opens her presents. Christmas morning without our child is just not right.

Yesterday was the same way. It was hard just watching the snow and not knowing how we would be able to get Emily home. I spent most of my day keeping busy - cooking, cleaning, wrapping gifts, and making Christmas cookies.

I swore I was not going to make all those cookies by myself, but what else did I have to do? I could not find my Christmas cookie cutters so I made all the cookies round. The decorating was all me. Isn't it lovely?

I think our Christmas dinner with the family is going to be postponed so I don't know what we'll have for Christmas lunch. Probably sandwiches, devilled eggs and sweets. I don't think I have anything more gourmet than that.

I can't wait until Emily gets home.

Merry Christmas everybody! JESUS is the reason for the season.

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Happy Birthday

So sorry about my lack of posts the last few weeks. I have been without a computer for quite some time. Then I got it back and something else messed up on it the next day. Sooo frustrating! But it looks like I'm back on track now.

Lots of things have happened that I'd like to share, but I can only do one thing at a time.

This weekend, I celebrated my birthday. On Saturday night, Mike and Emily took me out to a wonderful pizza dinner with a little shopping afterwards. Then we went home and enjoyed some angel food cake with fluffy white frosting - that Emily helped me bake.

(In case you wanted to know, the frosting is by Betty Crocker and comes in a small blue box. Sometimes this frosting is hard to find. My WM Supercenter does not carry it, but I can find it in a small local supermarket.)

Mike and Emily also got me a set of "Magnolia blossom" wall plaques that I saw online and really liked.

On Sunday after church, we went to The Cheesecake Factory with the family to continue the celebration. I had their Shepherd's Pie for lunch followed by their Red Velvet Cake Cheesecake. It was so so good. It had layers of red velvet cake and cheesecake finished off with white chocolate. Yum!

All in all, it was a great weekend filled with fun, family, and great friends.

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Would you do me a favor?

One of my friends from my hometown just had a major surgery to treat appendix cancer. She is still in the hospital and could use some encouragement.

Would you go to her website and leave her a message?

Her name is Heather Chandler. She's a young mother with two children. Lets lift her up while she's going through this tough tough situation.

Here's her website: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/heatherchandler

Thank you all very very much!

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Red Velvet Cake Balls

Over the last few days, I've been working on making some red velvet cake balls. The "recipe" is really simple. The execution is the difficult part.

All you need to do is make a boxes cake according to the package directions. I used a 9X13 cake pan, but it doesn't really matter. After baking, let the cake cool about 30 minutes crumble the entire cake into a large bowl. Mix an entire can of frosting into the crumbled cake and mix well. This will be the filling for the cake balls.

Next, cool the mixture for a few hours or overnight in the refrigerator. Then use a cookie scoop to form into small balls. Then dip into white chocolate - I used almond bark. Also, I put the balls onto a cookie sheet and stuck the balls into the freezer until they were firm before I dipped them. I think this is important because it is very hard to dip the balls when they are soft.

Cool the dipped balls on waxed paper. Enjoy!

See? Simple and so yummy good!

You can use any combination of cake and icing. Red Velvet cake and cream cheese frosting sounded good to me, but you could do chocolate cake and chocolate frosting or white cake with chocolate fudge frosting.

Have you ever made these? If so, what cake/frosting combinations did you use?

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Buttery Peanut Brittle

Okay so this weekend I experienced a cooking first. I actually used a candy thermometer while making my buttery peanut brittle. In years past, I'd experimented with microwave methods. Laugh if you want, but it actually turned out pretty good a couple times. But when it flopped, it flopped big time.

So this time, I got out the candy thermometer and jumped in with both potholders.

Here's the recipe:

Peanut Brittle

2 c. sugar
1 c. light corn syrup
1 c. water
2 c. raw spanish peanuts
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. butter
1 tsp. baking soda
2 large greased cookie sheets

In a heavy 3 qt saucepan, over medium heat, combine sugar, corn syrup and water. Cook until 234 degree is reached on a candy thermometer. Add peanuts and salt, stirring constantly up to 305 degrees.

Quickly stir in butter and baking soda. Pour at once onto cookie sheets. Spread very thin with spatula. Break up when cool.

And that's it ... simple as that. *wink*

If you follow me on twitter, you might remember the tweets about the candy thermometer and how I sat down for one minute and suddenly the nifty candy thermometer was 15 degrees over where it should have been. Yeah. Don't do that.

Well that's all for today. Come back tomorrow to see what other goodies I'll be sharing with you.

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A Week of Traditions

This weekend, I started gathering up things to make some Thanksgiving goodies for our family gathering. We usually go down to my family's house for Thanksgiving and then stay up here in OKC for Christmas Eve/Christmas Day.

So this week I would like to share some of my family's Thanksgiving traditions and recipes. But first ... I am a little behind on reporting all the happenings around here.

Pilgrims and Indians

On Friday morning, I went to Emily's school for the traditional Thanksgiving lunch. Emily went to lunch at 10:30am with the Pre-K and Kindergarten kids. They had turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, and pumpkin pie squares. All the kids had made either a pilgrim hat or a indian hat. Emily made an indian hat - probably because of the colorful feather.

After lunch, they got to go out on the playground and play for a bit. Of course, Emily had to point out Jaydon to me. He even let me take his picture with Emily. The teacher said that Jaydon is a really good kid, very sweet and courteous. That makes me feel better that she's got some good friends.

While Emily and her class went back to class, I headed out to look a blue shirt for Emily and some Christmas presents. I found a lot of things including a beautiful purple dress but not a blue shirt. It is really hard to find just a plain light blue shirt for a girl. Everything is turquoise or has some kind of design on it.

A Big Star

On Saturday, we celebrated Madison's 10th birthday. All the little girls went over to Nanny's house on Saturday afternoon for a pedicure party then Saturday evening the whole family came over for pizza, salad, and Hannah Montana cake. Madison got a lot of nice gifts. I can't believe she's already 10 years old!

Southern Living

I've been looking at my Southern Living magazine to see what new recipes they might have. They always have SUCH good desserts. I've been looking at the Pumpkin Pie Spectacular which has pecan streudel and maybe the Caramel Pecan Bars. They also had an idea for a tabletop decoration - Caramel Shopping Bags. Anything caramel is good in my book, but that shopping bag they had made was so cute! If only I was so talented. I love my Southern Living magazines!

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A Beary Fun Day

Yesterday, we went to Sarah's 7th Birthday Party at Build-A-Bear Workshop.

The kids got to pick out an animal ... Emily picked out a bunny with soft pink ears. Then they picked a heart for their bear and went through a ritual where they rubbed it on their cheek, touched it to their ear, and kissed it before putting it inside their new friend.

Then they got to help put stuffing in their animal - they got to choose how soft or firm they wanted them.

Then the animals were sewed up with their stuffing and their heart inside.

Next, it was time to get their friends a bath. Emily was soooo cute brushing on her bunny. She really worked it over good, brushing her all over even her big pink ears. She knew exactly what to do.

Meet beautiful bunny "Sweetheart".

This is the whole group with their animals.

After everyone got their bears fixed up and dressed, we went out to the food court in the mall and had cupcakes and opened presents.

It was SUCH a fun party and Emily really likes her pretty bunny.

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The Feast Is On

This week in Emily's school folder, we got our "assignment" for the Thanksgiving Feast party. Yes, we were assigned a food item to bring. The paper said "1 cooked pumpkin pie".

Okay, fine, no problem. I have never made a pumpkin pie in my life, but how hard can it be? I could go the canned pumpkin route or I could use those little pumpkins that we got at the pumpkin patch the other week.

But you know these are four-year-olds we're talking about. I'm pretty sure they are not going to care much what the pumpkin pie tastes like as long as it comes with whipped topping. I may just pick up one at the grocery store. It just depends on how much time I end up with.

I usually make my homemade cracker jacks around Thanksgiving. This year, I am looking to find a new kind of popping corn to use. When we were at the pumpkin patch a few weeks ago, they were selling kettle corn. The popcorn had these huge puffy kernels. I wish I could find some corn like that for my cracker jacks.

I have not decided on anything else to fix for Thanksgiving. Note to self - maybe I should ask Mom what I need to bring. Wait, she'll read this before I even get a chance to ask. Love you Mom!

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Piggly Wiggly Flu

On Saturday, we took Emily to the county health department to get her first of two H1N1 shots. If you recall, we just went to get the seasonal flu shot a few weeks ago and so it did not take Emily long to figure out that today was going to be a repeat of that performance. She was understandably upset about what was about to happen.

Luckily, we did not have to wait very long. We pretty much just walked right in and filled out the paperwork. They were having a "vaccination blitz" which meant that there were probably a dozen places you could go to get shots this weekend.

I had to hold Emily and she was crying and it was awful. After we were done, she got to choose a bear and she got a sticker for her shirt. On the way home, I asked why she cried and she said "because I wanted a bear". Ha!

Here's a picture of Emily with her new bear. She was a little put off that it didn't have a face.

I asked her to show me a model's pose and this is what happened ---->

Hehe, so cute.

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Vroom Vroom

I think I've hinted several times that "Mama got a new toy". It's something special and mostly for me. I just love it.

It's hardworking ...

Small, but mighty ...

Voraciously independent ...

A real busy little bee ...

It's a robot ...

Just for me ...

A Roomba!

Sometimes I feel a little guilty when the Roomba vacuum is running because it's working and I'm not. I love how it gets under furniture. It's so easy just to let it work while I do something else. It really does a good job too. It picks up all kinds of dirt and debris. My floors have never looked so good.
I use the Roomba on the carpet in the living room and bedrooms and the vinyl flooring in the kitchen. I've also used it on bathroom rugs and an indoor/outdoor rug in the laundry room. I've used it several times in Emily's room, but only once in my bedroom. Sadly, my bedroom floor hasn't been clear enough to run the Roomba since then. Just being real with ya'll ...
I got the 530 model which goes back to its charging base when it finishes the cleaning cycle or the battery gets low. It's such a nice feature. My Roomba "sleeps" under an end table and I don't even have to put it away when it's done cleaning.
That's my kind of cleaning!

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Picture Day

Thursday was Picture Day at Emily's school. I had been trying to find her a pants set to wear for her Pre-K picture - something brightly colored but simple in design. I wanted to find just the right thing because I kept thinking that this will be the first of her "school pictures".

I have a photo album page that's filled with all my school pictures in order from kindergarten to high school. I imagine Emily will have something similar too when she gets older. It's so fun to look back and see how they changed from year to year.

Last weekend, Mike took me and Emily shopping for a picture day outfit. Like I said, I wanted to find a pants outfit for Emily to wear. Well, I didn't like any of the pants and shirts that the store had, but I found a cute jumper. Do I really want to send my pre-kindergartner to school wearing a jumper? A jumper with a white shirt? "Sure, why not?"

So we got this purple jumper ...

... with a white shirt ... and white pantyhose. I picked an older pair of tights because I had this feeling that Emily would get a hole in her pantyhose ... which she did. BUT ... the hole was not nearly as big as I'd imagined ... and not nearly as noticeable. I thought they would be ripped to shreds. Ha!

The night before picture day, I showed her the jumper outfit again to confirm that she'd be willing to wear it the next day. (You do remember the whole Halloween costume situation, right?)

She wanted to know if I would be at school when they took her picture. "No". Will my friends be there for picture day? "Yes" Okay she was good with that answer and she would wear the outfit.

I think she really enjoyed wearing the dress to school. She is really a girly girl. She loves wearing dresses and ruffled shirts and silky nightgowns. She also loves to have her fingernails and toenails painted. She tells me that she doesn't want anyone looking at her when they are unpainted. She says "I don't want anyone to see my fingers - they're naked!"

She likes to pick the color of the polish. And she bosses me around "Mom, this polish is old. You can take off this old polish and then put on a new color."

Oh the joys of motherhood. Little girls are the best! "Sugar and spice and everything nice. That's what little girls are made of."

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Pre-K Halloween Party

On Friday afternoon, Emily's class had their Halloween party. I drove down from work to be with Emily at her party. I was about 10 minutes late due to traffic on the highway. Grrrr!

The kids had pizza, veggies and dip, and cookies at their party. Then they played a game where they put their hands into a tub of "goop" and try to find a centipede. If they find it, they win a prize.

When I got to the classroom, one little boy was already in time out by the door. Another one was laying face down on the floor and didn't get up the entire time I was there. One of the teachers eventually picked him up and moved him to a corner instead of the middle of the floor. I am wondering if this was typical for a day in Pre-K.

3-D

On Friday night, Mike and Emily and I went to see "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" in 3-D at the theater. There were not very many people at the movies that night since it was trick-or-treat night in a lot of communities around here. Emily did pretty good with keeping her 3-D glasses on during the movie.

She also ate almost a whole box of Hot Tamales!!! She really likes hot stuff like that. It does not seem to affect her very much. If it was me, I would have sucked down a large soda with it but she was fine.

I think this was the first 3-D movie I had ever seen. We all had a good time together.

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Happy Halloween!

I hope you all had fun-filled Halloween. As you may know, we've been debating for weeks about what costume Emily would wear for Halloween. We had two costumes - an angel and Princess Ariel. Emily decided that .... she did not want to dress up and she did not want to go trick-or-treating.

Instead of trick-or-treating, we went out for pizza. We went to Old Chicago for some deep dish pizza. It was yum! All the waiters and waitresses were dressed up in costumes - a kitty cat, a fairy, a cowgirl, a prisoner, a leopard kitty, a dude with a mullet, a Hawaiian tourist, and a Hippie.

Emily and Mom

('Scuse my look - I slept for several hours this afternoon and it ruined my look)

Dad

After that we went and picked out a new Wii game. While we were in Best Buy, Emily showed me the Nintendo that she wants for Christmas and allllll the games that she wanted. I hope Santa has deep pockets this year.

Before we went home, we stopped by Chick-fil-a for an ice cream cone. Before we even got out of the drive-thru, Emily's ice cream had already fall off the cone. *sigh* What a mess!

When we got home, Emily opened a package that had come in the mail for her. It was from Grandmother and Granddaddy and it was full of all of Emily's favorite things - Halloween book, coloring book, stickers, stampers, chocolate candy, and Boo-mallows just to name a few!

After playing our new Wii game for a bit, it was time for Emily to go to bed. Daylight Savings Time ends tonight so I went ahead and set Emily's clock back an hour. She won't call me in the morning until her clock says 7:00 so I will be able to sleep in a little bit in the morning.

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Pumpkin Patchin'

Okay, as promised, I uploaded several pictures from our field trip to the pumpkin patch. Emily and her classmates road the school bus - her first time. First, they went to the park and then to the Orr Family Farm.

Getting off the bus at the park. The lady with the camera is the teacher's assistant.

So excited, but it's cool and windy

Sliding is always fun

Emily was chasing a little boy around ... I kept my eye on him and took his picture then asked Emily who was in the picture - Jaydon, of course!



I was taking a picture of Emily's teacher taking a picture of Emily. She wanted Emily to sit on the edge of the slide, but other kids kept sliding down.

Who can pass up a turn on the swings? And if you must know, Jaydon was swinging right next to her.

The park had lots of tunnels and monkey bars and some really cool tire swings.

Next, it was time for sack lunches in the park.

Standing in line to get on the bus to the pumpkin patch - Say "Pumpkin!"

All of Emily's class before they loaded up on the bus

Our first stop was the animal barn. This little old goat was grabbing people's clothes as they walked by his cage. It was so so crowded in there that I don't think the kids could see much of the animals.

Then we took a hayride (minus the hay) to the pumpkin patch.

Everyone got to pick a pumpkin. This is Emily and her friend Jaydon comparing pumpkins.

Emily and I also rode the carousel. I didn't get any pictures of that since I was riding too. Emily rode a pink horse .. I 'walked' beside.

I think all the kids had a fun time even though we didn't get to do as much at the farm as we'd liked.

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Picking Punkins at the Punkin Patch

Today, Emily and I had a very busy day at her first Pre-K field trip. They went to a local park to play for a while. They ate their sack lunches at the park. Then we went to Orr Family Farm to visit the animals, go on a hay ride, and pick pumpkins at the pumpkin patch.

I took lots of pictures on the field trip, but I have not had a chance to pull them off the camera and upload them yet. I am really just too too too tired.

Hopefully I will be able to share some pictures with you tomorrow night.

And ... don't let me forget to tell you all what happened at Cubbies tonight. I was hoping for an easy night, but maybe that did not happen. Don't let me forget!

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Recharging My Batteries

Tonight, I'm recharging my batteries both literally and figuratively.

We're going to the Punkin' Patch field trip in the morning so I've got to get my camera batteries all charged up. I fully intend to take a lot of pictures of this special event. I have been so bad about posting pictures recently. I need to get some new ones for everyone.

I'm going to spend my evening relaxing and hopefully get a good night's rest tonight. I've had an awful time sleeping this week with all the coughing and the mad stuffy nose. Last night, I took some Benadryl and I was s00000 out of it. I could not keep my eyes open.

I haven't taken any medication tonight and so I am feeling better. I just hope I can fall asleep and stay asleep tonight.

I will admit that I'm not looking forward to being out in the cool air all day tomorrow with my cough and stuffy nose. I was thinking maybe I should wear a paper mask, but that would probably embarrass my child and freak out her whole class. Lets just pray for a warm day!

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What will I be?

I'm sure you're fully aware that Halloween is next Saturday. We've bought Emily two different costumes - Tinker Bell and an angel. Of course, Emily does not want to wear either one of those costumes ... or any of the other 150 store-bought or homemade or "your own clothing" costumes that we've suggested.

So what will Emily be for Halloween? My guess is that she'll be dressed as "Emily". Want to make a bet?

If you remember Halloween last year, you might recall that Emily does NOT like to see people dressed in costumes. She starts crying and shaking sooo bad. We have been talking for weeks about how there are "just people" in those costumes. It's probably somebody's mom or dad. That's not so scary, is it?

I guess we'll see on Saturday.

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Best Laid Plans

Last week was a pretty tough week. All the "best laid plans" did not work out as we'd planned. Emily got sick then I got sick then we got flu shots then our "Girls Weekend" was cancelled.

One of our problems this week was that we did not have a working thermometer. We thought Emily felt okay, but we didn't know if her fever was truly gone. If she still had a low fever, they would likely check her when she went to school and then we'd just be back at the beginning where we started this week.

So one night after work, we went into town to try to find a thermometer. I ran into the drugstore while Mike and Emily waited in the car. I was going to get a forehead scan thermometer since I knew that was what they used at Emily's school, but they were out of those. The only thing left were the under-the-tongue variety or old fashioned mercury thermometers. I got an 8-second under-the-tongue thermometer and hoped Emily wouldn't throw a fit over that one.

While I was standing in line to check out, I noticed the drugstore had all their Halloween candy out beside the registers. They had these mixed bags of Reeses candies - Reeses Cups, Reeses Sticks, Reeses Fast Breaks ... and my personal favorite ... Reeses Pieces. So I grabbed a bag. It was an impulse buy - what can I say?

When I got into the car, I pulled out the bag and said "This bag of candy just jumped into my buggy when I was walking by!" Emily just thought that was soooo funny. We were laughing and talking about how that whole situation might have gone down. "Hey Lady!" "Take me home!" "Hehe, she doesn't see us in her buggy!" That was a good bag of candy. It made me sick baby girl laugh and laugh.

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Improvement

Emily seems to be feeling better today. She did not have a fever this morning, but she's still coughing a little. Since she's been fever-free for 24 hours, she'll probably be going back to school in the morning. Tonight, she asked me if her best friend at school - a little boy named Jayden - knows that she had been sick. Yep .. I think he knows.

Before school tomorrow, we're going to go get our seasonal flu shots. The county health department is going to be at our church administering the shots in the morning. Anyone want to place a wager on how long we'll have to stand in like for that?

Tonight, I told Emily that we would all be getting a "little poke in the arm" in the morning before school. She did not think that was a good idea at all. Then I told her that we would go get some breakfast after we were done. She thought that might be okay. I doubt it will be okay in the morning when we get there.

Our plans for the weekend are still up in the air at this point. Even though Emily is feeling better, I would still hate to pass along any germs to the family. Besides Emily, my throat has been pretty scratchy today. I hope I'm not coming down with something too. Lets hope not because we have been planning this trip for a long time and we really want to go!

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