Grandma's Cooking

I have a grandmother who is an AMAZING cook! Everything is made from scratch, made with tons of flavor and made with plenty of LOVE! A few years ago she and I made a cookbook of all the best recipes for our family!

I am fortunate to have her live 2 miles from my house and so we get to enjoy her cooking alot! She is a very healthy young 82 yr old, but I realize that one of these days she will move on to a bigger and better eternity, then, I will be the one cooking all of her good recipes!

So the other night I was hungry for her yummy chocolate cream pie! So, I made one! It turned out great, and was delicious! My favorite part of her pies is the meringue! I like a lot of peaks on my pie, so I made 3 times more peaks than Gma Mae usually does! I had to take a picture it was so pretty and delicious!



Don't you wish you had a piece?!

Snow Day!

Rick came home from a very cold morning loading the big brown trucks, and said he was going to make Omelettes and wanted to take the kids to Pine Valley to play in the snow!

What a fun dad! We had breakfast and then I got them all in layers of clothes, then snow clothes, only to remind them all to go potty before we left, and ALL of them had to undress, go and then redress!

So we invited my Uncle to come, it is always good to have a more even adult to child ratio when going outdoors! We drove 2 Toyota 4 wheel drive trucks, which ended up being a blessing after Rick thought he was bigger than the snow and got STUCK! (I was dying laughing, but held my composure just long enough to take photos!)





My uncle insisted on taking a photo of Rix mishap and we all rubbed it in a little bit! Karma is a funny thing...on the way home as we drove over the icy roads towards home Rick saw in his rear view mirror the image of my uncles truck carrying myself, and 2 kids, fishtail slightly to the left, and then a correction caused a much larger fishtail to the right and finally the last correction caused his truck to spin completely around and faced the opposite direction landing us in the ditch. (For those of you who know my uncle it makes this even funnier...he is the slowest, most cautious, safe, over protective driver I have ever met! ) Rick wanted a side note that he did note JUMP out of the truck to photograph this mishap, rather he pulled over, turned on his flashers and made sure it was clear for us to get back on the road! Needless to say I screeched a little and was slightly terrified! Of course this all happened in the 5 ft. area where there was NO protection from the mountain drop off on the side :) Guess I should say an extra prayer of thanks tonight!

We took up sleds and extra gloves! Hunter could not stand on his own his layers of clothes were SO heavy! Therefore, he was grumpy a lot of the time!



Here we are moving from 1 sledding hill to another on the other side of Pine Valley



The adults spent a lot of time bringing sleds and kids up the hills!




This was our favorite hill, it is just past the historical LDS chapel in Pine Valley.





We finished off the day at home in new, warm, dry clothes and Hot Chocolate! Such a great day!

Christmas Morning

I grew up in a big family with a lot of FUN people! We are all our own people, have different personalities and all do things the same, but jut a little bit different...so we do Christmas BIG in our house, but that isn't always the case with many of my siblings. I remember growing up and Santa brought us that ONE thing we wanted more than anything and then we had a stocking filled with nuts, clementines and a few little things for fun and always some clothes or beautiful handmade things!

I loved the Christmas mornings from my childhood, but I also have to appreciate and respect the way Rick, as a father wants Christmas morning to be for our children. I have realized over the year that it isn't about the "things" they get, it is a deeper, emotional connection to his childhood that is the reason behind his desire to have a BIG, abundant christmas morning!

A lot of our family does the 3 gift theme, relative to the 3 gifts the wisemen brought to the baby Jesus. I love the idea, but don't know how to backtrack after all the years of big and grand! So, I choose not to post Santa's Loot photos on my blog, FB or our family site. But, I can say they all got everything they REALLY wanted and were very grateful and surprised that day!

This photo was taken at 4:59 am (which is the specified time they are "allowed" to wake everyone up and come upstairs) with them all gathered on the stairs waiting for the green light from us!



It was a great morning and they were all so happy and appreciative. By noon, it was a GREAT morning for me as all the trash was out of the house, all the toys were removed from their packaging and all put in new places in their rooms! Now, I can enjoy my family and our christmas day together! (Darn OCD!)

Parker helped me set out the treats for Santa and his reindeer!

Reason for the Season

So we did it! We survived another christmas morning with 5 kids who have a loving Santa who works very hard to make it a HUGE magical morning! I love this time of year with all the holidays back to back, but mostly knowing that Rick gets a few extra mornings off from the big brown truck is what I love best! Being home with our family and just watching great holiday movies and eaing yummy food is wonderful. Seeing the excitement and joy and gratitude on the kids faces is priceless!

So, we love the man in red but we DO know that the Saviors birth is why we find joy this time of year. Knowing that his life and death would mean so much to us and our faith is what we DO celebrate and that is why I will drag us all out of bed at 7am today so that we can be to church to celebrate his birth and that is why I will not go to the red store and load up on the 1/2 price holiday sale today...tomorrow all bets are off! I promised myself that I would always keep the sabbath day holy, I just hope the Lord blesses me and their is an ABUNDANCE of stuff left for me to buy tomorrow :).

So photos will come tomorrow, today we celebrate, just like the other 364 days a year, the birth the death and the life of our Savior Jesus Christ! Merry Chrismas.

Simple Gingerbread House Decorating

So, I love doing the gingerbread house thing but my plan for 5 kids is to buy 1 premade house kit and let them all do it together for a family home evening. No one actually eats it, because too many hands make for germs and then it collects dust, so it sits atop our counter and then gets dumped in the trash on Dec. 26!

I came across this cute Wilton's House Cookie Cutter and decided to do it all different! I made our family gingerbread dough and a double batch of royal icing! We cooked gingerbread men and houses. The kids each decorated a man and a house! I didn't put a lot of forethought into this and didn't buy the traditional candies to top with. So, I went to our candy bucket and cut open bags from all their halloween and holiday parties! (The halloween mats were from target last year and I use them all the time for cooking and craft projects!)

The kids had fun decorating and the cookies turned out perfect! They each got to eat 1 cookie and save the other for another day! This is my new favorite way to still keep a holiday tradition going without all the cross contamination and hassle :)

Cookie Plate

I can't take credit for this one, but just wanted to give a shout out to my friend Ilona for the cute christmas treat she made for us! Our friend Erin, showed her how to make them and I am sure they got the plates and candlestick holders at Hobby Lobby...they turned out so cute and the cookies were delicious!!!!

Rainy Days

We have been blessed with an over abundance of moisture...bad news is I have to come up with creative ways for the kids to get out their energy while being indoors.

Carter bought this new little craft kit at a yardsale for $1! I love these do it yourself projects. Rick came out to help with the nailing and gluing and even Hunter joined in with his Handy Many hammer. Here is the final project! We found a logo online of Carters choosing and printed it on a label sheet, then coated the whole thing with glossy spray! The kids have had fun using it...and Carter can sign off a Webelos requirement, too!

Imagination

I wanted to capture the imagination Hunter was showing one day while playing with this box (yes, it is a diaper box, and yes, we are slowly potty training!) I could see his feet peaking out so I grabbed the camera, but loved what else I saw once the photo was taken..."I see you!!!"

Growing Up

I enjoyed having my brother Stryder, his wife Ashley and their new baby Cassidy Mae stop over for the night as they headed to her family in So. Cal. I just loved these pictures! I can remember holding him as a baby and seeing him hold his own baby was special.

Here is our wonderful Gma Mae, (my mom's mother) holding the sweet great grandchild who was given her very special name!



And for those of you curious, seeing Cassidy and holding her...it only slightly peaked my baby hunger :)

After visiting Stryder told Rick, "Thanks, now my wife wants an ipad and a jetted tub!, Rick, said, well now I have to give mine a baby, guess we're even!" Brothers are funny!