Tonight I realized something.  I haven't had anyone ask to speak to my mom when I answer the phone since I got sick.  I guess that's one of the bonuses of being sick.  I finally sound like an adult.  I'll take what I can get

Wassail

Tonight, I'm grateful for Stephen's wassail and my awesome insulated mug that Nathan got at his food convention.  It's the only thing that soothes my throat.  Plus, it also has 110% of vitamin C, so I can get my vitamin C without swallowing a horse pill that doesn't feel great in my throat.

I'm also grateful that the three appointments that I had to cancel today were understanding.  I hate cancelling appointments.  Hopefully I can fit them in in the next week.

I'm also grateful that Nathan and the kids cleaned up the kitchen.  It's hard to get feeling better, then have to recover your house.

Thanks, Mom!

Today I was super flu-ish.  I felt like I was hurting all over, it killed my head when the kids even walked through the living room, and I couldn't get warm.  It didn't help that my kids' school started 2 hours late because of freezing rain.  Normally, I love my kids being home, but today I was just praying that I would make it until they went to school.  Jo had a project due and she wanted to get new contacts because she ripped one on Friday, so I drove her to school and stopped at the eye doctor on the way.  When I got home, I really couldn't get warm.  I piled on the blankets and turned my heat up.  Nothing worked.  Then, I remembered these, put them on and was able to get comfortable enough to fall asleep.  Thanks, Mom!!

Fire!

While the kids were playing outside with Nathan, I decided I wanted to cook.  It started out craving Seven Layer Bean Dip while thinking about the Super Bowl, even though we had other plans during the game.  So, I made that.  Then, I made chili for our little FHE today (for the first time with dried beans).  Then, I wanted to redeem myself after my last pie (it was too soupy and the apples weren't quite done) so I decided to make another pie, which made it so I had leftover crust to make tarts.  I got a tart pan a few years ago and decided to use it.  But then that made me want to have something to fill them with.  I had talked to Owen about chocolate pudding, but realized we didn't have any, so I found a recipe for chocolate pudding from scratch.

The first two things turned out okay, other than my pan of bean dip was overflowing, and I ended up with too much chili.  I made the pie.  I heard that you could make your lattice ahead of time and keep it in the fridge.  That worked great until I tried to get it back on the pie.  After finally just flipping it on there, then fixing the mistakes; I put it in the oven and didn't put a pan under it, so it overflowed and smoked up the kitchen.  Then, I had to turn the oven back up to do the tarts.  When I opened the oven, it was on fire!  Nathan put it out, cooled it off and scraped it out so I could cook my tarts.  Yep, he's awesome.  That was while I was dealing with the pudding.  The recipe said it was supposed to take about 10 minutes.  Forty minutes later, I declared it done.  It was a crazy cooking day and we didn't get done until 11:30, but we have lots of good food now.  My kitchen was a mess and it's a good thing that today was fast Sunday because we didn't have any clean dishes, but an hour and a half after church, my kitchen was put back in order and we still had lots of yummy food.

The Culprit:

Playing in the Snow

Yesterday was such a fun day.  It was warm enough to play outside, but there was still snow on the ground, so Nathan hitched up Mel and pulled the kids and their friends around on the inner tube.  It was perfect and everyone had fun.

Lattice pie

I just downloaded an app for my tablet for blogger.  I'm not really sure how to use it, but I promised my mom a picture of my pie from today.  So this is my attempt at a lattice top caramel apple pie.  Hopefully it tastes better than it looks.

Christ Centered Christmas Weeks 1 & 2

Nathan and I were asked to help out with the Ward Christmas Party this year.   We are in charge of the program.  We were talking as a committee how we would like to work hard to bring Christ into the program.  One day, my mom brought up a book that had been recommended to her.  It was A Christ Centered Christmas by Emily Freeman.  I had heard Emily talk at Time Out for Women and was impressed enough with her to try out the book and see if it gave any ideas I could use for the party.  I looked it up and found out I could get it on my kindle.  It was a quick read and I finished it in two days.  It did have some good ideas for the program, but even more than that, it had some good ideas that I decided I wanted to use in my own home this year.  It also got me excited for Christmas super early this year.  I put up my decorations at the beginning of November.  Usually I try to put them up the week of Thanksgiving, so the last thing we put up is our tree the weekend after Thanksgiving.  This year, I'm loving having them up longer.  I've decided that it's not skipping over Thanksgiving, it's getting in the mood for the holidays early.  I've felt excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas all month.

Anyway, back to the book.  It has a chapter on seven different nativity characters and what we can learn from them today.  It also has a tradition that you can incorporate into your Christmas traditions that will help you remember what that character teaches us.  When I read the book, I looked at the calendar and realized that we had seven Mondays until Christmas.  I decided that we will take one of the characters each week and learn about them in FHE, then we will do the tradition some time that week. 

The first character I chose was Joseph.  I chose him because reading through his chapter reminded me so much of one of my favorite Christmas stories, The Last Straw.  I've always wanted to do the tradition in that book, but it seemed like a lot of work.  And a big mess.  But I loved what the kids in that story learned from the tradition.  So, two Mondays ago, we learned about Joseph.  From Joseph we learn about service and one of the traditions they recommend is to have a jingle bell that gets passed from pillow to pillow in the house.  If you find a jingle bell on your pillow, you get to do service for someone else, then leave the bell on their pillow.  I didn't have huge hopes for this starting out.  I always feel like stories are that, stories.  Nothing ever works out like it's supposed to.  Nathan was late getting home that night, so we started without him.  We talked about Joseph, what we can learn from him, and the tradition.  I didn't have a jingle bell, but I printed one out on the computer and told the kids I'd color it and leave it on a pillow.  Nathan got home when we were having treats.  The kids were so excited to tell him about the tradition and that he got to do service if he found a jingle bell on his pillow.  We sent the kids to bed and I colored the jingle bell.  Nathan suggested I laminate it, so we decided to wait another day.  Zoey came flying into my bedroom the next morning looking all around.  Apparently she had been in everyone's room looking for the jingle bell.  I told her to keep watching for it.  It was actually a few days later that it finally got started, but the kids have been doing great with it.  We've decided to continue with the tradition clear until Christmas.  And the attitude in our home has totally changed.  It is just like the story.  I'm not going to say that no one ever fights, but there is plenty of service going on.  Even when people don't have the jingle bell.  I'm LOVING it!!

There are poems at the end of each chapter that summarize what that character teaches.  I also printed off the poems to hang up to remind us what we're supposed to be learning that week.  I hung Joseph's up for his week, but when I went to change it, the kids begged me to keep up all of the poems, so Joseph moved up and we put a new one in the page protector.  Our wall is going to be covered with nativity poems by Christmas.

This one is for Joseph.

And here is my jingle bell.

 

Last Monday, we learned about the lamb.  It also incorporates Simeon and Anna.  I was so excited to see them in this program!!  I love their stories and they are not usually brought into the nativity stories.  From them, we learned about recognizing the Lord in our lives and being immediately grateful.  For this tradition, I put a picture of a lamb on a box and put some papers and pencils inside.  When we recognize something the Lord has blessed us with, we can right it down and put it in the box.  Our box becomes a gratitude box.  I chose this one this week because it is the week of Thanksgiving and it seemed to fit well.  Once again our family has taken to it amazingly.  Our little pile of papers is growing.  And our attitude is changing again.  We are often talking about "jingle bells" (acts of service we've been prompted to do) inside and outside our home and things we're grateful for.  It really is hard to have a bad attitude when you're thinking about others and what the Lord has blessed you with.

Here is our poem that is up this week.

 

 And our gratitude box.

One more thing that the book talks about is having a nativity and putting each of the characters in the nativity as you learn about them.  I only have one nativity with all of the characters we'll be talking about.  A magnetic one my mom made.  It has a few other characters, so I put up the stable, donkey, cow, camel, and star to start.  The kids noticed immediately and asked where everything was.  I hadn't told them what we were doing yet, so I told them I'd tell them all about it on Monday.  When we learned about Joseph, I introduced it by showing them Joseph from the nativity.  They recognized it immediately and were excited.  I put his character on the poem for that week and we put him in the nativity scene last Monday after our week of learning about him.  Now we have our lambs hanging on our poem and we'll put them up on Monday.  The kids are excited to see each character as we learn about them.  It's working better than I ever hoped.  I feel like our attitudes are different, the feeling in our house is different, and we are able to focus on Christ this year for Christmas; not Santa, what presents we're getting, etc.

Our magnetic nativity on our door.