Some kids write Dear Santa letters at this time of year.  But as I was taking cookies out of the oven, Analise started her own letter, Dear God.  So sweet!  Check out the video

 

I came into it about halfway through, and she’d already thanked God for Mary and Joseph and the shepherds.  My favorite is the very end, where she decides to start a note to Mary 🙂

This is what happens when I get a nap on Saturday afternoon AND I don’t have to work on my weekly Sunday School lesson late into the night 🙂  You get to enjoy pictures!  Here’s just a couple quick ones from this week!

Crazy girl!  Princess shoes, pink tutu not exactly matching the red jacket, wand, racing back and forth down the sidewalk with her streamers flying.  Anyone doubt that she’s got Brian’s genes in her?

Moments later, she decided to ride down the short steep hill of our driveway, and we experienced our first crash.  She cried and cried and cried over her scraped knee, got pudding and an Angelina Ballerina movie instead of dinner with lots of snuggling.  The next day, I realized she had a big bruise on her shin, poor girl, in addition to the little scrape.  Of course, she was back riding down the hill yesterday. 

Brian came home while we were out playing that evening.  He’s modeling his new awesome reflective winter cycling jacket which he won in the inaugural month of a Saturday race ride here in Birmingham. 

And we’ve not told you about his new bike!  He’s got a brand-spankin’-new Trek Madone 5.5, which he calls The Hornet because of its flashy paintjob.  Trek offered the entire team the bikes at cost, so it was an amazing deal.   (Anyone want to buy 2-year old Trek Madone with more miles than we care to mention??)  He loves the new bike.  He’s hoping to post a blog soon called "The State of the Bikes". 
And two other biking tidbits… He’s been upgraded to Category 1/ elite.  Woohoo!  Now he won’t have to petition to get into the big races.  And his response to the crazy angry bike article was printed by the Huntsville Times, and you can see it here. 

I’ll leave you with a glimpse of our Christmas lights.  Those are twinkling snowflakes hanging down.  As I’ve said in previous years, before kids, I thought that less was more when it came to Christmas lights.  But now that my sweeties ooh and ahh over everything, and we have to pull over to enjoy the biggest, gaudiest Christmas decorations, I don’t think that there’s such a thing as too much 🙂  Unless, of course, we’re paying the electric bill!  Tom put these lights up for us, and the next day, he added to it by giving us his beautiful, extensive wood nativity set.  Needless to say, Analise is ecstatic that Baby Jesus is in her front yard.  We have to go check on him every time we come home.  I’ll post pictures soon!

Lest you think I’m totally on the ball with the Christmas cookies, decorations, lights, etc, I’m not.  The tree is up, but the kids are daily un-decorating it, the boxes are still in the living room, only a few decorations are out, and I’m only about 50% done with my Christmas shopping.  And the artsy-crafty Christmas cards haven’t been touched in a while.  Time to get on the ball!  But the Christmas spirit abounds here!  

Analise and I are embarking on a Christmas cookie adventure, and today, being December 1st was a perfect day to start.  And these Chocolate Crinkle cookies from Family Fun magazine were the best start we could have hoped for!  Easy and incredibly delicious. These are like little brownie bites.

• 3/4 c. butter, melted
• 1/2 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 c. sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 t vanilla extract
• 2 c. flour
• 1 t b aking powder
• 1 t baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 ounces (half a bag or 1 cup, I think) mini semisweet chocolate chips
• 3/4 c. confectioner’s sugar

In a large bowl, mix together the melted butter, cocoa powder and sugar. Whisk in the eggs and vanilla extract. In a medium-sized bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Use a large spoon to slowly add the dry ingredients to the chocolate mixture. Stir in the chips. Refrigerate the dough for 2 hours.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Form the dough into 1-inch balls, then roll them in confectioners’ sugar. Bake the cookies on an ungreased baking sheet for 10 minutes. Set the baking sheet on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then lightly dust the cookies with the remaining confectioners’ sugar. Transfer the cookies directly onto the rack to cool thoroughly. Makes about 4 dozen.

From Family Fun magazine here

Mom tip!! Analise always wants to take little bites of dough or chocolate chips, etc. I’m constantly having to have her get off the stool, move over to the sink and wash her hands after taking a bite. And she wants to make her cookies into fun shapes, like snakes. And I feel pretty strongly that peanut butter cookies need to be in balls, not snakes. I know, I’m a control freak.  I’m working on it, and kids are slowly but surely breaking me of it.  

But! I’ve started giving her a small chunk of dough, a toaster oven sized baking pan, a plate with sprinkles and chips, and moving her over to the table where she can shape, take bites, and decorate at her leisure. I’m even cooking her cookies in the toaster oven – usually same temp, but about half time, since her cookies are smaller than mine. It’s working WONDERFULLY! We’re all happy!

Analise and Josiah on the Teeter Totter. Click the picture to watch a short video.

We started the Christmas season on Saturday here in our house. I made turkey chili with cornbread, and we enjoyed my delicious apple pie for dessert. Brian brought our Christmas tree up from the basement. Can I just say that the Christmas tree storage bag I bought last year was a GREAT idea?? In contrast to last year’s experience of shaking a mice nest from the tree in its cardboard box in the shed, this year all the pieces were neatly stacked together with their other color-coded branches, and it went together so easily! 

In contrast to last year’s sweet memories of a 2 1/2 year old Analise decorating, this year she was a HUGE help, handing Brian branches, sorting pieces into their color piles. (Sorry they’re not the greatest pictures, but they capture the moments!)

After the tree was up, Analise quickly determined we needed "presents", so she brought in a bunch of toys to keep under the tree.  Good thing… I won’t be able to put the wrapped ones under until Christmas eve, because she’ll never leave them alone!

She wanted to be a part of everything, including fluffing up the branches with me, and helping me put on the lights. When I told her to be careful, she said, "Look, Mommy, when I stand on the chair, I won’t fall because my legs don’t wobble!"

We lost track of Josiah for a bit, and found playing in the kitchen, having found the pre-tree decorating snack.

Brian’s parents joined us for dinner and the actual decorating. Analise again, enjoyed putting up all the ornaments, especially opening the ones that were stored in their little Hallmark boxes. She was SO EXCITED about all the Christmas decorations coming out!  She was determined that we were going to get ALL the decorations out of every box before she went to bed.  She pulled out the velvet ribbon, poinsettias, and garland for outside and carefully placed them all over the house.  It’s festive, specially the poinsettias sticking up from the blinds on the shutters:)  She was so cute. 

Josiah, on the other hand, was seriously into UN-decorating… that’s what these chubby little hands are actually doing 🙂

When he took the decorations off the tree, he’d either take them to another room in the house, leaving them there… decorating in his little way, I’m sure

…or use them to decorate Grandma.

Though last year the tree was heavy on the lower 5-6 branches thanks to Analise’s decorating and Josiah wasn’t a problem, this year I’ve had to make the lower branches the "child safe" ornaments, and move all Analise’s carefully placed ornaments higher up to safer places.  Now, if we can just keep him from pulling the tree over…

I’ll leave you with our one good ornament picture…

It’s going to be a fun Christmas with these 2 little sweeties!

Here’s a 10 minute video of a climb I did up Smeyer Road a couple weeks ago. Beautiful fall colors.

I’ll be posting more videos soon. Stay tuned!

On Tuesday, Analise’s preschool had a pow-wow picnic. They had made pillowcase indian vests and feather headbands with their Indian names on them. Analise’s name was Little Fawn. I only stayed for the picnic, but after I left, they sat in a circle, played their Indian (oatmeal container) drums and danced the Turkey Tango. Fun!

I tell ya… he can entertain himself with anything! I got a cute video of him playing with them, too, and eating them. I loved running them through his fingers, rolling them across the floor, bouncing them, tossing them in the colander. He ate several, rolling them around in his mouth for a bit, before biting into them with a wrinkled face. After feeling it burst its tartness in his mouth, he’d reach in and pull it out, putting it back in the colander.

Love these chubby soft little fingerrs!

I love homemade apple pie. I learned to make it from scratch, courtesy of Lori Thompson and Betty Crocker, while in Nicaragua, and since then, I’ve been determined to make it myself. Today, I didn’t get it done in time for dinner. Bummer. But I made the dough yesterday, and finally had the time to peel, core and cut the apples and roll out the dough this afternoon. Since I didn’t have anyone to share it with over dinner, I thought I’d share it with you.

I used Paula Deen’s Perfect Pie Crust recipe and Betty Crocker’s Apple Pie recipe. I was afraid the pie crust wouldn’t hold together, but after patting it into a ball, flattening it into a thick disk, wrapping it in Saran and chilling it overnight, it rolled out really well.

Yum, apples…I even used organic:) Tossed with flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and a pinch of salt.

I have to say the crust crimping wasn’t the best, but I’ll work on that next time. But the leaf and acorn cut-outs looked good!

Golden out of the oven.

Yum. Too bad I had to enjoy it alone. Anyone want to come over for pie and ice cream? It was DELICIOUS!