Cookies with Grandma

Christmas creations

All right boys. When you read this in the future, please try to remember that I TRIED to be good at doing crafts with you. I TRIED to have patience, & I TRIED to let you do as much as possible without taking over & doing it myself. 

In the case of the Ginger bread house, I did most of it myself. It was a little tricky. And yes, I put each individual shingle on the roof. 

You guys tried your hardest to get the eyes & nose to stay on our Rudolph candy canes, but eventually I vacuumed them all up.

Your Christmas countdown you did almost by yourself. They turned out wonderful. But we never remembered to take off a loop each day. It ended up being 3 or 4 days at a time (which made for good hand cuffs) so I think that depletes the purpose of learning what a day is or counting them down. 

These trees would have lasted forever if Nathan wasn't obsessed with the little gingerbread men. He took them all off, I swear I picked up more than what we put on. And Daddy just got mad at them because they were always in the way. Maybe Christmas 2009 will be a little more hands on & not Mommy doing most of the work!! 

(by the way, thank you for breaking so many Christmas decorations & ornaments. Now I don't have to store them anymore!!)

Our Christmas tree!

    
 
 

We finally went & got a tree. Didn't want to spend money on it, so we got a pretty dinky one. We let the boys do most of the decorating, except the lights, therefore the interesting looking tree. It seems as though trees are always more of a pain than not. Everyday I catch myself threatening the boys to put the ornaments back on the tree or I'll throw it away. It's worse than getting them to clean their rooms & I have ornaments strung throughout the house. But it's finally here, & it feels like Christmas!!!

Appropriate? Or just funny............

A Christmas Story for people having a bad day:

When four of Santa's elves got sick, the trainee elves did not produce toys as fast as the regular ones, and Santa began to feel the Pre-Christmas pressure.

Then Mrs Claus told Santa her Mother was coming to visit, which stressed Santa even more. When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two others had jumped the fence and were out, Heaven knows where.

Then when he began to load the sleigh, one of the floorboards cracked, the toy bag fell to the ground and all the toys were scattered.

Frustrated, Santa went in the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered the elves had drank all the cider and hidden the liquor. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped
the cider jug, and it broke into hundreds of little glass pieces all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found the mice had eaten all the straw off the end of the broom.

Just then the doorbell rang, and irritated Santa marched to the door, yanked it open, and there stood a little angel with a great big Christmas tree. The angel said very cheerfully, 'Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn't this a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?'

And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.

Feeling a little more educated.

I found this book on a fellow friend's "Good Reads" review. It looked very interesting, so I picked it up from the library & watched it sit on my piano for a couple of weeks. Finally ready to start looking at what I put into my body, I opened the cover, & was amazed at what I found. This book is NOT a eat this, don't eat this kind of read. The author is very laid back & explains how we have come to our Western diet as a society today. This is my review on my "Good Reads" account: 

Has anyone seen that commercial recently about one mom giving her kids juice, then the other mom says, "how can you give your kids so much juice? It has a lot of high fructose corn syrup in it." Which the mom pouring the juice replys,"it comes from corn, what can be so wrong with it?"  I saw that commercial a couple of weeks ago & thought, hmmm, they make a good point. But also what kind of selfish, greedy individual would come up with that? Telling moms it's ok to drink lots of juice with crap in it because it originally comes from corn?  This book was SUPER great at explaining how our country has arrived at how we think about "nutrition" & food. How we eat, what we think is ok, the evil politics that has hidden what is really healthy for us in order to gain more money. Then the author goes on to talk about other cultures, why they're healthier, why our studies are nothing but crap, but also talks to the people who head these studies who admit they are crap. He has researched this topic very deeply, taking in all points of views, opinions, sides, but still never tells you That you MUST eat how he says.  His opinion is non-bias, & has quit a few humorous comments that keep you reading more. I recomend this to EVERYONE. You will learn more about what you "think" is healthy, but not feel guilty (unless you should be) about your eating habits. I still sat down & ate my sis in laws choc cream cheese frosting (thanks Lisa) & read about how to go about a healthier lifestyle. I know that oreos, crackers, cakes, fast foods are not healthy. But what about my peanut butter? My canned foods? My bread? The packages that have health claims, the laws that are made to go around really being healthy, but can claim to be. Did you know Fritos can claim to reduce some disease (don't remember which) because they now use a product called corn oil, instead of a previous ingredient, although corn oil is even worse to consume. It's ridiculous.  Also contains interesting results to studies about our habits, how media gets us to think a certain way, & why we eat the way we do. The difference between "food" & "food products." It's all about the title: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Yes, you should read it. So now Jared & I are trying to be a little better at cooking with more fresh "food" & learning more about what those pesky ingredients are that we can't even pronounce. Some of my favorite advice from this book was "don't eat anything your Grandmother wouldn't recognize"  "don't shop in the center aisles"  "no more than 5 ingredients" (to this my response was bun, hamburger, lettuce, cheese & bacon. That's only 5!) "try not to eat alone" "shake the hand that feeds you"  & " NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP"

During the voting frenzy, a friend sent me an email about this group of women who fought for the right to vote. I placed this HBO movie on my Netflix list & waited for a couple months for it to become available. It's not that they didn't do a good job, the acting was ok, but it's the story that gets you. I had no idea about how these women were arrested & tortured. What society thought about the intelligence of women, how no one cared. I will never again not care about voting. Every chance I get, I will give my tiny little voice of opinion, if not only to show appreciation to what women fought for not even 100 years ago. 

Caramel anyone???

I bought a 15 pound cube of quality caramel to make some treats. This is a picture of it AFTER I used a good 4 inches of it. 

So I ended up with around 160 SWEET DELICIOUS TURTLES.