Christmas Break

It snowed on Christmas, so Aaron and the kids spent a lot of Christmas break playing in the snow. We attempted to go sledding as a family outing, to an empty lot just down the street from us. Ollie hated it, and only lasted one run down the hill. And Ruby started fussing right after that, so I took Ollie and Rue home, while Aaron and the older kids played and had fun. 

Later, Aaron and Ollie played hoops to make up for Ollie not loving the sledding adventure. Ollie LOVES his new basketball hoop. Maybe I'll have an athletic child after all. :) This is Aaron and Ollie's version of H-O-R-S-E.

On Monday I was the meanest mom who ever lived, and made up a cleaning chart and we had a family cleaning day.

Aaron made up for it though by building the kids a bob-sled run in our front yard out of the snow he shoveled off the driveway. Everyone (except Ruby and I) spent the afternoon out in the snow.

He might be the cutest thing that ever wandered out in the snow. 

And this is a funny picture of Ollie. He's learned the word 'juice'. He found this grape juice bottle in the pantry, and a cup in the drawer and followed me around this morning begging, "Juice....juice." It was adorable. And of course I gave him juice. :) 

Merry Christmas Day 2014

This year was not our best photographically documented Christmas. But it was a very good Christmas, I just decided to sit back and enjoy it, instead of frantically trying to capture it all on camera. 

Our kids gave us the gift of sleeping until 8:00am. Yay! Then they waited patiently at the top of the stairs until Aaron gave the ok to go down. 

We open stockings first, and then the kids get to play with that stuff while Aaron and I get breakfast ready. This year the kids each got a small Lego set, and they worked on putting those together. 

Aaron made scrambled eggs, toast, and the traditional Tapioca Pudding, while I nursed Ruby. 

Ivan found the almond in his pudding this year, so he got to be the present passer-outer. We decided to try something a bit different this year, with the hopes of keeping the focus more on giving and less on getting. Ivan passed out presents according to who they were from, instead of who they were to. So, all the presents from Lincoln got piled up by Lincoln, and so on. Then we went around the circle one at a time and the person whose turn it was got to pick a present from their pile to give to someone else. For example, on Lincoln's turn, he might pick to give Adelia the present that was from him. And we went around and around until all the presents had been opened. It was glorious, because the kids really were excited to watch each other open things they'd given each other, AND it made Christmas morning last so much longer, instead of all being over in a whirl-wind of flying wrapping paper. I loved it. I think we'll do it this way again next year. 

Another thing I loved about Christmas this year, was that we had the kids do jobs to earn money to buy each other presents. Aaron and I made a list of jobs we felt were worth $1, then the kids chose which job they wanted to do, they earned a dollar, and then Aaron or I took them to the dollar store, or the dollar bin at Target or whatever, and let them pick out something to give to one of their siblings. It was really cool. They kids were a) willing to help out with chores throughout December b) very creative and thoughtful about how they wanted to spend their dollars on each other, and c) excited to watch each other open presents on Christmas morning. It was a win-win all around. I think we'll do that again next year too.

Anyways, without further ado, here are the pictures of Christmas day: 

Lincoln's wish came true, he got a robot arm. He and Aaron spent a lot of the day putting it together.

Ollie was thrilled with his "truck".

Meet Hemi and Stretch, Ivan's new pet rats

Rue slept through most of her first Christmas.

We went to Aaron's parents' house for a wonderful Christmas dinner, and enjoyed the time that we got to spend there with family. Again, I didn't take any pictures. Sorry.

Merry Christmas one and all!

Christmas Eve 2014

Today is Christmas Eve. We always do a Bethlehem dinner, and it's probably my favorite tradition of all the holiday traditions ever.

As I was preparing the pita bread for dinner, I got out my wheat grinder, and I started thinking about Christmas presents of the past. Aaron and I were giving this wheat grinder a few years ago, and it's probably been one of the best Christmas presents ever. I use it all the time to grind our flour. And the things I make with the flour make me happy.

Aaron went into work early this morning so that he could come home early and help with the finishing touches of dinner. I had all the food pretty much ready to go when he got home, so all that was left was to clean up. Aaron started spot mopping the floor, and Ollie decided that he would help too. He followed Aaron around and "mopped" where he mopped. It was adorable. I love that little Ollie.  

Aaron's parents came over to celebrate the evening with us. And it was fun to have them. My kids were super excited for it all, even though we keep Christmas Eve relatively simple as we try to keep our focus on the Savior.

Here is the dinner spread:

Olives, almonds, grapes, pita bread, dried apricots, pomegranates, ancient grains crackers, hummus, cheese, tabbouleh salad, smoked salmon and grape juice. We eat by semi-candlelight. Something about this dinner feels different and special. I love it.

After dinner Lincoln played his Christmas songs for us on the piano. I was really happy to add this to our Christmas Eve tradition. Hopefully in the future all the kids will be able to participate and everyone can sing along, and we can create a tradition of music in our home as part of our worship. That would make me a happy mama.

And lastly, we reenacted the Nativity Story. This year Aaron was Joseph, Adelia was Mary, Ruby was our " real-live baby Jesus" as Adelia kept calling her. Oliver was the angel. Ivan was a sheep. Chuck, Debbie and I were inn-keepers, and Lincoln was the narrator.

For dessert we had homemade eggnog, made with our very own chicken eggs, which I did not take a picture of, but which was fantastic. Here is the recipe below, but it doesn't make very much, I tripled it to get a glass pitcher full.

Homemade Eggnog

INGREDIENTS

6 large egg yolks
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup heavy cream
2 cups milk
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract


DIRECTIONS

In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until light and creamy.
In a saucepan, bring the cream, milk, nutmeg and salt to a bare simmer, stirring often. Slowly ladle in 1/2 cup or so of the hot milk to the egg mixture, whisking vigorously to avoid little bits of cooked egg. This will temper the eggs so they don't scramble when cooked on the stove-top. Ladle in another 1/2 cup, whisking vigorously the entire time. Do this until all the hot milk has been added to the eggs and the mixture is well combined.
Pour the tempered egg mixture back into the saucepan of milk on the stove, whisking quickly, and cook the mixture, stirring constantly, until it reaches 160 degrees F on a thermometer.
Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.
Pour the eggnog into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

And after that the kids got their jammies on and went to bed.

Christmas Card 2014

I got our Christmas card out super late this year, and I didn't print as many as I should have. I can do better next year...but in the meantime, if you didn't get a Christmas card from us, we still love you! Here's a digital copy of it. :)

We've Been Doing a Lot of This Around Here...

Cute little baby toes

And this:

"Mom, we're just sitting here milking our babies together." -Del

 The other kids have had to entertain themselves. Ollie found the puzzles.

 And Lincoln is working on his modeling career.

The Piano Guys

For Aaron's birthday, my parents gave him tickets to go see the Piano Guys in concert. Rue and I got to go too, lucky girls that we are. :)

The concert was A,MAZING. I highly recommend going if you ever have the chance. Not only was the music really good, but Jon and Steve are hilarious. You get awesome music and a comedy routine all for the price of one. By the far the best concert I've even been to.

Ruby was good too. I only had to take her out to feed her once. She slept through the rest. :)

I'm not sure what Aaron's favorite part was, but mine was the last song they played called Angels From the Realm of Glory. It was powerful, and amazing.





Thanks Mom and Kerry for the tickets. Thanks Kyle and Kelsey for watching our other munchkins late into the night so we could go.

I Heart Family Pictures

Aaron's brother Ryan and sister-in-law Melissa took our family pictures today. They are in town for a too short amount of time for the holidays. Taking a break from sailing around the world. We took advantage of them and asked them to do our family pictures. They always do a fantastic job. And that's saying something, because it is NOT easy to photograph 5 children and get them all holding still, looking in the same ish direction, and smiling.

Love how these turned out.