First of a few Christmas Recaps...

Happy New Year, everyone!

We've had a really great break.  Mike is in a slight depression that today is the last day and is kicking himself for not taking off the rest of the week and wanting to kick some Shakopee patootie for not giving the kids the rest of the week off.  Oh well.  I have the rest of the week off.  :)

Because of the break and me not really touching my computer since about December 21st, there is a little back-tracking I need to do.

This year my family celebrated Christmas in mid-December.  

We started with our annual family photo - this just gets so much easier every year!

But on to bigger things....presents!!

First there were stockings...

(Each of the younger girls got a complete princess set - including new lip gloss!)

This was really the calm...

Before the storm...

We unwrap gifts in turns so this process can take awhile, but it's fun to see what everyone got and their expressions!

(I totally thought we'd be the loser aunt/uncle who gave a Frisbee to Austin.  HOWEVER - he was so excited to get this Captain America shield - our gift giving reputation was saved thanks to a marketing genius!)

(Mom tends to get pretty excited over her gifts.)

(Dad...not so much.  This is his face right before he says, "That's really neat."  In "dad-speak" this is the equivalent to a normal person saying, "Wow!  Stupendous!!  That's SO AWESOME!!!"  Tracy and I have both managed to follow mom's lead and marry men who express excitement with periods at the ends of their declarations.  It's so unsatisfying.)

 (This is one of my favorite pictures from the day.  Riley was over the moon about getting a horse that was about as big as her.  I love Ellie's arms out - she just looks so happy for her sister.  Or she's asking Riley to hand it over...but I choose to believe the first scenario.)

(Maddie is definitely out of the toy stage and getting into more girly-girl things.  We haven't decided if this makes shopping for her easier or harder - but she was pretty happy with her gifts that day!)

 (Jake received a blanket from my parents.  They weren't sure he would like it, but it's a duplicate of one that he LOVES at their house, only it matches his room.  He declared that night that it could very well be the best present he received for Christmas.)

(Probably one of my favorite pictures of my mom.  She loves having her house full of family and you can see it on her face.)

(Dan's got his hands full with three girls but he looks okay with that...)

It was a really wonderful Saturday filled with lots of food, lots of fun, and lots of goofballs!

More Christmas Goodies

The weekend after Thanksgiving...what?  A little behind you say???....anyway, I was invited to a friend's house for her yearly tradition of making truffles.

My job was to prepare the mint flavored insides.  This was SURPRISINGLY easy.  What stunk about the process was rolling them into balls.  I pulled out my little cookie dough scooper and the mint chocolate I had prepared was so hard it broke my scooper.  Waah.  I later discovered that each flavor produces its own kind of problems - hard or soft - but that the mint was one of the harder ones to roll.

Anyway - after four hours, we had a TON of truffles.  I didn't take my camera along, unfortunately, but I will if I'm ever invited back!

I think I went home with about 40 truffles!  We had mint (green), butter cream (yellow), raspberry (red), caramel (brown), and Bailey's (white).

We took these to a Sunday dinner at my parents' house.  Reviews were mixed on favorites.  Mom and Ellie really liked raspberry.  My kids loved the mint.  I'm not a huge truffle fan, but those Bailey's ones...slurp.

What was ridiculous?  We ate these in about a week.  Not our finest moment of 2012.

Lefse 2012

This year's lefse making day was a doozy!  My mom's friends joined us for the first time and the kitchen was full!  The night before  Mom made eight (!) batches of lefse the night before and her fridge was STOCKED. We all got there and set right to work.

You roll lefse on special boards covered with a broadcloth like material and coated in flour.  LOTS of flour. To begin with, Tracy and mom's friend (and neighbor from the old 'hood), Sue, were in charge of rolling out the balls of dough.  Every year we get better and better at creating actual circles.  Tracy remembered right away how to get the lefse from the board to the stick.  Some people had a harder time with this at first ("some people" = Kerry).

Maddie and Jake's first post was the griddle.

Maddie pretty much stayed here all day.  For some reason those first few pieces weren't coming off the griddle like she planned and were getting massacred.  Fortunately they were still edible and we all decided this was a tasty batch of lefse!  Jake ventured into other areas, eventually hitting every job.

Mom's job was to cut and roll the dough into the balls.  This involved a lot of kneading.  I helped out in this area after awhile - but you get a lot of sticky fingers and I couldn't take pictures at the same time.  Jake joined in the fun after awhile too.

As I mentioned - Jake took part in all aspects of the morning.  He said he can't decide is grilling or rolling was the best job.  He leaned toward rolling though he thought he was better and grilling.  I will say - he had the most bizarre way of rolling.  It wasn't so much rolling as attacking in all manner of directions.  We all took some time to just watch his process.  His pieces ended in circles, but not without being beaten to death first.

You'll notice we didn't waste time hitting the liquor.  Mom had made a pot of chili for everyone so between jobs we all had a nice little break for lunch.  Marcia is in the top picture with mom.  She'd never made lefse before and helped out with different jobs.  She was a little less than enthused with the rolling part.  At one point Tracy offered to take over for her.  Marcia was leaning against the counter "one-handing" the rolling pin and more kind of tossing it across the dough.  She was only too happy to give it up.

Pat rounds out the quartet of "giggle girls".  I don't think she likes to cook normally, so she was only too happy to have the job of brushing the excess flour off the lefse pieces.  She started the afternoon here and ended here and is now a professional flour brusher.

Sue and Pat's husbands joined my dad for the afternoon and watched the Vikings game.  This was the first Bears game this year where the Vikings lost.  Not an overly enthusiastic group.

We've learned over the years what NOT to wear.  Hence the aprons, short sleeves and light colored clothing on a few of us.  Jake didn't get that memo and his pants were covered in flour.  Live and learn.

Unfortunately we didn't think to take a picture until after Tracy had left.  This process took a little longer than we anticipated and she had to get home.  By the end of the afternoon we'd made 80 full sheets of lefse.  We each got to take home 42 half pieces and I am slowly working my way through them all.  Occasionally I share with the rest of the family.

Thanks, ladies, for joining us!  Thanks, mom, for making all the dough the night before and hosting this huge mess so we could all enjoy some deliciousness!

Tonight's Sudden Conversation

Tonight we dropped Maddie off at church for confirmation class and Mike, Jake and I headed to dinner.  About 10 seconds into the ride this is the conversation completely out of the blue:

Jake:  What's a one-night stand?

[crickets...]

Mike:  Kerry?

Kerry:  Uhhh...where did you hear that?
Jake: I'm reading these cool facts on my iPod.  "40% of all Americans will have a one-night stand."

[Driving must have gotten intense because Mike was super focused on the road at this point.]

Kerry:  Um...it's where a guy and girl who may or may not really know each other...sleep together...asinhavesex...and then probably never see each other again.  It's really not cool.

Jake:  Oh...yeah, doesn't sound cool.  SO...Armadillos....

And like father, like son, Jake was pretty fast to change the subject as well.  But we did learn that somehow or other Armadillos get leprosy.

Ho Ho Ho!

This past weekend we set up our Christmas decorations.  Jake opened one box and found his new winter hat:

He wore it to school Monday and I think it's become his new go-to hat in the mornings.  I wonder if I bought him a snowman hat for January - and a different theme for each month of winter - if he'd wear them?

Breakfast of Champions

This morning Jake was rummaging through the refrigerator when he saw the lefse my mom had brought over a few days ago.  He mentioned how he would love some, but it probably wouldn't fill him up.  I agreed.

He decided on the next best thing...

I'm sure this is exactly what the teachers had in mind when they remind you to eat a healthy breakfast on test day.

Regifting

A really great friend of mine was having a baby in October and I wanted to make her a blanket.  Forget getting her something she could actually use like a gift card to Domino's or something...

Anyway - ages ago I pinned this blanket with the hope that someday one of my friends would decide to have a baby.  I knew this would be the blanket I wanted to try in October.

(via aestheticnest.com)

I gathered the materials and sewed everything to what I read the directions to be.  I later realized that what I had read and what was written were actually two hugely different things.

This is what I ended up with:

Soft and cuddly?  I think not.

The inspiration was all fluffy - you couldn't see the underlying fabric between the rows.  Mine?  Not so much. I had chosen a base fabric of stripes where the rows on the back ran in complete opposite directions.  I had also chosen a very contrasting thread, so there was a third direction of "stripes" included.  It was migraine inducing.  Not to mention that the colors of the backing fabric and the colors of the flannel completely clashed.  I don't know what I had been thinking; it looked so cute at Joann Fabric.

And square...fuggle.  I had finally stopped trying because it was soon to be the size of a napkin.

The flannel binding, after washing, was not only pilling - because it was flannel - but was also coming undone because it was too thin a strip and my hand sewing was no match for the thickness of the blanket.

Mike, being ever supportive, told me it was fine.  My friend would love it.  I told him I could not in good conscience give this to someone I actually liked.

So, I headed back to the store and tried again.  I bought completely different styles of fabric based on my learning experience (big or minimal patterns only).  I bought flannel that actually matched.  I bought thread that blended into my backing fabric.

Then I went home and read the directions correctly.  Attempt number two ended with this:

Are you all breathing a sigh of relief for my friend?  I was.  THIS was what I had envisioned it turning out like.

See that fluff?  It might get fluffier with each washing!  I explained to my friend that she might want to dry it alone - this bad boy produces some lint!  Then I realized I had just given a gift of not only extra laundry...but one that possibly required special instructions.  What every new mother needs...

You may be wondering what we are going to do with the previous blanket.  Hence the post title.  It is Sadie's Christmas present.  If she were human she'd be a blanket baby.  She has a Barney towel that we gave her when she first arrived and it has giant holes in it, it's purple and well...it has a picture of Barney on it.  I told Maddie my idea and she went right over to Sadie and told her, "You are getting a new blanket for Christmas!"

I told Maddie that wasn't very nice...now the dog won't even be surprised.