Merry Christmas!

Just popping in to say a quick "Merry Christmas!!" to all of you. May your day be merry and bright!

Random

1. It's funny how I thought I would be posting less this week. I've probably had more posts in the last few days than I've had in the previous few weeks. Weird.

2. Also weird - my daughter. After she ate breakfast, she threw an absolute fit, which included more whining than I could handle. I told her she needed an attitude adjustment, and asked if she wanted to go to her room to settle down. Not only did she willingly go back to her room, she also wanted to go back to bed. She laid there for a good 20 minutes, giving me a nice, quiet opportunity to do important morning things, like checking email and facebook. (She is now in a much better mood.)

3. Why is it that I can never remember how to spell weird? Why doesn't it follow the whole "i before e except after c" rule? Thank goodness for spell check.

4. I had a fun morning yesterday with my nephew and niece. They played with Kaitlyn (which she LOVED), we made cookies, we watched Elf and ate sloppy joes, and generally had a good time. My favorite part of the morning? When Josiah showed me his collection of Taco Bell sauce packets. He has quite a list of foods that supposedly are enhanced by this sauce - I wish I could remember them. (And I must say that I'm not entirely convinced.)

5. My sister made it through her surgery, which lasted a lot longer than expected. Visit her blog for the updates. I hope to make a trip to the hospital to see her today.

6. As mentioned in #4, we made cookies yesterday. I've never thought much about molasses cookies, but decided to try this Pioneer Woman recipe. Can I just say "YUM!"? They were delicious, and were fun to make. I'll definitely be making these again.

7. My mom got stuck in her driveway yesterday. I thought this was ironic, considering my last post.

I guess that's the end of my list. Mostly because I don't have anything else to say, but also because I'm pretty sure that Kaitlyn is filling her diaper right now. And she hasn't had a good poop in a few days. And I gave her some prunes this morning.

(Aren't you envious?)

The new game at our house:

Seeing if we can make it up the driveway and into the garage.

Friday night I lost, and had to wait for Mike to come home and scrape off part of the ice. But I didn't go down without a fight - I wonder what the neighbors thought of me reversing the car and then gunning it at different angles in an attempt to find a spot with traction.

I thought I might lose again today because I hit a "speed bump" about halfway up that had been created by the combination of ice and blowing snow. I had to do some creative maneuvering, which for a split-second seemed as if it might result in me running the car through the side of the garage, or proppeling us backwards into the yard.

Yeah, I could totally do one of those car chases in an action film. Just call me 007. (Or 911, depending on how things go.)

When is spring?

Unconventional Christmas

My sister has been scheduled for surgery on Tuesday, and will probably be in the hospital until Christmas Day.

She is actually relieved about this - she wanted to have the surgery before the end of the year, for a variety of reasons. (See her blog post about it here.)

Thankfully, this will not alter our plans for Christmas. It is our year to be with Mike's family on Christmas, so my family had already planned to delay our celebration until New Year's Day.

This all seems a little surreal... While we join the world around us in the hustle and bustle of last-minute Christmas preparations, we are also preparing for a surgery. My week will include wrapping presents, packing to go out of town, and visitng my sister in the hospital. Honestly, that just feels a little wierd.

One good thing about this week is that I only have to work on Monday. Woohoo! The college's offices are shut down from Christmas Eve through New Year's Day, and because of the surgery I am also taking Tuesday off so my nephew and niece can come to my house for the morning. So, I officially have one day left before Christmas break, and then I will have almost two full weeks off. Nice.

It will be great to have a break from work, but more importantly, it will be great to have time to spend with my family. My other sister, Andrea, is flying in on Tuesday evening from California. What a blessing that we will all be together, and that God arranged for us to be available to help as needed.

And, as awful as it is to have to go through this, I have two friends who are dealing with things that are just as (or more) awful. Despite my family's circumstances, we feel very blessed.

This Christmas will be incredibly bittersweet - looking back to last Christmas, we never would have guessed all of the struggles this year would bring. But we've also been reminded of what's truly important and have drawn closer as a family.

I intend to have a few more posts up this week, but I'm not sure if that will happen. If not, I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

My new favorite kitchen tools

I am finally participating in Alaina's Keeping Creative Kitchens! I've meant to have a post up for this for many, many weeks, and I'm so excited that my planned topic just happens to fit this week's theme perfectly. The theme is cookies and candy, which, of course, is extremely appropriate considering that Christmas is a week away.

One week! Where did the time time go??

Anyway, I want to share with you something that I bought for my birthday in November. I invested in two baking sheets that are basically the full size of my oven. I got the idea here, and here is where I found the right size cookie sheet.

FYI, I discovered that there are two (or three?) standard sizes for baking sheets - full, half, and I think I also saw a quarter-size. The full size is made to fit in a professional oven, and is just wee bit too big for a conventional home oven. This site has a size that is specific for conventional ovens, and is called the "home" size, which is what I ended up getting.


One of the things that I LOVE about having these is that I can maximize my time. On the day after Thanksgiving, I made shortbread cookies with Kaitlyn, and was able to make almost all of a double batch of cookies in one shot!

I also used parchment paper for the first time, and I fell in love with that, too. Easy clean up!

Here are both sheets of cookies in the oven:


After taking them out of the oven, I slid the whole sheet of parchment paper onto cooling racks. (Which is a lot easier to type than it is to do. For about 1.2 seconds I thought all of my cookies were going to slide right onto the floor. Hopefully I will get better at this technique.)


One of the things I've always hated about making cookies is the time it takes to bake them all. Put them on the cookie sheet, set the timer, wait 5-10 minutes, take them out, let them cool, take them off the cookie sheet, put new ones on the cookie sheet, repeat. It always seems to take FOREVER! But making them this way was so quick and easy. If you do a lot of baking, I would highly recommend investing in these sheets!

Of course, I can't end this post without showing some pictures of Kaitlyn. She had a blast "helping" me with the cookies. I gave her some dough and some little cookie cutters and let her do her own thing. She loved it!


Here are her cookies:



A happy girl! (With some crazy hair!)


I also want to share one of my favorite holiday cookie recipes, which comes from my mom. If we don't have these cookies, it just doesn't seem like Christmas!

Mom's Christmas Pastel Cookies

2 cups soft butter
2 cups sifted confectioner's sugar
4 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Mix butter, sugar and salt thoroughly. Add flour and blend into dough.

2. Divide dough into thirds, placing each third in a different bowl. Add a different food coloring and flavoring to each third. (1/2 to 1 teaspoon flavoring per third.) We traditionally use green/mint; red/cherry; and yellow/lemon. Use your hands to work the coloring and the flavoring throughout the dough, until it is a consistent color. (Use as much or as little coloring as you want, and expect to walk away with a lot of color on your hands!)

3. Mold each third into long, smooth rolls, about 2 inches in diameter. Roll in colored sugar or nuts. Wrap each roll in waxed paper or plastic wrap, and chill until stiff - several hours or overnight. (Can also be frozen.)

4. When you are ready to bake, slice cookies 1/8-inch thick, place on ungreased cookie sheets and bake at 375* for 7 to 9 minutes. Do not brown.

Yum!

Head over to Meant to Be for more creative kitchen ideas!

A new trend in Christmas decor?

I have so many things that I've intended to post over the past few days. Serious things, funny things, Kaitlyn stories, Christmas preparation ideas, etc.

So what is it that actually brings me out of my blogging slump?

Toilet paper.

When I drove onto campus this morning, I saw that some college-age elves had been hard at work last night. Maybe this is a new way to decorate for Christmas?