Lots of Little Memories

This has all the other little things we did between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Emily's ballet teacher was travelling early in the term, so she swapped out that date, for one just before Christmas.  We were on break from school, so it made for a weird day, but she had a good time.  

Alice saw a video on how to make Japanese pancakes and wanted to try it.  The first time, they didn't turn out that great, but the second time they were pretty good.

William and I each had a bout of illness the week of his belt testing, so he had to make it up the following week.  He was one excited little boy to earn his 10 kyu belt.

One day, Wlliam decided to whittle a stick to make an "arrow" and then needed a bow to go with it.  It would have been ineffective as a hunting tool, but he enjoyed it as a toy for two or three days.

Billy's "nightstand" is an antiquated CPU.  As such, it is particularly poor at holding things like his phone and heated blanket remote.  After looking up the prices for a small shelf on Amazon, I decided I could make one.  I found the stash of our old Texas license plates, and easily made him a shelf with command hooks and a bent plate.  His phone cord won't fall down into the other cables (the disaster you see below) and should he ever decide that he no longer needs it, it is fully removable!

Sarah sent over some silpat mats, and while I had used them in the past, I never liked how difficult it seemed to be to store them. Since I was on a command hook kick, I gave it the same treatment as my sugar cube molds.  It has reduced the amount of parchment paper I use, and I am not inconvenienced by it in the least. Finally, a silpat win! 

In one of Juliet's books, she was reading about 'fire cakes.'  They are basically flour, water and salt, baked for a few minutes.  Instead of just eating them inside, we decided to make it into a valley forge experience!  Each child had a towel on one foot, in place of a boot, and trudged through the snow to an unheated shed.  The warm fire cakes were really good, probably because they were warm and we were not, but it was a peak into what the fighters of the revolution endured.

Part of Sarah's Christmas this year.  It is for her garden. = )

Using the remaining reindeer horn from Billy's car, we made Seven into Max from How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

I bought some Lincoln Logs, from a garage sale, as a stocking stuffer for the kids, but was disappointed in the scant number of long pieces.  So, we got them out to play with for a day, before sending them on to a new home.

Emily found that an egg she cracked while baking looked like an Among Us character.

I had to wrap very few presents with fresh paper this year.  It is really so much easier to keep the paper year to year.  I did up my number of reusable bags from two to four this year!! (One was my annual increase, the other from my sister, via a Christmas gift from a friend.)

William's chicken nugget looked like a fish!

Billy and I found our new Mexican Restaurant "place!"  The only negative they received was on the queso temperature (it was cold, but the taste was good.)  Billy got one margarita, and it lasted our entire meal, it was so big!

I must say, it feels like it has been a good season!

later days