Make carmel popcorn and watch Miracle on 34th St

I feel like we have a lot of Christmas movies on our list but there are so many and some that have already been traditional family movies that I just try and add another activity onto that. I tried a new recipe for carmel corn and its yummy! Its a crunchy recipe and is supposed to store well in the freezer. Here it is:

12 qts popped corn
Preheat oven to 250
Combine the following in saucepan:
2 c brown sugar
1 1/2 sticks margarine or butter
1/2 c corn syrup
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 tsp salt
Bring to boil and boil 5 min.
Remove from heat and add 1 1/2 tsp baking soda.
Mix well and pour carmel over popcorn.
Spread on cookie sheets coated with cooking spray.
Bake for 20 min - stirring once. Remove and break apart.
For a richer treat use less popcorn.
I used 10 qts and that was 3 cookie sheets worth.

Read Twas the Night Before Christmas around the fire

We built a fire in our fireplace and opened up 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. We will have to read it later too but it was fun to sit around the fire and read stories. I love story time and kids need as much as we'll give them!

Dec 13 Decorate the tree

Our tree is actually a work in progress. The ornaments move
from moment to moment and room to room. One even came with us to church today. It started out with ornaments grouped low in one spot but once Marcus woke up from his nap we realized the tree could only be 2/3 of the way decorated. Put 'em up high. His sisters are good ornament police but he pushes right back. What a loving bunch. Having a decorated tree just makes the house feel more like Christmas!

Dec 12 - Go get a Christmas tree

This was our tree adventure. Eric and I had different opinions about what our tree should be like. I wanted it to be FREE with lots of possible character and he wanted it to be the typical PERFECT tree. Some friends of ours have some pines they need to cut down and I thought By golly lets cut one down and top the tree and voila free tree! Wahoo. Eric turned up his nose from the start but I finally talked him into tromping through their woods. As is evidenced by the picture with a certain retailers reflection I had to let go of my purse strings for the sake of Eric's special tree memories. We have it up and it is beautiful but one of these years I'm going to introduce him to the joys of the character tree. We'll just wait and see.
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum wie treu sind deine Blätter!

Read Polar Express and watch the movie

I LOVE this book!!! We opened this as our Christmas book tonight and Daddy read them the story. They even got to watch the movie. I'll always love the book better but the movie is good too. The girls love the "Hot Chocolate" song and take turns singing
hot-hot-hot
hot-chocolate
Mommy got to go make a gingerbread house for Enrichment so I missed this one but it was a good activity for a night with Daddy.

I don't know if I've mentioned it but we open one book every night and read that Christmas book together at bedtime. Thanks to the library our Christmas book collection is quite expanded!

Make Christmas cookies and deliver them

We made these buckeye candies and they were easier than I thought. Death by chocolate and peanut butter would be the way to go! The girls "helped" and Marcus climbed onto the table to "help" before I could get him off with my peanut butter covered hands. I don't have a double boiler and so I used my glass Pampered Chef bowl over my small pan. I am being so creative with these advent things. (to toot my own horn!)
We didn't get a chance to deliver anything yet - Daddy was gone all day so we'll wait until he can go with us. The neighbors already wonder what he does for a living. :)

Watch The Santa Clause

I added make ornaments to this because I thought just plopping ourselves in front of the TV doesn't make the greatest of memories. I made some Bakers Clay and we used cookie cutters to get our shapes. I totally forgot we're out of straws and I was at a loss until I remembered I had ziti noodles and they worked perfect for punching the holes. Such a smart girl am I!

The kids had fun and Cora found out quickly the dough had 1 cup of salt and she didn't like it.

Santa Clause was well - just that. I did have to reinforce why we celebrate Christmas at prayer time though - we aren't celebrating Santa Claus - Who is it we celebrate at Christmas? John. Cora is quick on her feet even if she's confidently wrong. Cute girl. We are so grateful we can celebrate the birth of Jesus. Without him we would be nothing!

Drink hot cocoa and eat a candy cane

We used our candy canes as stir sticks for our homemade hot cocoa. Jodi corrected Daddy (as usual - she argues or contradicts EVERYTHING!) because its "warm cocoa." Our adorable strong willed daughter.

Write Christmas letters to family

We have family all over and Sunday is a good day for writing letters. Jodi loves to write her name on a piece of paper, fold it up and hand me the "mail" she wants to send. I need to be better about actually sending these cute scraps of paper. Merry Christmas!

Putting up lights - the pix

Here are the pictures I had a hard time with yesterday. The face Marcus is making is a pretty permanent face - he's always happy and excited about something. Right now its especially lights.

Decorate the house for Christmas

We had fun getting out the boxes full of Christmas "things" and its fun to watch the house transform into something festive. We didn't get everything put up (mostly because we haven't gotten our tree yet - I think that is Day 12) but the girls were really excited about the stockings. Jodi and Cora have been talking about Santa coming down the "chiminy" for several days now. I've gotta get my mom to finish Marcus' stocking and then his can hang too. Here is the inbetween-math (rather than aftermath which I still need to clean up!) of our decorating as well a shot of the floor we put in ourselves.

Gotta love Cora's face! They are very good at the cheesy faces and they're excited for their stockings.

I had to put in a picture of the pillars - that is what caught my eye on the house in the first place. I imagined wrapping them in white lights and pine garland at Christmas. Well this year its this darling homemade holly and ivy instead. I spent a lot of time today cutting out those pieces and sewing them together. I'm rather pleased with myself I just wish I had a better shot of the whole thing.

Put up Christmas lights

I've got some cute putting up lights pix but due to technical difficulties I can't seem to get them right at the moment and I'm too tired to try any longer. I"ll fix it tomorrow in daylight hours. Lights are fun though - they totally set the mood.

Write a Letter to Santa

Letters to Santa Clause for Day 4. (okay so I add an "e" and I'm not sure if its just my need to spell things correctly or that Disney's movies have cemented this spelling in my mind but I think I'll keep it Clause with an E just like Anne Shirley.)

The girls rather liked this activity because they love to color so much. I think Jodi had more fun decorating the outside of the envelope than "writing" the letter but it was a good way to spend 20 minutes.

Watch Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer

Day 3 had to be a switcharoo. It was meant to be a snowman building day but we steadily watched the snow melting all day - more green grass than white snowman building stuff. Instead we pulled out a paper that said - Watch Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. What a great classic movie - Eric and I even have Rudolf flannel sheets if that's not too much information for ya. :)

Make a paper chain countdown

Here is day 2 - making a paper chain countdown. Cora loved using the glue stick and Jodi only wanted to color/draw on the strips of paper. Jodi cried when I told her we'd get to tear the papers off. "Nooo, I want to leave it the same!" Cora loved posing with the chains and our trick now is to keep them out of Marcus' reach for a few days because that boy can reach when he'd determined!

Our Christmas Advent

I finally finished making an advent calendar I started when I was...well let's just say I finally finished it. Eric and I brainstormed activities we could do each day until Christmas, typed them up and printed them off and then stuck them in a pocket. Tonight we did our first "Advent Activity" and I decided I'd give myself one more thing to do every night and that would be posting our activity. Tonight we "made the car go crazy." The phrase comes from his parents who would take this road and then that road and wiggle the wheel of the car so the car would "go crazy" and Eric really wanted to make this one of our events. We started off with a bang. [After the usual frustration of herding chickens (not to mention getting said chickens to put on coat, boots, mittens, hat, go potty, go to the van, etc.) and having a frustrated mommy, we got into our car that would go crazy.] Well it went this way and that and we found a house that could use some new fuses for Christmas with the amount of lights they had up. It looked beautiful though and with the dusting of snow we've had the lights looked even better. After finding pretty lights the auto pilot found its way to some golden arches! McDonalds held our first Christmas "mini miracle" we'll call it. We all shared a large french fry to start us off and the girls wanted more french fries so up to the counter we marched for more of those great little fried potatoes. We had $4 left and thought it would be fun to share some ice cream too. We took 2 sundaes and another large fry back to Daddy and Marcus but we did not have to pay for them. The manager gave them to us for free. I told her what we were doing and she told me to put my money away. Now to me that little bit of kindness meant something - $4 is a lot of money this week and I'm grateful to all the little things that add up to make life special. We'll be back tomorrow! Merry Christmas.

Cake Destruction

Here is the 1st birthday and the traditional cake destruction we think is so cute. Marcus did a number on his cake - it was a baseball bat and ball but it looked rather fishlike. I was pressed for time alright! :)

Its so hard to believe that time goes so quickly - it happens to everyone but when I see my children sprouting right before my eyes I think how lucky I am to have these days when they're little. (Some days I need it told to me over a loud speaker every 2 minutes but I love this time of life!) Marcus is so much fun and we are so glad his happy little person is the other boy in our house. Things wouldn't be the same without him!

We sure love you Marcus!

The Slide

Marcus LOVES this thing. Good thing because of all the snow we've got already I need something inside! This kid is no doubt boy through and through. Its fun to watch him "beat" up his sisters already. Okay so as a mother I should not think its fun, but his sisters let him crawl on them, drop on them, pull their hair, hit them on the head with spoons, etc. and then whine and cry about it when he just wants to be with his big sisters. I'll admit I don't do much about it yet becasue he's just playing but if he doesn't ever have a brother than he's gonna need a puppy!

Happy Halloween

Flamenco dancer and dragon - Jodi's friend Landon came to trick-or-treat with us
The tiger got a Crunch bar and no plastic wrapper was stopping him!

"the flying monster" as Cora dubbed it - it was a ghost that moved up and down

The "cheese" pictures before the adventure began.

This is the way to go - a free ride and free candy!

The one day of the year when its okay for my children to take candy from strangers. Sadly these "strangers" are people in our neighborhood, people just don't get out and mingle with their neighbors like they ought to - myself included.

The kids had fun going door to door though and they have plenty of candy to last many a week if we do a piece a day. (yeah right!) Mommy and Daddy sift through the candy and make sure its okay for the kiddies to eat so it might not last as long as we think.

All Ramdomness...

Here is just some random things that are happening right now - a list will save me multiple posts which I just don't do!
1. Canning and dehydrating food is my life at present. Pears today, applesauce earlier this week and dried apples. Yummy! I would like to finish however so I can start finishing my curtains, all the windows are still naked!
2. Marcus officially came down the stairs all by himself because I found him where I did not leave him!
3. Fall is here and our backyard is beautiful! There is so much orange and red and golden yellow. What a wonderful time of year.
4. Cross Country has Regionals on Saturday - go boys, run fast!
5. Our cat has discovered she's a mouser - wahoo - except for the presents on the doorstep.
6. Jodi gets to be part of her first Primary Program at church on Sunday but odds are she'll just suck her middle fingers and shyly smile at the congregation instead of saying her part and singing.
7. Cora loves singing her ABC's
8. Jodi has a group of "friends" and their names are Allie, Callie, Ballie, Fallie and Sallie
9. We'll ask Cora to bless the food or say family prayers and she won't until Jodi starts and then we've got double coverage.
10. Any day now we'll have 3 children who are upright bipeds. Oh, boy!