I’ve been making this Easy Mexican Mac and Cheese for church for the past few weeks, and I think I like it. It suffers some from sitting in the warmers at church for 3 hours, so the noodles get a little dry and you can’t put the fresh toppings on, but all in all, I think it’s a good recipe for potluck type events. I think it’d be even better served fresh at home with all the fixings, but I haven’t tried that yet. What I like about it is that it’s relatively easy to keep the ingredients on hand, so no last minute grocery trips. Also, it’s got a lot of flavor but only a few ingredients. These are nice things for a recipe you might make nearly every week!

When your kids are hungry between meals, what do you do? Some resolutely do not provide snacks, some do sometimes, and I do most of the time, when asked. This is only because the snacks that I think of as “good snacks” are ones that the kids can largely get for themselves, though of course one sometimes makes exceptions for the little ones. Anymore though, Judah and Ezra can get their own snacks and ones for the little ones. Yippee! (I try to make sure the snack doesn’t occur too close to dinner or lunch, but our dinner is usually relatively late, and our lunch is early, so there’s plenty of time inbetween)

I define a Good Snack as something that the kids can largely get themselves, that doesn’t make too big of a mess, that is cheap, and that might even be nutritious.

So, without further ado, here are some Good Snacks For Little Kids:

1. Apples, see Recent Finds.
2. Pears, also see Recent Finds.
3. Bananas
4. Oranges (the boys can cut them into slices for everybody)
5. Grapes (though since the little one/s require them cut up, they’re not easy  for all the kids)
6. Frozen Blueberries (in a bowl, like little pop-sickles)
7. Graham Crackers
8. Graham Crackers with Peanut Butter
9. Saltine Crackers
10. Saltine Crackers with Peanut Butter
11. Saltine Crackers with cheese (melted or unmelted)
12. Yogurt (though this is more messy)
13. Bread, with a simple topping.
14. Carrots (the older boys can scrape their own)
15. Taco chips with salsa
16. pop-sickles (in the summer, out on the deck)

Now, basically that largely boils down to fruit, crackers, and a few other things, but it looked more impressive with the different variations written out.

Happy Snacking!

I saw this tip on Pinterest, and figured I could definitely benefit from such a cure for dirty burner pans. The short version: put the burner pans in a ziplock bag with a little ammonia. The ammonia fumes magically cleans the pans. Hurrah! The blog post linked on Pinterest was very enthusiastic, but her burner pans are black. Mine are shiny, and unfortunately, though much improved with very little effort on my part, the pans still ended up (after two day-long stints in a ziplock bag with the magic fumes) looking like this:

I didn’t take before pictures, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that this is an improvement.

Not quite as magical as I had hoped.

Yes, indeed, we are expecting another baby girl! I’m sure all of the grandmas and grandpas, and aunts and uncles will be overjoyed – the universal response to our initial announcement was something like, “Congratulations! I hope it’s a girl!” If the ultrasound tech were here, she would probably caution, once again, that this is merely her best guess – she wasn’t super confident, but I got the impression that was more of a personality thing. The pertinent… er… facts… looked pretty clear to me.

We ALL went to the ultrasound appointment (which I’m not sure I’d recommend – it’s a tremendous amount of waiting around for the adult supervising the children during the scientific part of the exam), but this might be our last, and the older kids are old enough to remember/appreciate the experience, and Michael had never gone to one, so we figured we’d give it a shot. Normally I would never schedule a 7:30 appointment for anything involving children, but Michael’s a bit busy this time of year, so it needed to be first thing in the morning. I’m sure they had to wait around for over an hour, and were only actually in the exam room for maybe 5 minutes, so I’d say the cost/benefit ratio was pretty high. If the kids were super excited, it might’ve been more worth it, but their reaction was rather underwhelming. A lot of “Oh.” “Uhuh.” “Yeah, I can see it.” I think the kids were rather awed by the equipment and the darkened room and the ultrasound tech. They were overall very happy with the whole experience – they especially liked getting up before dawn and going somewhere in the car, with snacks. Kids are strange.

And lo, when I woke up too early and walked out to the kitchen I didn’t quite believe what my still groggy eyes were seeing: 3 inches of snow on the deck railings! And normally I would be overjoyed, but of course my first thought was that I was going to be driving on that, with my 4 1/2 most precious possessions in the back, before sunrise, without any coffee. But the main roads and most of the valley was relatively snow free, and we still had our snow tires on, so it wasn’t actually at all stressful, praise God! When we finally drove home back up our hill, the snow was still there, much to the children’s delight, so they stayed outside and built a snowman.

So here we are, with snow still on the deck, and another little girl on the way!

We went to my parents in Tri-Cities, WA this year for Christmas, so we opened our presents from the other side of the family early (It doesn’t make any sense, and we wouldn’t have room, to haul them all to my parents, wrapped, open them, then haul them all back). We opened them late in the evening the day before we left, because Michael was working really late. We had planned to do a gift exchange evening with Michael’s parents and siblings that night, but our kids had colds, and they didn’t want to catch a bug before the left for Arizona right after Christmas, so the event was cancelled. The kids were up late on present opening night, and a little loopy (especially Monica).

Phinehas got a little tired of people demanding that he open and appreciate presents:

Christmas morning was at my mom and dad’s house. Here are the stockings pre-opening:

We opened the Christmas gifts on Christmas afternoon, after church, when my brother Sam, and his wife, Valerie, came over. Here’s “Aunt Katy” opening a gift – funny mug from a bizarre tv show about life at a community college, as I recall.

Like Grandpa…

Like Grandson:

Monica’s new tea set. She still loves it. Glad I went with plastic.

After the present opening, some of us walked to the park, because it was sunny and beautiful outside… and COLD! It was a short walk. We barely made it there (a couple blocks away) before we decided it would be warmer, MUCH warmer, back at the house, and turned around. After a rousing game of Mexican train, a dominoes game, we had Christmas dinner. Us kids de-stressed Mom’s day by convincing her that a full on formal holiday dinner wasn’t necessary this year – we still ate on a table-cloth, but cut back on some of the sides, and much of the formality (i.e. work). We all pitched in and had even more fun than usual!

Back at home, we used the ice cream maker that my brother Ben and his family sent us for Christmas. The kids were super excited and we all agreed that the resulting peanut butter cup ice cream was fabulous. I keep thinking that I should make it again, but keep forgetting to get cream at the grocery store!

It’s sheer tardiness to post about Christmas in March, I realize – but I figured better late than never, right?!

If you like A&E’s Pride and Prejudice, English mini-series type shows in general, or Upstairs/Downstairs stories featuring the English upper class and the servants who make their lives possible – you might like Downton Abbey. And if you DO like Downton Abbey you will be happy to know that it’s back for it’s second season, which you can view for free on the PBS site.

It starts two years into World War I, when everybody is starting to realize that their lives will never be the same again. Prompted by the show, I started telling Judah what little I know about the horrors of that war, and he was so interested I went and searched my bookshelves, because I thought we might have a kids book about WWI. We don’t. But we do have a book about the great escapes of WWII, which he is currently reading with great interest. So at least something good came of watching Downton Abbey!

Michael worked late every night this week, except Tuesday (when we had company for dinner) and Friday (when we had a church Christmas pageant). Thursday night I took the kids to the dress rehearsal, so they were up late that night. Friday night, after the pageant we brought two boys home to spend the night to celebrate Judah’s birthday – we didn’t send them to bed until 10:00 (come on, it was a sleepover – and a Friday night!). They woke up before 6 am. This morning we had a birthday brunch for Judah with various family and friends showing up mid-morning to lunch time. While we were waiting for our guest to arrive and I was cooking and cleaning up last night’s dinner dishes, Michael got the tires either torqued or changed on both of our vehicles.

The brunch was fun and Judah got some great gifts! I’ll post pictures later. After all our guests left, Michael had to go in to work again, though he’s getting pretty tired of the place – he got home shortly before 8:00. I cleaned up the kitchen some and made a big fruit salad for church tomorrow, then made and served dinner (short cut dinner –  frozen pizza). The older boys are all tired and getting sick from all that playing, eating sweet things, watching TV, playing the Wii and running around outside, so they were happy to go to bed at 8:30-ish, after we finished Advent. The younger two, after taking two-hour naps this afternoon, seem fully charged. We put Monica to bed anyway, but of course she came out shortly thereafter needing “fresh water” with ice. I sent her to go to the bathroom since she was up anyway, but she dawdled putting her drink by her bed first and – you guessed it – wet her pants. *sigh* She is finally to bed again, but Phinehas still is full of energy and cheerfulness, and seems to be thinking: “now that the older siblings are in bed, what are we gonna do together, huh, Mom? Huh, Dad?” Now I just need to finish all of the hand-washing, and I can rest (but of course, I’m writing this blog post, first).

And I can’t figure out, why are Michael and I so tired?!

Thanksgiving baking! Pumpkin pie from scratch. Monica gutted the pumpkin and Judah pulled off all of the pumpkin skin after it was baked, so it wasn’t too onerous for me. But I don’t think we’ll do it again unless we grow our own pumpkins. It didn’t taste any better than the pumpkin pies I made from canned pumpkin puree, and the texture was less smooth. And I think I like the seasoning in the Libby’s pumpkin pie recipe better anyway.

Christmas cookie baking. Am I not a good mom?!!

None of my kids seem to understand that it’s December – time for long sleeves and pants.

Decorating! I actually did some! The stockings were all made by my mother in law – I just got mine this year. Decided it was finally time to join the rest of the family, so I requested one of my own last year.

Advent devotions! As you can see, the kids really get into the candles!! Phinehas was initially very uncomfortable with starting fires in the house, but as you can see he’s finally gotten into it.

There is such a huge difference between 12 months and 18 months! That must be why people differentiate, rather than just saying “He’s one year old.” He wasn’t quite walking at 12 months, and now he’s running. Fast. He couldn’t really manipulate his surroundings, and now he can open drawers and cupboards, push chairs into more convenient locations for climbing, and push buttons on any electronics he can reach. He didn’t talk at all at 12 months and now he… well, he still doesn’t talk much. People theorize that with three older siblings he doesn’t much need to, but I think he’s just another like Judah. Judah didn’t talk until he was 2 years and 4 months old and then, as my parents said about me, “[he] never stopped.” Phinehas jabbers all the time and seems to think he’s talking, but his only words that we can recognize are:

1. “Mo” More.
2. “Daddy”
3. “Mommy” or “Mama”
4. “uh-oh” (usually after intentionally dropping something)
5. “Hhha” Hot
6. “Day” in a very pleasant voice, for Please
7. “Day-Day” in a very pleasant voice, for Thank you.
8. “goo” Good, when you say, “How are you, Phinehas?”

As you can see, he’s light on the ending consonants!

He loves to be involved in everything, as you can see in the photo below, taken the day before Thanksgiving when we were making pumpkin pies (from scratch!).

I say that his job description is “going around the house getting into things,” because I think that’s pretty much what he does all day! When not doing that, he routinely:

• pulls out all of the dishes from the bottom cupboard in our bookshelf and climbs in
• plays in the bathroom sink with bath toys, usually making a big soupy water mess. (I don’t mind, I have a bunch of old towels specifically for cleaning up messes)
• hides under blankets and giggles
• runs like the wind and hides behind the big chair in his room, when I’m getting his clothes out of the drawer to dress him
• throws his blanket on the floor and does a face plant into it to snuggle. (He calls his blanket, “Mmmmm.”)
• climbs up on anything he can

He went through a really rough patch right around Thanksgiving. He got the flu and didn’t recover from it for almost a week, and then it still seemed like something else was bothering him – he was unbelievably crabby. But whatever it was seems to be gone and now he’s Mr. Cheerful again, just like in the picture above.

You could microwave it – and pull out a cube with hole melted through it – some if it still too hard. Or you could postpone your baking project until it softens – by which time who knows what will be going on? (Anybody else had sick kids lately?!) Or you could follow this tip: How to Soften Butter. It works! I know, I just tried it today. I was making Salted Caramel Thumbprint Cookies for Judah’s piano recital tomorrow, and was faced with the above mentioned dilemma. Google came to my rescue, and the cookies are made (and delicious!)

Now let’s just hope that Judah doesn’t get the flu before his big moment! Of course if he did, we’d just have to eat them all ourselves….