Gingerbread castle!

Our family and our good friends are studying Medieval times for history this year.  So my friend Julie did an amazing job setting everything up for the kids to create and decorate a gingerbread castle.  She had planned and prepared all of the pieces, but then left the kids to figure out how to put it all together. 

Aidan didn't really know what what going on, but there was candy involved so he was interested.  He made Nate upset when he ate the gingerbread man Nate was planning to decorate into a soldier.

The finished product was awesome!

Forts, feasts, and wreaths as we prepare for Christmas

Some Christmas card outtakes 

This doesn't really have anything to do with preparing for Christmas, but the kids spent one day in December building a really great fort in the living room.

This part of the fort was Annie's office.  She set it up like Daddy's office and composed a great many letters to everyone in the family during her office hours.A

A new tradition:  celebrating the Feast of Saint Nicholas on December 6.  After skiing, the kids enjoyed candy canes in their hot chocolate.

Then we surprised them with Saint Nicholas gifts.  A puzzle for the big boys and books for the other three.

We get together with a group of Catholic home school families on the First Friday of each month.  After Mass in December, a few of the moms (not me, the Mom who breaks out in a cold sweat at the thought of setting up a craft for large groups of kids) organized various Christmas crafts for the kids.  My kids absolutely love making wreaths and arrangements with greens.  They. LOVE. it.    And they do a beautiful job.  Their creations make our home so festive!

Jakin created our family's Advent wreath.

Catching up/Thanksgiving and Jack's birthday

 It's New Year's Eve.  Our family returned home this evening from our ten days of crazy Christmas traveling.  Everyone in the house is asleep and some in the house are sick.  I'm in my pajamas by the fire.  I expect it's going to be a quiet evening so I'm going to try to catch up on a little bit of what's happened in the past two months since my last post.

My parents spent another Thanksgiving with us.  I'm so glad they've been able to join us these past years.  It's nice to have family here and to also relax.  On the day before Thanksgiving, Jack installed the new island counter top.  Beautiful!  And huge!  The picture above shows that all four adults could have our own work station at the island without being in each other's way at all.  Really nice.

We usually get our Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving. 

My parents were very generous to stay with our kids for about 28 hours so that Jack and I could sneak in a quick getaway to celebrate his 40th birthday.  We enjoyed a hike (just the two of us!  I don't think that's happened since we've had children), dinner, a lovely bed and breakfast, Christmas shopping (thank you, Jack!), and time reading in one of our favorite bookstores.  Thank you, Mom and Dad.

Our family celebrated Jack's birthday almost exactly as we celebrated my birthday back in October.  After a family hike, we ordered a pizza, make chocolate pudding cake, and ate both by the fire in the living room.  Jack fell asleep early by the fire and I did some furious Cyber Monday shopping.

I don't take many pictures of adult birthdays, but I had to take this picture of Annie's birthday project for her Dad.

Halloween

One nice thing about our Halloween plans each year is that we don't have to plan.  We head out with the same friends every year, just as we have since 2004.  That's good stuff.  Good memories.

Annie loves to dress and decorate for holidays.  She and Lauren had their "during the day" Halloween clothes laying out before they went to bed on October 30.  

I'm definitely the kind of mom who encourages my kids to raid the dress up bin an hour before trick-or-treating starts (rather than planning elaborate costumes weeks in advance... and since I don't sew or knit, I certainly don't make their costumes).  The kids did pretty well coming up with costumes this year.  We had two cowboys.

Two little Ingalls girls.  Having a mother-in-law who makes beautiful costumes for my kids helps a lot with Halloween costume planning.

And Jakin was a Viking

Aidan wasn't quite sure what was going on, but he got to ride on Daddy's shoulders and people gave him candy every once in a while, so he was happy.

Lauren with her good buddy, Nate.  Lauren RAN for the first half of the night.  Seeing her run and run from house to house with that cute little costume on was the highlight of the night for me.

Eating candy after trick-or-treating

Another part of the Halloween tradition that my kids love is the opportunity to dump all of their candy on to the floor at the end of the night.  After sorting comes trading!  While the big boys and the girls went off to trade with their friends, Lauren stayed on the porch to trade with Pete.  He and his wife had dressed up as bacon and eggs.  Pete reasoned that since he was dressed up, he could take a bag and trick-or-treat right along with the kids.  Much to his wife's mortification, Pete came home with a whole bag of candy and he and Lauren worked some deals in the Halloween after party.

My new obsession

Green smoothies!

I am, perhaps, a little behind on this trend, but better late than never, I say.  Seriously, I love these things.  I don't drink these smoothies out of an sense of obligation.   They taste good.  Milk, yogurt, peanut butter, banana, and spinach.  Peanut butter and spinach!!??  Don't knock it till you try it.  And Aidan will suck these smoothies down, which is nice.  The other kids showed some initial enthusiasm, which has unfortunately cooled off.  But Lauren will still drink some, so she gets a little bit of green in her. 

Anyway, here's what I do:  It's spinach season again at the farm, so I've been taking advantage and bringing home huge bags.  I clean the spinach, remove the ribs, and liquify the leaves in the food processor.  Then, I fill these reusable, flexible muffin cups with the liquid spinach and freeze them over night.

 When I make the smoothies, I use a cup of milk, a half cup of plain yogurt, a frozen banana, a tablespoon of peanut butter, and then fill the rest of the blender with spinach (when I have fresh).

 Green goodness

When the spinach freezes, I can just pop it out of the muffin cups and into a freezer bag.   I'm freezing a bunch of these every week while I have an abundance of spinach.  I'm filling up my freezer with these little cups.  Making smoothies will be even easier when I can grab one little "muffin" from the freezer and throw it in the blender with everything else.

 These freezer bags make me happy!

Girls

Just some pictures to see what the girls have been up to lately...

I recently spent a whole day (it's a big job!) switching over all of the kids' clothes from summer to winter clothes.  In the transition, the girls found matching winter jammies.  They get all silly and cuddly with each other when they wear their matching clothes.  Annie and Lauren are also warming their feet by the stove in this picture.

 Lauren likes very much to sit with the big kids when they do school.  She has been enjoying doing puzzles during that time lately.  We have a few 50-60 piece puzzles that were very difficult for Lauren at first.  Now, after voluntary daily practice, she is very good at the bigger puzzles and can complete them by herself.

 Success! 

Annie started piano lessons a few weeks ago

 Lauren is constantly asking if she can hold Aidan and I am constantly trying to tell her that he's not a baby anymore.  He wants to play with her, not sit on her lap like he did when he was a baby.  But, he did sit on her lap one day recently when she was offering to read him a book.

For the first time, Lauren completed one of these magnetic mosiacs by herself.