Meal Plan Monday

Monday - Tomato and Bacon Soup with grilled cheese sandwiches, apple slices
Tuesday - Spilt Pea Soup, bread and butter
Wednesday - Enchiladas
Thursday - Beef Fondue, sauces - horseradish, BBQ, garlic & lemon vinaigrette, baked potatoes, salad
Friday - Spaghetti, salad
Saturday - Chicken casserole with wild rice (kid request - yuck!)
Sunday - Beef Roast, cauliflower with burnt butter sauce, green beans, bread pudding

Merry Christmas

I'm Back

H1N1 didn't kill me. Surprisingly, Advent hasn't killed me either.

About a month ago, our shower leaked from our upstairs bathroom onto our laptop in the kitchen below. I literally poured water out of my computer. It was amazing to me that the water didn't touch anything but the computer...not food, or phones, or children's artwork, just the most expensive thing on the counter. Chris called the church trustees. I called the computer fix-it man to do some data recovery. All the work is done now. The shower is fixed and I own a new-to-me laptop (a hand-me-down gift from a friend who upgraded to a Mac--wasn't she nice?). It was a pain, but it's over and I can't express to you the relief I feel that all of my pictures were able to be copied off of the old hard drive.

We traveled to Michigan for Thanksgiving. Jeannette hosted and prepared a great feast! The cousins made some big messes and acted out some play they made up about Snow Fairies. The grown ups ate too many calories and played some mean games of Scrabble.

The Sunday School Christmas Program was earlier this month. It was CPH's "From Heaven Above to Earth I Come" program. It was a lovely, beautiful evening. All of the kids did a fantastic job of memorizing both the hymn and their spoken verses from the Gospel of Luke. Here is a picture of the dress I finally found for Claire on eBay ($11.00 plus shipping!) with a red sweater from Goodwill ($2.99).

I tried to take a picture of the four of them together. This is the best of 171 tries. Ha! It was as traumatic as Gus makes it out to be. I think that I put on a DVD for them and had a glass of wine when we were finished.

There has been lots of decorating and Christmas crafts and baking going on here. I am glad that my children enjoy the season as much as I do. One particular afternoon, as Lily was working on a Christmas craft and sipping hot chocolate she said, "I feel so Christmasy."

My husband gets me a glass ornament every year for Christmas. I hung them on the light above the dining room table this year. I love them and it seemed a safer place to put them. I put the others in a glass vase.

Here is our tree and other decorations.

My parents took the 3 girls this past weekend. They all had a nice time baking cookies, doing some Christmas shopping, and going to church with my parents. Claire and Lily were so excited to see their godparents, who all attend my parent's church. Chris and I also had a nice time with just Gus at home. It was so quiet without his sisters! We cleaned (and it stayed clean!) and ran some errands. I worked on Gus' stocking (which still isn't finished). We made mussels on Saturday night. They were delicious.

At one point this month Claire was missing 3 of her upper teeth. One finally starting coming in. I had her practice singing "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth..." for the camcorder. She reads a lot. The latest book series to gain her attention is the Sister's Grimm Detective stories and the Great Illustrated Classics--she loved King Arthur.

She has been practicing for her upcoming, first-ever piano recital. Her selection is "Away in the Manger". Not exaggerating...she plays it at least 23 times a day, most often at 4:30pm, when Gus and Izzy are both crying and I am trying to simultaneously cook dinner and listen to Mark Belling.

Lily finished up swimming lessons with Claire early in the month. The girls really enjoyed the lessons. They both idolized Lou their instructor. "Lou swims on the swim team. Lou has blond hair. Lou said this. Lou does that." I signed them up for another session starting in January.

Lily has been growing up really quickly the past few weeks. Chris and I both have noticed a shift in her thinking...her memory work has been easier for her, she is loving math, she is really starting to understand phonics and her reading skills have greatly improved. She has been struggling with the distinction between fantasy and reality, and has been asking some great questions. She is understanding the Nativity at a deeper level, and it has been a pleasure to watch it all enfold before her eyes this Advent. "You mean Jesus is both God and man?"

Isabel has been pretty easy to love. She has a wonderful sense of humor, and is quick to laugh and do funny things to make others giggle. She has enjoyed creating ornaments for the Christmas tree...and sometime while she was crafting she gave herself a haircut. You know what? The 45,632,568th time self styles happen in your house, it doesn't bother you too much at all.

Gus is almost 11 months old now. He is crawling VERY efficiently and getting into all the girls' projects, as well as the toilet paper and (dare I say it?) the toilet if we don't keep the doors closed. He likes to chew on almost anything; toys, toothbrushes, and if nothing else is available, your shoulder. We just recently figured out that he is allergic to eggs--we thought it was nitrates for a while. I have to make an appointment with an allergist sometime soon.