D is for

Daddy and Dinosaur: Jim took some time on his day off to do the Letter of the Day with Claire. It just happened to be D like daddy. They made dinosaurs out of the letter and then played with them for quite some time while I made dinner. It was really sweet to get to listen in on their play from the kitchen. My kids are super lucky to have such a great Daddy.

Dinner: Dinner tonight was stirfry? - any vegetable that was in my crisper with some soy sauce and ginger over rice.

A Note About our Uneventful Lives

Other than the recent wedding and the drama that came with it, life here has been rather uneventful, I have not accomplished anything off of my list of things I want to accomplish these next two months, I have not made any interesting foods, bought any girl scout cookies or done any laundry.
With this recent cold snap keeping us housebound I have had to dig deep in my bag of tricks to find new, engaging and stimulating activities to keep us all sane.
We have begun having almost daily car washes in our kitchen

And have enjoyed the occasional Christmas gift as is straggles into our house. That's right folks, the two gifts that got the greatest reaction from my daughter this year were a pair of pink corduroy pants and a box full of empty picture frames. I'm officially giving up on buying her anything for next year.

Nick is keeping busy potty training himself, off and on. You gotta do what you gotta do I guess.

Life is good here, we wish it were warmer so we could at least go for a walk and get fresh air without our lungs getting frostbite but, hey you win some, you lose some I guess.
Keep warm out there.

Salt Dough Ornaments

We made ornaments for on our tree, ones that weren't collectible, ones that weren't very breakable, ones that if they didn't last to see next year we didn't really care. We made them out of salt dough. (recipe here)  We mixed them up, rolled them flat and cut them out.

 The recipe said you could speed the hardening process by 'baking' them at 200 degrees for about 20 min. Ours 'baked' for about 2 1/2 hours, then sat out all night and were still not really hard the whole way through the next day... I wonder what we did wrong?

 

Regardless of their soft middles we painted them the next day... 

ok - Nick ate one. (pre-paint) I didn't think he'd like it.

He ate the whole thing.

Jesus Shines

Jesus Shines night and day to show us the way.

"...And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was." Matthew 2:9b

Please continue to remember that Jesus goes before you, preparing the way and knows what there is to come. He will never take you down a road you couldn't handle.

Another Day Another Adventure

Another 'successful' napping experience. (Although I can't figure that it's any kind of comfortable)

And thumbprint bugs. :)

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

I have heard, often actually that you are able to eat dandelions... mostly people say you can eat the greens like a salad. But here is recipe that allows you to eat the fun flower part. I will put it here and hope that someone stumbles across it and makes them and lets me know how they actually are.
I have no dandelions. In fact I made a startling discovery today that I actually have no grass in my front patch. I have moss, feet and feet of moss covering the area I would like to someday be a 'yard'. For some reason this morning during nap time, instead of folding laundry, mopping floors, changing beds, or (insert other mundane household chore of choice here) I decided to garden. This urge has only come over me one other time. That's didn't go so well.
See, some people (my mother) are gifted gardeners. and some; like me are not. I am in good company with my upstairs neighbor who I share the 'yard' with. She decorated the front 'bed' with plastic plants. Sadly I am coming to accept that this is my fate as a gardener as well. I did however manage to kill three uninvited trees that were growing tall enough to cover the plastic foliage, and take out the pieces of concrete that have lived in the 'garden' since they cut a hole in my wall over a year ago.
And wait - I took out all the dead plantlike life that constituted most of the 'life' in the garden.
I am marking it as a success :)