Category: Holidays

Giant Ostrich Eggs!

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I have exactly one (1) April Fool’s joke in my repertoire.  Besides, you know, “look behind you!  An elephant, I SWEAR!”

These are ostrich eggs, which I fried up fresh this morning.  It’s a great way to get the kids dressed in the morning on April 1.  I told them that I got them from the zoo yesterday afternoon.  Why didn’t they see them in the fridge?  Because I didn’t want them to play with and break them, of course.

What are they really?  Cool Whip and canned peach halves.  They go great with a slice of toast.  Mmmm!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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The best thing about St. Patrick’s Day is how easy it is to celebrate.  Just slap somethin’ green on your kids, and voila!  Done!  Putting green food coloring in everyone’s food is another good option, but I always forget.  I alwas intend to make my Irish-American Soda Bread, too (it’s sweeter and cake-ier than regular soda bread, mmm) but I forget that, too.

You know what I don’t ever forget?  SHAMROCK DONUTS.  From the Banbury Cross Bakery.  Them’s good stuff.

How about one more picture of cute kids for your pleasure?

I love Katie’s combination smile/raspberry.  It’s like she’s simultaneously thrilled by the attention and grossed out by cooties.  Love it.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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I like to think of Valentine’s Day as a celebration of love.  My love for baked goods.  Behold:

A successfully made Red Velvet Cake!  I attempted this same cake recipe last Valentine’s, and it was not pretty.  I didn’t have the right size cake pan, so the batter overflowed in the oven, and what was left in the pan collapsed into a big cake crater.

Oh, and I didn’t have enough red food dye, so the cake crater was the color of Spam.

But this year, I invested in the proper pan, and a full ounce of dye (that’s what you need, apparently) and lo!  A cake worth destroying! A happy Valentine’s was enjoyed by all!

Oh, and Katie felt the love, too:

Hmm.  On second thought, I think I’ll count this last picture as my Valentine’s present.  Yum.

 

The Rest of Christmas

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For my family, the week before and after Christmas is always jam-packed and crazy.  No wonder I needed three weeks to go by before I could write about it . . .

  • On the 20th, we went to a party for Jeff & Brian’s Tae Kwon Do class.  Everyone referred to each other as “sir,” which is apparently a Tae Kwon Do thing.  (“Would you like more cheese dip, sir?”)  The most coveted prize in the white elephant gift exchange?  The Chuck Norris t-shirt, hands-down.  (“Chuck Norris slams revolving doors.”  “Chuck Norris can split the atom with his bare hands.”  “Chuck Norris doesn’t scuba dive — he just holds his breath.”)
  • On the 21st, Brian’s family congregated at my house for a gingerbread-a-thon.  This year, they decided to make a castle, complete with stained glass candy windows, Snow White in a glass casket, a Rapunzel with braided licorice hair, a very cool gumdrop dragon, King Claudius poisoning Hamlet’s father, Ophelia drowning in the moat, and an assault by a bunch of Gummi Bears with a battering ram made from a Pirouette cookie.  Other Gummi Bears stood on top of the gatehouse, pouring a pot of molten candy down on the invaders.  I commented that it was a tableaux both whimsical and under siege.  “Oh, just like Christmas, right?” joked my sister-in-law, Kristen.
  • On the 22nd, we celebrated my brother’s birthday with a dinner at my parents’ house.  My kids got to play with their cousins, which was delightful. Their favorite game was to use a string of golden tinsel as “reins,” and then take turns being Santa Claus and reindeer.
  • Dec 23rd: every year Brian’s grandmother, who is 102 years old, “hosts” a Christmas party for her extended family.  This year it took place in La Jolla Groves, a restaurant in Provo that, while fancily decorated, had some of the worst table service I’ve ever seen.  (They brought me a plate of food, then hastily took it back, saying “that’s not for you!”; they brought Brian a half-eaten bowl of soup and a dirty spoon.)  But it was fun to see the family and watch Jeffrey and Eleanor put on their “good manners” — or try to.  Afterwards we went back to Brian’s parents’ house to stay up late playing games (or, in my case, going to town on their Steinway baby grand with a fat stack of Christmas music.  Golly, I love to play on that thing).
  • Dec. 24th.  The aforementioned bell choir performance was followed by a big dinner for my extended family.  (Yeah, I think you can actually hear my bones creak when reading that sentence.)  I love roasting a ham with Bosc pears and then turning the fruit into a compote with cranberries.  I also tried making a triple-chocolate peppermint trifle for dessert, which turned out tasting like silky sweet manna.  After dinner, we exchanged presents and played the “thimble game,” where we each take turns hiding a thimble around the room.
  • Dec. 25th.  Our kids always sleep in, regardless of what day of the year it is, which means I always get to shower and dress myself on Christmas morning (huzzah!).  We always like to have a special sit-down breakfast for the holiday.  This year, the kids requested blueberry pancakes.  After playing around in pajamas for a bit, we headed back down to Provo for more gift exchanging and games.  My mother-in-law had purchased and wrapped several gifts for “baby girl,” but had changed the labels since I had revealed the baby’s name (Katherine Suzanne).  I thought this was rather adorable.  Jeffrey was given a set of Lego Star Wars figures, which he held joyously above his head and shouted “Wow!  This is just what I need to make my day!”  My brother-in-law and his wife also gave him a tricorner hat, which he has worn pretty much constantly ever since.

  • Dec. 26th — yet one more bell choir performance, ho boy
  • Dec. 27th — Brian went back to work, and we spent the day at home doing NOTHING.  NOTHING, do you hear me?  Excepting grocery shopping, laundry, and housecleaning.  This apparently counts as “nothing.”  (Very tired at this point.)
  • Dec. 28th — my family met in Salt Lake for a photo shoot, followed by pizza at my house.  In the middle of all this, Brian’s parents arrive to take Jeff & Ella down to St. George for a family reunion.  (Brian and I stayed at home with William, since I am Great With Child.)
  • Dec. 29 & 30 — we spend time moving William upstairs into Jeff’s room, then cleaning out the old nursery and repainting it to get everything set for Baby Katie’s arrival
  • Dec. 31st — Jeff & Ella return; we go to a friends’ house for a New Year’s Eve party.  Just after midnight, I notice that baby Katie has “dropped,” and I can breathe again.  Hooray!
  • Jan 1st — as per tradition, we host a sledding party for mine and Brian’s families; at the very last minute half of them decide they’d rather not come because “it’s cold outside.”  Lamest thing ever.  But making the extra-thick hot cocoa and pumpkin spice doughnuts made up for it.  A bit.
  • Jan 2nd — I actually got a good night’s sleep for the first time in a month, and so I was actually cheerful at one last whole-family gathering at my parents’ house.  William and cousin Sarah are adorable playmates.  My sister made the owl hats they are wearing in this picture — in fact, she made a hat for all her nieces and nephews, which is something amazing.  (My kids love to put them on and spend a good hour talking in “owl language.”)

  • Jan 3rd — the kids go back to school, and I take a nap.  Naps are golden.

Christmas With Bells On

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It isn’t too late to write about the holidays, right?

I spent much of this past Christmas season lifting dumbbells.  Or, rather, these:

English handbells!  Owing to an out-of-the-blue phone call from a family I knew in high school (but hadn’t had contact with for 15 years), I became part of a handbell choir in late October.  The bells are owned by Steve and Renee, who lived in Virginia back when I did, but have since retired and moved to Sandy.  For decades, Steve has hauled out his bells every holiday season and rounds up a bunch of music enthusiasts to practice and play carols here and there.  I was part of his bell choir when I was a teenager and absolutely adored it.  It was thrilling to have the chance to play them again.

Each member of the choir is assigned two bells and its accompanying accidentals.  My job was to mind the bass E and F — two of the heaviest bells, hence the name “dumbbells” — which were assigned to me because I can read bass clef.  The clappers of each bell are held silent by a rubber “spring” (I think you can kind of see it in the picture.)  That way, the bell only makes sound when the ringer flicks his or her wrist hard enough to overcome the spring, allowing for accurate note-playing.  To silence the bells, you hold them against your chest, which means I had two little sore spots just below my breastbone after the first rehearsal.

The bells are made of brass, which can tarnish easily if they are touched often, so everyone wears little white cotton gloves during rehearsals and performances.  It always made me feel like a magician ready to pull a rabbit out of something.

It’s fun to play something so percussive, especially with all the various techniques we use to achieve different sounds out of the bells.  Bells are shaken, hit with mallets, muted with thumbs, swung up and down, waved back and forth, plucked, “marked” — this is when you slam the bell down on a table covered with foam to make a staccato — and “mark-lifted,” where you slam the bell down and then immediately lift it to make a kind of pluck-echo.  My favorite technique that I got to do involved ringing the bell, and then gently brushing it against the table in circles, making a kind of dinnnnng-wing-wing-wing sound.

My favorite performace of the season was on Christmas Eve.  We played for a community sing-in at the “rock church,” an old LDS chapel just west of the state Capitol buliding.  The chapel is old-fashioned and lovely, with a high arched ceiling delicately edged with swirls of gilding and paintings of flowers.  People from the neighborhood (as well as the “bell choir groupies,” as our families were called) came in street clothes to sing carols and hear the bells.  Afterwards, we all got to drink cider.  In the choir, you have to wear all black for performances (thank heavens it’s easy to find maternity shirts in that color) and one of the other choir members handed out little crocheted pins that looked like Christmas wreaths that she had made for us.

My entire family was able to be there, excepting my sister, whose daughters hadn’t been feeling well that day.  My stand partner, Mike, and I had fun pointing out our families’ various teenage hairstyles to each other.  (His son is fifteen and lanky; my brother is fifteen and has a wicked ‘fro.)  Eleanor was excited to sing the two or three carols that she had learned in church this year, and I could hear her little voice singing out loud and clear.

Afterwards, Jeffrey held my hand as I helped carry whatever lightweight choir-related objects I could out to Steve’s truck.  He was both excited and hushed at the same time, in that way that can somehow only be accomplished on Christmas Eve.  It was a wonderful evening.

The Most Photographed Christmas Pageant Ever

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My ward has a tradition of putting on a children’s Nativity pageant the Sunday before Christmas.  It’s something that always makes me want to get down on my knees and personally thank the Primary presidency for.  Nothing makes me feel the true Christmas spirit like this little 30-minute presentation. My mother-in-law, my parents, and my brother Alex all drove to see it.  My parents declared afterwards that the pageant is “when Christmas really begins.”

Jeffrey was a shepherd.  He’s always been a shepherd, and will probably be a shepherd until the day he turns 12 and is deemed to big for the program.  He actually sang some of the songs this year, which is a big step for him.  (He knows all the songs; he usually just kinda freezes in front of an audience and does nothing.  But not this time!  Hooray!)

Eleanor was a sheep.  She was asked to come dressed in “animal colors” — black, brown, grey, or white — and was near despair when she couldn’t find white pants in her dresser drawer.  Eventually, we were able to convince her that khaki would be okay.

Two of my Wolf Scouts got to sing a small-group song with a pair of girls, and I pointed them out to my mom.  She said, “Yes, it’s funny how fast you grow attached to them, isn’t it?”  I replied that my scouts were pretty easy to get attached to.

The kids sang sweetly, and there was only one small moment when someone forgot their lines.  I highly suspect that the kid who played the “drummer boy” had his lines taped to the edge of his drum.  And the Angel Gabriel blew a retractable trumpet that looked an awful lot like a vuvuzela.  All in all, a most excellent program.

Afterwards, there were star-shaped sugar cookies, which made William rather happy.

The center of the refreshments table had this sweet little stable made out of gingerbread.  See how they used pepitas for the roof and dried oatmeal for snow?  My mom and I want to try this out next year.  I have a whole box of animal cookie cutters I inherited from Brian’s grandma.  Mmmm, gingerdonkeys and gingerpigs!  Can’t wait.

Proper Little Ladies

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This past Saturday Eleanor and I went to Santa’s Tea Party at the Grand America, along with all her female cousins, various aunts, and both grandmas.  (From left to right in the above picture: Abby (age 1 1/2), June (age 2), Eleanor (age 5), and Sarah (age 3 1/2).  It was overwhelmingly girly fun; and the food was EXCELLENT.  Praise be to the inventor of the scone.  Especially the scone that includes clotted cream and lemon curd.  I drank a delightful plum spice herbal tea (eh, they should have just called it “wassail” because that’s what it tasted like) which was also quite the yummy thing.  Each person at the table had her own little mini teapot, which enchanted the girls.

Eleanor and her cousin Sarah sat side by side on this big couch for the party.  You can really see the likeness between them!  Eleanor chose to have mint hot chocolate and Sarah chose plain hot chocolate.  They were very interested in the sugar bowl, and insisted on putting “lumps” in their cocoa with the tongs.  (This, of course, lead to many lumps of sugar being dropped on the floor.)  Sarah insisted on drinking her cocoa with a spoon, which I thought adorably funny.

Despite the excitement of the event, both girls were remarkably well behaved, taking pains to show off their “fancy manners.”

There was still some twirling and bouncing around, but they were well within the parameters of expected three- and five-year-old behavior.  A grand piano was in the center of the room, with a woman playing and endless list of carols; pretty much every little girl in the room (including mine) took the opportunity to go and dance.

During the party, Santa and Mrs. Claus paid us a visit.  This has to be one of the best Santas I’ve ever seen; he was incredibly kind and patient with the kids.  Eleanor, as you can see, was thrilled to talk to him.  Everyone enjoyed the outing and we’re already planning to go again next year!

Ella’s First Piano Recital

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I am so sick of “Here Comes Santa Claus.”  It’s been playing in my house, in one form or another, at least 3-5 times a day since late September, often with miscellaneous grunts of frustration thrown in for spice.

People who complain about seeing Christmas ornaments in stores the day after Halloween have NOTHING on a home with a young piano student.  There have been times when I felt that hearing even one more note of this song would be enough to send me over the edge.  But it’s been worth it.

November marked the completion of Eleanor’s first year of piano lessons, and either as a result of this or perhaps other factors, her teacher decided to give her a very advanced piece to play for the holiday recital this year.  Her arrangement of “Here Comes Santa Claus” features eighth notes, flats, sharps, and lots of tricky fingering (cross-overs, position changes, and other things that frequently foul up the beginning pianist).  This is unusual for a kid who is still in the “primer” stage of lessons.  She’s only five, and to tell the truth, I had serious doubts when I first saw the music.

And then . . . she had to have it MEMORIZED.

The great thing is that Eleanor tackled the project with enthusiasm, and after many, many, MANY days of practice, had it pretty much ready to go by last Saturday’s recital.  She practiced walking up to the piano by herself, playing without too much wiggling around on the bench, and taking a bow afterwards.  I’m very proud of how she’s able to focus and work hard.

On the day of the performance, she eagerly slipped into her red ruffly Christmas dress (“with a matching headband!” she told anyone who crossed her path), packed up her music folder, and we all headed down to the recital hall.

She was the first person playing in the program . . . and she FROZE.

Yup.  That shiny black Steinway on stage was nothing like the piano at home.  She didn’t seem nervous or upset, she just looked puzzled:  “Where are my fingers supposed to go again?”  After a few minutes of being lost, her piano teacher came up and sat next to her, opened her music, and pointed out where she needed to be.

Then Eleanor and I played a duet called “The Snow Lay on the Ground” together, which went off without a hitch.  Everyone praised her work, and then she got to go eat cookies.

If there was anything about the performance she found upsetting, she hasn’t mentioned it.  When we got home, we made a video of her playing it without mistakes, and she seemed very pleased by that.  Besides, we were going to a performance of “Nutcracker” that evening in Provo.  It’s simply impossible for a little girl to be upset when she knows ballerinas are next on the menu.

I’m so proud of my little girl!  And best of all, I don’t have to hear a single thing about Santa Claus Lane EVER AGAIN.

Eh, well.  How about one more time:

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like . . . Well, You Know

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Over the past week we’ve been slowly dragging out our Christmas decorations and setting them up.  Usually we try to get it all done in one day, but between painting our kitchen (more on that later) and my perpetual pregnancy-induced exhaustion, it’s been more of a little-bit-here, little-bit-there, situation.

This, of course, frustrates the kids to no end, who want everything up NOW.

On the first evening, we just set up our tree.  No decorations or anything.  When Brian and I finished this and left to do dishes, the kids decided to Take Matters Into Their Own Hands.  Grabbing up a box of outdoor lights, they went to work on their toy castle:

TA-DAH!  How festive is that?  There are golden fake poinsettia flowers all over it, too.  And in the center of it all, our much loved, much abused nutcracker in the shape of the Mouse King.  (I don’t think it’s visible in the photo.)

The next day, we put most of the ornaments on the tree, excepting a bunch of handmade straw ornaments from Germany and the silver star topper.  Once again, I was doing dishes, and Eleanor and William decided to Take Matters Into . . . well, you figure it out:

It’s an Ella tree!  See the ornaments hanging off her fingers and toes?  She’s using one hand to hold the silver star on top of her head.

This past Tuesday for Family Home Evening, we upheld one of our family traditions and picked out a new nativity set from Ten Thousand Villages.  For those of you not familiar with this store (which is part of a national chain), it is a non-profit organization sells fair-trade gifts from all over the world, and is run mostly by volunteers. I love seeing all the different cultural interpretations of the Christmas story.  So far we have creches from Taiwan, Peru, Indonesia, Kenya, Bangladesh, and a weinachtspyramid from Germany (which I found at a thrift store.  Everything else is from Ten Thousand Villages).

Upon arrival at the store, Jeffrey marched in, scanned the wall of nativities, then cornered a clerk and began asking where all the Roman nativity sets were.  Rome is one of his current obsessions.  “Where are the Roman ones?  Where are the Roman ones?”  I had to gently take Jeff aside and explain that Rome really wasn’t a country anymore.

“What happened to Rome?” he asked, puzzled.

I explained briefly — not wanting to be dragged into a discussion of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — that it was Italy now.

Ten minutes later, he was at the store clerk again: “Where are the Italy ones?  Where are the Italy ones?”

Thank heavens for patient volunteer store clerks!

Brian and I can be notorious for being wishy-washy over decisions like this.  Should we get the little crocheted set from Vietnam?  Or the punched-metal display from Haiti?  However, it was Jeffrey who spotted the nativity that we all fell in love with.  I don’t have time to take a picture of it, but this is what it kind of looks like:

It’s from Uganda.  Our set is just like this, only we have two shepherds, and the stable is made of stamped leather and triangle-shaped.  I think it’s just lovely.  The sheep made of twisted bark are adorable!

 

The Turkey Trot

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Here’s Eleanor’s “Thankful Turkey” that she made in kindergarten:

The words on the feathers are kind of random (peas?  peaches?) and I think she was picking them off of a board of suggested words her teacher made.  Thanksgiving had quite the impact on her class; over the past few days the favorite recess game is a holiday-inspired variation of tag.  As Eleanor put it, “The girls are all Indians, and Fiona is our pet turkey.  Then the boys are all Pilgrims and they try to catch our turkey and eat her up!”

It sounds like kindergarten hasn’t changed much since I was a kid, in some ways.

The funny thing is that even though all of my kids are in different classes — or different schools — they all brought home paper tipis they had made in class.  I mentioned this in my previous “100 thankful things” post, but here’s the picture of the display Eleanor made of them on the piano:

Love that bison piggy bank.

Thanksgiving proper was celebrated at Brian’s parents’ house.  Here is our festive spread — my mother-in-law, Kathryn, found these foil-wrapped chocolate turkeys and encouraged the kids to use them for name cards:

See the funny-shaped turkey in the center of the table?  Brian and I discovered a roasting method called “spatchcocking” — where you cut the spine out of the bird, then press it flat.  Because the turkey is much thinner this way, it takes much less time to roast — only about 70-80 minutes.  This ensures moist, tender meat and a crispy skin.  Brian loves this method, and rubbed a butter-rosemary mixture all over the meat before roasting, which I found fantastic.

After dinner we played games —  a literary variant of Balderdash called Liebrary (in which you make up the first lines of real books, then guess which one is real), and a marathon game of dominoes (dominoes being one of the few games the kids find just as entertaining as the adults).

Jeffrey got bored of games after just one round of dominoes, and wanted to go off to play by himself.  In his social skills class, we’ve learned that this isn’t behavior we should encourage; the rule now is that Jeffrey doesn’t have to play the game, but he can’t go off by himself, either — he has to stay with the group. Since Jeffrey had spent part of the weekend watching the BYU-Utah football game on television with Brian, he decided to stay with us and “call” the dominoes game like a sportscaster would.

“Eleanor passes a 5 to Mommy!” he cried, as Ella put down a tile.  “Mommy blocks it!”  Then, whenever someone played a double tile, “TOUCHDOWN!”