Home for the Holidays

Short post to say we are home from Moorhead. The entire house looks like a toy store. Both Dave and I have made lists of Things To Do After Christmas. Dave has started on his. I'm sitting here, writing this blog post, just having eaten two servings of Pho. TWO! In the same meal! I can't move. I'm thinking, "List? What list? Where's the chocolate?"

The plan is to cook this week. I have a new stand mixer to calibrate (!!!!!!! Don't ask me - I'm just parroting the instruction manual) and break in. But I also want to make four soups. So this morning Emily and I went supermarketing for the ingredients.

Watched Back To The Future last night. So much fun. Oh, those skinny neckties!

Well, off to trim a toenail now. Jenna's, I believe. Always something exciting around here.

Merry 2nd Day of Christmas!

Christmas by Preschoolers

We're off to relatives for Christmas this weekend. 

In our absence, please accept some entertainment by the children, recorded at their annual Preschool Christmas Concert. Typically, this is held in the beautiful sanctuary, as you will see in the first video starring Kate. However, the sanctuary was occupied during the time of Jenna's concert, so that became, instead, an intimate sort of affair in her own classroom. 

You all know the words to We Wish You A Merry Christmas, 

but maybe not those of Jenna's song, so here they are:

A Stable Warm and Dry

A stable warm and dry, oh yes,

A stable warm and dry

For Mary and Joseph

And the new little baby boy.

The angels came to sing, oh yes,

The angels came to sing

For Mary and Joseph

And the new little baby boy.

The shepherds came to see, oh yes,

The shepherds came to see

Mary and Joseph

And the new little baby boy.

The wise men brought their gifts, oh yes,

The wise men brought their gifts

For Mary and Joseph

And the new little baby boy.

It happened long ago, oh yes,

It happened long ago

But we still remember

The new little baby boy

Merry Christmas, all!

Merry Christmas To Me

After a fair bit of research, I finally went out and bought this one. There were others with great reviews - Borsch, Electrolux, but they also seemed very pro-baker; the sort for folks who need to bake 50 loaves of bread and 20 batches of ultra-chewy bagels per day. I just need one loaf every 2 weeks or so. And that temperamental sugee (semolina) cake every now and then. Wish we had Kenwood (what Mum has) here. I think it used to exist, but it's been reacquired by somebody else, and given a new name, and a new uh... reputation, so... pffft. 

Fancy, but still infinitely cheaper than the Pfaff Industrial Sewing Machine that was also on my Covetousness List this year. I want to sew neoprene and vinyl so bad. But we have no room for a industrial machine in the house right now, so a stand mixer it is. If we can't outfit the family in wetsuits, at least we can feed them bread now.

It's still in its box, by the way. Too many cookies on my counter right now to share space with a mixer. I'll unbox it today and take more photos of it later.

Watercolor Family Portrait

Emily brought this home from school this week. My jeans have scoop pockets! And Dave wishes he had an actual shirt like that. And Kate and Jenna have pink in their outfits - coming from any of our girls, that's like the highest, most selfless gift ever.


And here's the message that went with it:

I know - awwwwww.

Post-it to Santa

Found on our Christmas Tree earlier this week, the morning after we brought the wrapped gifts up from the basement storage.

Where did she learn P.S. ????

10 Things I Will Never Tire Of

1. The smell of a 3-year old's head
2. The roundness of a 3-year-old's head
3. Small people jumping gleefully, in completely vertical projectiles
4. Young voices singing about Jesus (and mispronouncing the important words)
5. The look in a child's eyes -and the grin they're trying unsuccessfully to hide - when they accomplish something
6. The question, "What are we making today?"
7. Sleepy, disoriented children wandering out into the living room, rubbing their eyes, needing only to be ushered back to their bedrooms with a kiss
8. Listening to a child read aloud
9. Tiny toes and pudgy feet, running fast
10. Clicking in my seat belt buckle, looking around at three little faces (and sometimes their accompanying soft toy friends, masses of coloring sheets and vast numbers of markers) and asking, "ready to roll?"

What an ride motherhood is. And how lucky I am, and how deeply blessed, to navigate it with these three, and their matchless dad.

Happy almost-Christmas, everyone!

(Ours looks set to be a brown one this year, drat it.)

Jenna Reading

Jenna reading Henry and Mudge:

Updates

We're still here, and everyone is well. But we've been busy, and not taking a lot of photos because we're indoors so much. Advent this year has been fun. Emily and Jenna are done with preschool for 2011, which translates to me getting a break from the silly chauffeuring. I've imposed a moratorium on sewing, for the purposes of sanity and countering Christmas-stress and general family ungrouchiness. When sewing sanctions are lifted on Boxing Day (or the new year, if I am especially enjoying myself), I might finally sew a couple of winter dresses for Jenna, who badly needs them. 

We're doing lots of crafts, and refusing to blog about a lot of them. We baked lots of cookies, and did blog about all of them. We're playing lots of games, like the Clothespins game, and Christmas bingo, and tomorrow we're supposed to play Princess Monopoly. We're reading lots of Christmas books, which we get to pick out of a pillowcase, as dictated by our advent calendar. We aren't going on as many trips this year, because Emily is in full-day school and would miss out on them. I've finally finished writing out our Christmas cards. I've given up even thinking of writing a Christmas letter. We've got all our Christmas presents bought/done, save one (needs to be painted). We're excited to start the wrapping. We're enjoying Christmas movies which, along with the Christmas books, are fun and fresh again after 11 months of being tucked away in storage.

Above are photos of Jenna, enjoying her new craft. She is weaving little stretchy bands on a hand loom/frame to make small potholders. She and Emily are trying to complete enough of them to assemble a patchwork rug. I am glad she's discovered it, because it is a craft that appeals to the part of her that adores sorting, colors and organizing. 

Jenna is also starting to read independently! We are very excited and also surprised at how well she is doing already. Emily has started on Enid Blyton's Secret Seven series, while also reading through the Rainbow Fairy series. Sometimes as I'm watching her sit and quietly read, curled up on the sofa, or beside me at the kitchen table, I marvel that this is the same little girl who was gnawing on board books and eating newspapers not that long ago. 

Kate is going through a new phase in her fashion journey. Where she used to alternate only between her fluffy "cute little pink skirt" and her other fluffy "cute little grey skirt", she now exclusively prefers the chiffon dress-up dance skirts that I made the girls some years ago. She wears them out to school and all day and then to bed. We have put our foot(s) down at also wearing them church, especially as they retain and display food stains remarkably well. 

We are also rejoicing/panicking at the lack of snow this December. On the one hand, we like that there's nothing to shovel. Plus I got to take photos on the deck all week, which is a miracle. On the other hand, we are not pleased at the prospect of a brown Christmas, or at the lousy sledding and tubing conditions.

We are missing family far away, as we do every year-end. But we are planning to see you all in Singapore during CNY anyway, so look out for us! Already Dave and I have started mental lists of food we want to eat, and how many times we want to eat them. We are rubbing our hands in glee and fantasizing. With those flavours finally within arm's (in a manner of speaking) reach, I think I might finally throw out those old shriveled bits of pandan leaves in our freezer, and the tablespoonful of pineapple jam from 2009 to which I've developed an almost pathological sentimental attachment.

And that's our update for tonight!

I hope your weekend is going well!

Christmas Baking

This past weekend was a Bakingstravaganza of sorts. 

We baked cookies to give to teachers and neighbors this week.

We did these Chocolate-Butterscotch Haystacks,

shortbread with white sugar and shortbread with brown sugar

and nuts

and sprinkles,

krumkake,

princess cookies and orange drop cookies.

These got packed in reusable foil pans

and topped with a kitchen towel

which the girls sort-of-helped sew ribbons onto.

The girls also worked on Christmas gifts for their classmates. For Kate's classmates, we made paper stockings and filled them with treats.

Everyone helped decorate and fill them.

Jenna filled these little plastic candy houses for her classmates:

They come with the cutest little scoop.

Everyone helped fill those, too.

Today, Jenna and Kate had their preschool Christmas concerts. It was so much fun to watch them. Then they gave out their gifts to their teachers and friends. That was fun to watch, too! 

It was raining tonight so we didn't deliver cookies to the neighbors. Hopefully we can do that tomorrow!