This Day Brought to You by the Letters G G R

My grandma Adelaide sends her great grandchild Adelaide money for her birthdays and for Christmas. Often I will chose something special with part of the money, and save the rest in Adelaide's bank account for her to decide its use at a later date. This time around, however, I cashed the check and took Adelaide for a special day.

First we went to see Lyle the Crocodile at the Children's Theater. It was a good show and fun for both of us.
Adelaide collected autographs after the show and posed for a picture with Lyle.
She was hungry after the show so we went over to the center house for some fish & chips. It was surprisingly good, though it's hard to go wrong with hot, salty and greasy on a cold winter evening.
We spent a little time checking out the huge winter village/train set.
I was reminded that there is usually a carousel and skating for the full-sized people, too, so we went down to check out the scene.
In a fit of overconfidence, I told Adelaide we could skate. They had a height limit on the use of the walkers, however, so after nearly taking Adelaide out we decided she'd be better off out there on her own.
She had fun and after a few times around, was getting a bit faster and more confident. She even did a loop without the walker, but clinging to the wall (and waiting for all the people like me who were inching along) wasn't quite as fun.

We had a lovely outing and enjoyed seeing all of the wonderful lights on our way home. Thank you, grandma, for inspiring me to do some special things with my girl this vacation. I wish you could have been here to see her smiles, but you were with us in spirit.

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Adelaide and I made a little video today for Great Grandma Adelaide, who turns 91 tomorrow. She is great in so many ways, and I hope she has a lovely birthday.

Bedtime Social Planner, Optimist

From her bed, A calls out: Mom?

C: Yes?

A: Can you arrange a playdate for the day after tomorrow?

C: For Saturday?

A: Yes.

C: Sure hon. Who do you want to play with?

A: With Atticus.

C: Okay, I'll talk to his mom.

A: And Mom?

C: Yes?

A: Can you arrange a playdate with Rebecca for Sunday?

C: Maybe.

A: Does maybe mean yes, or no?

C: I have to see what we have scheduled, honey, I don't know yet.

A: I'm taking that maybe for a yes.

Jesus and the Fishes

Managed to turn a bedtime question about Jesus (too many uncensored Christmas carols lately, I guess!) into a quick review of evolution, which we have covered several times before.

Went something like this:

A: Mom, is Jesus the son of God?

C: That's what some people believe. But that is made up.

A: Sometimes I ask God questions.

C: It's okay to ask questions.

A: Like I ask, "why aren't turkeys purple?"

C: Well, if people asked questions and did science, they'd get a lot more answers than asking God questions. Because God doesn't ever answer anyone's questions, but science does.

A: Can science answer my question?

C: Sure, it already has. We know turkeys are the color they are because of evolution.

A: What is evolution?

C: Remember when we talked about how life on Earth started in the water, and was really simple, and then creatures got more complicated, and eventually they became land creatures?

A: Oh, yeah.

C: And before there were humans, there were apes that got more complicated and eventually became humans?

A: Yes.

Salt Dough Ornaments

The first Christmas I remember being old enough to be excited to give presents rather than just receive them, my mom helped me make salt dough ornaments to give to my grandparents and aunts and uncles. I think I was six, and watching the gifts I had made be unwrapped and hung on the tree was very exciting to me.

Today Adelaide and I made salt dough ornaments for her to give to her teachers at school. She worked hard on this project, excitedly counting and re-counting all of the teachers for whom she wanted to make gifts. She is finding it hard to wait until Friday when she will deliver them to her teachers.
The recipe is simple: 1/2 cup salt, 1/2 cup water, and 1 cup flour. (I made about a recipe and a half's worth, and we had about 20 two-inch ornaments at the end.) You mix the ingredients and then knead the dough until it's easy to work with.
We rolled it out to about 1/4" thickness. Thicker would be fine, but would need to bake longer.
We had to flour the table a bit since the dough is very soft and stretched easily when lifting it.
I baked them for about an hour at 200 degrees. Some recipes I looked called for 4 hours in the oven, some for 2, but they were starting to brown so I pulled them out after one. I probably had the oven a bit too hot (not having any numbers on the temperature dial can cause some issues!).
We used markers to decorate them, which made it very simple. Later on I might dig out some clear spray to make them a little shinier and help them last, but they look pretty good as is.
This was a fun and easy project, and I think they will make a nice gift for her to give.

Order from Chaos

Yesterday and this afternoon I tackled the project of pulling the Christmas gifts and stocking stuffers from their hiding places, taking inventory and getting things wrapped and hidden again. I also took this opportunity to consolidate what was an alarming 6 bags, bins and boxes of gift bags, ribbons, wrapping paper and gift boxes in 3 different locations in the basement. Now it's down to one bin and 2 bags of recycling. My gift to myself.

Trimming the Tree

Tonight we put on Bing Crosby and trimmed the tree. Iris was a pretty cute stocking stuffer,

and present under the tree,
but her attack on the tree itself has me worried for tonight, when she will probably decide the ornaments all need to be captured, eviscerated, beheaded, and brought to the master. We did take the most problematic ornaments from last year and put them on the mantel rather than the tree, but I doubt it will be enough to stop her.
Despite Iris's potential to wreak havoc on the finished product, we had fun deciding where to put our favorites. Adelaide chose the tree topper from the collection of stars. She is almost tall enough to put the star on top on her own!
I was glad I still needed to lift her up to put it on (and glad I still can).
Now we are fully in the Christmas spirit around here.

Crustless Mini-Quiches

Given that we are often a bit rushed in the morning, we are limited in our breakfast choices. Today's kitchen experiment is intended to provide us with some yummy and quick hot breakfasts this week.

I kept it simple and just used things I already had on hand in the frig.
The egg mixture had milk, sweet picante peppers, some red pepper/artichoke tapenade from PCC deli, milk, fresh basil, TJ's grilling seasoning blend and salt and pepper.

I put cheese (cheddar and mozzarella) in a layer in the bottom of the muffin tins to form a base.
Filled them most of the way with the egg mixture (I used 8 eggs for 12 quiches).
They puffed up quite a bit in the oven (about 15 minutes, 425 degrees).

And they tasted great! Had a little sneak preview tonight and we'll try them out as breakfast in the morning.

Tree Farm

Before the really heavy rain hit yesterday, we headed out to chop down a Christmas tree. Chop being a little heavy-handed, as it seemed like that saw slid right through the trunk like butter. A little easier going getting a small tree from a farm in Redmond than my childhood adventure tromping through waist-deep snow and felling what was the smallest tree on the land but the biggest one we'd ever tried to fit in our house.

The kids had fun (or at least I did) with the obligatory stick-your-face-in-the-hole photo shoot:

Breaking character:
The "chopping:"

Some hands-on help:
Carrying our treasure back to the car:

Happy with our selection:
Time to bake some cookies and dust off the Bing Crosby cd so we can decorate the tree!

Rain

Mini-can (12 gallon) garbage can, approx. 18" by 18" by 24."
Eight days of rainfall.

Taking the Casserole to a new level?