Bailey does these funny interpretive dances, a robot, a fish, a lion, etc. I can only seem to get one uploaded. I will keep trying to upload the others, they are just as funny/cute. This is her robot dance. She does talk during it, so you may want to mute the song Last Christmas on the post below. There is a little speaker in the lower left corner of the slide show, just click that til the music pauses.

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve and Day. The kids got a ton of really nice things. They were polite and respectful and they are all thoroughly enjoying everything they got! McKenzie’s reactions were priceless. Every thing she opened was “just what she always wanted” right after a quick squeal Things are put away and the Christmas decorations will come down shortly, another Christmas behind us. Here are a few pictures I took over the last few days

Here are the goodies I made for Christmas baking this year. Everything was very good, I tried a couple of new things and baked several tried & trues.

INGREDIENTS
3/4 cup shortening
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
3 cups rolled oats

DIRECTIONS
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets.
2) In a medium bowl, cream together the shortening, brown sugar and white sugar. Stir in the egg, water and vanilla. Combine the flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon, stir into the creamed mixture. Finally, stir in the rolled oats. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheets.
3) Bake for 12 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool on baking sheets for a couple of minutes before removing to cool on wire racks.

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Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk
40 miniature chocolate covered peanut butter cups, unwrapped

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. Sift together the flour, salt and baking soda; set aside.
3. Cream together the butter, sugar, peanut butter and brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg, vanilla and milk. 4. Add the flour mixture; mix well.
5. Shape into 40 balls and place each into an ungreased mini muffin pan.
6. Bake at 375 degrees for about 8 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately press a mini peanut butter cup into each ball. Cool and carefully remove from pan.

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Christmas Joy Pretzels

Ingredients
Mini pretzels (circle, waffle or twist shapes)
Hershey’s Kisses, unwrapped
M&M’s

Directions
Circle pretzels work the best, but I have used the waffle shaped mini pretzels (shown above) and just mini pretzel twists and all of them work fine. Place hershey’s kiss (this year we used candy cane kisses and milk chocolate) on pretzel. Bake at 350 for about 3 minutes until chocolate is soft. Remove and quickly place red or green m&m on each kiss and push down a bit to flatten the kiss. Festive and delicious

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Cinnamon Popcorn

Ingredients
4 quarts popped popcorn
1 cup butter or margarine
2/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Directions
1. Place popcorn in a large bowl. In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the butter, sugar and cinnamon.
2. Microwave on high for 1 minute; stir. Microwave 1 minute longer or until the butter is melted. Pour over popcorn and toss to coat.
3. Transfer to two greased 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. baking pans or 1 large roasting pan. Bake, uncovered, at 300 degrees F for 10 minutes. Cool. Store in an airtight container.

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Dirty Snowballs - these are too good to share!

Ingredients
8oz cream cheese softened
1 package oreo cookies, crushed
1 large package white almond bark

Directions
1. Combine cream cheese and crushed oreo cookies until mixed thoroughly. Refrigerate 1 hour.
2. Roll into balls, between .5 and 1″, place on cookie sheet, return to fridge for 30 minutes.
3. Melt Almond Bark according to pkg instructions.
4. Using toothpicks, dip oreo balls into almond bark and place on waxed paper.

Makes about 40, more or less depending on size.

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Crispy Marshmallow Balls

Ingredients
4 cups crispy rice cereal
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup margarine
30 individually wrapped caramels, unwrapped
1 (16 ounce) package large marshmallows

Directions
1. Line trays with waxed paper. Pour rice cereal into a shallow dish or bowl.
2. In a double boiler, combine condensed milk, margarine and caramels. Cook, stirring, over simmering water, until melted and smooth.
3. Using tongs or two forks, dip marshmallows one at a time into caramel mixture, then roll in rice cereal. Place on waxed paper until set.

** I don’t have a double broiler, so I used two saucepans, one that was a tad bit bigger for the boiling water and and a little smaller that sat on top for the caramel mixture. Red & Green rice krispies make this one even more festive

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Christmas Wreaths (my favorite)

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
30 large marshmallows
1 1/2 teaspoons green food coloring
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 cups cornflakes cereal
2 tablespoons cinnamon red hot candies

Directions
1. Melt butter in a large saucepan over low heat. Add marshmallows, and cook until melted, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and stir in the food coloring, vanilla, and cornflakes.
2. Quickly drop heaping tablespoonfuls of the mixture onto waxed paper, and form into a wreath shape with lightly greased fingers. Immediately decorate with red hot candies. Allow to cool to room temperature before removing from waxed paper, and storing in an airtight container.

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Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups white chocolate chips

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar and white sugar until light and fluffy. 3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition. Combine the cocoa, flour, and baking soda, gradually stir into the creamed mixture. Finally, fold in white chocolate chips. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheets.
4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until puffy but still soft. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

And no… no chocolate chip cookies this year. I didn’t get to them. That’s okay though I make those all throughout the year

I have a Christmas photo book that I’ve been keeping our Santa pictures in for the last 15 years or so, starting with Katy’s first Christmas in 1992. I am missing a couple of years, but otherwise they are all in there. I thought it would be neat to take pictures of each page in the book and make a slideshow of them (got this idea from my friend Jan

Today was a very busy day! We started off at the mall, the 4 youngest kids, David and I. The kids wanted to buy David a few gifts and see Santa. Then, David was going to take them to buy gifts for me, and I would finish up my shopping. I was hoping I could say today “I AM DONE”. However, 3 small things are holding me up from saying that. Do people seriously pay $38.95 for your average non-new release hard cover book? I had a list of three books to pick up for David and the total was coming to about $90.00. I couldn’t do it, knowing I could get them at Costco for a fraction of that, so I left them even though I so badly wanted to be “DONE” today!

One more day, and then I will be saying “I AM DONE”. Hopefully. LOL.

After all of that, I wanted to come home and crash, but what I ended up doing was taking the 4 kids to see Alvin And The Chipmunks, while David and his brother went to a Blazers game. We had a great time, that movie was SOOO cute! I would pay to see it again The kids all gave it thumbs up also.

So here we are just a few days away from Christmas, and I’m so excited! We have lots of things planned, family activities, baking, games, etc. and I am just excited to be with my familiy and enjoy each other.

Here is a picture of today’s visit with Santa, taken from my cell phone (I completely forgot to bring my digital camera!) - the real picture turned out SO good! Bailey has been continuously asking for “Butterscotch”, the Furreal Friends pony. She wants it soooo badly. Unfortunately, she won’t be getting it and I know she’ll be looking for it on Christmas morning. :(

Ashlyn and Bailey waiting in line…
Santa!

All the girls… Bailey made this gift for me. I haven’t opened it yet, we’ll open it Christmas Eve

Katie finished Silver Buckle last night. I am proud of her for finishing the class. She was afraid of horses and was adament about not riding them when she was enrolled in the program. She was referred there by a counselor, so it was a mandatory thing, but she could have made it much more difficult to get there and participate if she wanted to. She did a good job and by the end she was riding with confidence. This program is amazing and Katelyn is interested in returning as a volunteer, so it’s been a great thing all around.

The lighting was bad in the arena, but… here are pictures anyway

Demonstrating how to pick Black’s hooves.

Her certificate. It’s really neat.

My friend Sarah sent me this. I thought it was SO sweet and I had to share

I got my Christmas cards out in the mail today. Yay! I almost didn’t do them at all this year, as I think I mentioned in a previous post, but…. I really fell in love with these particular ones and there would be a piece missing to my Christmas if I didn’t send out cards. I can’t think of a year in the past that I didn’t do them. And as a last minute addition, a photo we took the other night… which is just okay. I’m making them go to the portrait studio next year, the little stinkers!

So a picture of my card for all of you that don’t get to receive one of these beauties in the mail You gotta click it to make it bigger, it’s so pretty

This evening after Ashlyn’s basketball practice, I decided to make a batch of Chex mix. I was going to make it last week, but Walmart was all out of all 3 types of Chex cereal, so I picked some up tonight at Target and they only had a few boxes left! I usually make about 6 batches of this in December, we give a little holiday ziploc away on our goodie trays, but mostly we just snack on it ourselves. The kids like to take it to school for snack or in their lunches. Ashlyn and Tanner were practically drooling as I was baking/stirring it this evening! YUMM-OH

Here is the original Chex Mix recipe from the back of the Chex box, then below I will add in red what we do to tweak it a little bit to suit our picky tastes.

Holiday Chex Party Mix

6 Tbsp butter or margarine *I use about 6 1/2 tbsp, I like it a little butterier (is that a word?)
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tsp seasoned salt
3/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
3 c. Corn Chex
3 c. Rice Chex
3 c. Wheat Chex *I couldn’t find these today, so I used Kix instead
1 c. mixed nuts *I use regular peanuts
1 c. bite size pretzels *I use the thin pretzel rods
1 c. garlic flavor bagel chips (bite sized or cut up) *we omit these and generally use Kix or Cheerios as a substitute

1. Heat oven to 250 degrees. In ungreased large roasting pan, melt butter in oven while it is preheating. Stir in all seasonings. Gradually stir in remaining ingredients until evenly coated.

2. Bake 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. *I set the timer for 15 minutes and then stir, I do that 4 times…. and it reminds me when to stir it Spread on paper towels to cool. *It’s best when it’s warm!! Store in airtight container.

Our Supplies

Before they got started

Bailey’s in progress

McKenzie putting her finishing touches on

Bailey & McKenzie

All the kids working on their houses. (minus Katelyn)

Tanner’s cute lil house