Jingle Jangle

Okay.  Here we go...

This month photo review:

 Kid & I took a lovely night time walk on our ski vacation.  I pretended to hear a pack of wolves... and scared the crap out of her.  It was good times.

 Kid never EVER would look up when I tried to take a picture of her skiing.  Always just straight down the slope.  She was kind of serious about it.

 Baby was 100% not serious about it... except that she could ski with poles even though every single person there told her/us it would make it harder to learn.

 They were all wrong.  She could totally ski with the poles.  And as she said "I haven't crashed into anyone yet!"

 We got home from that trip on December 1st and I was SO proud of myself for organizing my Xmas bins.  With the 1st Bin I knew I had our advent calendars and we were set to go, even if we hadn't officially started decorating yet.

 Hmm... that doesn't look that great but this is a fantastic go to dinner in these parts.  Chicken & noodles.  Wide egg noodles & mixed vegetables cooked in chicken broth, then drained & tossed with shredded poached chicken, 1 box of Pacific brand organic cream of Chicken soup (I highly recommend), lots of poultry seasoning & salt & pepper and you are good to go!  Sometimes I also saute up an onion but if in a time crunch it isn't necessary.  This is a fast weeknight meal.  I don't really measure anything; just eyeball it & taste for seasoning.  I use about 3/4 bag of noodles, a couple cups of veg & chicken & 2-ish teaspoons of poultry seasoning.  I have bags of shredded poached chicken in the freezer so it really only takes 15-20 min to throw this all together.  You could use rotisserie chicken.  This is one of the casserole type dinners I make that make great hot packed lunches for the girls.

 We went to our local tree lot, where Mr F insisted that we could only fit a 6-7 foot tree.  Hmm... next year we're going with the 7-8 footers.  

Although, it did make it easier to decorate the top.

 Just a reminder that Big Boy is a humongous cat.  Tiger (in back) is actually a 13 pound adult male.  Big Boy looks like he could fit him in his stomach.  :)

 Every year we add something to our Creche scene.  This year: palm trees.  Holy crap it makes all the difference.  Mr F and I are almost embarrassingly into them.  We got them on our annual trip to Bronner's , they are made by Fontanini.  Now all we need are animals.  

 Baby had an awesome "Non Christmas" holiday concert.  She sang "Footloose" and "Hound Dog".  It was awesome & she was SO into it.  She's sitting right below the girl that may or may not be picking her nose.  

Of course, as is to be expected, I was stuck sitting behind my concert nemesis... A woman I call "Hair".  It was filling me with homicidal rage.  This is the 2nd time I've been stuck behind "Hair". She had saved her seat with a coat, so I had no idea she was sitting there when I got our seats.  Thank God, someone down our row left the show before Baby sang & we could move over.  

This year, Baby really wanted us to go caroling. We roped my mother & step father into it.

 Baby had a plan. She insisted that she go up to each door and ring the door bell.  Then she'd sing the first stanza on her own before signaling us to join in.  She is fearless.  It was amazing.

And as heartbreakingly cute as you can imagine.

 Wouldn't your heart just explode if some little kid with a candle was singing to you on your porch?

After our village installed sidewalks surrounding our acre lot (which we need to clear, ahem) Mr F got a mega snowblower.  The girls loved running under it's snow stream getting pelted in the face.  Weirdos.   

 The sidewalk project also regraded our back hill (which was formerly kind of a deadly, though exhilarating sledding hill) and now we don't have to worry about the kids shooting into the road.

 Which is a good thing.

 After a slow start to the holiday merry making.  This week, I got the house decorated (and cleaned!!) and busted out some serious back to back to back baking days.

 While I have made my own gingerbread houses in the past (Joy of Cooking recipe & instructions!!) and bought one of those all inclusive kits (which I didn't love). This year I stumbled on IKEA's gingerbread house parts.  No candy or icing (which were always the disappointing kit components imo, anyway).  They were CHEAP and flat.  Assembly was fairly easy.  I just used homemade royal icing.

 Kid's looks AMAZING.  Her OCD was a real advantage for this project ;)  She also reluctantly took my advice on the cinnamon candy field stone chimney look and was glad she did.  

 Baby took no advice whatsoever.  Her project (like all her artwork) in a constantly evolving storyline. 

I think she accidentally miscounted her first row of candy roofing and she had to kind of squeeze in one of the tiles & instead of getting mad she just made it intentional saying "There are no straight lines, to ward of evil spirits!"(having just read a book about the sloping roofs of ancient China) and then she just went with that and carried it out in everything she did thereafter.   

 She created more of a gingerbread tableaux, than a house. Her gingerbread mom & daughter are decorating the snowman.  The mom is holding his other eye and the daughter is holding his last button.

 The gingerbread baby boy thinks he's been left alone until he looks out the window and sees his dad hanging up the last ornament on the garland.  (I'm not kidding, this is how it goes.  This will be a little bit easier in a few years when she doesn't need help working out the logistics... like me having to nervously pick up a decorated house so she could try and insert the baby boy)

This took a LONG time to complete.  

And the first thing she said this morning was:  

"Mom, can I finish my gingerbread house?"

Um.....No?

(just kidding, of course... just sometime in the distant future)  

So that is the long and the short of it.  Happy December!  I have not worked out in a month-ish.  Just FYI.  I also have had 3 days in a row of only eating cookies for nourishment.