Saturday, December 25, 2010

Wishing Everyone A....

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I hope everyone has a wonderful day with family....and enjoy this white Christmas...those of you who have snow! :)

Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas Eve!


We've been having a fun Christmas Eve and it all started by waking up to beautiful snow that has continued throughout the day! I love how it covers all the trees...snow makes everything look beautiful.....well, with the exception of roads when you're trying to drive on them! :) Our Christmas Eve will also conclude with snow ice cream...hopefully...I haven't told Jacob of my latest plan, but with the abundance of snow and the influence of Abigail and Bethany (and of course, ME!), it shouldn't be too hard to convince him! ;)

The other day, with some help from Jacob, painted our toenails and fingernails to match and be Christmasy...the girls fingernail polish didn't last very long though, so we just got pictures of our toes. :) Jacob declined getting his nails painted, for any of you wondering. ;)
I have no idea why, but the girls decided to go around in nothing but diapers....
and in Abigail's case, a hat!
Bethany carried a jacket around...I guess assuming that if she had a jacket I would let her out the door, which she tried on several occasions to escape through!
This picture is a little blurry, but it makes me laugh! Some day they both will want to kill me for posting a picture of them in only their diapers....yes, Bethany is wearing a diaper, but it's hilarious because it looks like she isn't! :)

So, while the girls ran around naked, Jacob made a little snowman for the girls....
Isn't he cute! Maybe tomorrow we can make some big snowmen to be his buddies! :)

Have a good Christmas Eve!

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

It's Been Crazy Around Here...

I guess December is a busy month no matter what, but it has seemed extra crazy around here. We were all sick last week with a cold and the girls are still getting over it, but thankfully they didn't seem to get it as bad as Jacob and I. The week before that Jacob had hurt his ankle really bad and at about the same time, work quit because of the cold weather so that's been pretty tough. He's been applying for a bunch of different jobs, but that bad thing is that a lot of them can take months before they let you know if you have the job or not, so it's tough to know which direction to go since in a couple months someone could be contacting him with a job. He is actually working today though, so that's a blessing, but I'm not sure if he'll be working tomorrow or not.

Sunday morning, my sister Elisabeth, who is a flight medic on the Staff for Life, was in a helicopter crash. It was one of the scariest things and I didn't even know the whole of it till later, but it's truly a miracle that all three of them on the helicopter survived. They all have similar conditions (broken back/crushed vertebra), but nothing life threatening. Both the pilot and nurse had to have surgery right away and they thought Elisabeth was going to have to, but then they decided since she was young and strong to see if it would heal on its own. So she is wearing a brace and if it looks like its working, she will be wearing it for the next 6 weeks. She went home yesterday and I got to see her and spend some time with her, which was really nice! She is such an amazing person and definitely one of the strongest people I know and she kept up her wonderful sense of humor through the whole ordeal and it was funny to get to hear her yesterday. :) She has an amazing story though. There was no reason what so ever why that helicopter didn't go up in flames immediately on impact, other than the grace of God, because when they hit the ground fuel was spraying up into the helicopter (they were all soaked in fuel) and there were flames on both sides of the helicopter. She said she knew she wouldn't be able to get out quick enough because her legs weren't working right, but then the flames just went out! God truly was working and had His hand on them and I am so thankful that they all made it out alive! We'll probably be visiting my sister often over the next couple of months since she's going to have a lot of down time and she still needs prayer, since it'll be pretty tough for her.

On another note....Jacob and I had our 4 year anniversary on the 9th! It's kind of hard to believe, but it's been a good 4 years...even during his deployment there were some good times too. We went to a nice steak dinner for our anniversary...the first time in a long time where we didn't have one of the girls with us, so that was nice and relaxing and so like the times before we had kids. Including the toothpick finale! I love you Jacob! :D Then the next evening we went to see Narnia-Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where we snuck food into the theatre (that is where big purses come in handy!) and then Jacob had to go get a pretzel along with a big soda....then we proceeded to watch the movie! :) Of course, both of us throughout the movie would worry about it being too loud and waking up the girls or trying to cough quietly so as not to disturb the girls! Yeah, I think we need to do it more often...we're out of practice with it just being the two of us since we're so used to doing things with the girls. :) After the movie we went to Toys R Us (I really do love that store!) to do some Christmas shopping for the girls and that was a lot of fun...I could spend a really long time in there just looking at everything! Then as we were leaving we saw a Krispy Kreme Donuts.....so, Jacob stopped just for me and he even got milk so we could eat donuts in the car! It was a fun two day anniversary!
A lot can happen in 4 years and we were blessed with two beautiful little girls!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

More Baking Adventures

I didn't take a "final" picture of these, but this was the beginning of Homemade Oreo Cookies. They were amazing! So easy to make and they tasted incredible....everyone who had them loved them, including the girls. Abigail in particular loved "her chocolate cookies"....she even got really upset at Jacob when she thought he took all of her chocolate cookies! I'll definitely be making them again...and hopefully taking more pictures. I've realized I'm hopeless when it comes to taking pictures. First off, I always forget to take pictures, second of all, they are generally horrible pictures.....well, other then this first one. I think it turned out pretty well...probably my best picture of food ever....which isn't saying much I know! :)

Yummy granola...I eat this stuff a lot.
Yes, I know this isn't a baking photo, but I was cooking when this happened....Bethany loves cheese and I guess I wasn't cutting her a slice quick enough so that is what happened to my block of cheese. Maybe someday she will be my helper in the kitchen, not just the "eat and lick everything in sight"......especially my chocolate covered pretzels!

I made a lot of chocolate covered pretzels for deer season on Jacob's request...including white ones, but of course, for some reason, I have no pictures of the white ones. *sigh* They were so good though, especially the white ones! :)
Mini Cheesecakes.....oh yummy! These were sooo good. I made oreo ones too, but they were all gone by the end of the day, which (being me) was when I thought I'd better take a picture of them.
Please excuse this horrible picture, but trust me it was the best of all the ones I took (pretty bad, I know). This Chocolate Cream Pie is probably the best pie out there if you like chocolate pie....it's amazing and it sets up so nice! It's also easy to add either meringue or whipped cream to the top of depending on your preferences.
Peanut Blossoms! If you want to attract any ones attention, especially kids, then make these. They were really good and I'll be making them again, probably around Christmas. :)

Thanksgiving Fun!

It's hard to believe it's been almost a week since Thanksgiving....fun times always go by so fast! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving even though it decided to rain and sleet as soon as Jacob had the turkeys ready to deep fry outside! It then snowed while he did the second one! Making memories for sure with that experience. :) We had a lot of yummy food, and I most certainly mean a lot of food....it was all delicious though. My desserts all turned out good...no flops or anything so that was good. The mini cheesecakes were a hit so I'll definitely be making them again...I will post dessert pictures another time. :) My sister and her husband had also gotten my family Band Hero.......so, yes we did a lot of "rockin' and a rollin'"! :)There was some serious concentration going on...... :)
Mom was having a lot of fun on the drums! It was fun having her and Dad both playing together....we had a hard time convincing Mom, but I think she liked it after she tried it. :)
We played lots of card games.....
Did lots of silly stuff! .....
Played with toys....lots of them....
Sat around and talked....a lot!
We worked out....oh wait, that's Bethany! I guess she thought she needed to work off her turkey dinner! :)

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving!