Friday Foto

In this photo Beatrice looks a little bit like one of those plastic surgery gone wrong victims. This is what happens when "say cheese" is taken to the extreme. And Maggie and Obie are wearing scarves with their fleece jammies - you can never be too warm in an old house in Minnesota in December! One week until Christmas, are you ready? You can see that our stockings are hung - and stuffed - and the presents are wrapped under the tree. We're all ready to celebrate!

Real Snow Cones

When the Keehns came for Thanksgiving, Aunt Betsy sent with them a three pack of fruit-flavored syrup to make snow cones with. Every day since then I've heard one of the following questions about every hour:

"Mom, is it going to snow today?"

"Mom, when will it snow?"

"Mom, can we make snow cones?"

"Mom, did it snow while we were asleep?"

"Mom, why didn't it snow yet??"

Until finally last Tuesday we got snow - enough to make a million, billion snow cones!

Thanks, Aunt Betsy!!!

St. Nicholas Day, Celebrated!

Here are the girls with their St. Nicholas Day shoes and treats. It was a great success!

Beatrice agrees with her mother that gift shoes should be filled with socks. Unfortunately I didn't think of it until the night before, but next year they will be hand knit socks!!

Yes, Maggie does have chocolate on her face at 7:15 in the morning!! Hooray for the the Holidays!!

Now we can get ready for Christ's Birth and the real reason to celebrate the Christmas Season!!

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

Santa doesn't come to our house, but we do like to pay homage to St. Nicholas the patron saint of sailors, merchants, and children, and the model for the American Santa Claus. St. Nicholas was a fourth century bishop known for his extreme generosity and kindness to those in need and is said to have performed miracles through prayer. Every year on December 5th children celebrate St. Nicholas Day by leaving their shoes out in hopes that they've been good enough to get treats.

My children are always good enough for treats!

If you're interested, you can learn more about St. Nicholas Day on wikipedia or with a google search.

Friday Foto

An Apple A Day

We've been trying to incorporate more raw fruits and veggies into our diet lately, so when the kids asked for a snack today I led them in the direction of the bag of fresh apples from our local orchard. They get some sort of weird kid pleasure out of holding a sticky, juicy apple and eating it whole instead of having boring old slices. When Obie saw the girls munching and crunching into their apples he squealed until he got to have some, too.

Meanwhile, I snuck into the kitchen and ate potato chips and dill dip. Yes, I'm ashamed. But, those kids sure love to eat apples. Let's focus on that!!