Creative Cooking

One of our family's new favorite activities is cooking & watching the food network together. Yes, the girls love cooking shows! Grace is really getting into wanting to try and make things she sees on tv.

Since this is the year of SNOW we have made snow ice cream a few times. We tried a Paula Dean recipe that uses sweetened condensed milk that is very smooth, but kind of has a twang. Its much better with a bit of chocolate sauce. We also made chocolate milk shakes using chocolate pudding and snow. Yummy!

Even though it was before Titus' birthday I caved and let him have some. He loved it!

We have also gotten very creative with our pancakes. Jeremy recently saw this idea on Diners, Drive Ins & Dives. Then we found the clip here on YouTube. For Christmas he got his own bottle and we have been "drawing" pancakes ever since. Here are some of our favorites


Another new tradition we have started is having a "dinner question" each night at dinner. This was part of one of my 2011 goals to improve the craziness we experience at mealtime. The girls are really loving it. Some of our favorites so far:

-If you could go on any trip where would you go?

I love the girls' answers of the zoo & a museum. Much simpler than Jeremy and I's trip to Disney World and Mexico!

-What would your dream house be like?

The girls were very creative but it still involved them sharing a room and very much resembled our own house with a few bonus features.

-What do you want to be when you grow up?

This one was all over the board. Grace recently told me she is excited to go to the hospital and be a mom someday, but she is too afraid to get a shot.

Grace always reminds us if we forget, she even wanted us to do a question on Wednesday night when we are at church for dinner! I am hoping this is a tradition that will stick. We might have to invest in a set of cards though as sometimes I have a hard time coming up with new questions off the top of my head.

Titus-11 Months

Titus turned eleven months on Christmas Day. I can remember last year thinking I cannot wait for this baby to be here. I however had no idea it would only be 1 month later when I would actually meet my sweet baby boy. (I was thinking it would be more like 2 months)

I hate that I didn't write this when he actually turned 11 months old because its hard to remember the subtle differences between months.

Titus was working on teeth and kept me up most of the two nights we stayed with my parents. His sleep has definitely been more affected by teething than the girls. Although I also figured out I don't think he sleeps near as well when we are not at home.

Christmas Crafts

So, usually around Christmas time I become super crafty. We like to give lots of handmade gifts. This year however, was not my most "crafty" Christmas. We always make something for the "grandmas." Kristina usually does an ornament with her kids. So, when we got together to freezer cook we also took on the "grandma" craft project/ornament. This is what we came up with...

We didn't actually finish this project due to the craziness of 6 kids and cooking so we each finished up on our own.

I have a set of 3 frames in my hallway that are a work in progress. My goal is to display a piece of seasonal artwork for each child. My mom had previously helped the girls make a fall tree and snowmen for winter. This year I decided to tackle making a piece of Christmas artwork. I actually did this with all 3 kids so Titus made his own tree too. Here is the finished product. I thought they turned out great. I am hoping to "catch" Titus up so that his frame will have other seasons as well. My next project is to decide what we want to do for Spring. So far all of the art has involved painting the kids hand/fingers in order to make it. The tree is made of their handprints and the ornaments are their fingerprint.