Bread

I am not normally the bread maker of the family but with our usual family bread maker "out of pocket" for an extended period of time B#3 and I have stepped up to the plate. It was kind of funny that I asked a friend for the recipe of some rolls that she brought on Thanksgiving and she laughed and told me it was my recipe from days gone by. So I am using a new old recipe for our bread and so far so good. Even B#5 was excited when he heard I was making bread today.

Now I am working on reading through one of her gardening books. I have relied on her for so long to help me with the outside work that now that she is off on an adventure I am having to learn some things that I thought I was too old to learn...

Know anything about bees???

Merry Christmas!

We hope you all had a great Christmas! It definitely didn't feel like Christmas here, at least to me. I have been trying to decide if it is because we had 6 less days between Thanksgiving and Christmas or if it is because we were missing three of our loved ones this year. B#1 and his wife weren't here and B#2 is down at my parents in MS spending Christmas with them. In any case it was strange. But as it is with all big families, there is never a quiet moment so we still had a good time. Its funny but DH and I are usually up before the children on Christmas so once we were up we started waking up the ones who weren't up yet.

 

 

You might think with 9 children still at home that Christmas must be mass chaos but we do try to keep things toned down. One thing that helps with that is that we do not go hog wild with gifts for the children. We typically stick to our usual plan of Something to Read, Something to Wear and Something to Share. Although for my little ones who can't read yet we do buy them one toy item instead of a book. Several of the received new rain boots this year and others got some much needed clothes or jackets. The something to share may be a game, or movies or sometimes a big item.

 

One fun item that was received by B#9 from his Secret Sibling was this minion. We are big Despicable Me fans around here and these pudgy little things remind us of our pudgy little B#9 so it was a fun gift to get. Everyone likes him.

 

We do things a bit differently around here than most people...our Christmas dinner is always pizza( a tradition started several years back when Auntie M came for Christmas). We love that it is a relaxing day for us all with a minimal amount of clean-up. We always start the morning off with canned cinnamon rolls. I love the orange ones!

We finished up the day with our birthday cake for Jesus!

 

                               B#10 got some fun toys from his Mamaw and Papaw to chew on.

Christmas Happenings around here

Well my Christmas crafts didn't go quite as planned but I still enjoyed making a few things this year as I had time and I have enjoyed doing our "Christmas Calendar" that I made. The children have enjoyed pulling a new tag out each day to see what we were going to do that day. I will admit to being very unorganized about it all, despite making a list in the beginning. Most mornings found me scrambling to write something on the tag and sometimes even trying to figure out what we were going to do that day. But all in all it has gone well.  Some of the things we have done are....

 
                                                       Make ornaments to feed the birds

 

Celebrate St. Nicholas Day by putting our shoes by the fireplace for treats

 

Make yummy sugar cookies

 

Make baking soda dough ornaments

                                                                 Make Christmas trees

 

 

 

Make Goody plates to share with our gas attendants, Dr.'s office and hospital staff

                      
                                   And make these cute animal pictures with little ones hand prints.

I was talking with the children today about how Christmas presents are a picture of God's Grace....we don't deserve them(as we usually haven't been good all year) but we give gifts out of love. Just as He gives Grace to us, free and unconditional. All we have to do is accept His free gift to us, with joy just as we accept gifts from our family.

Merry Christmas to you all and we pray that if you have never accepted the free gift of forgiveness and eternal life that is offered to you through the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that this will be the year that you accept the reason for the season.

Ear Tubes

Well we fought it for 2 long years and lots of "ear-rational" behavior but we finally decided that it was time to have tubes put in B#8's ears. We talked about lots of different things...waiting till he grew out of it, taking him off of dairy products, taking him to a naturopath to strengthen his immune system in hopes that he wouldn't get the colds that turn in to an ear infection every time. But in the end we hated seeing him go through his day not hearing everything as well as he could be. So yesterday he had surgery to have tubes put in his ears and you know what....it wasn't the traumatic thing I was so afraid it would be.

He was a little clingy and unsure once he realized that he would have to shed his clothes and wear hospital duds but the hospital staff was amazing. They were super kind and gentle and each person who would be taking care of him in the OR came to the room to talk to us and him. I really think that helped him once he had to leave us. Honestly that was one of the parts I was dreading the most, having to see him leave with someone I didn't know. But they let dad carry him down to the OR doors and he was even able to take "Chewcy", his special blankie in with him. He went to the OR nurse without any problems and they all said how wonderfully he did. No crying, he just looked around at them and then drifted off to sleep.

His recovery has been great, no problems there and most of all, he is hearing great. He is such a strong little guy and hasn't even needed any pain meds.