Snowman Craft #1

We've been making a lot of snowmen lately - usually combined with a worksheet on the letter s.

We have had 20 inches of snow on the ground since early November and I am ready for it to leave. Usually I get tired of the cold and the snow around late February or March, but for some reason this year I am going stir crazy a bit early. Most of my friends are leaving for trips to warmer climates this month - Orlando, Texas, Mexico and Africa. I wish I could stow away in their luggage just to be able to feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. Instead I'll just make another pot of herbal tea and continue to wear wool socks, warm slippers and lot of layers for a few more months. The kids still seem happy with winter though they have stopped begging to go sledding every single day - maybe because it has been so miserably cold.

These snowmen are simple, simple and I am sure you've seen them before. I gave the kids two different sized lids and had them trace circles on white paper.

After cutting them out, they glued them to some patterned 12X12 blue paper.


To attach the cotton balls, pull each ball apart to make smaller pieces, dip in glue and then adhere to the white circles. If this is too messy for the little ones, have them put glue on the paper first and skip the dipping.


Try and make sure the baby does not eat the cotton.

Help him when he gets annoyed that the cotton is sticking to his fingers.


Once the white paper was covered in cotton, we used card-stock to punch out circles for the eyes and buttons and scissors to make an orange nose. The end.

Friends and Spider Crafts

I found these photos from Christmas break while trying to play catch up on this blog. Sophie has the sweetest group of little girlfriends at school. I am so glad she has these girls in her life - friends are so very important. All of the kids were able to have play dates during the winter break - we need to do that more often.

He's Losing It

This child of mine lost his first tooth yesterday. He pulled it out during primary and proudly showed it to me and every single other person in the halls after church. The tooth fairy forgot to come during the night, but somehow managed to slip a two dollar bill under his pillow while Calvin lounged in Mommy's bed as she got ready this morning. The tooth fairy needs to get on the ball as he has another loose tooth! He is so adorable.

These Two

This sweet little girl had a birthday yesterday. Somehow the years have flown by and my only daughter is nine. She wore a red birthday dress to school and a huge smile on her face. No matter how much I want her to stay little, she is growing and changing and loving every minute of it! Since I am still battling the cold from $%**, there was no birthday cake yesterday. We will have a little celebration with her girlfriends when I feel human again.

No cake, but there were presents. Her Grandma Erickson spoiled her with beautiful gifts that had Sophie dancing around the living room with joy. Sophie sat her brothers down for an immediate tea party with the dainty ladybug tea set with her new doll perched on her lap. I found some prepared slides for her microscope and a pair of unflattering goggles which remind me of high school chemistry. Maxwell printed off information on bugs from the computer and made her a penny launcher from a toilet paper tube and a balloon. He also put an impressive dent in my wall showing Sophie how it works - that thing is deadly! It has been designated an outside only toy.


This handsome young man won the 5th grade spelling bee yesterday!


I was able to walk over in the afternoon with 4 of the little ones to watch the finals and Max was just as surprised as I was when he won! There are 182 fifth graders in his school and they all took written spelling tests and from those results, the top 25 students were chosen for the final oral round. Several of Max's friends were in the finals as well so it was fun to watch them compete. Max was very happy and proud and had a huge cheering section in the audience. He is such a great kid and we are very proud of him.



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Back When We Were Healthy . . .

These are the last healthy photos of us during winter break. The kids had a week off from school, but I still had to work Monday through Thursday. At some point during the week, Kirstin came down with a severe cold which passed to me a day later. We had all sorts of grand plans of places to see and visit while Kirstin was in town but instead, we drank a lot of herbal tea, went through two boxes (and counting) of tissues and a box of cold medicine that had expired two years earlier. It has been rather miserable.

Our saucy plans of dinner and dancing on New Years were revised to flannel pajamas and watching season one of Lark Rise to Candleford on the computer (by the way, if you have not seen this little drama, request it immediately from Netflicks - so good!).

We did get out a couple of times during Kirstin's visit despite feeling like warmed over death. One day we met up with friends and took the kids to the zoo. Another evening, Kirstin and I met up with girlfriends for dinner at Crave and some shopping at the Mall of America. On Friday, Kirstin and I took the three kids to the amusement park for a day of free rides thanks to one of my daycare families. Mostly though, we slept, hung out in pajamas and watched movies. Many thanks to the Young Women who dropped off soup and rolls Sunday afternoon.

Hopefully, we are on the mend. Kirstin flew home to Oregon last night and I think (hope) my worst days were Saturday and Sunday. I still feel pretty nasty today, but it should be better soon . . . right?!

New Year's resolutions will have to wait until I can breath out of at least one nostril.

Recipe: Triple Berry White Chocolate Trifle

This is another trifle I made for dinner with friends over the Christmas weekend. The recipe is loosely based on this one, but I could not find ladyfingers at the store so I made a pound cake instead. I made the white chocolate mousse from the epicurious recipe.

The pound cake recipe is called Honey Vanilla Pound Cake from the Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics Cookbook (which I received for Christmas - thank you David and Trisha!). For the berry layer, I combined a jar of raspberry rhubarb preserves with frozen strawberries and blueberries and warmed them up on the stove to make the preserves liquid.

My thoughts: I filled my trifle bowl way too full. The pound cake needed some almond extract or something to make it stand out more when combined with the while chocolate mousse, berries and whipped cream. The trifle would have been better if I had made it the day before and let the berries really soak into the pound cake. It was good, but not great. I'd like to try it again with the ladyfingers as written.


Head over to Cream Puffs in Venice for Sugar High Friday and more trifle recipes!

Do You Skype?

It's my new favorite thing. The kids can discuss their presents with cousins who live thousands of miles from us. We need to skype more.

Christmas Morning

I love Christmas morning. The kids are so excited and anxious to get downstairs and see if Santa really came. This year I told them not to get up until at least 8:00 so of course Sophie was in my room at 5:30 asking me what she should do until 8:00 because she could not sleep. Calvin was up much of the night coughing in my face so it was not a very restful evening!

The kids wore their new Christmas pajamas to bed - I just bought them and washed them instead of wrapping them this year. They are more a gift to me - I love the photos with matching pajamas on Christmas morning. At our house, Santa does not wrap his gifts - there is a little pile for each child in different parts of the room. We usually wait to have breakfast until all of the presents are open though we do eat the Christmas chocolate out of the stockings while opening gifts.

This year the kids were spoiled rotten as no one received any clothes. All three children maintain ongoing wish lists on Amazon and everyone seemed to send gifts from their list this year. They were thrilled to say the last! Max was happy with a new pile of books (most of which he has now read). Sophie about cried she was so excited about her microscope and framed bugs and Calvin scored with a new collection of wii games. Happy, happy kids! We have a lot of thank-you notes to write!

Christmas Eve Dinner

I'm still playing catch up with some photos and memories I want to record.

We have shared Christmas Eve Dinner with our friends The Manzellas for the last four or five years. Usually Thomas prepares some amazing meal (he's done seafood, individual stuffed cornish game hens and prime rib in the past), Lori does all of the shopping and prep, always makes my favorite salad and sets a gorgeous table and I take care of the rolls and dessert. This year her Dad and were step Mom were visiting from Florida and they prepared much of the meal.

I brought the gingerbread pumpkin trifle and a nutella cheesecake and Cecile (Lori's step mom) made a rum cake so we were more than covered in the dessert department. Dinner, as always, was amazing and the kids kept running into the office to check on the Santa Tracker (even Max who no longer really believes).

We stayed and visited after dinner until it was time to pick up Koo from the airport. I did not tell tell the kids where we were going - I just said we were searching for Christmas lights. When we got to the airport I told them I had heard some of the planes were decorated from Christmas and while they looked out the windows, I pulled up to where Koo was waiting for us. They were very surprised and very happy and we are so grateful she is here.