when we were in texas in early december, my friend, rhonda, gave us her kid's rocking horse. once we got home and put it out townsend and ellory immediately started calling each other joseph and mary. ellory would get on the horse and townsend would pull her into bethlehem and they would look for a "room in the inn." it was kinda cute. :)
hmmm. still not alot of pictures here. pitiful. gran and pawpaw flew in on Christmas Eve for our second Christmas of the year. we decided to start some Guatemalan traditions so for dinner we had Guatemalan tamales. i had found a Guatemalan grocery story/cafe in downtown denver and ordered some to be ready on the 24th. they were huge! nothing like those little cornhusk ones that are so popular. these were wrapped in big banana leaves! i couldn't even eat the whole thing. but did i take a picture to document this? on to dessert-a popular dessert in many latin places is tres leches. three milks cake. i made this one from scratch and it turned out pretty well. a big sponge cake with a mixture of whole milk, evaporated milk, and sweetened condensed milk poured over the whole thing and allowed to sit in the fridge for several hours. yum! oh, and topped with real whipped cream. and a cherry.
we finally had our first fire of the year. thank you daddy.
the next morning we opened presents. and presents. and presents. so fun. :) then continued to eat alot. our meal was a little different this year. norton and i decided to cook ribeye steaks. there was a recipe in my new pioneer woman cookbook for a whiskey sauce so norton did the honors. it was good. probably won't make it again but it was fun to do something besides turkey. :)
i forgot how much i love teacher supply stores! it's a good thing because things aren't cheap there. back in early december i went in to one and looked around for some activities to do with the kids. they had this bulletin board package with a tree and lots of ornaments to put on it. one afternoon when the kids were having cabin fever, i pulled out the package and we put the tree up in the girls' room. i think the hope was that they would use all the paper ornaments and then on another day they could take them down and rearrange. yeah, not so much. the kids definitely took down the ornaments but instead of putting them back on the tree i started finding ripped up ornaments all over the place. i don't understand this desire to rip. especially townsend. but the activity filled at least one afternoon so i was happy. :)
last year we were so bummed when our wonderful babysitter, olivia, decided to move to california. (she's since moved back actually!) but i started praying for a new babysitter and one day was talking with my friend julie and she told me about a friend's daughter who babysat. i got the number and called emily. she agreed to babysit one thursday night during our small group. i was so thankful on many accounts. one blessing is that although she is not old enough to drive, her family lives 2 minutes from our house. so that first time was in august or september and here we are in march, going strong. the kids love her and literally scream when she walks in the door. there have a been a couple of times that emily has put one of the kids in time out and i'm so glad she feels comfortable enough to just take control. she's learned all the routines so norton and i can just leave as soon as i've picked her up. we are so grateful we found her! thank you miss emily!!
