Passover for Nice Blonde Christian Girls

Caution: If you are devoutly Jewish and keep a Kosher home, this is not the explanation for you.

Still reading? Okay.

First, a story.  My first year married to my nice, semi-Jewish boy (henceforth NSJB), I was going to be leaving to go home to visit my family for Easter all week while he stayed home and worked until he weekend when he'd come join me for a nice Easter Ham Dinner.  This is what interfaith is all about, people.

Anyhow, NSJB answered in the affirmative when I asked him if he kept Kosher for Passover (KFP.  It's like KFC, but not as tasty). So, wanting to be a good wife to my NSJB, off I went to the market, which, being in Massachusetts, had moved everything around and brought out separate shelves for Passover so things would be KFP.  As you may or may not know, most of the Kosher laws are related to cootie shots now, because things wrapped in cellophane, placed in sealed boxes, with the boxes also wrapped in cellophane can get non-KFP germs from shelves that are not KFP.

I digress.

So, down these specially-shelved aisles I went, with a bewildered look on my face and a screaming colicky baby in my arms.  Luckily in response to my "Oh, Jesus, I am in over my head" prayer, a nice Jewish Bubbe came over to me.

"Sweetheart, you look lost.  This part of the store is for people celebrating Passover.  Your part of the store is over there." she said, motioning to the left.

When I explained that I had recently married a NSJB who told me he kept KFP, the older woman smiled at me nicely, muttered under her breath about how Reform men are going to single-handedly end Judaism by marrying these shiksas, and then took it upon herself to fill my cart.  When I got home, NSJB was perplexed by my pasta made from matzo meal and pre-packaged turkey and matzo stuffing.  The nice woman in the store had actually planned a lovely week of KFP meals for him, since he'd be alone and have to prepare his own dinner, I explained.  Then he laughed and told me that by KFP he meant he tried really hard not to eat bread.

Fail.

Anyhow, the nice older Jewish lady from the store also gave me several recipes (just wrote them down from memory on the back of a grocery receipt she had in her massive purse), and those were less of a fail!

Here's some stuff you may or may not want to do for Passover.
1) Procure a Haggadah.  We use a messianic one, but you can use whatever you like.  Typically, if you shop in a high-density Jewish area, someone will have one for free (our free one came from Maxwell House Coffee, but sometimes the Matzo companies will package one in, too).

2) Procure a Sedar Plate.  You can buy a pretty one, or you can make one.  It just needs to hold all the requisite stuff.  (More on that to come)

3) Decide how hard-core your NSJB is.  In traditional families they'll give away any non-KFP food to the hungry (or pay another family a fee to hold it for them until the holiday is over) and they'll do a major spring-cleaning.  They'll also search the house for any traces of leaven (a la an egg hunt!).

4) Decide what night (or both) you're celebrating.

5) Plan your menu

6) Cook until you die

7) Eat

8) Resign yourself to the fact that every sect and family and denomination has different practices and traditions.  If your husband is Sephardic, he'll have different traditional foods than a Ashkenazi, etc.  You'll probably screw something up, even if it's very silly.  For example, I made macaroons, because my husband told me they were a complete necessity.  Then, when he ate them, he didn't know what they were, because the ones that were a complete necessity were the ones his grandmother always bought in a can from our friends at Manischewitz. Well, there's an hour of my life I wasted!

9) Encourage yourself with the fact that you are now a family, and your family will have different practices and traditions.  So you screwed up the macaroons from a can.  That's okay, because your husband actually likes the home-made version better!! You wanna do the kid Haggadah and call it a night? That's your family's prerogative.  (Note, I'm not a rabbi, I'm just telling you how we do it.  I want to make my husband happy and make sure our kids are appreciating the religious significance.  I have no desire to push my husband to do more than he wants/is comfortable with).

So, with that said, here's what you'll need:

Seder Plate:
1- Egg.  We roast ours in the oven.  Just toss that bad boy in until it's brown and toasty on the shell.  You can also boil it.

2-You're supposed to have a lamb shank.  I hate the smell of lamb and had a vegan Jewish friend in college who told me that you could use a beet.  I usually use a roasted chicken bone.

3- Charoset.  I do 1 red and 1 green apple, roughly chopped, 1/2 cup walnuts (toasted), 1 T honey, 3 T wine, pulse  until it makes a "relish" consistency and then stir in a bit of cinnamon.  It's supposed to remind you of mortar between the bricks.

4/5- There are 2 spaces for bitter herbs, and they need to be specific ones.  We usually do horseradish and parsley.  I'm not sure parsley is correct, but Austin grew up using it. I know you can use romaine lettuce. The horseradish is supposed to be freshly grated, but we use the stuff from a jar.

Other stuff you need:
KFP Matzo (it has to be plain, no flavors or salt- bread of affliction and all that.  However, for not your seder meal, chocolate covered and "everything" flavored are both tasty.) 3 pieces wrapped in a cloth.

Water to wash

Salt water

Any other accouterment necessitated by the Haggadah you have selected.




For dinner, I typically prepare the following.  This is NOT a kosher meal (because I use both meat and dairy), but it's the meal that Austin requests.  If you swap out margarine for butter and omit the macaroons, (and, of course, buy kosher products), then it'd be kosher.
1) Beef Brisket.  I trim mine very well and coat it with mustard, salt and pepper to brown, and then put it in the crock pot with 1 chopped onion, 1 chopped green bell pepper, 2 cans of stewed tomatoes. Sweet and Sour Brisket is traditional, but years ago my mother-in-law lost the family recipe and started making this one.

2) Potatoes.  You can do pretty much any potato that you want, because they're a starch without leaven.  In the past Austin has requested garlic mashed or latkes, but I've also done Potato Kugel, which is more traditional.  2.5 pounds of frozen shredded hash browns (or you can shred about 6 large russets), 1 large shredded onion, 1/2 cup matzo meal, 1.5 teaspoons kosher salt, 3 beaten eggs, 1/4 cup oil, pepper.  Mix all ingredients, pour into a greased 13x9 pan and bake at 325 for about an hour until crisp.

3) Matzo ball soup.  This is my own version, my MIL uses lipton noodle soup as her base (with noodles...not KFP) but now Lipton sells a chicken soup base without noodles, if you like salt.  I use the Streit's brand matzo ball mix (its just matzo meal and salt), which I find makes a superior texture ball to the Manischewitz.  (I feel like this post is offending all my imaginary Jewish readers and my preference of the Streit's brand is probably throwing it over the edge).  Follow the directions! Yes, it's a lot of oil! Do it anyway! Before that, though, place 2 skinless bone-in chicken breasts in a stock pot of water.  Boil until fully cooked with 1/2 an onion, 3 peppercorns, 2 stalks of celery, 2 carrots and a bay leaf.  Remove the chicken and veggies.  Discard the veggies and let the chicken cool.  Add 1/2 a diced onion, 3 diced carrots, 2 stalks of celery (also diced), the shredded chicken, salt or bouillon to taste, and pepper.  Add the matzo balls and cook according to package directions.  Before serving, add 1 small bunch of chopped parsley (don't add the stems, leaf ends only).

4) Carrot Tzimmies.  You can also make a version that's sweet potato, but we prefer carrots.  You'll need 3/4 cup of dried fruit (prunes, raisins, and apricots all work well), 1/4 cup butter, 1/2 generous cup of brown sugar (pack it tight and then add a little extra), 1/2 t salt, 1/4 t cinnamon, dash nutmeg, 1 cup orange juice, 1 T orange zest, 1 T lemon juice, and 1 T cornstarch (or potato starch if you're being KFP). Mix the orange juice and starch, set aside.  Peel and chop the carrots into rounds and microwave or boil until they're slightly less than done.  While that's happening, mix the remaining ingredients except the fruit in a saucepan until melted together.  Add the OJ/Starch mixture and bring to a boil.  Mix all ingredients in a greased baking dish and bake at 325 for for about 40 minutes because it's supposed to be baked at 350 for 30 minutes but the gosh-darn kugel bakes at 325 and they're going in together come heck or high water.

so there.

5) Some people eat Gefilte Fish.  We do not.  Ever.  Have you seen those nasty jars?? If I had to, though, I'd do this one, because several Jewish friends say it's the best you're gonna get.

6) I serve a salad.  It's not traditional because it's not fried/coated in oil/artery clogging.  Whatever.  I like to do cucumber or mixed greens.

7) Macaroons.  I use Ina Garten's recipe and it is delightful.  Do not skip buttering the parchment paper because they stick.

8) This year I'm also serving this cake from Martha.  She very rarely steers me wrong on Passover foods.

9) Wine.  Lots.  Because it's not a Jewish holiday without some.

St. Patrick's Day

We're neither Irish, nor Catholic, but Logan's favorite color is green and Riley spent all his free time building "Leprechaun Traps" after being jealous about the treats and mischief at Savannah's preschool.  I decided (at 12 am, which is when my best inspiration always strikes) that I'd go with it, so, here's what I did.

 The leprechaun mischief.  This involved a skein of yarn, some tape, and a package of green balloons.  Luckily the kids are having a "sleepover" together tonight, so I only had to sneak around one room!!

 In the kitchen I drew a picture and threw down some glitter.  I have 0 artistic skill, I know, so no laughing at my leprechaun!!

 Also on the table are goody bags for the kids.  Each kid got a shirt, bracelet, 7 Up, crayons, gum, granola bar, lollipop, and jello.  The boys have flat green shirts and green "lucky" bracelets.

CC Science Club: Chinese New Year

Yes, yes, this happened in January.  So sue me.  We use a book I picked up at the library, but you can also get it on Amazon.  For the January lesson, we talked about phase changes.  

First, we read a few books about the Chinese New Year.  Then we made a Venn Diagram about the differences and similarities between the Chinese and the American New Years.  The kids did really well! 

Next I did a demo by making poppers that were completely unsuccessful at the library (using off-brand alka-seltzer and water in an old-school film canister, which was really hard to find!) but worked at home.  It was supposed to tie in with the "Fireworks/explosions" portion of the Venn Diagram.  Next we separated into groups and showed how a liquid (vinegar) and a solid (baking soda) can produce a reaction in the form of a gas (carbon dioxide), which we could see by inflating a balloon over a soda bottle. 

Helpful hint: Use a paper cone to pour the baking soda into the balloon.  Measure the vinegar into the soda bottle, and then attach the balloon to the top of the bottle.  When you stand the balloon up, the baking soda goes in, but you've got all the time in the world to attach your balloon, unlike if you try to mix the elements and THEN put the balloon on top. 

Then it was time for snack and crafts!! The book (and my original plan) suggests doing mini egg rolls, but since there were supposed to be too many kids to have it at my house (fully 1/2 of the people who RSVP'd didn't come), we were at the library and I wasn't sure what our kitchen options were going to be, so we did popcorn (get it, it's popping/exploding?)

Then the kids worked on a really simple craft that I based on a Pinterest find. This was also a second choice, the first choice craft involved paint, which I decided was a bad idea at the library, but the kids seemed to enjoy making puppets, and they're younger, so this was good.

 We had a great time! The science club idea seems to work well for us and for our CC friends! I didn't take any pictures from our February club, which we had this week on Monday, but we did polymers using Teflon Tape and plastic bags.  We had fun learning we could stretch vertically and distort the images and then pull horizontally and realign the molecules! Our crafts were just fun heart-shaped foam activities from Michaels.  I had a bunch of events that all happened on the same day, so a CC friend greatly blessed me by saying she'd bring a craft.  I really didn't feel like I fit in our community at the beginning of the year (I still don't) but I've been very supported by

Christmas: A Holiday with one spelling

My munchkins were so cute this year crafting away.  Logan made chocolate covered pretzels that he added to some...um....special trail mix (3 kids of marshmallows, banana chips, almonds, peppermint pieces, it was odd).  He was very proud.  Riley helped me scan his artwork and make a calendar on snapfish.  It turned out so awesome! Savannah Lynn made tie-dyed soap.  All three made candy necklaces and cookie mix in a jar for various friends and family.  It was cute and it was fun.  I tried to cut back on the number of presents.  It didn't work.  I forget they have 2 insane grandmothers who love buying stuff.

Yeah.  That's our "downsized" room of junk.

But, before we got to that, there was Christmas Eve.  Despite knowing better, I agreed to have Christmas Eve in Springfield.  6 Flags Over Jesus (my loving knickname for our mega-church) was "sold" out of free tickets, so I gave ours back so someone else could have a seat.  I just have come to embrace the fact that my crazy self gets angry when I'm stressed, and I knew that I would be stressed Christmas eve.  Anyway, driving up to get to Springfield I was freaking out and crying, we got to the Lutheran Church of Silence at 6:45 to be sure we'd get seats and Service didn't start until 7:30 (not 7 like we originally thought), the kids were exhausted by 8, service didn't end until 9:15, Savannah was crying in the car and fell asleep, Austin insisted on going back to my brother's house for dessert, so Savannah and I stayed out in the car while they went in- it wasn't great.

As a funny aside, on Tuesday, Austin met another new VP at his work who happened to be sitting behind us at Christmas Eve Service! Wheee!! It's always good when you have to ask your work superior "Did our overtired children drive you nuts?"

Christmas morning (is it morning if the sun isn't up?) started with lighting our Advent Candles and singing Happy Birthday to baby Jesus.

Yeah, it's still dark outside.  When I was little I hated that I had to wait until 6:30 for Kevin to be allowed to wake my parents up because that meant he just drove me nuts until then.  (True story- Kevin woke me up every 15 minutes on Christmas Eve until he was 14 and started OD-ing on NyQuil.)

Grammy and Papa were on time, but we had to wait for Uncle Kevin and Lauren, so we got a few pictures:

(Still dark.  Very very dark.) Check out my special snowflakes on the windows, btw.  Anne (the nice MIL) sent them to me early so I could have them up with my decorations.  They're very beautiful and quite delicate! So far the kids haven't ripped them to shreds, though, so I have hope!

Breakfast was Blueberry French Toast Bake with Cream Cheese.  It was phenomenal.
-2 loaves egg challah, chunked.  Yes, chunked is a technical term.
-12 eggs, beaten
-1 cup heavy cream (I did not call this diet French Toast)
-1 cup milk
-1/3 cup maple syrup
-2 8oz blocks of cream cheese, frozen and chunked.  Yup, we're chunking again.
-1 1/2 cups frozen blueberries.
Mix eggs, cream, milk, syrup.  Add blueberries, cream cheese, and challah chunks.  No challah? You could use panetonne, brioche, or another sturdy, slightly dry bread.  Or, you could stop hating and find some challah.  Put it in the fridge overnight.

Grease a 13x9 pan.  Dump in the purple mess you think looks horrible and unedible.  It'll bake up toasty and gorgeous, so don't worry. While it bakes for 1 hour at 350, mix the following in a sauce pan and bring to a boil until syrupy:
-1 cup water
-1 cup frozen blueberries
-1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
-3T butter

In an hour, your French Toast will have baked up and gotten super tall like a freaking souffle.  It's okay, you used 12 eggs.  When you take it out of the oven, it'll collapse and fall down, like a souffle.  Let it set for 10 minutes so the cream cheese isn't like liquid lava, and then serve with the blueberry syrup.  I think this would easily make 2 slightly less packed 13x9's if you're concerned about the amount you're cramming into the baking dish.  We ate every last bite over the course of the day, with people shunning lunch to have more.  This will definitely be made again soon!

Dinner was pretty standard, prime rib cooked in rosemary, dijon, and red wine, served with horseradish cream (2 parts sour cream to 1 part mayo to as much horseradish as your peeps happen to like.  We like ours spicy.) and garlic mash.  I tried something new this year and poached the sliced potatoes and garlic in enough cream (I used 1/2 a cup) and chicken stock (I used a box of low sodium) to just cover them.  You scoop out the soft veggies and mash them, using any remaining liquid if you need it (I didn't).  These were the BEST mashed potatoes ever.  EVER EVER.  So creamy and flavorful!  There were orange glazed string beans with candied pecans, spinach salad with winter fruit, fresh rolls, and red velvet cake.  It was tasty :) I have to admit, though, after Hannukah dinner, a dinner for friends, and Christmas dinner all in one week, even I am a little cooked out!!

This year was good for me as we made a conscious effort to focus more on Jesus and less on anything that typically frustrates mommy (like ZOMG SANTA! for an entire month. They know, they're okay.) and it was so beautiful for me.  I loved our devotional this year and we'll definitely use it again, and I especially loved that my reader and beginning reader could help share the message with us.

These flowers were purchased for our Friday night dinner with friends and lasted until Christmas, which is really good for tulips! They're gorgeous and it turns out that one of my presents from Austin was a year of once a month flower delivery from my favorite local florist.  I've always said that if I won the lottery I'd buy a house with a yard, a minivan, and weekly flowers and then I'd stick the rest in savings and investments....apparently he was listening!

(C/K)Han(n)uka(h)

Apparently you can spell that beast with a K, too! Who knew.  However you spell it, this is how we spent it:

 Num num num.  I have actually come to make pretty yummy latkes, but I use (gasp!) defrosted shredded hash brown potatoes.  Oh, the horror.  Luckily, Jesus loves me despite my flawed Jewish cooking, so we're cool.
Shiksa Latkes
(In the south, y'all, we call them hash browns!)
1 30 ounce bag of shredded potato hash browns, thawed
2 medium or 1 very large onion, shredded (see, I still put my fingers at risk!)
1 t salt
2 large eggs
pepper to taste (yes, I put pepper in my latkes.  you wanna fight?)
1/4-1/2 cup Matzo meal.  I prefer Streit's brand to Manishewitz.  (I said it....so now it's all out on the table)
Mix.  Fry in hot vegetable oil.  I know coconut oil is better for your and blahdy blahdy blah.  They're fried potatoes, friend, I don't care if you put magical rainbow powder on them, they're still not good for you and they may as well not taste like a pina colada spilled in them.  When you put them in the pan, LEAVE THEM ALONE.  Seriously.  Don't keep peaking or test flipping, because they'll be gross.  Your oil should be hot enough that the end of your wooden spoon bubbles (I think that means it's 350) and usually on medium heat mine take 4-5 minutes per side to get crunchy and delicious.

Then we had carrot slaw (was supposed to be cooked carrots, but I got lazy), pomegranate arils, applesauce (I like to use the slow cooker- just toss in your peeled apples, 1/4 cup sugar, cinnamon to taste and a little water and let er rip on low until it's, well, saucy), peas (were supposed to be green beans, but the kids wanted peas), and some london broil, which is not traditional but was OH.SO.TASTY!
London Broil (is falling down)
In a ziplock bag mix 2 cups of red wine, 3T worchestire sauce, 3 crushed garlic cloves, 3 T dijon mustard, herbs of your choice (I had a provence spice blend) add meat.  Let sit overnight.  Remove, pat dry, and broil on high for 5-7 minutes per side depending on desired doneness.  I cooked 3 separate pieces so our serving platter actually ranged from bloody mess to my shoe leather, but all of it was tender and very flavorful.

Then, there was the epic fail.  I proof my yeast every time, but my donuts and my challah were EPIC fails.  The challah in the picture? It came out like a 2 week old stale pretzel.  Now I must conquer Challah.  It's on egg bread, it's on.

 Yes, that's my husband and kids lighting the advent candles with the shamus from our menorah.  If you don't like it, look away.  In our house, Christmas (which the kids spilled the beans to the other homeschoolers is probably "not Jesus' actual birthday") and Hannukah are about the fact that God is faithful and keeps his promises.  If God says he'll make some oil last or kick some Greek booty, he will.  If he says he's going to send a Savior, you better believe it's going to happen. He's not playin.  That's what I like about God.

Savannah dressed for dinner.  I was inredibly jealous I don't have a purple sparkle ballet recital dress to wear for dinner! This is daddy with his extra-special desert (since the donuts didn't rise he got us donut holes from DD) from the kids! We melted candy cane pieces in the oven to make Star of David shaped candy.  It was fun!

Directions from my facebook: "You just break the candy canes into pieces and make equilateral(ish) triangles on a greased cookie sheet and bake them for 2-5 minutes at 300 degrees. Take them out, stack one on the other, back in for one minute to set them together, and then out to harden. Use a metal spatula or board scraper, the plastic ones are too fat and roll the candy. These are SweetTart candy canes, and they're pretty yummy :) Blueberry ones would be cute and the right colors :) When they're hard, you wipe any non-stick spray residue off with a napkin, and then you can hang them up or eat them after you light your candles :) You can use little pieces all put together, too- actually my favorite one was all the different leftover colors together!"


Savannah's class had a Channukah Party thanks to her buddy Alison's mom, and Savannah came home with her very own driedel (she did not, in fact, make it out of clay) and explained to us that "How you play drey-dull is you spinned the drey-dull and then Ow-ison's mom gives you a chocolate coin."  When I tried to explain the actual rules she rolled her eyes and repeated you need Ow-ison's mom in order to play.  We invited them for dinner on Friday night (I should have taken a picture of that dinner!) but Savannah and Alison ended up playing dolls and tea party the whole time, so it was just a fun dinner with no work involved handing out gelt :) 

In Which We Survey the Wonderous Cross

Easter is pretty fantastic at our house.  We start with observing Passover (hooray for my 7 year old who can expound on the foreshadowing in Exodus of Christ's sacrifice....he definitely doesn't have a religion major for a mother...) and then observe several rather somber holy days including Maundy Thursday (this year with 100% more Catholic as we were able to attend a Stations of the Cross, which was awesome!) and Good Friday, which I typically attend alone because I cry.

Sometimes I forget about Jesus altogether.  I can admit that.  There are days when I am overwhelmed by all the junk in my day and I forget that my actions are supposed to reflect Him.  I'm not proud of it, but it's true.  Knowing that is why His sacrifice, in spite of my complete and utter failure to ever get things right, is so overwhelming.

One of the rectors at the service I attended talked from the perspective of Simon the Cyrene, the man who was forced to help Jesus carry the cross when He, after being brutally beaten, could no longer manage to drag it.  The rector, speaking as Simon, recounted Jesus falling and silently wishing that He would just stay down, that the suffering would end, but Jesus would pull himself up with eyes resolute, fixed on the end, on the suffering, on the death that He knew He must endure for each of us.  Riley asked me for the first time this year why Jesus didn't get down off the cross.  He's God, after all.  He healed the sick and rose the dead, so it seems rather simple to get off a cross.  I've been waiting to tell him the answer to that question his whole little life.  "He chose to stay, Riley.  The nails didn't hold Jesus to the cross.  Jesus Held himself because He knew that for all of us to be forgiven, so that we could have eternal life with Him in Heaven, He had to die as a sacrifice.  Love for you held Him there, not metal."  Riley cried, too.  He's very like me sometimes, that little boy. 

How amazing to be loved so much.  In the Simon monologue, the rector then recounted "I'd come to Jerusalem on pilgrimage to celebrate the passover, and now, touching Jesus as He died, I was unclean, ceremonially unfit to observe the seder.  But as I thought about it, the blood of the lamb would not be on my doorposts that night, because it was already on me, it covered me." 

I hope that I have taught my children to observe Easter and the holy mystery that it represents with both joy and reverence.  This CS Lewis quote has always spoken to me about our observance of holidays.  I want our children to know that beyond the eggs and the candy, there is so much more happening.  With God's grace, I hope that I can succeed.

“There is a stage in a child’s life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began ‘Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.’ This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer seem sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They will have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life.” ~C. S. Lewis

Christmas in February

Christmas was wicked fun :) We started off with a trip to the Christmas Tree farm where we picked up this gigantic beauty :) It took up basically our entire living room, which I think is pretty fantastic :) I love Christmas, even though it's so much more work as the mommy!! Plus there was the extra difficulty this year of hiding the kids' super-secret present!!

The Christmas Tree Farm we went to was the best one by far! They had bunnies to pet and lots of space to hike and a trail back to the old cabin that the farmer and his wife lived in!! Since bunnies are Logan's favorite thing on earth, Logan was in 7th Heaven! He was so cute holding the little tiny babies! Riley's favorite part was running around in all that open space- he's constantly making me feel guilty about the fact that we don't have a big backyard for him. One day, though, we will :) We really didn't have enough ornaments for the size tree that we bought, so one of my favorite things this Christmas was watching the kids add whatever they could find that was hang-able. Candy, toys, refrigerator magnets- they all made their way up to the tree upstairs. Also awesome this year was getting to go to Logan's first Christmas performance!! Yay for preschool! He did a great job singing "There were 10 Little Angels" and looked adorable in his halo. Logan is such a sweet and loving little boy who is so full of joy and watching him is great fun for all of us :) (Also, as you see from the first picture, we went in for the Pageant of Peace and the National Christmas Tree, too!)

Then of course, there were the visits to Santa...always fun! Savannah did really well and was excited to see the big man, and Logan was excited, too, to ask for a pirate dog and a sword. Riley had a list a mile long, which was cute, too! Little did Logan know, though, that the surprise we had to work so hard to keep a secret was the dog that he and Riley had been begging for FOREVER!! I never thought I'd talk Austin into it, but I finally did. It only took 7 years :) His name is Luck and he's pretty freaking adorable.

So, we obviously had a few snow days. (11, actually, between December and February) We finished up 2009 by celebrating the New Year with Riley and Logan's friends Kailey and Heather and my family. We had been hoping for more people, but the snow-that-never-came kept most people inside :) We had a blast, though!