Girls Night!! (With the "Sister Wife")

My friend Jennifer quit school with me.

It's always more fun to quit together.

She has been such a great help and source of encouragement to me throughout this first year of homeschooling our children, both of whom have flourished under CC although our approaches and supplementary curricula are very different.  Jennifer is always a trooper and willing to do crazy things like field trips in other states that coincide with our history sentences. Even on local field trips she's such a great help, especially since I always seem to have between 1 and 10 extra children with me! One day we joked that everyone kept staring at us at a museum because we had so many children.  "They must think we're sister wives!" Never one to let an inside joke go, it stuck :)

One thing that I love about Jennifer is that she NEVER complains.  Ever.  (Although if she ever needs to, I will be more than happy to listen to her).  Girlfriend had some serious, serious issues in her first marriage.  Her health has been in jeopardy several times over the last year, including a bout with cancer and surgery to remove it.  She moved.  Just this week, her husband left for Afghanistan.  She's raising 3 kids, including her daughter she adopted from her now husband's first marriage and a little girl with Lyme Disease.  If anyone could take a day and just completely lose their ish, it would be her.  But she doesn't.  (I think it's the wine, personally, but maybe she's just incredibly strong, too)  I'm so inspired by her ability to keep calm and carry on.  Oh, also, I love that when I whine, she doesn't throw it in my face that my problems are petty.  Thanks for that, Sister Wife!

Anyway, this is all to say that since hubby is away and she's such an awesome person and we play hooky from Public School together, she's a great girls night out date! Her friend from high school made a local independent film called "The Fellows Hip", which is not really my scene (it's about gamers who are trying to make it to a Lord of the Rings online gaming competition), but I was excited to go to a premier and it was really fun to see all the local places they used in what was actually a very well done film!

I'm not as cute as her husband, but since he's getting ready to fly to Afghanistan, I'll do in a pinch.  We had dinner first at a Great American restaurant and I got to introduce Jennifer to the fantastic fried dough balls of fatness, which are really very fantastic :) Dinner was awesome and I had lemoncello martinis.  Love.  Next we went over to the theater and checked in.  I have not done many cool things in my lifetime, but the two times I've had to say "We're on the list" I've felt way cooler than I actually am. This was one of those times!

Wait, wait, wait- there's a red carpet?? This calls for some fun with iPhone pictures, even though Mrs. Jennifer had an ACTUAL camera that would have taken good ones!  Work it, girl!

I am not sexy in any way, shape, or form, but my shoes were sexy, and they worked the carpet.  Work it shoes, work it!! (I love these shoes and I hate being taller than Austin so I NEVER wear them.  My feet were strangely unhappy after being forced to run 4 miles before I went out and then being in 3 inch stilettos for the first time in 2 years for a few hours, but they make me feel pretty!)

We had a great time, and as I mentioned, the movie was well done, even if I didn't understand the gaming and Lord of the Rings references.  Plus, it's always great to get a night out with your "Sister Wife", especially when you don't actually have to share husbands!

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 :) 

Cookie Swap 2011

I love these crazy women.

 The Schnotlus Cookie Spectacular (TM) started five years ago.  The only fixtures are myself, Kathy (next to my mom) and my mom.  Every year we get a slightly different group of women and a slightly different mix of cookies, but we always have a great time.

 This year, our crafts were alcohol-inked gingerbread man tins to use for gift cards (ask me about how I got the wrong brown clay and melted everyone's original gingerbread men and I'll deny everything!) and layered "Candy Cane" candles in mini martini glasses.  This was the first year in a long time that my godmother, Beth, has been able to join us with her daughter Denise, and it's always so fun to see them.

 I decided this year I would make cake pops.  They took me ALL freaking night and I was an hour late to my own party.  Luckily the "Schn" part of the party was already at home.  I'm not sure they tasted good, but they looked pretty!! I found adorable chinese takeout shaped Christmas boxes with cutouts on the front and packed my cake pops in those with a small piece of floral foam to put the sticks in.

We clean up well :) I love that we have such an age range and such a diverse group of women, but we have a fantastic time!! Ashley (in white) is mom's friend from Mason, Kathy is a friend from the church we attended when we first moved down here, Lauren (in red, front) is Kevin's girlfriend, Gaby is a new friend who's military, Jennifer (behind her) left Public School with me, Beth is my godmother, and Rachel, behind me, is the most amazing Children's Ministry coordinator you'll ever meet!! Our youngest swapper was 20 and our oldest was...well, 39 ;) we'll call it 39.

We have everyone bring a dozen cookies for each person, and let me tell you, we all give the best cookie trays to our neighbors of anyone I know!

An Open Letter to the Mother of my Savior

Dear Mary,

I was raised protestant, so we've never really paid that much attention to you.  Of course, each year when we'd do our nativity play the girls would fight over who got to be Mary, especially if all the angel spots were full and all that was left was shepherds, but that's about it.  We like to focus more on your son.  You were a Jewish mother, I'm sure you don't mind.

However, the Christmas after I had my own son, I felt intensely connected to you.  I was 19 and having a child 5 months after getting married.  You do the math.  I couldn't look up.  My family was disappointed, my friends were judgmental...it was really hard.  I'd imagine even if you knew what was going on, that not everyone around you was particularly understanding.  I read the magnificant over and over and am in awe of your joy- but I wonder if it lasted.  I remember staring at the floor in church one week as they talked about you, the teenage mother of a child not her husband's, and I wondered if you kept looking up.  I wonder how hard it was for you- if you ever outlived the stigma. If when your son was bleeding on the cross there were still a few people snickering "maybe if his mom wasn't so loose..."

I just wonder.

I don't remember the exact day, but I do remember a few years later, after much depression and self-loathing that I finally looked up.  A professor remarked to me "Why Mrs. Kristina, what a beautiful face you have.  I don't think I've seen it these few years! I'm so glad you've decided to see what's in front of you!".

I promptly burst into tears.

Anyway, that's all just to say that every Christmas, I now wonder what it was like for you.  Even with great faith, it must have been hard.  Even as a protestant, I've come to respect how difficult your journey must have been and how much you must have sacrificed so that we could all have the gift of your son.  I hope that you looked up one day, especially in realization of the gift you gave us by being humble.

In appreciation,
Kristina

Santa Concert

I'm not sure who our preschool thinks they're fooling with the massive Santa Concert they do every year.

I think we all know that the big man is associated with Christmas.

But, whatever, they swear up one side and down the other they're "non-sectarian" and "multicultural", which has nothing to do with why we picked the school, but is something I've started to find funny as the school increases in numbers, especially of Indian and Muslim students!

Either way, the concert is always cute, and the kids have fun showing off their skills.

This is actually a remarkably good picture of Grammy and Savannah, both of whom tend to make funny faces in their pictures!! Grammy has exams this week, but took some time off from studying to come and hear the concert.  The funny part was that Savannah promised that she'd sing extra loud, but then her age group did a dance and not a song!!  Too funny!! She was very adorable dancing to music from the Nutcracker, though!

After the concert we made sure to snap a picture of Savannah and her best preschool buddies.  It was complete chaos in the fellowship hall, there were millions of people and cookies everywhere, so if the girls look a little overwhelmed, that's why!! These three are such fun to watch together!!

Kids Craft Tutorial- Hot Cocoa Gift Bags

Mmmm Hot Cocoa.  Did you know that there's a National Hot Cocoa Day? AND it's today!?!? That's right, December 13th is the day to celebrate Hot Cocoa.  (If you missed it, no worries, I hear January 31st is National Hot Chocolate Day....sooo, just hang in there)

Today we made a fun hot cocoa mix that you can give away on your cookie platter or to a friend or teacher assistant.  It would be cute with a gift card attached for a coach or Sunday School teacher, too!  A lot of my "kid" crafts are ones that I've done before that I just make a little simpler for my kiddos (or, in this case, our homeschool friends) to do.

You'll need:
     *A large can of hot cocoa mix (or make your own- we love Alton Brown's although for my crew I sub a pinch of cinnamon for the pinch of cayenne)
     *Candy Canes.  We like to use our broken ones this way.  If it falls off the tree but is still wrapped, it can be repurposed!!
     *White or Dark chocolate chips- the mini chips work especially well.
     *Marshmallows, we like the holiday shapes!
     *12x12 cardstock
     *adhesive (double sided sticky tape and/or glue stick) and/or a stapler
     *Embellishments (paper, stickers, stamps, ribbons)
     *Tie-top bags, plain or seasonal will work just fine!

Step One, Crush:

Crushing things is very fun.  We find that candy pieces tend to be very sharp and break our ziplock bags, so use two to prevent spills.  Don't make the pieces too small, or you won't be able to see them in your bag!

Step Two, Fill:

Start with a 1/4 cup scoop of hot chocolate mix (or more if that's what your recipe calls for) to make one mug of cocoa.  Then layer on chocolate chips, peppermint pieces, and marshmallows.  Yum :)  Secure your bag well.

Step Three, Cut:

You'll need a long piece of cardstock. All of mine were 12x6, but you can use what you have.  Fold at about 1/2 inch from the top and then set your folded edge over the other cut end.  Stand it up on the table to figure out your center folds, which will need to allow for about a 1-1.5 inch "bottom".  Once you do the first one, unfold it to use as a template if your other papers are the same size.

Voila.  She is the beautiful.

Step Whatever We're on, I'm sick of scrolling up- Insert chocolate:

Yup.  Put it inside the now-folded paper.  We stapled, but you don't have to.  On ours, the staple will be covered by ribbon.  You can either put the flap under or over.  Side note- if you're not doing this with kids, and actually have some time, I would make them look like THIS instead of like the ones we did today :)

Step the Next- Seal and Decorate:

Note: I find it helpful to have several pre-cut shapes (like squares) so that kids don't get frustrated.  

Surprise inside! Guess what's inside!! (Gingerbread Marshmallows is a way cooler prize than you get in Cracker Jacks now, anyway!) 

Look! It's a mini one! It's cute, too!

Fun and quick, you could also fill these up with any home-made treat from Russian Tea Mix (but for heaven's sake, put some red-hot candies in!) to peanut brittle.  It makes a simple homemade gift that much more special because you took the time to dress it up!!

Happy Crafting :)