Christmas goodies....getting ready for the cabin!

The time has FINALLY arrived...our long awaited Christmas trip to stay in a cabin in Oklahoma w/ my mom and dad and sis and her family! To say we've been waiting for a long time is quite an understatement. I think dad booked the cabin at Christmastime last year.

Of course, putting together a trip for 14 to a rustic log cabin takes a little planning...ok more than a little, but the list lovin' me was up for the challenge. Mom and Julie and I planned menus and mom (also a fabulous list maker in her own right...the difference: she uses technology i.e., a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet; me, a spiral notebook (that of course I got for ridiculously cheap before school started) and a pencil) made the lists of groceries and food and fun items that we each needed to bring. We figured out many Christmases back that the cabin deal works so much better when you just plan ahead and bring your own groceries and don't plan on eating many meals out. We've mastered the art form and now we don't eat ANY meals out....truth be told, it's easier to make a meal for 14 than to take 8 kids, most of them under the age of 8 out to eat dinner. Besides, it gives mom and Julie and I hours in the kitchen to just gab and cook and cook and gab. It's all part of the vacation package in my book!

But anyway, part of MY list for the cabin was to bring cheese balls/cheese logs and sugar cookie dough to make Christmas cookies. So today was the day and Jeffrey and Josiah were my willing helpers. Actually they did almost everything while I took pictures and just talked them through what to do.

Here they are rolling the cheese balls in paprika. I had actually already made the cheese mixture on Saturday, I'd just run out of paprika, so had to go to HEB on Sunday to get some more.

Then the really fun part....sugar cookie dough. This recipe is so old that I remember making it when I was little girl. It's the best. Makes delicious crisp sugar cookies, just the way they're supposed to be especially with some frosting and sprinkles! :-)

Here they are putting in some butter....

some sugar.....

eggs....

Mix that up a little...

Jeffrey doing the "scoop,level,pour" with the flour....

and Josiah doing the same w/ the baking powder....

Add the dry ingredients...

and a little more....

use your hands (if you're 8!!) to put the dough on waxed paper to chill in the fridge-I guess that way there's more to lick on your fingers later....

Jeffrey opted for the spatula...

I KNOW they will be just as thrilled about helping to bake them....and Lauren and Katie and David (and POP!) will be there to help.

Christmas with Grandpa

On Sunday, we drove over to Houston/La Marque to watch Grandpa and his church choir perform their Christmas cantada. Then following a yummy lunch at Pappasitos (where Michael's stepbrother, Sammy and his wife, Giovanina joined us) we drove down to La Marque and had brownies and ice cream (the boys got a pass on the "sweets fast" for this special occasion! I mean Blue Bell Peppermint ice cream only comes once a year...and on top of a homemade brownie....yum!) at Lois's house. Lois is Grandpa's dear friend who conveniently lives right next door. Grandpa was having some plumbing issues at his house, so Lois graciously offered for us to come to her home. Thanks, Lois.

Michael enjoying some coffee.

Grandpa's gift....a Mike Huckabee book and some gift cards.

Jonathan got some books. He's already finished one and a half!

Jeffrey got a Lego.

Books for Jeremy...and I just have to take a moment and tell you what great little bargain hunters my boys are becoming. Grandpa gave each of the boys $30 to spend online to get what they wanted. Jonathan and Jeremy knew which books they wanted, so they shopped around and instead of buying new and just getting one or two each, they bought used and each got 4! What's the slogan..."Buy used and save the difference!" Excuse me while I wipe a tear from my eye! Great hunting boys!

Josiah got two Legos. He and Jeffrey have had a lot of fun building the Legos. Can you ever get enough of those??!!

After a quick trip by the cemetary to put a poinsettia on Michael's mom's grave, we headed home. It was a lot of driving (8 hours) for a visit, but it was so worth it. In addition to the nice time in La Marque, Michael and I got almost 8 hours of long conversations in. That made the day even better!

The Gann band Christmas program

A couple of weeks ago we had a Christmas program for the band that the boys play in. Jeffrey was so excited to get to play in his very first concert, especially after having to sit in the audience at band concerts for years now. As usual, moms got to play as well since there are no other clarinets and the moms who participated all played the clarinet in school.

I got to sit next to a very handsome fellow! :-)

Jonathan, Jeffrey and some other members of the band.

Here's the program...

Jonathan played "Feliz Navidad" as a solo, Jeffrey played "Up on the housetop", and Jeremy played "Hark the Hearld Angels Sing" in a jazzed up version....and if I knew how to load things from my video camera to my computer you could actually hear them. They did well and I think one of the cutest things was watching Jeffrey's eyebrows while he was playing. He was concentrating so hard and was making crazy shapes with his eyebrows. I worked hard to keep from laughing! But it sounded great!

Here's most of the band. Jeffrey was missing from this one.

There's Jeffrey....

We were again so thankful for the band this semester. We're so sad because the Gann family is moving to Colorado Springs in January (life in the Air Force, you know)! One of the other clarinet-playing moms and I (mostly the OTHER mom, I hope!!) are going to take over the band for the spring semester and then we'll see what kinds of things open up for next year. We love that the boys are playing instruments and don't want their developing skills and talents just fall by the wayside! Great job guys!

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever...Christmas fun begins!

Ok, I'm behind in posting Christmas things that have been going on. But hopefully over the next few days I'll actually get posted the posts that have been rolling around in my head of things that we've done already this Christmas season. Most pictures will be from my camera phone because I left my camera batter charger in Bryan at Thanksgiving. But even low quality photos are better than no photos!

One of the first things we did this holiday season was take a field trip to the local children's theatre to watch a production of "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever". Jonathan and Jeremy's class in Classical Conversations read this book for the last week of their class before Christmas. (Believe me, all the other books they read this semester were MUCH harder than this one! Just an easy/fun read before Christmas, I guess!) Well, when I saw the theatre was putting this play on and even the day right after J&Js last class, I planned a field trip. Almost everyone from the class was able to make it. We had a great time. Jeffrey and Josiah hadn't read the book (and it's been years since I have) so they weren't sure what to expect, but I think they enjoyed it.

Here's Jeffrey with part of J&Js class. We were up in the balcony which is why the theatre looks so empty.

Because we had an extra ticket, we invited one of Josiah's friends who is the daughter of the lady who teaches band to the big boys. Josiah always enjoys hanging out with her. And it is always a fun and different adventure to have a girl tagging along! :-)

After the play, we went to eat at Spaghetti Warehouse. We've been wanting to go there for some time now and since the theatre was just a few minutes from there, it was the perfect opportunity.

And after lunch, we headed back toward the theatre which sits on the same property as Hemisfair park. And in the boys' mind, you CAN'T get this close to Hemisfair park and NOT play!! So, we rustled up all the change we could find for the parking meter and played for a few minutes before we had to head off to basketball. A game of Hide and Seek quickly broke out.

Everyone on "base".

In loving memory....

Today marks 20 years since Michael's sweet mother passed away. She's been greatly missed at such wonderful days likes weddings, births and holidays and thousands of other ordinary days over the last 20 years. Her sweet tender care of Michael despite the hardship of living as a single mom did so much to shape the wonderful man that Michael is today. I was so blessed to know her and spend time with her, though the time was short, before she passed away. She treated me like her own daughter from the very beginning. We're thankful to God for Peggy!
Peggy Dagerath (1935-1989)

Pumpkins and projects

Remember those pumpkins I got cheap at the corn maze....for a $1 each, to be exact! Well, I took them to mom and dad's one weekend and mom and I got busy.

We sliced them open, scraped out the goop...

dried and roasted the seeds (yum!)

and cooked those pretty babies! The outer shell peeled off kinda like wallpaper....it was almost fun to peel. Ok that's wierd, I know!

Then we puree'd the pumpkin. This photo was the flesh of just one of those pumpkins, so imagine this bowl times 3. Lots of pumpkin!!

Then we put the pumpkin in these jelly strainer bags and squeezed (and squeezed and squeezed) to get as much of the liquid out as we could. I haven't done this step before, but it really helped the pumpkin to have more of the texture of canned pumpkin.

There was an amazing amount of liquid. Most of it we threw out, some of it we put on Jackson's food (after finding out that he REALLY likes pumpkin! Such a healthy puppy! :-) )and some I froze in jars to cook pasta in or something. All in all, I ended up with the equivalent of 7 cans of pumpkin. Not bad for $3!! And I used some for some gluten-free pumpkin muffins with a mix that Michael brought home from work and they were AWESOME!!!

Now to everyone elses projects.
A couple of weeks before Christmas break, Josiah's assignment for the weekly presentation at Classical Conversations was to make a painting with oil paints and tell about it and which of the five elements of drawing were used in the painting. Now, really folks WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND gives an assignment to use OIL PAINTS to a bunch of kiddos. But who am I to not follow the rules?? And Hobby Lobby had them on sale that week, so we got Josiah the combo pack and set him to work.
We used only cheapola brushes so we could throw them away when he wanted to change colors because WHO keeps turpentine and paint thinner on hand?!?!

The paint set even came with that cute little palate with a place to put your thumb. He felt like a real artist! I think his painting was something like a schoolroom or something like that. It was a little...um....abstract! And hey THAT'S OK! It was fun and we did it!

Well, when it was Jeffrey's turn to do the project, we went the acrylic paint route since we were going to be heading over to mom and dad's and dad had many color options. And because they clean up with WATER!! Jeffrey chose to do a painting of the Crusades and talk about the timeline card that went with the Crusades. Here's Jeffrey's painting.

Like Josiah, he had a fun time drawing and painting his picture.

Then Jonathan and Jeremy each had projects to submit for their drama class. Jonathan built a model of the Globe Theatre and did an oral report on its history.

I don't know if you can tell, but he put those stage people on cardboard so they could stand up like they were acting on the stage.

And Jeremy did a report on falconry (training birds of prey). He also made 3-D birds to stand up in front of his project...they looked really cool. Like Jonathan, Jeremy also prepared an oral report to give to his class to explain his project.

Jeremy and Jonathan also finished up an economics stock market game project (that I didn't give pictures of...sorry). They were given $10,000 of "money" to invest in the stock market in 5 different companies at the beginning of September. They tracked their stocks all semester and then turned in a final report. J&J's report was complete with stock charts of each of their companies. It looked sharp! Jeremy made almost $1200 over the course of the game with Wells Fargo, Starbucks, Walgreens, Home Depot and Amazon. Jonathan just about broke even with CVS, NuStar Energy, Costco, SunMicro, and Target. They really enjoyed watching the market and seeing how things went over the course of the semester. Their economic project also included an budget for themselves imagining that they had $300/week to spend. Not only did they do a great job with Michael in setting up their budget, J&J spiced the graphics up with a pie chart. It looked really great.

Way to go guys...all of you! Great job on all your projects this semester.

Honoring Papa

A few weeks ago we had the great honoring of travelling to Lubbock, TX for my grandfather (Papa)'s 90th birthday celebration. My aunt and uncles and cousins and a hundreds of other friends and family came for a special party at the Embassy Suites to honor Papa. As always, it was great to have everyone together. We took a moment while we were there for our branch of the tree "The Bill Moores" to take a picture for mom and dad's Christmas card. It took a lot shots to get everyone looking in the same direction, not crying, without pacifiers, etc. and that was just MY boys! :-)

Here's what greeted us on the entrance of the hotel....

In the party room was a collection of photos of Papa through the years...

Here's Papa with Jonathan and Jeremy. The hats are from the "Moore Cup" game when McMurry University in Abilene (where my grandfather is in the Hall of Fame for coaching) plays Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene (where my grandfather is in the Hall of Fame for playing). The winner of the game is awarded The Moore Cup. Isn't that cool! Michael took Papa a sharpie to have him autograph the boys' caps, which started a trend. I think he had to autograph nearly all of the caps that were given out!

Here's Papa with Jeffrey and Josiah.

I have so many wonderful memories with Papa, I'm thrilled that my boys have some as well. It was such a pleasure to honor Papa!

And while we were there, Jackson got his first opportunity to stay at a Doggie Day Care. Since we couldn't have him in the hotel rooms, we booked a stay for him at the Tipton Pet Hotel (sounds upity doesn't it!...it WAS!) for a "Play day". He stayed in the car on the evenings before and after because we didn't want to have to wait until the doggie hotel opened on Sunday to be able to leave for home. We were very pleasantly surprised at the Pet Hotel. Very clean, not at all stinky, even nice artwork in the lobby! Michael and dad even threw around the idea of starting one in College Station, until they saw that someone beat them to it. Jackson, previously has had less than stellar memories of boarding situations, got a great report from the staff. "He played very well today" Seriously, that's what they said. Yeah, he plays well with others! I'm so proud! We were worried since he's homeschooled and therefore, unsocialized! Way to rise to the occasion, Jackson! :-)