Holiday Wrapped Up

Miss Cheeks' Gingerbread Birthday Party

It's trying to snow outside, but at the moment appears to be mostly rain and sleet.  It's a curl up with a cuppa, stay in pajamas kind of morning.  The kiddos are transfixed by their weekend dose of Sesame Street. This weekend will wrap up my wonderful holiday week at home, and I am thankful to not have anything to do other than clean the house and pack up some of the Christmas decorations.

It was a wonderful Christmas; here are a few of the highlights:

--Discovering that the mysterious leak from my refrigerator was in fact a bag of ice from Miss Cheeks' birthday party that had been slowly melting over the course of several days.  (The fact that my fridge was so full as to obscure an entire bag of melting ice is a testament in itself!)

--Lighting the final candle on our advent calendar.  Each night we would light the candles and read our Advent story book.  It became a lovely tradition that I hope to repeat next year.

--Knitting every spare moment in the days before Christmas in order to finish Cheeks' present.  Finished it at 10 pm on Christmas eve.   Joyful and triumphant.

--Sending my husband out on a Christmas eve reindeer run to buy chocolate to fill the girls' stockings.  Santa delivered some great gifts, but kinda forgot about the whole "hung by the fireplace" thing.

--The girls thundering down the hallway on Christmas morning.  

--Spending time with extended family...my baby niece in particular.

--Putting the Nisse away for the season.  Their antics persevered to the 24th even if my posts did not!

Time Out Nisse

Birthday Nisse

Little Miss Cheeks is turning three tomorrow.  The presents and Nisse are all arranged on her special chair.  Three is a magical age.  I keep telling myself that in consolation of the fact that my baby, MY baby who was just born five weeks ago, I swear it, morphed from a baby in my arms into an articulate preschool in a matter of moments.  Slow down little daughter of mine, please slow down.

Nisse Highlights

Nisse go fishing.

Nisse cook.

Nisse hide in the laundry basket.

Nisse Fairy Tale

Can you guess which one?

Daredevil Nisse

Joy ride Nisse

Nisse & St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas has already visited our house!

Nisse & Reindeer Games

Nearsighted Nisse

Pizza Nisse

Nisse Sledding

New Nisse

Marie & Magnus arrive just in time for December 1st.

The nisse help fill the Advent calendar.

Nisse Market

Nisse Self Portrait

Crafty Nisse

In which the Nisse make pumpkin soup

Too many cooks...

Christmas Nisse

What do you do when your child tells you they no longer believe?

It's a family tradition that the Danish Christmas elves, called nisse, visit our house just after Thanksgiving.  They have a tendency of moving around in the house during the night and getting into mischief. They would climb the lamps, hide under tables, or perch preciously on the bookshelves.  Bee and Cheeks would look for the "naughty nisse" first thing in the morning and scold them for their nighttime frolics.

Last week, as I was explaining the nisse tradition to Miss Cheeks, since as a two year old her long term memory doesn't stretch back all that far, Bee angrily interrupted me saying, "Mommy.  I know that the nisse don't move around on their own. You and Daddy do it."

I laughed and said that the best part of Christmastime was all the magic--nisse, putting out shoes for St. Nicholas on December 6, and cookies for Santa on Christmas eve.

This just made her angrier and she started to cry.  "It's not real!" she repeated.

Cheeks began to look concerned.

Bee is smart for her age, and while I don't believe in lying to my children unless absolutely necessary (as in, there is no more ice cream or no, I didn't see a spider in the corner of your room) I wasn't ready to just dispel the magic completely.  I  took her aside and told her what my parents always told me as a child, "You have to believe in Santa Claus so that he will come and fill your stocking on Christmas eve. "

I explained that the world is full of wonderful mysteries; things that cannot be explained; phenomena that we don't yet understand; and added that some of those things, might just be magic.  She wiped her tears and looked at me with a serious expression and said, "Tell me the Christmas story."

She had me cornered--exactly how do you explain the difference between magic and faith to a doubting thomas six year old?

But I did. I took a deep breath and I told her about Mary and Joseph and their long journey.  No room in the inn.  A tiny baby in the manger.  Jesus growing up to teach the whole world about love and how to love each other.  And that Jesus, the son of God, was so important that more than 2,000 years later we still know about him.  And celebrate his birth at Christmastime.  And when I finished I told her again, gently, that although the real focus of Christmas is the birth of Christ, that our family also loves to celebrate nisse and Santa too because it's a fun tradition.  I emphasized that very little girls, like her sister, really do still believe in magic and that not denigrating that belief is sacrosanct. 

Bee nodded gravely. I let out a breath I didn't know I had been holding.  She let the matter drop, and this past Friday, I took our Christmas decorations out from their home under the stairs, including our nisse.  And they have been making mischief.  And, you know what?  Miss Bee is also in on the game, secretly moving them about in the afternoon while her sister was napping.

I am still a little sad, because my oldest daughter is growing up faster than I am ready for.  She is stretching those wings of hers and it hurts my heart. I was thinking this over today and resolved that this year, the nisse needed to make some extra magic.  They can still delight even if my oldest doesn't completely believe.

So while I haven't been much for blogging lately, I hope over the next few weeks, to catch the nisse in action:

Knitting Nisse

Still Life with Nisse

Nisse with Newspaper

Franken Sunday

So, the girls are off school tomorrow.  My husband's flight to Egypt was c-a-n-c-e-l-l-e-d.  The federal government is closed tomorrow.  All of the East Coast is bracing itself for Hurricane Sandy with the possibility of periodic blizzards and maybe frogs raining down from the heavens.  But I--I could care less.

Because although tomorrow will likely bring power outages and flooding down my street I am just happy that survived today--my own personal Franken-Sunday.

My morning this began slightly earlier than usual, somewhere around 2 am, when I heard the very ominous beep-screech-beep of the power going out.  I look outside.  No rain.  No wind.  No nothing.  I do hear sirens and trucks going by my street for the rest of the night.  It turns out that there was a car accident nearby which knocked over a telephone pole.  Dominion power, to their great credit, had the lines back up and the power back on by 3 am.

But let me back up a little. . . so after the power went out, I couldn't fall back asleep, as I was thinking about the contents of my fridge, and the milk getting warm, and trying to will the power to come back on.  Around 3:30, Miss Cheeks wakes up crying.  And vomiting.  We get her cleaned up and the laundry bundled up and put her in bed with me.  She's sick.  A fever and chills and later she'll also throw up in my bed and all over me.  (I think she might have scored bonus points for the last one.)  But that wasn't until the morning...  I spent the rest of the night fussing over her, smoothing her hair off her hot little forehead.

Right around 6 am I think I actually fell back asleep but awake to a loud and terrible gagging sound.  It's not Cheeks, it's Max.  And he promptly throws up a great big pile of something really disgusting on my bedroom floor.  My dear husband, to his everlasting credit took care of that one.

So, to recap--sick kid, sick dog, no power and oh--Miss Bee's friend birthday party was today.  Poor Cheeks.  She couldn't go to her sister's party and she was so looking forward to spending time with the "big kids."

After getting everything ready, I took Cheeks off to quarantine at my parents' house and stayed with her.  By all accounts, it was a great party. 
 

The spread:  cupcakes, cookie "acorns", grapes, strawberries, cheese & crackers and popcorn.

Pumpkin patch cupcakes.

Cinderella's pumpkin coach.

Pumpkin painting was the main activity--can you guess the theme yet?

Pin the nose on the pumpkin.

Pinata!

A most unusual party favor--loaves of bread, for when we all lose power tomorrow!

But today is coming to an end.  Cheeks is a little bit better.  Both girls are asleep.  And I don't have to go to work tomorrow.  Hurricane or no hurricane things are looking up.

Out of the mouths of babes

So Miss Cheeks is quite articulate for a two year old, thanks to many hours of conversation with her big sister. Sometimes though, she will get a word completely wrong.

Tonight she wandered into my bedroom and picked up a brassiere that hadn't made it into the laundry basket.

Cradling it in her arms, she earnestly turned to me and asked, "Mommy, can I have this hedgehog?  I want to put it on!"

For the rest of my life, whenever I cannot remember the name to something, I am going to call it a hedgehog.

Pick-a-what?

Since the canner makes it down so infrequently from its high shelf in the laundry room, I decided to do a second round of canning on Monday night. 

We neglected our tomato plants this year, and ended up with only about a half a dozen ripe tomatoes.  We picked all the remaining green ones and decided to make picalilli. I had been intrigued ever since one of my favorite bloggers, Dawn, on "By Sun and Candlelight" posted her family's recipe, and included helpful step by step directions. 

Basically, you chop up green tomatoes, onions, and peppers, salt them, and let them sit overnight.  The next day, you cook the mixture with vinegar, picking spice, and sugar for about 45 minutes.  You process the jars in the canner for 15 minutes. 

Never having made picalilly before, I'm not exactly sure how it is supposed to taste, but my husband and I went from putting tentative spoonfuls on the side of our plate at dinner last night to heaping it on top of our mashed potatoes.  Our result is a relish that is alternatively salty, sweet, and sour.


For our recipe we used:

5 pounds green tomatoes
One orange pepper
2 sweet onions
1/2 cup salt
One pint cider vinegar
1/2 jar McCormick's pickling spice
2 cups sugar

I think we could have maybe used a little less salt and a little more sugar.  Something to try for next year!

apples to applesauce

Apple picking has become an annual tradition in our family. 

Miss Bee was a most enthusiastic apple picker.

Cheeks needed a lift from her dad.

We finished off our bags with these delicious specimens.

Ready for peeling!

Put the peeled, quartered, apples in a pot with enough water to prevent sticking. Cook until soft. Sugar to taste.

Fill pre-heated mason jars and process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes.  Ball "Blue Book" is the canning bible.

Enjoy!  We put up four quart jars and had a lot leftover for the fridge.

Beach weekend

My sister and I rode in those exact same boats at that exact same age some two decades ago.  I don't think they have changed a single thing at Funland in Rehoboth Beach, including the water that those boats are floating in!

Watching my girls walk through Funland, hand in hand, staring at the whirling noisy wonderfulness of it all brought me back to my own childhood.  I think that's one of the best things about becoming a parent...you get to do it all again.

FarMor and FarFar's 60th Anniversary

My first time making kransekake. It tasted just like it was supposed to--a minor baking miracle.

My Mom made a gorgeous fruit salad and farmer potatoes.  Justin made not one but two egg casseroles.  And I made banana bread, because I've inherited my grandmother's fear that there won't be enough food. (There was!)

I also made a vanilla cake with raspberry frosting.

Hostess gifts were snickerdoodle cookies and pieces of the kransekake.