Christmas 2020

 Well, it's New Year's Eve, so I guess it's time to talk about Christmas. Or at least to show off my kids' Christmas gifts. 

This looks like Christmas morning, but it's not.
This is what it looks like the week before Christmas when you have seven kids at home,
all buying gifts for each other.

This year the kids drew names in April so they'd have lots of time to plan and make their gifts. And in October or November a few of them got started. We still spent the week before Christmas madly working on the homemade gifts...but they were pretty cool. And, fortunately, Bruce was able to help quite a bit this year.

The first photo of Christmas morning.
These girls get up an hour or two before everyone else every Christmas so they can hang out in the great room and talk,  and admire the tree with all the gifts around it. Also so they can make themselves look cute for photos...unlike some of us.

This candy jar, and the dolls, belong to Jessica. Santa wanted to fill her jar with candy for Christmas, so he got about a gallon of chocolate kisses, peanut butter cups, and other chocolates. Then he thought to ask her what kind of candy she likes best. Reeses Pieces and M&Ms because they are crunchy. So Santa bought a bunch of those to fill up the jar, and left the other candies for the rest of the family. We still have some.

Leaving filled stockings hanging on the mantel is an iffy proposition. This year Santa placed them on the piano. They had lots of chocolate candies in them.

I was the last one to enter the great room before we started opening gifts so I snagged this picture on the way there (at 8:00 a.m. We've never done it this late in the day before!).

And then I snapped this pic right after I sat down.
Merry Christmas, everyone!

OK. On to the fabulous gifts:

This year Jessica made Kaylie a turtle-duck (all by herself!). It is a character from a cartoon that Kaylie likes, and she loved her little duck.

Kaylie gave Rachel a lap desk. She needed a little instruction, but she did the work herself. The symbol inside the lid is one Rachel designed. She guessed right away that Kaylie had made the desk, because Kaylie is one of the few who's seen that symbol.

Brandon got a set of building blocks from Jason. But not just any building blocks; these are sized to work with a role-playing-game board. They (will) have magnets in them to hold Brandon's buildings together when they play RPGs.

And Brandon made Ryan some Q-tips.
No! That Q-tip box has a leather pouch that will hold earbuds and charging cables when they're not in use, or for travel. (Although it came with candy in it, so I guess it could also double as a candy-holder.)

This is not a homemade gift.
Bruce got a melodica for Christmas—you blow through the tube while playing the keyboard, and it sounds something like an accordion or a harmonica.
I think it was his favorite present this year.

The kids all made me a present this year, too!
They decorated four aprons for me. I particularly like the T-Rex wearing a fez.

About halfway through opening the presents we paused to have our amazing, traditional breakfast. This is also something we've never done before.

Then, back to the unwrapping!

Michael made a fancy gaming box for Jason.
Covered in velvet and lined with satin and brocade, it will hold a deck of cards, and all of his RPG dice. Or, if Jason ever gets tired of gaming (not likely) it could also be a trinket box.

Rachel was one of the first to finish making her gift. She got Michael's name, and she designed some T-shirts for him. I don't know if you can really see it, but the black one has a snake draped over a tree branch and it says "Wake me up when it's less hot."  The gray shirt has a symbol and a saying from one of Michael's
favorite books.

Ryan made Lindsey a knitting bag. It's pretty fancy...made with two inside compartments—one for holding the yarn and one for holding the project. And a pocket to hold knitting needles, too.

And Adreanna's gift from Lindsey was the very first one to be finished this year: a succulent fairy garden, complete with a little bridge. Lindsey sneakily hid in on my plant shelf back in August.

The kids all really liked their homemade presents; it's our best Christmas tradition.

But, you say, what about Jessica? 

Nope. This jacket is not Jessica's homemade gift.
This is something she asked Santa for.

What was Jessica's homemade gift? 

Well, that was the question of the season! 

Adreanna drew Jessica's name, and she had a really great idea. But she was in Vernal Theatre's production of "White Christmas" and didn't have a lot of time to work on it. Because it needed a lot of woodworking (and Adreanna has never done that before), Jason came here to help her out with it. And Brandon helped, and Bruce helped, and I helped, and it floated around our house for a month. Everyone knew it was a homemade Christmas gift, but nobody could guess what it was or who it was for.

Sadly, Adreanna wasn't able to finish it before Christmas (she only had about two days that she could have worked on it). And, even sadder, no one took a picture when she presented her mystery gift to Jessica and everyone tried to guess what it could be. (We couldn't even reenact the presentation, because I've already put away all the Christmas decor. 😉 )

But here are the pictures I took of it this morning:

You can see that it's a flat box, with a hole in the middle. There's also an open space which a drawer fits into. (I didn't get a pic of the drawer.)

I don't think I'll tell you what this is going to be. I'll just leave you to guess, and then write about it when it's all finished. It will be cool, though.

And there was one more homemade gift this year:

Can you see what it is?

I made one of these for each of my kids this year. Rachel was the first one to open hers, and when she saw it she said, "I guess this means I have to move out now." Yes, I served each of my kids an eviction notice for Christmas. Or maybe I just gave each of them a copy of my cookbook—which was my most exciting present this year. The most exciting one I had to give. (I have a lot more to say about this, but it will have to be another post.)

the aftermath
(Oh, look! You can see Jessica's mystery gift
under the left side of the tree!)

Well, we had a really nice Christmas day, and I hope you all did too. And we are hoping for a great new year and wishing the same to you!

Fame is Fleeting

I was just realizing that I didn't ever write about the fate of our prize-winning gingerbread house. Well, I mentioned it briefly on facebook, but didn't show pics.

Lindsey and I went to retrieve our house at the Uintah Heritage Museum (where they'd held the gingerbread house contest) one week after the competition. The museum smelled wonderful after displaying twenty or thirty gingerbread houses for a week, by the way. But when we got there the lady at the museum was very apologetic because our house looked like this:

The candies and frosting had slid off of one side of the roof when the museum staff moved the table the house was sitting on. I think the lady we talked to was afraid we'd be upset, but...whatever.

We thought we'd take the house back home and replace the fallen candies, but when Lindsey and I tried to lift it up, more candy fell off, and the wing separated from the rest of the house. We were OK with that, and when we said we'd just throw it away the museum lady (I should have learned her name!) said she would just take care of it for us.

If you look closely you can see the two roofs (rooves?) coming away from each other. Also the little roof over the front porch fell off.

I thought maybe we'd just take the tower home for a Christmas decoration, but when I touched it the two halves slid apart, the candy slid off of it, and the roof fell off. At this point we decided to collect the foil-wrapped candies from around the house, and the lights, and call it good.

The back wall fell off first. You can see it, intact, in the trash can below my arm as I dismantle the lights.

The funny thing is that the cookies didn't break and the frosting was hardened, but the house just slipped apart at the seams. We have never, in seventeen years of building these houses, had this happen. Usually they last for-ever! When my kids quit wanting to eat them, but before we started giving them away, we once had a house that lasted until late in February. Then I had to smash it in with a hammer before I could throw it away. Not this year's house!

And now you can see straight through the whole thing. No tower; no back walls. Just a condemned home, surrounded by a pile of rubble.

And that was the end of the 2020 gingerbread house.
Fame really is fleeting!

Thanksgiving 2020

Well, it's only a week after Thanksgiving...

We had a lovely holiday. 

Although I enjoy having people over, and I like cooking for people, I had pretty much decided not to invite anyone. Initially this was mostly because I couldn't decide who to invite—our new friends who have kids the ages of my older kids, or our dear friends who have a lot of little kids (and a few who are the ages of our younger girls). But then we were all being told we couldn't have more than ten people in our homes because of...

Well, despite that, I thoroughly intended to have Jason and Adreanna in our home (duh!) which brought our count to eleven, and I invited Bruce's dad, too. 

I never know if anyone will want to make the three-hour drive to come for dinner (we are three hours from everything), so I was delighted that Dad accepted our invitation. He came out on Wednesday, just in time to see our finished gingerbread house before we whisked it off to the contest. (Which reminds me—again—that today is the last day I can go retrieve it. I wonder what I'll do with it now. ?)

I did manage to make all the pies, and the baklava on Wednesday after the gingerbread house was turned in. This is largely due to my family cleaning up the gingerbread mess, and Dad buying us dinner from Subway that night. In fact, things seemed to be going so well that I ignored my planned schedule and got started on the turkey a little late on Thursday. So dinner was about an hour later than I had intended, but it was all good. We enjoyed the time visiting together while the bird was in the oven.

There I am, doing the last-minute stuff.
Or maybe just washing my hands.
Notice all the post-its on my cabinets?
Those are new recipes I've used
in the last year or so.

This year's menu was a little simpler than usual. For the last...three years or so I've thought that Thanksgiving dinner, while yummy, is soooo laden with ultra-rich foods that it's almost too much. So this year instead of a veggie tray accompanied by a creamy dip, I opted for a salad of spring greens, apples, bacon, and toasted pecans with a maple-dijon vinaigrette. Delicious! And instead of the traditional green bean casserole (which is always home-made, none of that canned stuff!)...instead of the casserole I made roasted green beans. It was just right; it lightened the dinner up just enough to make the desserts in the evening a little more enjoyable. At least I thought so.

Our table only seats ten. So we set up another table in the great room and seated six people at each table.
(You can see Dad in the top left corner, visiting with Bruce and the kids while they wait for dinner.)

After dinner Dad told us stories about when he was younger, and about his mission to Peru. And we sang (mostly Christmas songs) together. And then pie, and a little more visiting.

I fell asleep as soon as I got into bed that night. And slept in until ...maybe 8:30 the next morning. Dad stopped by a little later, before he headed back home (with some pumpkin pie and some turkey, of course!). We really enjoyed having him with us.

Traditionally the day after Thanksgiving is our "Decorate the House" day, but I think this year we were all a little tired out. We managed to bring the boxes up from the crawl space, and we got some nativity sets put up, and that's about it. We may have played some games; we may have watched a movie. Bruce and I did walk to Cobble Rock Park (about four blocks from our house) to pick up our prize for the gingerbread house. We had leftovers for dinner, and more pie for dessert, and I went to bed early that night. 

I think we finally finished getting the tree put up and decorated on Sunday. :-)

After going to bed around 9:30 Sunday, and sleeping in until almost 10:00 on Monday, I was fully recovered. Thanksgiving week was filled with long, long, busy days, but it's worth it. 

I love to spend time with my family!

What a Week!

What a week this has been!
It's been a good week, but what a week. I guess it all started last Friday (the 20th) with two online events/announcements: 

First, President Nelson did a special online broadcast about gratitude, and invited everyone watching to make social media their gratitude journals for a week. Thousands of people took that challenge and suddenly instead of the complaining, snarky, accusing, etc. political or covid (or whatever) posts I'd been seeing so much of, there was almost nothing but gratitude showing up on my facebook page. It was wonderful! I think Michael iterated it best when he said that instead of people just reposting memes or other things they saw, they were suddenly talking about their own, real lives (in a positive way!). This is what made social media fun, and nice, and interesting again.

Second, I saw the ad for the Holly Days gingerbread house contest. My family has gone to Holly Days every year since we moved to Vernal. They usually block off a main intersection and have firebowls there, serve hot chocolate or spiced cider, have free activities, etc. It's a pretty big deal around here. It was a little different this year, but they still had the gingerbread contest. Every year we've gone to see the gingerbread houses, and vote for the "People's Choice" award, and every year we conceited Norths have thought, "We could win this contest." But it has been so much fun to give our house to a family who has little children that we've been doing just that, and have never entered the contest.

But this year I thought it might be difficult to find a family who wasn't afraid of getting a house made entirely of cookies and candies for their children to eat. (Covid. >sigh<) So we decided to enter the contest.

Bruce was going to be home a lot, and he wanted to be more involved in making the house this year. So he started looking for designs on...Saturday? I think it was Saturday morning. And he chose this one:

It looked trickier than any other houses we've built, but I figured we could do it. I started drawing up the patterns Saturday night, but I was super tired that day, and didn't finish. (I had wanted to make the patterns on Saturday, bake on Sunday, and build and decorate on Monday. This would still give me enough time for all our Thanksgiving preparations. The best laid plans...)

Exhaustion seemed to be the word of the week for me. We finished drawing most of the patterns by Sunday night, but that morning I'd woke (woken? awakened?) at 4:30 a.m. and by night time I couldn't make myself stay up past 9:00. Monday I woke up at a more decent time—5:30—and finished drawing the plans, and started making the gingerbread. We were a day behind schedule.

This picture was actually taken after we baked most of the house. In the bottom left corner you can see the mold we made for the bottom of the turret. The point was molded onto an ice cream cone.

This year, after seeing a cookie recipe that Kim had posted, I decided to put cocoa into the gingerbread for the roof pieces so they'd be a darker color than the rest of the house. Just cocoa didn't do it; I had to add black food coloring, which made it turn a disgusting green, and then I added red food coloring to correct it. It did bake up to a nice, chocolatey brown. We had already decided to mold the round tower on a salt box, but how to make that tower roof took some figuring out.

The turret on the left is in two pieces; it doesn't look too bad from this angle, but there is a huge gap that would have to have been filled with a lot of frosting. I decided to try to make it all in one piece. And I was successful, except that I had covered both the base and the cone with foil, hoping that I could extract them from the inside of the turret, making the whole thing edible.
The base came out, but not the cone. You can also
see the salt box, cut in half and covered in foil,
with the tower baked onto it. (The molds came
out of those pieces easily.)

By bedtime (11:00) Monday night I still had a few house pieces left to bake. When I got up on Tuesday morning (5:00 wake-up time—not intentional) I thought I'd bake the rest of the pieces. And then I saw that pointy roof piece. I really didn't want the foil in there. So I got a fork and started picking at the cone to break it. And I was successful until about halfway up; then I poked a hole into the gingerbread. Oh noooo! Well, I still had some chocolate gingerbread in the fridge, so I patched the hole and stuck it back into the oven. Next thing I know, I smell burning gingerbread. So I rush to the oven, open it, and see that the tower roof had softened, fell apart, and some of it was burning on the bottom of the oven. AAAAACK!

My roof, in ruins.

Well, there was still gingerbread dough in the fridge, but not the chocolate stuff. So I had to get out the plain gingerbread and try to duplicate the color, and rebuild the roof. Fortunately I still had the mold for the base. This time I did not cover the cone with foil; in about thirty minutes I had a new tower roof that was completely edible. But it was a pretty good scare for first thing in the morning.

The windows were all put in by around 1:00.

I always put the Christmas tree in the front
window. And here I'm putting a wreath
into the tower door's window too.
Meticulous work.
There you see Kaylie and Bruce looking
at all the pieces with the windows done.

Finally, we could start on the construction.

We managed to get the lights into the house (that's the easy part), but we needed to make sure a few lights would stay in the little extensions next to the tower, plus we needed a light in the tower itself. We actually had all the walls up when we started, but the main front wall fell over (and was caught by some quick hands!) when we started on the lighting.

Ryan got all the lights in place, and here he is putting a reflector above the tower light. (His clever idea.)

There's the tower light. And if you look, you can see
the front walls are all in place too.

By now it was dinner time. And the kitchen looked like this:

Not just this counter; the whole kitchen looked like this.

After dinner, we still had to put the roofs on the house before we could decorate.

It turns out that this flat roof was the trickiest bit of construction...actual building. We had to trim pieces to match angles, and then we were afraid that putting the flat top on would make the rest collapse. I should have more faith in the royal icing—when it finishes setting up, it's as tough as bricks.

We worked on decorating for a little while, but then the kids went to play a multi-player video game with some friends who live out of town, and I was on my own. By 10:00 I was more than exhausted, and I finally gave up around 11:00.

Ryan puts PEZ bricks on a chimney; Kaylie is putting holly under and around windows.

The door to the tower. I decorated it and...
Do you see what I see on that tower?
(No, not me in the background. On the tower itself.)
I suppose it's only fitting after we spent two days calling that roof "the witches hat" or "the wizard's hat".

Wednesday morning. The house needs to be turned in between 1:00 an 2:00 p.m. Not a scrap of Thanksgiving cooking has been done. We all worked like mad to get the gingerbread house finished on time! 

close-up of the front door

right side of house

from the left-front (tower) corner

back and left side of house

front of house

This might be my favorite picture of the house.

On our way to the museum, at about 1:25.
Dad watches as Ryan and I maneuver stairs, a misplaced bench for the van, and the cat, while we take the house out to Rachel's car. (How often do you take the house to the car?)

This is what we left behind:

At the museum, to pay us for our conceit, we saw some really nice gingerbread houses—I knew at least two of them were serious contenders. And there were still more arriving as we left. 

I was sure this would be the winning house. It looks like it was done by a professional cake-decorator, with lots of airbrushing in the house and the landscaping.
It was amazing!

And I was pretty sure this one would win a prize too. You can't really tell from the photos, but the landscaping on this house was beautiful! I think everything was dusted with edible glitter.

When we got to the museum, our extension cord wouldn't reach the outlet. But the nice lady who worked there found us a cord and got everything plugged in and... it didn't work! Oh nooo! She found another cord, and it did work. Whew! Half the charm of our house is the lighted windows. We admired all the other houses, and then went back home to work on cleaning up and Thanksgiving preparations. (Thanksgiving was lovely, but this post is already too long. I'll write a short post about the holiday later.)

On Friday we got a text from the judges of the contest telling us we'd won second place! How exciting!

I thought the gnome house and the red house would come out ahead of us, and we would get third place—
if no other fabulous houses came in after ours.
I thought the gnome house would be first,
but the judges weren't sure it was entirely made
of gingerbread, so it got third. I'll bet it was though.
I could see that the roof was gingerbread, and
I'm pretty sure the candy rocks on the outside of
the house had to be "glued" on to some kind of structure; it would be nearly impossible to get such nice straight walls by just mortaring those rocks together.

Well, it was all pretty exciting! And exhausting. And now my only wish is that, after we pick up our house tomorrow, we could find a family with little kids who would like to have it—giving it to delighted little children is still more fun than winning a contest, fun as that was. 

Maybe someone will still take it. We'll see. We'll see.