This Christmas...

This Christmas was a wonderful one. This year we didn't have a sick child. This year we didn't spend a good part of Christmas Eve or several days after in and out of an urgent care and doctors offices. This year my son enjoyed Christmas the way a child should enjoy Christmas. This year I enjoyed watching my son enjoy his Christmas. This year...I enjoyed Christmas.

Enjoy the pictures:

Make a slideshow - it's easy!

Santa Cookies

I asked Sam the other day what kind of cookies he would like to make and leave for Santa this year. He told me that he wanted to make peppermint chocolate chip cookies. Okay, I've never seen a recipe for that kind of cookie. I told him I would look on the Internet because I had never seen a recipe for them before. Lo, and behold, there were many recipes for peppermint chocolate chip cookies. We made them today and I have to tell you...WOW! They are some cookies! I found the recipe that I used on Home Baking Association's website. The cookie recipe will follow below. But first, there are pictures to share with you!


Here is Sam putting out the cookies for Santa. The note that he wrote to Sana says "Santa! You Rock" on the front.

This is probably the last year that Sam will believe in Santa so I'm trying to make the most of it. He is such a sweet and loving little boy and it will be a part of his childhood that will be gone forever once he doesn't believe in him anymore. Of course, I still believe in him!

Peppermint-Chocolate Chip Cookies

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup packed brown sugar

1/3 cup margarine or butter, softened

1/3 cup shortening

1 tsp. vanilla

1 egg

1½ cups all-purpose flour or whole-wheat flour

½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

½ cup chopped nuts

1/3 cup crushed hard peppermint candies
1 package (6 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips (1 cup)

Preheat oven to 375°F. Mix sugars, margarine, shortening, vanilla, and egg in bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light brown. Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet. Cool on wire rack. Provided by General Mills Serves 42.Approximate Nutrition Analysis (per serving): calories, 95; protein, 1 g; carbohydrate, 12 g; fat, 5 g; cholesterol, 5 mg; sodium, 55 mg.

My notes: I used all-purpose flour, omitted the nuts, and increased the chocolate chips to 1 1/4 cups. I cooked them for 9 minutes on parchment paper and then cooled them for 2 minutes before putting them on the rack to cool the rest of the way.

ENJOY!

Finally Up!

Finally have our tree up! I know I'm late in getting it up but with everything happening with us not knowing if we have a place to live and when anything will happen about it I kind of put it off. That and we've just been terribly busy. So, yesterday and today we got the tree up and decorated! We also finally did something that I have always wanted to do. We strung popcorn and cranberries! Sam even said, "Mom, this is really fun!". Boy was I surprised. I will have to say that I did most of them but it was still time that we spent as a family. Even Andy strung some of them. (Remember that if you want you can click on the pictures below to seem them full size.)

What started as this......

Slowly after much limb arranging turned into this...

Which finally today turned into this wonderful looking tree. At least it is wonderful looking to me. Sam and I worked on it for quite some time. I'll admit there were times where I got agitated at where he was putting some of the ornaments but I got over it and guided him to where some of them should go. He was wanting to put them basically all in the same area. Half way through decorating he asked if he could have a break. I said yes and kept decorating. We've waited long enough to get it up and I didn't want to finish it later this evening. So it is finally done!

Here are two more pictures of the tree close up. Enjoy!

Dinner and Singing!

Last Friday evening my dear hubby took me out to a wonderful dinner at Rockfish Seafood Grill. It was so delicious! My favorite item there is one of their soups.

It's the Red Pepper Crab Bisque. In fact it is so good that I am going to search for a recipe similar to it and fix it here at home.

After dinner we went to the Christmas Show of The Vocal Majority. WOW! Those men can sing.

We were going to go out for dessert afterwards but we had to sit in traffic due to an accident on one of the highways. Oh well. It was still a wonderful evening.

Thank You Andy! I love you!!!

Pay It Forward

I read this on Pink Knitting Adventures blog (who read it elsewhere) and thought it sounded great!

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

I love the pay it forward idea and I love that it gives you 365 days. ;)

Harry Potter Scarves

I know I'm late in posting pictures of the Harry Potter scarves that I knitted for my nieces but here they are finally!

They got there just in time for them to wear for Halloween this year. I didn't know if I was going to get them done in time or not. In fact one of them isn't quite the "real" pattern. But it works and that is what counts. Not to mention that they loved them.

What's Going On.....

Boy do I have a lot to update you all on!!!! I hope that you have a minute because this may get long.

Last Tuesday my husband checked his voice mail to hear that the guy that owns our house is having it foreclosed on. I must tell you that I was a wreck! The lady that is our agent here in TX, and manages the property, has been just wonderful with helping us. We are trying to get the bank that now owns the note on the house to give us the amount that it would take to purchase the house as we have quite a few interested parties that would purchase it and let us rent it from them. The big down side to all of this is that there is still a chance that we will have to move again. Now remember that we just moved here a few months ago! The up side to all of this is that we are currently living rent free!!! We haven't told Sam as of yet mainly because if we end up staying here then he never needs to know.

The same day my mother-in-law went into the hospital severely dehydrated. They couldn't do any tests until they hydrated her but once they did they found a blockage in her lower intestines. They did surgery and took out roughly 8 inches of her lower intestines. After surgery she went into the ICU as her heart was fluttering and they were having a hard time getting it to stabilize. She is now in a private room. She is recovering well from surgery but is still waiting for the lower half to begin functioning. Her heart is now in a good rhythm. But now she is battling fluid in lungs which has now turned into pneumonia. She is getting antibiotics, physical therapy and inhalation therapy to combat that. We haven't been able to make it up there to visit or help out but Andy's big sister did get to go down along with one of his younger sisters going up to help out.

Okay...let's move ahead to last Friday. I was frantically running around the city trying to find an all black dress as I was singing the Messiah Sunday evening and we were all wearing black attire. Finally found a dress with just a few minutes to spare before I had to head back across town to pick up Sam from school. On the way there my temperature light went on in my car. I called my husband to let him know what was going on. As I'm pulling into the school parking lot the car dies. I had two people help me push it into a parking space and Andy met me over there to put some coolant in it. He followed me home with Sam and we tried to start it again. When we did everything in the radiator poured down our driveway. Had to have the car towed the following morning and ended up spending a bit over $400 to get it fixed.

With all of that last week you can only imagine my stress level went way up and my body said that it had had enough and I started to get sick. So I just took it easy for a few days and got myself in order. Never did get sick but I can still feel the stress in all of my muscles.

I think that is me in a nutshell as of right now. Oh, yeah, I got a new computer! So I've been trying to reload everything back on to this one but it's okay because it runs so much better than my old one.

It's cold here and looks like it will stay cold for a while now. I still need to decorate my house for the holidays which I am hoping to do this weekend. As soon as I do I'll take some pictures to share with you.

We've been busy since we moved here getting involved in just about everything. I am going to get back into the groove of blogging and have missed it terribly. I do want to thank all of you that have either left comments or have emailed me asking if everything is okay because I stopped blogging. It meant a lot to me.

Sam in Seussical the Musical, Jr.

Last month Sam and his second grade class put on Seussical the Musical Jr. They had a lot of fun putting it all together and we had a blast watching them all. There were risers on the stage and two sets of risers on either side of the stage on the floor. They did a fantastic job and I'm so proud of them all. Here is just a little snippet of one of the songs. Sam was also one of the narrators for the musical. In fact he had most of the narrator lines memorized and could say them all for me on cue before the show.

Sam is on the front row towards stage right. I love watching him towards the end of the song when his arms are up in the air and they are moving them up and down. He puts his whole body into it.

Welcoming Home the Troops

Make a scrapbook!