Brianna turns 17

Brianna, my oldest daughter, turned 17 on May 3rd.  I really don't know how that happened.  She's not supposed to be 17 yet, as I'm not old enough for a 17 year old! 

We celebrated her birthday on April 30th, with a family party.  Mom, Dick, Dad, Ann, and Becky joined us for a birthday dinner.  We had a hamburger and hotdog bar, which is my absolute favorite party dinner these days.  Don manned the grill, and I laid out all of the fixin's.  Apparently, I go overboard...I put out 3 kinds of cheese, bacon, guacamole, standard burger produce, and grilled onions.  This year, I went to our garage and opened one of every kind of homemade relish out there, including homemade ketchup.  I love an excuse for lots of choices!

Anyway, back to Brianna.  For the first time in a very long time, she seemed genuinely happy.  Made me remember the little girl Brianna, who was always smiling.  It was good to see, but made me a little sad at the same time.  She was around for her whole party, and engaged with everyone.  Here she is opening gifts:

(Maddie "helped" her the whole time, which is why she is in so many pictures!)

Here is another picture of the cake:

When I asked Brianna what kind of cake she wanted, she told me to surprise her.  So I did.  This is Brianna's favorite:  chocolate cake, split lengthwise, with a layer of homemade whipped cream and sliced bananas in the middle.  The rest is frosted in more whipped cream.  So yummy, and she was surprised.  I had the 3 girls help me with the decorations.  I sliced some jumbo marshmallows, and they dipped the sticky sides in various colored sugars.  I really think they like to help.  The stems on the flowers are green Twizzlers I found at the grocery store that morning.  I hadn't planned on using them on the cake, but they worked perfectly!

I always like how birthday cakes look when the candles are lit!

Here she is, thinking of what to wish for.  Katie is anxious for the first piece.  I think she wanted to make sure that she got the piece with the blue flower!

Yes, she blew out all the candles, so I guess that means she'll get her wish.  I wonder what it was???  Should I be nervous about that???

See you soon!

Easter Sunday

OK, so I'm a little late on this, but I'm going to go ahead and post it now.  Better late than never, right?

Our family begins their Easter celebration the night before, with egg dyeing.  We let all of the kids participate, which makes it extra fun.  Extra messy, too, and they usually have colored fingers for church the next day, but that's all part of the fun.  This was the first year that Maddie participated:

We colored a total of 48 eggs, I think, which gave each of the 6 kids 8 eggs.



Abby & Katie



Brittany, Emma, and Maddie



Emma, Maddie, and Don

I didn't dye eggs this year, for perhaps the first time ever.  I got a much easier job:  assembling breakfast casseroles for the next morning.  Have you ever made an overnight casserole?  We have a couple that we really like.  One is bread, ham, and cheese, layered, and then a beaten egg mixture poured on top.  The other is a french toast casserole, which is a sweetened milk/egg mixture poured on top of cubed bread.  Both are put in the refrigerator overnight, then put in the oven the next morning.  They are great for large brunch get togethers!  Here is the recipe for my favorite French Toast casserole.  The only things I change are that I cut the bread into 1" cubes, and I sometimes use maple flavored french toast bread.

I also got together all the ingredients to make Resurrection Cookies with the girls.  They are basically meringe cookies, but each ingredient and step is tied to the Easter story.  For instance, these called for pecans, which you place in a resealable bag.  The kids beat them with a wooden spoon, which represents the harsh treatment Jesus faced.  The kids taste each ingredient along the way, and you explain the correlation, along with reading Bible verses.  The vinegar represents the vinegar Jesus was given on the cross, the eggs represent new life, the salt represents the salty tears of Jesus' disciples, the sugar is the sweet promise that was fulfilled, the white color represents purity in God's eyes of those clensed of their sin.  You put the cookies in a preheated oven, turn the oven off, and seal it with scotch tape, to represent the sealed tomb.  When the kids get up in the morning, you "unseal" the oven, and give each child a cookie, telling them to break it open.  It is hollow inside, which represents the empty tomb.  Here is the site where I got the recipe.  I really liked them, and think we will make that part of our tradition.  The kids didn't like them so much, but I think that was because there were nuts in them!

We all went to church in the morning, and were met at home by Mom, Dick, Becky, and a couple of Brittany's friends.  While Brittany, Becky and I worked on breakfast, the kids had their egg hunt.  I missed most of it, as I was in the kitchen, but Don took some pictures.

Emma and Abby

Katie

Maddie and Katie



Emma and Katie.  See that blur?  That's how a lot of our pictures came out that day.  The kids move faster than the camera!

Yes, our egg hunt was in the house.  It was raining, or threatening to rain, all day.  We've not had an egg hunt outside since we moved to this house, 4 years ago!  But the kids had fun, and it did limit the spots for hiding eggs, which is both good and bad.

Here are the girls in their Easter dresses, before the hunt started.  This was one of the few times they sat still all day!

After brunch, we all just hung out and played games.  Mom, Dick, and Becky stayed, and it was a very relaxing day.  We also did the full Easter dinner:  ham, scalloped potatoes, deviled eggs, broccoli salad (Mom's special recipe, and a family favorite!), asparagus, applesauce, and rolls.  I found a recipe for Blender Hollandaise sauce, that was so quick, easy and GOOD that I'll never used the packaged stuff again.  As a matter of fact, I've made it twice since Easter!  Dessert was a carrot cake roll with cream cheese frosting, which can be found here.  This cake is much easier than it looks, and completely worth the effort.  Best carrot cake I've ever had, I think!

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this belated look at our holiday.  I'll be back tomorrow, with a look at Brianna's birthday party.  See you then!

Back again!

Hello all, I'm back again, and apologize deeply for such a long absence.  I've put the time to good use, though, I promise!

As you know, I decided back at the end of January to knit dresses and sweaters for the four younger girls for Easter.  As my deadline drew closer, I came to realize that if I spent time at the computer, that was time away from my knitting needles, and I needed every minute I could get.  So, while I was away from you, every spare minute, and I mean Every Single Spare Minute, was spent on the dresses.  But YAY, I finished, on time, and without pulling a single all- nighter!

Here are Emma's and Abby's dresses:

And here are Madison's and Katie's:

Here are the girls on Easter morning:

They were quite happy with these dresses, which was a huge relief to me, after the months spent working on them.  While at church that morning, several people complimented them on their outfits.  Without fail, (well, except for Maddie), each girl said, "Thank you, my mom made it.", which made me quite happy.  It was nice to feel that they were proud of me!

And that is nearly the sum total of my knitting projects for March and April.  I did manage this knitted, beaded necklace, which was meant for Easter, but wound up not matching the dress I bought.  I did wear it on another occasion though, and got several comments about it.  I can't wait to try another one!

And I spent quite a bit of time on a cross stitch picture for Don, which was meant to be an anniversary present.  Our anniversary fell on Easter as well, and his present wasn't finished quite on time.  As I didn't actually finish it until May, and as it isn't in a frame yet, I will post pictures of that sometime later.

Here is a picture of Don with his carrot harvest.  I have to say, initially, I thought the garden was my garden, but it turns out, it is actually Don's!  He takes great pride in the vegetables that he grows, and I, after all, get to do the fun parts, which consist of helping to choose what we are going to grown, and then doing something with them after harvest!

Don, however, prepared this harvest for the freezzer.  He cleaned all of these, then sliced them, blanched them, and put them in the freezer.  We wound up with 3 1/2 pounds of sliced carrots...not too shabby!  Added to the cauliflower and broccoli, we had quite a nice little winter garden.  That's gone now though, and the spring/summer veggies are in, and already doing quite well!

This post was meant to be short and sweet, just to let you know that I've not forgotten about you!  I'll be back soon to catch you up on some of our other doings.  See you soon!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

As most people who know me can tell you, I love desserts.  And I particularly love holiday desserts, especially those kind of, well, silly holidays.  (Not that I think saints' days are silly, per se.  It's just that, let's face it, here, for most people, St. Patrick's Day is just a day for corned beef and green beer.)  Anyway, I like days where I can get a little silly with desserts:  St. Pat's, April Fool's Day, Halloween.  So I was really loving making dessert with the girls this year.

Although I would have dearly loved to make the Irish Cream Mousse cake I saw a recipe for, my target audience is a little too young yet for such a thing, so our St. Pat's desserts usually center around rainbows.  Last year, we had really cool looking rainbow cupcakes (think tie dye).  This year, it was....Jello.  I saw the idea on the last page of a magazine, and thought it would be the perfect dessert.  Don't ask me which magazine, I don't know.  I don't remember, and more to the point, I couldn't find it when I went to make this yesterday.  But, it's Jello, how hard is it?

We used 6 large boxes of Jello in the following flavors:  cherry, orange, lemon, lime, berry blue, and grape.  Also, boiling water, a glass casserole dish, and non stick cooking spray.  We had six flavors, and 3 girls available to help, so each girl picked two flavors to make.  I'd like to say I took pictures, but the truth is, I mostly forgot.  Something about supervising young kids pouring boiling water....

Here is the first layer.  The colors in the picture aren't very true, but we started with grape.

I started to follow the pacakge directions as to amount of water, but soon figured out that at that rate, there was no way all six packs were going into that pan, so we switched to the Jigglers recipe starting with the blue layer.  By the way, see that smudge in the middle?  That's my fingerprint.  Yep, the Jello was set enough to pour the next layer.

Here's the blue.  I didn't take pictures of each layer, I promise.  The lighting in my kitchen was not great yesterday, so there wasn't really much definition between the colors.

Here is Katie, getting ready to mix her yellow, which was actually the fourth layer we added:

And here is a square of the finished product:

Isn't it pretty?  It didn't look like that in the pan at all, but once the light was shining through it, you could really see all the colors.  I served it with a "cloud" of whipped cream.

This was Maddie's first experience with Jello:

She actually stopped eating to pose for the camera.  Here is Emma and Katie:

And here is Abby:

Nope, not a ham in the whole Hansen clan!

One last shot of our pretty (and silly!) holiday dessert:

(And good news!  There's lots left over, for my secret bedtime snacks!)

 

How a well supplied craft room kept me from losing Mom Points.

First of all, let me just say that another two weeks has slipped past me.  It's not that I haven't wanted to sit down and write to you, I just know that when I do, my whole day seems to evaporate somehow.  But, I have used my time wisely, and I'm going to do my best to update you!

This blog begins yesterday.  Actually, it began on March 10, which was the day before the kids got out of school for Spring Break.  Abby and Emma informed me that they needed to wear green to school the next day, in order to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in the classroom.  That was when we discovered that they didn't have much to choose from.  Abby has one shirt that is green.  Unfortunately, it has a rather large reindeer on the front of it.  Emma has.....nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  One of the drawbacks of refusing to wear any color other than pink.  We managed to find a shirt of Abby's that had enough green in it to pass, and she borrowed that.

Fast forward one week.  It's the day before St. Patrick's Day, and the bunch of us are scheduled to go to MOPS.  That means out.  And that means wearing green.  Now, a GOOD mom would've realized that this day was coming, and would have taken steps after the problem was discovered.  Apparently, in this instance, I am not such a mom.  Which led to yesterday's mad scramble.  And because of yesterday, I am able to maintain that a well supplied craft room is critical to the well being of my children.

I found some white t-shirts that had been purchased for another project, which we never got to.  After a 20 minute rummage through my craft room, I came up with a roll of Heat 'n Bond, and 5 different green fabrics.  I found a shamrock to trace, and copied it in 4 different sizes, then traced a number of shamrocks, of various sizes, on the back of the Heat 'n Bond.  Now, it was time to involve the girls.  I put each girl's first initial on the back of her shamrocks:  1 large, 2 medium, 3 small, and 4 tiny ones.  I then asked which fabric she wanted for each shamrock, and fused them to the the fabric.

I sat down and cut them out, which took quite a long time. 

Then called the girls in, one by one, to design their shirts.  Emma was first:

After she was satisfied with her design, I fused her pieces in place.  Here is her finished shirt:

It looks slighlty like a smiling face, doesn't it?

Next came Katie:

She was very precise about how she placed her pieces, and this is what she ended up with:

Now it was Abby's turn.  She really took it to heart when I told them to make sure that they were happy with how it looked, because once I ironed them, there was no changing.  Abby rearranged her pieces about a dozen times!

And this was her finished result:

And finally, I did one for Maddie:

Ordinarily, I would've sealed the edges with fabric paint right away, but I was afraid they wouldn't be dry in time to wear today, so I let that go.  I will be sealing them though, and hopefully, they will still fit next year!  They loved wearing the shirts...couldn't wait to get dressed today, actually, and I really think the fact that they "made" them themselves had a lot to do with it.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Happy New Year!

Wow, I've been away for a long time!  I've had the best intentions....every week, the item "write new blog" appears on my "to do" list, but this holiday season appears to have really knocked my best intentions all out of whack!

We've had a busy last couple of weeks.  Some of the our family activities, in no particular order, include kindergarten class parties (4 of them in one week, not counting the winter carnival!), performing for the MOPS group, attending the church Advent Night, a cookie baking/swapping party with friends, the twins' birthday party, bringing home the class "pet" (each twin), visiting Santa, traveling to see family, 2 ravioli days, and Christmas, with all that entails.  Whew!  Here is a kind of a photo journal synposis of the last month:

Abby and Fleegle, the class "pet", enjoying hot chocolate. (Each kid in class brings the stuffed animal home for a weekend, then writes a journal page about what they did.)

Emma and Fleegle, the very next week, at the school Winterfest carnival.

Katie, performing at the MOPS Christmas party.

Abby and Emma, with turning six!

Our Santa picture, after a long wait in line.  Maddie hadn't had a nap either...no wonder she's not happy!

All four kindergarten classes, performing at the school Christmas concert.  Fortunately, it was just kindergarten, or we might still be there.

Katie and Abby, decorating gingerbread cookies for the first time.  Lots of fun, and less mess than I thought it would be.

Sprinkling "reindeer food" on the front lawn, Christmas Eve night.

Brianna and Brittany, hanging their stockings "by the chimney with care."

The quietest moment of our entire Christmas Day...waiting to go downstairs to see what Santa brought.

Learning to roller skate...thanks Santa!

Maddie, enjoying our movie day.

Various shots of ravioli day, as captured by the girls.  Top to bottom:  Tori and Abby, Tori rolling pasta dough, and Sydney, cutting ravioli.

My hope is that as you look back on 2010, you have many memories to cherish, and that looking forward to 2011, you will make many more.

From our family to yours, a very Happy New Year!