I remember complaining to my Dad as a child about how time dragged by and he told me, "The older you get, the faster it goes." He was so right. Time passes by so quickly. This whole season I could hardly believe it was Christmas time already, and now it's over. So here are just a few things from our Christmas season which passed by so quickly I didn't get photos of some of it.
Evan drew this cute picture of me and him and we had to get a photo of it before it got erased. It's so cute it warms my heart to look at it!
Hooray for new snow to get the boys out of the house! They attempted to build an igloo, but kept getting distracted with snowball fights. They're sitting in what they got built and our dog Chloe is jumping on Noah's friend Kelson. Chloe loved having them out there too so she could kiss anyone who fell on the ground. I think they like going outside more as an excuse to come in and drink more cocoa.New recipe: CAKE BALLS
While the boys were outside playing Stauney and I were busy inside making food and treats for some neighbors and the family party the next day. This was a recipe I found on allrecipes.com that looked really good and sounded really easy. You bake a cake mix, crumble it into a bowl while warm, and mix in a can of frosting. You can mix any flavors you want to, we wanted to do red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, but couldn't find a red velvet mix, so this is a photo of the mix of cherry chip and cream cheese frosting.
Pack the mix tightly into a scoop then roll it lightly between your hands an place the balls on a tray. We used a 1" scoop. We also did a devils food cake with milk chocolate frosting. Each cake mix made about 70 cake balls. Then refrigerate (or freeze) them to harden the balls.
Then you melt almond bark or candy coating and dip the balls in them. We did some of each kind of cake in each coating. I got a little lazy on the drizzling, so they look messy, but we were ready to be done. This was an easy recipe, but it took hours to dip them all. They turned out pretty though, and were a big hit at the family party.
Here's a photo of all the Moon grandchildren. And thanks to the magic of Photoshop they are all in it and (mostly) smiling. Aimee had just gotten home from New Jersey that morning, yeah! We had a fun party, playing games, eating and visiting and more eating, and some really silly games, and even more eating.
Christmas eve cookies for Santa. The kids all in their new jammies and Christmas socks. This is by the kids' tree where they decorated underneath it with the Lego train and a Lego village they built on the train table. They decorated the tree without help this year and it's very unique!
And one final recipe.Whenever I do something the kids really like it has to become a new tradition whether I want to keep doing it or not. I made the french toast Christmas trees about 6 years ago for the first time an have been doing it ever since. Last year I told the kids it took too much time and I didn't want to spend that much time in the kitchen on Christmas morning so I made a breakfast casserole instead. It did not go over well. They didn't like, didn't eat it and kept reminding me how much they love the french toast Christmas trees. I got the hint. They were back this year, and will stay from now on, with their sausage trunks and orange slice suns too.
So here's the recipe: not for the french toast, but for the Lil' Smokies we used this year for trunks. We usually heat them in grape jelly, which is really good. But, Christmas morning we discovered we had no grape jelly - and we are so glad!!! We started searching for a substitute and decided to try cranberry jelly instead with a little orange juice. It was so good! We will now make that a tradition and look forward to trying them for other occasions as well.
We also enjoyed the kids in their Christmas concerts. Logan played his trumpet in the band concert, Evan sang with the kindergarten in the school assembly and Stauney and Noah performed in the school choirs three times. We are proud of them all and the hard work they put into their practices. They all did a wonderful job.
We had a fun Christmas morning and Santa must have decided the kids were good. They got books, clothes (Evan was not happy about getting underwear for Christmas), new Wii games, new Webkinz, and plenty of toys. Evan said, "I think I got everything I had on my list!" Noah was so excited that Santa came through with the hard-to-find Bakugan game that he asked for. Logan and Stauney were immediatley immersed in their new books that they were dying to read, Makeover (Stauney), and books 4 and 5 of The Ranger's Apprentice (Logan).
Their new Wii games are My Sims Kingdom, De Blob and Wii Music. If you have a Wii, you have to get Wii Music! It is so much fun and we laughed so hard at the music videos we made. They were all really fun games and we spent 2 days in our jammies just playing and watching new videos. On Christmas day we cooked a turkey with all the trimmings but felt so weird sitting down to eat such a nice meal in our pajamas.
We are now looking forward to the new year and our party with the Hansens. We'll keep you posted on that soon.
