Thinking about next week...

The kids have had two weeks off. It's been really nice to just hang around the house... no schedule... no routine...

And no lunches.

I thought I'd show you some pictures I took one Monday morning when I decided I would make Reid and Zach's sandwiches for the whole week that morning...

This is bread for 20 sandwiches. Two sandwiches a day for each kid. Now... this doesn't include the PB&J that I send with Reid every day... I don't make those ahead of time.

The meat... one slice of ham, one slice of turkey. And the cheese... provolone or muenster. We spoil our kids...

Here they are all wrapped up ready for the freezer. The ones at the upper left are the ones for that day. I just pull a bag out each morning for the rest of the week. Not too bad.

So the kids each get two of these sandwiches, a water bottle, an apple, and a small bag of chips. Reid gets an extra PB&J, a banana, and a trail mix bar to help him make it through wrestling practice. It is a lot of food every day.

It makes me grateful that we have sufficient for our needs. I can't imagine the feeling of not being about to afford enough food for your family.

It's lots of work, but it's a lot to be grateful for.

The Year of The Stocking

A couple of days after I posted my stockings post here on my little blog, I got a call from my mom. She said, "Well, we are mother and daughter." That morning, after working hard on a gift for the kids, she went to the post office and shipped off a nice package. That afternoon, she checked my blog and had to laugh.

The package contained stockings for the kids. :)

We were thrilled to get stockings from Grandma Becky (of course!), so we decided to hang them on the kid's doors. (All except for Zach... go figure... Zach wanted to do something different from the rest of the kids...)

Here they are:

Cole's

Jacob's

Reid's

Kira's

(no surprise there!)

Zach

Hopefully the kids won't be disappointed in the morning when Santa doesn't fill both sets of stockings. Santa just didn't have enough candy.

Oh... and guess what??? We're having a WHITE CHRISTMAS!!!!! We have about an inch of snow! I'll post pictures tomorrow!

Schnitzeling

We're up to our elbows here. I think we're about 2/3rds of the way through. I had to stop to take a break. I've had handsome assistants.

I'll start cooking it around 2pm.

Hopefully everyone is having a great Christmas Eve.

I've got a fun post coming in later today... hopefully you're all too busy spending time with family to see it! :)

Their Snowman

Jacob and Cole are the best of friends. Two peas in a pod. Best buds. Mucho Amigos.

So when we got a slight covering of snow in our yard, they worked together to gather up almost every flake that was on our grass to make themselves a snowman.

You see those long arms? Those are one of Mikes many (MANY) pairs of chopsticks.

They tried raisins and a carrot, but the fruit and vegetable variety of decorations just wasn't working for them. So...

He has googly eyes and a crayon nose. Isn't he cute!?!

Stockings

Because last week wasn't traumatizing enough, I decided on Sunday that we would make our stockings. I had purchased the material a week or so ago and thought we would do this project when school was out and the kids were bored. But I guess I decided to do it sooner. I was sooo tired, but it was nice to have the kids buzzing around cutting out their stockings and their names.

This is me helping glue Jacob's "JJ" onto his stocking. If Mike hadn't walked by when he did, the Js would have been backwards. I was too tired to notice. Pretty sad. :)

And here's Reid doing what he does best: messing with his brothers. Look at the expression on his face... it's just a routine thing he's doing... nothing unusual.

And here's the final product. Kinda nice. It's the first time we've ever had stockings. I think the kids are pretty excited. I'm very pleased with how they came out. Hopefully this will make Santa's job just a little bit easier.

Our first Artisan Bread.

A couple of weeks ago, Mike and I finally got around to trying out the Artisan bread from the book that Judy gave us over a year ago. My mom got Mike a baking stone and large pizza peel to make the work easier and look at what we made!

Isn't it pretty? Mike liked that it looks almost exactly like the one on the book cover. Not too shabby for a first try! Now I'm just looking for a container that will fit in our fridge to hold the dough. I'm trying to decide between the 5 qt and 10qt. Probably should do the 10qt since we'll go through the bread like crazy, but the 5 qt will take up less space in my already overloaded fridge. Decisions, decisions!