Christmas Greetings 2011!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Here at Smithereens we're all counting down the minutes to nightfall and the Christmas Eve celebration.  We'll head to the Christmas Eve service at CenterPoint, come home and pull out a smorgasbord of delicious appetizers and commence the opening of gifts!

Yes, we're one of those families who open presents on Christmas Eve.  It's a long-standing tradition in my family -- you think I'm gonna change something that means we get to open presents 12 hours sooner than the rest of you?  Nooooo.

Here are our girls with a Christmas update, Smithereens-style.

We really do hope your Christmas is joyous, stress-free and filled with reminders from God about the wonder and amazement that is the birth of Jesus, and that you will know how immeasurably long, high, wide and deep is God's love for you!

Gingie house

Yeah, I know, it's not even Thanksgiving yet. 

But, you see, I found these bead Christmas ornament kits down in our store room -- I bought them back in 2006 or something -- and they were so cute, and Christmas was only a few weeks away, and we had a free afternoon, and these kits were just sitting there, waiting to be used, so....

We gathered around the table on the deck (this was a couple of weeks ago when it was just mildly cool outside), opened the kits and spilled the beans...er...beads on the crafting surface.

Some wire, some very small beads, some pliers, and a lot of concentration.

And giggles, because those tiny beads never stay where you put them, and several of them are now decorating the moist dirt beneath our deck.

And in the end, some festive little beaded gingerbread houses!

*Please disregard the somewhat maniacal look on my face.  We were having fun.  And I didn't use a chainsaw on anyone's body parts.*

Mr. Frosty

We got our first "real" snow last night.  Real, meaning enough to accumulate on the grass and actually have fun with.

It looked like this last night.

And like this today.

So after we picked up G'pa from the airport this morn (Yay!  G'pa is here for Thanksgiving!!), the girls used the afternoon to assemble a frozen humanoid-ish object.

The blue food coloring mouth which was meant to make him look cold actually just makes him look like he's drooling...blue.

He's adorable.

And will probably melt by tomorrow afternoon.  Because that's how fall snow works.

Birthday of the Week - #2

Two days after the festivities surrounding the anniversary of my birth, we celebrated the other birthday in our family -- Jenna!!

This was the one in which Karen and I became parents of all teenage girls.

Yes.  Jenna is thirteen.

Wowie, wow, wow.

The evening began with Karen's BBQ meatballs, at Jenna's request, of course.

Sorry no picture.  But they are little balls of sweet, slightly smoky, beefy delectability.  Definitely a party in your mouth.  Which is fitting, since we were fixin' to party outside our mouths.

Jen opened her presents.  First, Wreck This Journal.

It's a journal.  That you're supposed to wreck.  Hence the name.

Each page says to do stuff that you normally wouldn't do to a book.  Like wipe your feet on a page.  Or dribble and spit coffee.  Or scribble profusely.  Or tape fruit stickers to it.

It's demented fun.  Although Jenna has found that it seems overtly rebellious to purposefully destroy a book.  So while she's fascinated by much of it, she's admitted that some of it she can't do.  Yet.

I think with time, her inner tornado will let fly.

Next, her sisters gave her season three of Gilmore Girls.  I've written before about our affection for the Gilmore women.

Anya also gave Jenna a picture.  But first, the back story.

Anya is affectionate.  So is Jenna.  But Jenna does have a strong sense of personal space when it comes to Anya. 

So Anya tries to hug Jenna.  And Jenna squirms away from the hugs.

Anya attempts to snuggle up to Jenna.  And Jenna swats her away.

So Anya drew a picture to commemorate their...complicated relationship.

The parents also gave her a box full of crafty fun:  crayons, markers, glitter glue, colored pencils; and all of it in a wonderful container, perfect for storing crafty items. 

I'm not sure which she liked more, the box itself or the items in it.

Next was a Wii game.

The look of surprise is not so much, "Oh I can't believe they got me this!  It's just what I wanted!", but more, "Oh I can't believe they got me this!  I never even thought of this before!"

We took it back and got a Wii game she really did want.

Next was a gift card from G'pa.  You really can't go wrong with that gift.

 Her favorite candy bar and some nice cash for the wallet from Grandma & Paka.

And once all the gifts were opened, we got to dig into the always luscious, oh-so-moist, tantalizing, fabulous chocolate strawberry torte.

A perfect cap to a wonderful day.

Happy birthday to our thirteen year old baby! (sniff, sniff...they're all getting so old...)

Birthday of the Week - #1

Monday October 24th was the 46th celebration of the day of my birth.

46.

That means I'm closer to 50 than I am to 40.  Ouch.

But rather than dwell on the ever-encroaching agedness of their father & husband, my family feted me lovingly, and brought up my decrepit state sparingly, and always with humor.

Before I even made it home in the afternoon for my evening of celebration, Jenny, a volunteer at our church office, made me a plateful of these delightful and oh-so-decadent cupcakes.

Those are microphones, for those of you of a less than creative bent.  There really was a plateful.  My colleagues and I ate them.

After a fabulous dinner of homemade pizza (mangia, mangia!), the gift presentation began.

Anya gave me a coffee cup that she made in her ceramics class.  Perfect for enjoying a cup of dark, morning java.  And she drew a sweet, wonderful picture of the two of us.

Next, Jenna designed and wrote a love-filled card, and designed some very festive, colorful bookmarks.  They're ingenious!  I love them, and am amazed at her eternal fount of artistic creativity.  She also gave me half a dozen cakebites from the Sweet Tooth Fairy.  Cakebites are sort of like petit fours, but made from the most dense, moist cake that's ever passed my lips, in delightful flavors like lemon, double fudge, salted caramel, and peanut butter fudge.  I don't know what that fairy puts in them, but whatever it is, it's definitely magical.

Before I reveal Emily's gift, I must preface it with a story.

About 1/2 mile south of our house, at a very busy intersection, is a blanket and sock store.  (Why the combination of blankets and socks? A mystery.  Because they're both warm?  Both fuzzy?  Because no one will forget such an odd pairing -- pairing, get it, like socks? -- and of course go to this former 7-11 now converted to the blanket/sock store?  I give up trying to understand it.)  In the parking lot of this odd little market are huge furry blankets hanging on display, probably 20-25 of them on any given day.  Odd things are on these blankets: Marilyn Monroe, wolves, Betty Boop, a Marine emblem, puppies.  But there was one that caught our eye every time we passed -- the Dora the Explorer blanket.  It doesn't look exactly like this, but it's in this general vicinity.

For the past month, I've told the girls that I hoped against hope that I would find that Dora blanket when I opened my birthday presents.  We joked about it every time we passed the intersection.

Even on my way home, as Em & Jen were riding with me, we passed the intersection and I said that I could hardly wait to get home and open my Dora blanket and wrap up in it.

So imagine my surprise when I opened my gift from Emily and discovered this.

She found some Dora fabric and fashioned me a mini-blanket.

I love it.  As I told her, it's perfect for when my big toe gets cold.  Or if I want to warm one hand at a time.  Em & Jen said it would make a great handkerchief to poke out of my suit pocket at weddings and funerals.  We had a great laugh over it.  And still do.  It stays in the living room so I can snuggle up with it while I watch TV.

She also got me a half dozen of those ridiculously tasty cake bites.  How does that fairy get all that goodness in those tiny packages?

We ended the evening with a trip to one of my favorite spots, Color Me Mine.  Each of us designed a painted a ceramic piece to commemorate the day of my birth.  Or actually, just to use and enjoy.

Dad begins his creative effort

Let those juices flow!

A mug for each of us

Perfect for holding popcorn

Deep in concentration

When Anya finishes anything, it's time to read.

And even Karen made one.  She's often resistant to these artsy endeavors.  But she jumped in with gusto this time.  Although you won't know that by these pictures, because she was always behind the camera.  But that's her cup above, 2nd from the left, next to the popcorn.

She really did make it though.

And the projects in all their finished glory!

Suh-weet!

The Dad's cup

I love my family.

A lovely fall hike

On a recent fall day, Karen and I jettisoned our children and headed up to Sundance to hike to the always-beautiful Stewart Falls.

It was a perfect day.

That little strip of white in the distance in the center of the pic, that's where we're headed.

The leaves were turning, the air was crisp, but not cold.

 Karen channeled her inner artist.

 That's me saying, "What are you doing?  The tree will be in the way."  I'm such a philistine.

Once we reached our destination, we dined on juicy apples, granola bars, crackers & cheese, and of course, the staple of every hike: goldfish. (The Pepperidge Farm kind, not the swimmy kind)

In all our eight years here, and multiple hikes to these falls, we'd never climbed up above the lower portion of the falls to see the pool just above and stand beneath the upper falls.  So this time we trekked on up there.

This is looking down on the lower falls.

 All of it B-E-A-you-tee-ful!

Those silly grins on our faces?  You might think it's simply because we're in this gorgeous place, each of us with our favorite person to share it with.  And that's part of it.

The other part is the blessed absence of any one of our three girls asking, "Why are we doing this?"  or, "Can we head back now?" or, "It's water and rocks.  I've pretty much seen it.  Moving on."

Sorry, girls.  I know you're reading this and are putting your hand on your hip and saying, "Dad!" right now.

We love our girls.  I mean it, really love them.  But we only like to hike with them when there are other families around.  It somehow distracts them.  Hiking with other children is the only way they really enjoy a hike.  With us, they merely tolerate it.

So this fabulous fall day really was perfect.  Just with my wife.

Yumminess

To be clear:  there's not a whole lot in this post, save some delicious food.

I'm posting in response to a desperate request from Jamie.  You see, on her blog, she has a blog roll that shows blogs she follows, and mine is there, which is usually just dandy.  But given the content of my last blog, Jamie could not take another millisecond of my buggy infestation being highlighted on her blog page.  And she commented on that post with her request:

"Totally nasty. Ick. Gross. Nasty. Please write another blog post soon so that this one disappears from the top of my blog roll for your blog, continually reminding me of the blech."

With such understated subtlety, I felt it appropriate to post anew, so that my offending blog post would no longer give her, or others, the heebie jeebies.

Which brings us to the joyous delights of this post.

No bugs.  Only luscious culinary delights.

First a glimpse of some of the fabulous strawberries we enjoyed earlier this summer. 

Thanks to my father-in-law's careful weeding and toiling last spring, and copious watering by my farming wife, we harvested a bounty of berries and enjoyed them immensely.

Another great passion of late in Smithereens land is bruschetta.  We bought a basil plant, and regularly pick its fragrant leaves, mix them with fresh tomatoes and garlic, gently arrange the delightful combo on olive oil-brushed broiled bread slices, drizzle with balsamic vinegar...and moan with joy at the party in our mouth.

It is fabulous beyond description.

And just recently, we received a box of peaches from our oh-so-wonderful farmer friend who works the field and orchard behind our house.  He likes us and we like him.  He uses our water occasionally, and he lets us eat his bounty occasionally in return.

He dropped of this behemoth box of peaches the other day. 

Wow.

Some of them are like peach globes.

Look at that beast.  Barely fits in her hand.

And they are succulent.  Suc-cu-LENT, I tell you.

Too bad they don't make blogs with a taste-o-rama feature.  If they did, you'd be deliriously happy right now.

That's all.


Better, Jamie?