Happy Birthday, Aedyn!

My big boy is 3 today! We celebrated on Sunday but saved a piece of cake for today which was requested at breakfast. Aedyn asked for a chocolate-orange cake so we baked a Brown Sugar Chocolate Cake with orange marmalade filling and orange-cream cheese frosting. Balloons, friends, and WARM WEATHER made for a great party.

So far, 3 suites him. He's been very polite today. "Fanks, mama!" is music to my ears. Aedyn Shepherd brings such joy and humor to our lives, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for him.

Some pictures from his party:

Happy February!

Everyone's growing taller and toothier. (well, not EVeryone.) We're home for our WI house-hunting trip and we may or may not be buying. We'll post if/when we find a house to buy!

Enjoy these happy times. Aedyn posing. Justice getting his first haircut. Babies raiding the cupboards. Eliyah being silly.

and . . . Bacon!

Yesterday morning I asked Aedyn if he would like cereal or toast for breakfast.

A: Toast with peanut butter and sumping sweet.

M: jelly or honey or apple stroop? (apple juice cooked down into a syrup, its German)

A: Bacon!

M: ok. peanut butter and bacon.

A: And sumping sweet. Apple stroop! and Bacon!

Saturday, snow softly falling, just the babies and I hanging out at home. We started with morning nap and I got a full hour of sleep! The last few nights have been rough. Eliyah has 3 teeth coming in, one of which has a bone chip poking through the front of the gum, and J had his MMR shot the other day, so neither have slept well. This morning Eric took Aedyn with him to drop-off the minivan for a tune-up extraordinaire as we have no idea if/when anything has ever been done on it for the 106,000 miles before we bought it this summer. The first week of February we'll be driving 1,200 miles to WI for a conference, house-hunting, and family visiting and we need a safe vehicle. Eric just called from the mall to say that Aedyn was loving the new 'play-place' there and that the minivan would take 3 hours. Aedyn must be thrilled with his day out: the play-place, lunch in a restaurant, and his papa all to himself!

So, just me and the twins. Eliyah, my overly confident 9-month-old climbed the stairs yesterday, twice. The first time I had Justice in my lap and hadn't thought about closing the stair gate; the second time she was just quicker than I. I always have a hard time describing Justice. He's so "sunshiny!" And very determined. He shouts out/giggles, "Hi-eee!" for phone callers and for Eric when he comes home from work. (He just said this as Eliyah crawled into the kitchen where J is playing.) They are quite the co-conspirators. Together they rummage through cabinets and toss all the clothes out of baskets and diapers out of bins. They act the same age, they seem to have split the 4 month difference and settled on acting like 11 month olds. They will both be enjoying a meal and then one of them will decide not to like whatever it is that they ate happily 10 times before but the one baby refuses to eat and within a minute the other has concurred. (grrrrr, says mama.) Right now they are are crawling toward me together, looking for lunch, I'm sure.

Happy Christmas

I tried, again, to load a video from iphoto but it didn't work. Shame, It was darling! Eliyah and Justice playing together, independent of anyone older. We had a great First Day of Christmas. Yep, we're celebrating all 12 days, Christmas through Epiphany. And we celebrated Advent. So we will have been consciously celebrating Jesus for 6 weeks! Our days of Christmas celebrations are less defined than I hope they will one day become. We want to do something special each day. Some of our friends also celebrate Epiphany and we'll be sharing a meal with them that day. I'll post more later on why we have chosen to remember Epiphany. It's quite relevant, you know, if you are a Jesus follower and interested in being missional.

On to the photos. Oh. My. Word, my kids are daaaaarling! I know the stockings-on-the-couch pic is smiliar to the banner photo, but I love Justice's roll-away smile. Aedyn is not so keen of potty training but he does like the sticker poster in this Elmo book. Yes. Eliyah is that sweet in person. More so. She is always kissing us, which means her widely opened mouth clamped onto our check or chin. Ellie's a lover.

Happy First Birthday, Justice!

On Sunday we celebrated the first birthday of our beautiful son, Justice River. This has been an amazing year for our family with Justice's birth as the excellent beginning. Our joy baby loves to giggle, speed crawl, climb everything, share with his sister (toys and food), soak up the giant hugs of his brother and hang-out in papa's arms. LOVE LOVE LOVE you, sunshine baby.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Grandma Debbi's Eggnog

I was just typing this up for a friend and decided to post it here as well. This eggnog is fantastic. If you love the sticky sweetness of most commercial "eggnog," you'll be surprised by how much better real eggnog tastes!

If you use eggs and milk from animals that haven't been confined in tiny boxes and dosed daily with antibiotics and hormones, even better!

Debra's Eggnog

Make the custard a day ahead, it takes time to cool. Recipe makes a quart, we double for 1/2 gallon or quadruple for parties.

A. The Custard

3 egg yolks

1/4 cup sugar

4 cups milk

1/8 teaspoon mace or nutmeg

Mix the yolks and sugar in a pan. Add the milk and mix well. Cook the custard on stovetop on med, stirring often (constantly at the end) until the mixture coats a spoon (you will notice a change in the consistency—a thickening). The change from raw eggs to custard seems to happen suddenly, just before the boil. Don't let it boil. This takes a LONG time. 30 min possibly, much longer when quadrupled. Let cool, strain, then refrigerate until cold.

B. The Meringue

3 egg whites (room temp)

3 Tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

Just before ready to serve, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. While beating, gradually add the sugar and then the vanilla.

Combining A & B: Gently fold in about 1/3 of the custard to the meringue. When fully incorporated, fold in the rest of the custard. This helps keep the eggnog a bit fluffy. Top with more nutmeg. Nice with a little kick of bourbon, rum, or brandy.