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.

She's Official!

Our baby girl is legally ours forever! The court hearing lasted about 10 minutes and then Eliyah enjoyed having her parents' full attention as the three of us went to lunch. The adoption party on Saturday was really lovely. (The court hearing had been re-scheduled from last Friday.)

We are so happy.


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Joy to the World, Banner instructions

Jenny, Sara and I made this lovely banner the day after Thanksgiving. We made it from a kit from Oriental Trading. It turned out so pretty! I sent the banner kits to my sister and S-I-L's so they could make some lovely-ness as well. It would be really fun to do with older kids. Unfortunaly, there were no instructions in the kits. Here are some brief directions.

1. Coat the punch-out letters with glue and cover with glitter. (We used tinsel glitter, silver/gold mixed) and set aside.
2. Choose 13 papers as 'backing' papers. Cut along edges with craft scissors.
3. For each backing paper, choose a coordinating paper. This is your 'front' paper. Use the rectangular cardboard tag as a template and trace tags on your front paper. Cut them out and glue onto the cardboard tags.
4. Poke a whole through the front paper to complete the wholes on the cardboard tags.
5. Glue the front paper/tags onto the backing paper. Poke the holes all the way through so the ribbon can be strung.
6. Glue the letters onto the front papers.
7. Make some spacers from the cardboard shapes. We used stars. Cut paper to shape and glue onto cardboard. Poke holes in the paper to match those on cardboard.
8. Thread ribbon through the letters, leaving a little space and the word spacer shapes. (see picture for how we did it) The ribbon that came with our kit was bright red and so I bought some burgundy to match better.)
9. Embellish with shapes or bows, if you wish.
10. Enjoy!

Adoption Hearing Date Change

We got a call from our lawyer's office yesterday afternoon. The judge has changed our hearing date from this Friday to next Wednesday, Dec. 16. So our Christmas cards are inaccurate. And, this Saturday when we hold Eliyah's adoption party, she won't be legally ours yet. Oh well, we'll eat cake anyway.

The Reenactment

On Sunday, while Eric and I were putting the babies to bed for the night, Aedyn tripped on the living room rug. Our friend Sara (whom the children call Ama Sara) was with Aedyn at the time. Aedyn cried for a few minutes, was comforted by Sara, and he was drying his tears as Eric and I got downstairs. He told us he fell and asked me to take pictures of him falling. And crying.

Enjoy the reenactment.

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