Christmas 2009

The rest of Christmas.

I love Christmas and all of our traditions. Some of them we have carried on from our families, some we have started on our own. We start our festivities on Christmas Eve with a very traditional program filled with drama, music and the spoken word. All of the extended family is invited.

We act out the nativity either live or with Playmobil.

We play and sing Christmas hymns. This year, much of the family prepared special numbers. It was fun, even if it wasn't perfectly harmonious.


And of course, we read from the scriptures, the story of the birth of our Savior.

A tradition from the Fisher side that I love is the whole ritual of Christmas morning. We all dress in our Sunday best, we sit down to a formal breakfast (the Dansies do not eat the traditional oysters).

We used to always have puffy oven pancake, aka German pancake (a Dansie tradition), but we have it so often that I wanted to do something a little more special. So this year, we had crepes with all sorts of delicious toppings.

Grandma and Grandpa are always invited, but we like to be in our own home. After a delicious breakfast, the kids line up, youngest to oldest in front of the sheet covering the living room. By this point they are so filled with anticapation, it is almost painful to watch them.

Finally, after someone goes around the other way to be ready with the camera, the sheet is parted and the kids are allowed to see what Santa brought them. Santa brings our children one gift and stocking filled with fruit, candy, soda and maybe a small toy or so.


James' favorite gift this year was a littel football Santa put in his stocking.


They spend the morning enjoying all the fun before we open one gift at a time from under the tree. Again, we try not to over do the whole present thing. We enjoy a relaxing morning before heading over to Grandma and Grandpa's for a delicious dinner.


Merry Christmas! And I will soon be caught up in my blogging.

Christmas Tree Decorating and Potential Christmas Card

Had we actually gotten around to printing a Christmas card, we would have chosen one of these photos, but alas, we didn't. And here it is, June and I am barely just getting around to blogging them.

Chocolate-Cinnamon Gelato Revisited

I made Bon Appetit's Chocolate-Cinnamon Gelato again. Wow! It is worth every calorie. Just thought I would repost the recipe because it the perfect time to enjoy this divinity. We enjoyed ours on the patio on a perfect Sunday afternoon after we devoured carne and pollo asada. I love Summer!!

Click here for the original post and recipe. i omitted the toffee chips and used semi-sweet chocolate chips. Next time I will cut back a little on the sugar as well. And of course I still quadrupled it and put it in my big ice cream maker.

Water

I have recently had reason to reflect on our consumption of water. We have always tried to be fairly frugal with our water usage (my husband is somewhat an environmentalist). We usually use 3000-4000 gallons a month, thanks in part to un-metered irrigation water (but if anyone has seen our yard and more specifically our grass, they know we don't splurge on that water either.)

Our last month's water bill came and I was shocked to see we used 10,000 gallons!!

I tried to figure out how in the world. Did we have a leak? No. Are the kids leaving faucets running? Yes. And does our new old school washer use that much more water than our old high-efficiency one? Yes.

Our HE washer broke recently and we had issues with it so, instead of spending $200 for the part, we just decided to buy a used top-loader for $200.

This week our water heater also broke. We decided to buy a tankless one since there were $600 in rebates available. And while the plumber was at it and we had money from our tax refund, we decided to get a water softener since we have wanted one for 5 years. The cool thing about the softener is that it tells us how much water we use. We check it before and after showers, doing wash, flushing the toilet, etc. It is fun to track our usage and try to reduce it.

But what shocked me the most about our usage was not that it takes 2-3 gallons to flush a toilet, but that it takes 40 gallons to wash 1 load of wash in our new machine. Yikes!!

So what does all this mean to us? I'd love a new HE washer, but I don't think it is in the budget now. So, I think we need to reduce the amount of wash we do and eliminate other water wasters. I talked to the kids today and maybe our plan will work. We plan to:

• Check our clothes after we take them off, and put them away instead of in the wash if they have another day in them.
• Wear our pj's for more than 1 night.
  
• Take faster showers.
• Wash our hands with faucet off.
• Brush teeth with faucet off (they are already pretty good with that).
• Use a cup to get drinks instead of putting face under the faucet.
  

What other things could we do?

Fall 2009

These are just some really fun pics Tom took in Salt Lake. Grandpa Elbert saved all the leaves for the kids to rake and play in.


They had a blast with their cousin, Olivia. They are so lucky to have so many cousins that they love so much.

Does it mean I am Nesting if..,.

I feel like cooking again?

I have to admit that I have been so lazy and neglectful this entire pregnancy. My family is lucky if they get 2 real meals a week. We literally eat cold cereal or eggs and toast at least once a week, each. It has been bad.

I keep telling Tom that once the babe arrives, it is all going to get better. I am going to go back to cooking 5 meals a week. I will blog regularly and post fun recipes. I will workout and actually make progress with my athletic endeavors. (Working out is the thing that has least suffered this pregnancy. I don't always feel like doing it, and I don't do it as often or as intense as I would like, but hey I am pregnant.) I will keep a clean house, ok who am I kidding, that has never really been a reality, pregnant or not.

Tom just rolls his eyes at me and says ok. He has been the best trooper. He has suffered through lack of meals, lack of a clean house and a lazy wife really well. He cooks. He cleans. He lets me sleep in every morning while he readies the children for school. I am one lucky girl and I will make it up to him, someday.

I think I will start by trying some of these recipes I have recently found (I have been so lazy and haven't felt like cooking that I haven't even been looking at new recipes, but I feel like it now.)

Pioneer Woman's Homemade Glazed Doughnuts



Pioneer Woman's Salted Caramel Brownie

Culinary Bliss's Chocolate Ice Cream

Who am I kidding? These recipes will be more satisfying to me than to him. Oh well.

Fall Soccer

My kids have since played another season of soccer, but I might as well post the pictures from the fall first.
This was Eliza's second season playing. She got much better and more confident. She was still very timid, but had fun. She got to play with one of her best friends, Gus.


Porter had the most awesome coaches ever and began to really learn the sport. His coaches helped develop actual soccer skills.

He really learned to dribble the ball down the field. We need to work with him on his power shot, though.