Family For Christmas

Family traveled from all parts of the country to gather for Christmas. It's always a lot of fun (and quite a bit of chaos) when the relatives all get together. On Christmas Eve the cousins got all decked out for church services. My children were part of the Children's Choir this year. There was no nativity skit as in previous years. (The children were disappointed, they like dressing up as angels). But they did get to sing up front ( and look really cute doing it).

There's nothing better than hanging out with family when they're around. Youngest DD talked Grandma and an uncle into playing "Pretty, Pretty, Princess" with her.


It's a game where your piece travels in an endless circle around the board while you collect various pieces of jewelry (which you have to put on). The winner (also known as the princess) is the first person who collects all the jewelry including the crown. Guess who won :o)

The cousins also enjoy gathering in Grandpa's room and playing on the computer. (anything to get out of that Pretty, Pretty, Princess game - huh Grandpa?)

And the adults running around with the digital cameras are always fascinating to the little ones.


So what will we remember from this year? Chaos, laughter, smiles and fun. A time to celebrate the birth of our savior, and the family that He has blessed us with.

What A Face!

Youngest DD got into some craft stickers. You gotta love that face!

Making Cookies

Decorating cookies is a fun tradition when December rolls around.

Since we don't use any artificial colors or flavorings, decorating cookies has been a challenge. Our first Christmas following the Feingold Program the children were happily decorating sugar cookies with a variety of chocolate chips, white chocolate chips and nuts, when DH arrived home from work. "The cookies are all black and white! What fun is that!", he exclaimed. So we've experimented with different ways of decorating cookies.


We tried mixing natural colors into the dough, it works okay with Tumeric for a nice yellow, but any other color couldn't stand up to the heat. (I've heard there are other powders that can be bought and mixed, but I haven't tried those).

Then we tried naturally colored sugars. They were a pretty pastel to start with, but the color baked out of those too. And pastel is nice for springtime, but doesn't quite cut it for Christmas.

Coloring frosting and frosting already baked cookies worked. But again, the colors were all pastel and my tradition was to decorate the cookies before baking.

Then we found egg-yolk painting. Mix some natural colors in with the eggyolk, paint on the cookies and bake. The colors turned out rich and dark! We mix tumeric for yellow, beet juice for red, liquid chlorophyll for green, cocoa for brown and plain egg white for a clear glaze. Pictured above are cookies before baking. The best part is that the colors get even darker in the baking process, so the pinkish color actually turns out red.

We still use various chocolate chips with some other cookies, but the eggyolk painting fills our need for rich, vibrant color.

Thanksgiving Reunion

The clan gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving together. This has become a bi-annual tradition for DH's family. We rented a cabin somewhere midway between the 8 traveling families and gathered for the long weekend.

It's always a great time for the cousins to hang out together and renew friendships. The girls definitely find themselves outnumbered. (DS really enjoys being in the majority for a while).

The cabin had a pool table, foos- ball and air hockey tables, along with a wide screen TV to which the boys connected their Playstations/Gamecubes, etc.

Outside there was hiking and a field to toss around a football. There was lots of shopping just a short drive away.

There were enough bedrooms/bathrooms for each family to have their own.

A great time was had by all. Good food, good fun, good fellowship, good family.

Happy Thanksgiving!