Trip Down Memory Lane

My sister, Karen, and I as we pose with a bouquet of flowers from my Dad to my Mom

Chris and his sister, Jennifer, on a family outing.
(yes, that's Chris with the white blond hair!)

Chris has started a new project. He's been taking the negatives and slides our parents have, scanning and then saving them to the computer. It's rather time consuming, but it has been a lot of fun to recollect childhood events or hear new stories about my dear husband. Here are just a couple of the snapshots taken several years ago.

Cookie Decorating

Finished Product

Luke and Hannah in action

Andrew got a hold of just a few red sprinkles and this is what happened . . .

On a whim, I decided trying to decorate cookies with my little trio last week. I picked up a couple of cookie cutters, some brighter food coloring and some refrigerated cookie dough. Since it was an experiment, I just made the icing and left most of the cookie work to the pros. After baking the cookies during naptime, we set out to decorate. Luke adopted the scoop, drip and spread approach. Several of his cookies were about 50% cookie and 50% icing. Of course, most of them also had green sprinkles on them. Hannah was a bit more dainty in her approach and just took her time. However, as time wore on, she became a bit more excessive in her icing. We did go through the icing. I used a recipe that my Mom had used as we were growing up. In her notes to me, she said that half of a recipe iced 58 cookies. Well, we went through two full recipes to ice 3 dozen or so cookies. Oh well, we had fun and I think it was a successful experiment. We'll be sure to do this again in the future and maybe Andrew can get in on more of the action.

Special Morning

Today was our last MOPS before 2010 and a special one it was at that! They had the morning full of special treatment for all of us - massages, haircuts for a lucky few, eye brow waxes, hand care, wii and dance praise. That is in addition to a yummy spread of brunch items and a coffee bar. Plus, I left with more than my share of gifts and door prizes and I wasn't the only one. It was a wonderful time of relaxation and fellowship all while our little ones were cared for and entertained.

The morning was special for me because I've had just a bit of a rough week (is it really only Tuesday?!). Not nearly as rough as "rough" goes, but somewhat of a challenge for me. When I walked in, saw what we were doing and someone said, "good morning, Kim", I nearly cried and I have to admit a few tears did come to my eyes. This MOPS group has been the first one I've been a part of that I've felt myself in and part of the group. I'm so thankful for them. It all is because these ladies have been very kind and loving to me and for that I'm quite thankful. To know that they would serve us in this way meant a lot to me. Plus, I know they did it because they wanted it to be a service to us and not just something to do. I'm so thankful that God gave me this gift!

Today's Project

Since the forecast for today did not sound very promising, I headed to Micheal's last night to pick up a few supplies. I was looking for something to make for the kids' MOPS teachers. I have stuff here I could have made, but wanted it to be something a bit different (although, candy is a rather typical holiday gift) and maybe a bit of a time sacrifice for me. I found this candy mold and decided to make a try of it. I have never made this type of candy in my life so I didn't know what to expect. It actually wasn't too hard, but I think the first ones I did may have turned out a bit better than the latter batches - possibly, beginner's luck and a bit more patience at the beginning. Anyway, I was pleased with how these chocolate lollipops turned out. Hopefully, they taste good as well!

Out and About

Last week, Chris was on leave. Last week, Chris's parents were also visiting so Chris and I took advantage of a little time to ourselves. There is a decent sized town about an hour from our home that had a couple of museums that we wanted to visit. We took one day and headed out. The first stop was an underground salt museum. Very neat to visit if you're ever in the area. Since we got there when it opened on a weekday, we got a personal tour. We pretty much had the run of the place doing what we wanted when we wanted. Plus, much of what we saw was explained to us rather than having to read every detail. If you ever watch Dirty Jobs, this is the same salt mine that Mike Rowe visited in one of the episodes.

After a quick lunch at Quiznos, we headed to a space museum. I think it's billed as the largest space museum west of the Mississippi River. I have yet to figure out why in the world it is located nearly in the middle of nowhere middle America, but anyway, it was nice as well. They have the original refurbished Apollo 13 plus and the Liberty Bell 7 that they recently recovered from the ocean floor. They had a few other originals as well. We were busy that afternoon watching an IMAX movie and planetarium show and a rocket demonstration. I think Chris knew most of the stuff for the rocket demo, but I found it quite interesting as he made some mini rockets. In the middle of all of that, we tried to see everything on display. We were the last ones out the door when they closed and I think we could have spent another hour or two there.

After that very full day, we headed out again for Chris's squadron Christmas party. It was good that we went and socialized, met a new family to the squadron (it was his very first day of reporting to the squadron - very new) and spent some good time with my dear husband.