Dec 24, 2011

Our Christmas Feast

We had plans Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so we decided to have a traditional Christmas meal on Friday night. We invited several friends over and ate till we were stuffed. 
I do not consider myself to excel in the area of homemaking and cooking/hosting, but I have finally gotten the hang of some things and managed to plan in advance and was able to pull if off without too much stress!
Of course the photos are out of order, but here they are:

Enjoying our meal

The Ham - not a true ham, but a cured chunk of pork that tastes pretty similar. I put the "rub" on the night before - brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and then poured apple juice and coke on it as well as added mustard powder the day of... turned out pretty good

My first time to make crescent rolls from scratch - thanks to my friend's food blog.  They didn't taste too much like Pillsbury, but they were good

Our little guy - he was really fussy most of the day and especially after dinner - poor thing must have had some tummy trouble :(

My 6 year old toaster oven that seems to be going strong - cooking the ham at this point

My mom's cornbread stuffing recipe - yummy

Apple Cider - again from my friend's food blog

Pecan Pie - pecans are hard to come by here, but my mom had brought a bag of them in the summer and I pulled them out of the freezer and had a bottle of Karo Syrup on hand that someone had passed on!

Our dinner table settings..
We also had green bean casserole and sweet potato casserole but I didn't get pictures of them.
Micah and I discussed that all this food was "comfort food". It sure felt nice to eat it as we celebrated with good friends.  There is true joy in knowing that our Savior really did come in the flesh as a babe two thousand years ago - He came to die, that we might live!

Dec 19, 2011

Such a good big brother!

One day recently I looked over and Reister was "reading" a book about the Christmas story to Mason and Peyton. Of course he can't read yet, but was explaining it the best he could according to what he knows, and by looking at the pictures. I have the sweetest boys!


Dec 17, 2011

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!
Reister (5), Mason (3) and Peyton (2 months)

Dec 1, 2011

Student of the Day

Today Reister was chosen to be the Student of the Day at the boys' preschool.  He was really excited to have this job. He gets to stand at the top of the stairs where the kids come into the school and greet them with a "Good Morning" or "Zao Shang Hao".  His teacher said he would also be her helper for the day.  I'm so glad that Reister was excited about this - he doesn't always love going to school, but I think this special role made it more exciting for him.

I'm proud of Reister for learning Chinese and doing well at his school. His teachers really felt like he really "grew up" while we were in Thailand.  He is one of the oldest in his class now, whereas in the past he always gravitated toward the older boys in his class.  Now he is closest with a girl in his class, who is also 5 and is tall for her age (not the one in the picture).