Christmas Dinner

For Christmas dinner, we had Kalua Pig, Panipopo, rice, pineapple/orange juice and macadamia nut chocolates for dessert. We've been making "Hawaiian" food for Christmas dinner for the last about 4 years. I gave up trying to make Chicken Long Rice about 2 years ago.

 

 

This panipopo recipe is simple and delicious. Panipopo is dinner rolls cooked in coconut milk pudding. I use Kehau Woolsey's recipe.

Use your favorite bread recipe (I used my Kitchenaid recipe)or Rhodes dinner rolls. Prepare coconut pudding by mixing well:
2 cans (13.5oz each)coconut milk
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup cornstarch

Pour mixture into a large foil pan or divide between two 9" x 13" cake pans. When dough has risen for an hour, shape into round dinner rolls (about 24). Drop into pan(s) with coconut milk. Let rise again for an hour. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Christmas Day

Hope you had a fun Christmas day. Our kids managed to get lots of stuff this year and J. did what he does every year in declaring this to be "The Best Christmas Ever" (he thought so until last night when the baby broke his ski ball toy.) A holiday spent with our family is the best ever and we are thankful for our blessings this holiday season.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Student of the Week

R. was the Student of the Week at his school the first week of December. He also found out he won the Thanksgiving turkey drawing contest. The assignment was to draw a turkey in disguise. His turkey was disguised as a turkey hunter. He's a pretty creative kid and we love him.

A Request for Traditions

This year we made up a new Christmas tradition. Every year a nearby stake centers hosts a nativity display featuring hundreds of nativity sets on display in their cultural hall as well as a kids' craft room and free photos of the family dressed up in Jerusalem-era garb. We all love seeing the beautiful and unique nativity sets. So this year we brought nativity-shaped sugar cookies and milk. After taking in all the nativities, we hung out in the van eating cookies, drinking milk, and listening to Christmas music. It was a nice evening, one we'll try to duplicate in the coming years.

When I was little we had two family traditions. One was making gumdrop-stuffed fruitcake (we called it "Jesus Fruitcake") and singing happy birthday to Jesus. The other was to dress up and act out Luke chapter 2.

Ben's family tradition was to draw names and exchange handmade gifts on Christmas Eve.

With the cold temperatures and heaps of snow, I'm looking for ways to distract my stir-crazy children. (I'll admit it, I'm a little stir-crazy myself!) Do you have any fun-at-home Christmas traditions I can adopt this year?

Twelve Days of Christmas

Warner Music Group yoinked all their vids from youtube, here's a link for their myspace video http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=748678

Completely Loving December!

1. I am thankful for the incredible joy the kids have in unpacking our Christmas boxes. They love the ornaments and I had totally forgotten that I got two new nativities (on clearance 75% off) after Christmas last year. Unwrapping decorations around here is almost as much fun as Christmas morning.


2. I am thankful that we have a limited gift-giving budget this year. It could have been the year for my boys to wipe out years of carefully frugal, perfectly merry Christmases. I mentioned before that R. (but really both boys) wants it all. My knee-jerk reaction to this extensive wish listing is to make my kids happy. But since that's not really what Christmas is all about, I feel good modifying these lists & throwing in some service to others while I'm at it.

3. I am thankful that S. is keeping her conjunctivitis germs to herself--so far. Sad that she got it. But nobody wants to be given pink eye for Christmas.

4. I am thankful that I got to sing a song with Tiffani for our ward Christmas Party. We sang "Will the Real Santa Please Stand Up?" It's a fun '70s showtunes number, not a salute to the Eminem. We dressed up in our jammies and held a dolly and a teddy bear. And Sam did a wonderful job accompanying us.

5. I'm thankful for loving parents. They know all too well how much our basement is costing us. They agreed they wouldn't, because "Early Christmas" came already, but they sent Christmas presents and some money, which Santa knows exactly what to do with. What a blessing they are.

6. I'm thankful for the snow. It makes the kids happy!

7. I'm not thankful for dead batteries (no pic, sorry!), but I am thankful that I remembered what was stored on a shelf in the garage. We just opened two boxes filled with the most amazing nativity scene from Ben's sister, Ali. The Gunters moved this past summer and didn't have room for all of their Christmas stuff so she offered it to us. We love it.

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Such a Precious Little Sweetheart, Aww!

Precious. . . Little Sweetheart. . . Really?

Fooled you, didn't she?

Lately we've been seeing a drastic increase in the of number of messes made. Her favorite things to make a total mess of are:

(1) Dry cereal

(2) Cups of water
(substitutions permitted for any liquid in a cup)

What's sad is that C. will spill something and then grab a broom (for cereal) or dish towel (for water). "Uh oh!" she'll say with a grin. Then, like its a game, like she's cute, like what she spilled wasn't just my favorite Quaker granola ever, she swishes the chosen cleaning instrument around and walks away all smiles!

When the boys were little we put up a DIY picket fence along the opening from the living room to the kitchen (after R. used Hershey's syrup as linoleum/body paint). Keeping those stinker buggies, a fond nickname for my children, out of the kitchen is easier said than done when it's totally open to the living room. I'm discovering that open floor plans work best for those without toddlers.

DIY-ing another picket fence would curb some messes. But if you thought her messes only happened in the kitchen, have I got news for you! Did you know that toilet paper can unroll into toilet water very quickly? And did you also know that wet toilet paper carried around the house by a toddler sends disgusted shivers down my spine? Hold the phone, cowboy. Since when is shutting bathroom doors so difficult, people?!?

Need more proof, in the form of a mess-making collage perhaps, that she's not simply a stinker buggie, but a total stinker buggie?

Told you so!

Today's Etsy Picks

My friend from our Moscow days, Tanya Hansen, sells cool bags like this one (and cute aprons, too) on etsy! Her items are at lusciouslemon.etsy.com

Dude, OPEC is totally messing with my mind!

Funny times! On the way home we filled up the van for $1.62, cash only price. It would have been a lofty $1.72 to charge it. Ben gave the cashier $25.00 and had to go get change after he finished pumping the gas. Do you suppose OPEC will soon consider paying us when we fill up? Works for me!

S. was homesick and crying in Leavenworth. When Ben asked why, she said "Because I miss Hera. I'm afraid she's going to melt." Hera is our pet tarantula, who she has never seemed all that attached to. And by "melt" she meant "molt" which is when tarantulas harmlessly shed their exoskeletons as they grow bigger.

Lilly and J. were sitting together during sacrament meeting. They looked at the stamped property of "LDS FOOTHILLS BLDG" on the hymnal and asked me what BLDG meant. I told them it stood for building. J. then said; "Does LDS stand for "LIBERTY DOWNLOAD SECRETARY?" and we all got a little giggly.

I was going to attribute this next quote to R. but as I type I'm remembering that it was J. who said it. (The only funny things R. has said lately are lengthy additions to his Christmas wish list. We could spend a thousand bucks on him and it wouldn't quite cover the first half of his list.) So here's what J., who is into spelling, said in the van after finding out that he could have some gum at the rest stop; "S-W-E-E-T. All capitol letters. Three shout marks. Two underlines. Circle. Oh, and a sign pointing to it that says 'Yeah!'"

And while I'm writing about funny things, I should mention that after watching A Colbert Christmas, the phrase "I'm Delicious!" has grabbed hold around here. It's right up there with "Ginormous!" "Give me some of your tots!"and "D'oh!"