Christmas Day

Sugar

Seby and Zane being amazed at how MUCH sugar I was putting in for the buttercream. I am making 4 batches at one time, so it is an amazing amount of sugar. It was bedtime and Slade was putting them down - but they had to wait until I got the water in - so they could watch the sugar dissolve.......



Here is the buttercream (with all that sugar!) made and ready to sit until we decorate the Bush de Noel cakes tomorrow. There is no room in the fridge (and we also already have stuff out at Erika's) so I am using our last resort fridge/freezer space. It is the corner cabinet in our dining room. It is 9.6 degrees outside (at this later hour)!

Happy Holidays!

New Orleans

Does anybody out there have some ideas about doing volunteer work in New Orleans?

I'm hoping that next spring for Cody's spring break (which is different dates then his brothers) he and I will go do some volunteer work in New Orleans.

I have been looking at some ideas, but would love to hear others.

Crows

The black crows are flying around. Erika told me about a walk she went on early the other morning. She said there were a ton of crows in the trees by the Minneapolis Art Institute. Well it looks like this afternoon they were over a few blocks.

A Christmas Carol

Here are the boys at the Guthrie during intermission of A Christmas Carol. We went to lunch at their restaurant, Level Five Cafe. Slade and I have season tickets and usually have dinner at Cue, the restaurant on the main level. Level Five Cafe was more of a burgers and sandwich stop - which was perfect for our crowd.

Zane was a bit scared by the performance -- and I lied to him (didn't mean to). There were really four ghosts, not the three I told there would be. Remember? Ops, bad mommy.

It was a very fun day and we can't believe that this is the best picture of the many we took.

Community Service

Pictures of the kids doing Community Service, of course!

I went with a group from the JH to do some community service at the local public elementary school. We read to a class of 2nd graders. It was in the school's library. The kids picked out books and then found someone to read to them, or we approached them. They were all very eager to have someone read to them. Then we spent some time with them in the computer lab, where they had to log onto a network and do a typing program. It was great to watch the JH kids - Graham, Sam, Oliver, Lena & Ingrid - interact with the younger kids. I look forward to doing it again with them in the spring.

I meant to take pics of the JH kids reading to the 2nd graders, but I spent the whole time reading also! There would of been some great shots of each one of them!

Snow!

It is been snowing all day. We got about 6 inches on Saturday and at this point I think we have another 3-4 inches - with the snow stopping late this evening!

Doorbell - oh cool, I just got our UPS driver to pick up a large pre-paid package!

The snow is awesome. Zane has been going out in the back yard the last two mornings to play in the snow before going to school - where he also gets time to play in the snow!

I had to take a pic of the house and carraige house for our insurance company.



Don't you love the wreaths that Erika made? She and Graham hung them this morning. I have forbidden Slade to put out the Santa, etc this year. This year we will have tasteful holiday decorations!



Here is the carraige house.



We put up a lot of the holiday decorations this past weekend. Zane is loving it. We still haven't finished putting on the ornaments and he isn't too happy about it.

Here is the pic we are using for our holiday card this year (first one is too many years!)



This pic was taken at Muir Woods in SF when we were out visiting in October.

Ok, the kids are all getting off the bus - so I must run!