have a schmitty christmas.....

Nothing says christmas like a terrible sweater...and a tall glass of wine. Here's a little peek at what you people missed....

le colonial for dinner.

"soulja boy"

Cousins Visit Fort Wayne to Make Cookies and Meet Rivers

This weekend a group of us drove down to Fort Wayne to visit Grandmother and Grandfather, say hello to my mom, and of course meet Rivers. Laura, Jeff and I had a bit of trouble getting out of the city. We got a block away from our house when we realized that we had a flat tire. Jeff put on the spare and two hours later the tire was repaired and we were on our way. The late start meant we didn't get there until after 1am. Jeff said he made record time and the trip took just over 3 hours. (Laura and I cannot verify this as we were asleep the whole way.)

Nevertheless we started the baking early on Saturday. On the list to be baked: sugar cookies, mexican wedding cakes, buckeyes, fudge, spiced pecans and spritz cookies. Almost everything turned out well. Here's Laura making buckeyes.

Emily, Abby and Maggie arrived just in time for lunch. After lunch we made fudge and Maggie took the lead. I am pleased to report that Maggie did not ruin the fudge. She did learn a difficult lesson about the repercussions of not taking the instruction to 'stir constantly' seriously.

Not to worry - Grandmother came to the rescue and the fudge turned out okay.

Later on we attempted to make spritz, or cookie press cookies. I cannot exaggerate how unpopular the cookie press was. I had to run an errand and was not present for the cookie press disaster. However, as it is my cookie press and I made the double batch of dough for the cookies, I take full responsibility for the failure. I hope to be able to redeem cookie press cookies in the minds of those present at some future date.

Here is Laura and Maggie mixing up some dough:

The look like they are working hard.

Of course the absolute highlight of the weekend was meeting Rivers.

I truly was not prepared for how adorable and cuddly he was. Naturally I expected him to be a lovely baby, but he exceeded all my expectations. He's wonderful. Here are a few pictures:

I know other people took a few more pictures and it would be great to see those too. I didn't get pictures of everyone there.

If you are wondering what Jeff did while we made cookies:

He watched sports. KU v. DePaul. KU won.

Saturday night my mom made a fantastic dinner of enchiladas. It's been a long time since we had so many people around the dinner table and it was great. That night we played a few games of SkipBo. Grandmother won of course.

Cousins Visit the Pumpkin Patch

Here are a few pictures from the trip Jeff, Laura, Emily and I took this fall to an apple orchard/pumpkin farm. Originally we had planned to pick apples, but we were too late and decided to get pumpkins instead. We each picked out a pumpkin from the patch.

Jeff spent the most time making sure he found the best pumpkin. There were also animals and a few other attractions. After we picked the pumpkins we washed them at the pumpkin washing stations.

It was a fun day. Next year I'd like to go earlier in September and pick apples too.