NYE Fondue

Just in case you're trying to decide right now what to make for New Year's Eve, print these recipes off and bring them to the grocery store right now! We make fondue every New Year's, the tradition started when Jeff and I were dating and would come up to visit his parents in MN. I don't think we've skipped a year since then! Now we have our own fondue pot, and our own beloved recipes. I don't like swiss cheese, which is the usual ingredient in fondue recipes, so here's my favorite cheddar version.

Cheddar Cheese Fondue

Serves 4-6

Ingredients: 1 cup milk, 1 cup beer, 1 tablespoon Wocestershire sauce, 2 teaspoons ground dry mustard, 1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed, 3 tablespoons all purpose flour, 6 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese

Directions:
1. In a medium saucepan over low heat, mix together milk, beer, Worcestershire sauce, ground dry mustard, and garlic.
2. Heat until almost boiling.
3. In a small bowl, mix the flour with the cheddar cheese.
4. Gradually stir cheese & flour mixture into saucepan.
5. Continue heating until all the cheese has melted and transfer to a fondue dish to keep warm and melted for dipping.

Our favorite dippers: apple slices, baby carrots, celery sticks, pumpernickel bread, french bread, cauliflower, fresh mushrooms

Dark Chocolate Fondue

Serves 4-6

Ingredients: 12 oz dark chocolate chips, 8 ounces heavy cream; pinch salt

Directions:
1. Warm the cream over moderate heat until tiny bubbles show and begins to lightly and slowly boil. Add the chocolate and whisk until smooth and full incorporated.
2. Immediately transfer to a fondue pot heated at low or with a low flame, or serve straight from the pot.

Our favorite dippers: brownie bites, pineapple, strawberries, banana, marshmallow, pretzels, graham crackers, cheesecake bites

Happy New Years!!

N is for Nat

The letters are a little mixed up, but here is Nathaniel's third attempt at writing his nickname. The first two attempts were equally as wonderful, but after writing them he colored over the letters so they wouldn't have scanned too well, ha ha. I am proud of him! When we started preschool homeschool this fall he could only draw one letter, an O. Now he is proficient at several!

Favorites at (Almost) 3 and 1/2

Nathaniel has been talking a lot lately about his favorites. I thought I would make up a list and quiz him all at once to see what he said.

What's your favorite color? "Uh, green."
Favorite TV show? "Sesame Street"
Favorite movie? "ABC's movie" (It's a DVD by They Might Be Giants)
Favorite person? "Mommy" (Flattery will get you everywhere, Nathaniel!!)
Favorite place? "Playgroup" (Not exactly a place, but still a good answer).
Favorite veggie? "Um, a carrot!"
Favorite thing to eat for dinner? "Mac & cheese and grilled cheese" (I guess he can't narrow it down).
Favorite breakfast food? "Grilled cheese!" (Apparently we're stuck on this now).
Favorite fruit? "What?" (I list off several fruits) "Oh, a banana!"
Favorite dessert/treat? "Cookies and chocolate milk and, and, all treats!" (ha ha ha)
Favorite snack? "Chips!" (Hmm I'm not sure he's ever been offered that as a snack).
Favorite place to eat out/restaurant? "Subway" (That is totally not what I thought he would answer ha ha).
Favorite animal? "Giraffe"
Favorite toy? "Cars" (Surprised me, I thought dinos had finally beaten out the cars).
Favorite book? "Thomas the Train" (It was the last one we read so he may be biased).
Favorite letter? "The letter C"
Favorite number? "1"

If you have a preschooler, go quiz him/her and report back!

"Dino"

It's official, "dino" is Mary's 35th spoken word. Hmmm, can you tell she has a big brother? Equally as amusing is the fact that she learned "car" and "dolly" in the same week.

I've been attempting to keep track of Mary's word acquisition, at least until her 18 month birthday, because I didn't do it for Nathaniel and I've often wished I had. It's exciting the closer we get to 40 words, because typically children will have a language explosion after that, acquiring 8-10 words per week. Mary's right on track to have that happen at 18 months.

Here's the list for you grandparents out there to admire:

Dada
Uh Oh
Duck
Hi
nigh nigh
help
ball
Mama (although I'm still more frequently called Daddy than Mama!)
hat
wawa (for water)
hot
up
bye
more
apple
light
wet
down
all done
Natty (nickname for Nathaniel)
cow
belly
rub
book
car
dolly
sorry
bubble
thanks
cheese
Papa
please
mine (this is a fun one)
ice (She's getting three teeth right now, so she's sucking on a lot of this)
dino

Guess What, Kiddo?

You still need a nap! I have proof:

So you can stop giving me such a hard time about it now.

(sigh) :)

Appyhay Irthdaybay Effjay

Happy 30th Birthday to a great Daddy and fabulous husband. Last year for his birthday I listed 29 things we love about him, so I am adding a thirtieth reason this year:

30. Your wisdom. (Hey, it comes with age, right?)

To celebrate this year here is "Happy Birthday" in thirty different languages:

Happy Birthday!
Fortuna dies natalis! (Latin)
Buon Compleanno! (Italian)
Feliz Cumpleanos! (Spanish)
Wszystkiego Najlepszego! (Polish)
Otanjou-bi Omedetou Gozaimasu! (Japanese)
Mnohiya lita! (Ukrainian)
Joyeux Anniversaire! (French)
Sun Yat Fair Lok! (Chinese)
Ne gelukkege verjoardach! (Dutch)
Grattis pŒ fšdelsedagen! (Swedish)
L‡ breithe mhaith agat! (Gaelic)
Eytyxismena Genethlia! or Chronia Pola! (Greek)
Hau`oli la hanau! (Hawaiian)
Yom Huledet Same'ach! (Hebrew)
Janam Din ki shubkamnaayein! (Hindi)
Alles Gute zum Geburtstag! (German)
S dniom razhdjenia! (Russian)
Hongera! (Swahili)
Dogum gunun kutlu olsun! (Turkish)
A Freilekhn Gebortstog! (Yiddish)
Gratulerer med dagen! (Norwegian)
Parabens pelo seu aniversario! (Portuguese)
La Multi Ani! (Romanian)
Suba Upan dinayak vewa! (Sri Lanken)
Maligayang Bati Sa Iyong Kaarawan! (Tagalog)
Tavalodet Mobarak! (Farsi)
Hyvaa syntymapaivaa! (Finnish)
Gilotcav dabadebis dges! (Georgian)
Til hamingju med afmaelisdaginn! (Icelandic)

OK now I'm off to do some cooking, baking, and decorating with the kids!

SQPN: Catholic Podcasts

I recently found a really exciting website. If you have an Ipod or even if you don't, check out www.sqpn.com. Here's the description of what the site is all about:

SQPN, or the Star Quest Production Network, consists of a group of young people from all over the world, producing great catholic programs – audio and video – for people like you!
These audio and video productions are made in different languages and are aimed at an international audience. They focus on building bridges between the dominant popular culture of the Western world and the religious culture and tradition of the Catholic Church in order to reach an audience that has little or no relationship with that Church.
All our programs are distributed as ‘podcasts’: small audio and videofiles that are made available on the internet.

You don’t need a television, a radio or an iPod to get access to our shows: you can listen, view or download them all for free on your computer!

Click here to find out how to subscribe to SQPN and have new podcasts automatically delivered to you when they become available.

I've listened to a couple of shows and they are so good. They vary in length, but I can almost always fit at least one in while the kids nap. You can choose from different categories according to what interests you. My favorites so far are "Among Women", "Healthy Catholic", "In Between Sundays", and "SaintCast", and I haven't listened to them all yet!

A Mostly Handmade Christmas

This Christmas I am tackling something kind of big. I'm trying to mostly make by hand all the gifts for family and friends on our list. This is very daunting! I've been dabbling a little in some handmade projects over the last year or so, and I thought I'd share links and photos of those projects in case anyone else is looking for some handmade gift ideas this Christmas. My big goal is to have everything complete before Advent, so I can really focus on doing activities with our family in preparation for Our Lord's birth. But we shall see!

For Mary's first birthday favors Jeff and I made crayon rollups and printed off coloring pages from crayola.com. Here are the pictures of the ones I made:



And here are the two tutorials online that I drew from:

http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/2008/04/crayon-roll-tutorial.html

http://www.skiptomylou.org/2007/04/25/on-a-roll/

Last Christmas for Jeff's brother's children we bought a doorway puppet theater and made hand puppets using felt:


I couldn't find a good tutorial or pattern online so I made my own pattern and based them off of the Land of Nod puppets found here: http://www.landofnod.com/family.aspx?c=3148&f=4031

For Mary's first birthday invitation I wanted to take a picture of her in a tutu. Tutus sell on Etsy for $30 to $40 and I wanted to try to make one myself. When I stopped into Joann Fabric I realized they literally cost about $4-$8 for the materials! Here's the tutorial I followed: http://because-estee-says-so.blogspot.com/2008/10/directions-for-handmade-tutu.html

I'd love to share the ideas I'm working on right now but I don't want to give it away to anyone receiving the gifts! If you can't find me this month try looking under the piles of sewing or scrapping supplies!

Halloween Sugar High

Here are pics of the kids trick or treating last night for the very first time. All the York cousins went together and the kids had tons of fun! Nathaniel quickly caught on to the concept and right after receiving candy at one house, he would say "Let's go to the next house, Mama!"


We discovered last night what Mary is like on a sugar rush. She giggles A LOT.

Cousin Thomas with Aunt Brittany Banana and Uncle Dennis Banana.

The older boys peering into the house of a trick-or-treat offender. The home owners had left their porch light on and were sitting in the living room but never came to answer the door!


All the cousins! From left to right: Super Jacob, Leah the Chicken, Thomas the Monkey, Mary the Strawberry, Peter the Pirate, and Nathaniel the Triceratops.

Trick or Treat, Smell My Dinosaur Feet

Nathaniel had his pick from several costumes this year and chose Triceratops. He is thrilled about the roaring and pretending to eat a certain strawberry. Triceratops are herbivores, after all!

Mary the Strawberry. Cutest piece of fruit we've ever seen!


All ready to fill their buckets with candy. This will be the first year we've officially gone trick-or-treating.


Happy Halloween!!

Fall Fun

We've had a few gorgeous fall days lately so the kids have been excited to be able to run around outside again. Daddy put away all the yard toys already, but throwing, kicking, and rolling in leaves has been occupying all our time so the kids haven't even noticed!

Boo!

(-tiful!)

The Marshmallow Experiment

So the gist of this post is that I graduated with a Psychology degree and never got it out of my system I guess! Last year WCCO, a local news channel, did a spot on Walter Mischel's experiment with four year olds and marshmallows. Basically, you give a kid a marshmallow and tell them if they can wait and not eat it while you leave the room for a little bit, when you return you will give them another marshmallow and they can have two. There are all sorts of supposed long term implications for how your child handles this task, but we mostly did it for fun. Here is WCCO's video if you want the background:



And here is our little home experiment with Nathaniel. Jeff explained the situation to Nathaniel and then scurried out of the room. We then attempted to hide out of sight and keep Mary quiet so as not to disturb the experiment. You'll notice in the video at one point he hears the bag of marshmallows accidentally drop to the ground... oops! I debated posting this or not because it could seem boring to someone else, but I find it hilarious the little things he does to keep himself from eating the marshmallow. On whether or not he caves... well, you'll just have to watch to find out!

Roar!

I am roared at by a certain little three year old at least 100 times a day, so I figured I would take some pictures of it for the scrapbook!

Let's Do It Again

Today after his nap Nathaniel walked sleepily up the stairs to the office, where I was sitting at the computer, and climbed into my lap. The website I was looking at had a Christmas wreath on it. Nathaniel said, "Christmas? Is that for Christmas?" I said yes and asked if he remembered Christmas from last year. "Yes", he said, with a gleam in his eye. "Can we do it again?"

Halloween Hints

Mary Grace @ 15 Months

I realize all my posts have been about Nathaniel recently, so here's a catch up post about what Mary's been up to. Mary turned 15 months at the end of September and quite honestly I don't know what happened to months 12 to 15. It seems like we were just celebrating her first birthday! When I think about it, though, I realize she's really different than she was three months ago. She's now walking and even running all over the place. Her personality has really blossomed. She doesn't have many words yet, but she understands almost everything, and follows direction much better than Nathaniel did at this age. About 50% of the time she will actually walk over to me when I ask her to come, whereas Nathaniel immediately turned and ran in the opposite direction. She knows exactly which cabinet doors in the kitchen have broken safety latches and whenever I'm preparing a meal she will open it up and start rooting around for something interesting to discover. She is testing us a bit lately, and loves to chuck food on the floor or right at us, in the middle of a meal, and then giggle. She adores Nathaniel and will attempt anything he is doing, including ROARING like a dinosaur, pushing cars around on the floor, and coloring with crayons. She gets very jealous if she thinks she is being left out of something, and is already starting to develop a little temper. She screams if something is taken away from her, and occasionally when frustrated she throws herself onto her belly on the floor and cries. It's very short-lived, but it makes me worry for when she's 2 and they turn into all out kicking, flailing, and screaming tantrums!

Mary is usually very cuddly and sweet, and if she swats at Nathaniel or me and we ask her to say sorry, she immediately gives whoever it is a kiss. She's still nursing and I really cherish those moments because the rest of the day she is so active she doesn't want to sit down for anything! Right now she's in a very friendly phase, and says "hi" and waves at anyone and everyone. She can really turn on the charm, especially with elderly ladies in Mass. She had several of them oohing and ahhing over her last Sunday! She's changing and growing every day, and I'm perfectly happy with my role of just trying to keep up!

Soccer Camp

Since Nathaniel turned three this summer, I knew it was the first time he could really participate in any sort of sport, but up until the spring he didn't seem interested in anything other than swimming so we didn't sign him up for anything. Over the summer, however, I noticed him gaining an interest in kicking a beach ball around the yard. He would call it a soccer ball and want me to kick it back to him. I found him an actual soccer ball at one point, and he was really excited about it. I taught him how to dribble and pass the ball back and forth, but that's as far as my soccer skills extend! Then in August we received a catalog for the school and park district activities in St. Anthony and I saw they were holding a mini soccer camp for 3's and 4's to teach them various soccer skills this fall. Jeff played soccer as a kid and really loved it, so he was immediately all for the idea. This past Saturday was Nathaniel's fourth time at the camp. At the beginning of every lesson he always has some uncertainty about going onto the field with the other kids and the coaches, but very quickly he warms up and starts enjoying himself. He likes the games they play, including "red light green light", passing with a partner, playing "pirate" and trying to steal the ball away from the other kids, and also having a scrimmage game. He loves getting to wear a "penny" and playing on a team. Jeff and I enjoy watching him learn new skills and I enjoy being a soccer mom without having to drive a mini van quite yet! :)

Stretching and warming up:

Getting ready to dribble a ball across the field:

The coach instructing Nathaniel:

The coaches explaining how the scrimmage game would work:

Playing in the scrimmage game!



Posing at home with our soccer ball. Don't you love his shirt? The "U of I" (University of Illinois is my alma mater) jumped out at me at Target!

Four Eyes

I got glasses! I've been far sighted since grade school. I have this weird thing going on with my eyes where my left eye has perfect vision at 20/20 and my right eye is horrible at 20/40. However I see almost perfectly all the time, because my right eye depends on my left eye for sight, so glasses weren't really necessary. But lately my eyes have been straining a bit and I've gotten some headaches so I went to the eye doc. My prescription hadn't changed much, but he recommended I wear glasses for driving, reading, and computer work. As I was trying them on, Nathaniel told me "I don't like glasses on you, Mama", and Mary just stared. What do you think? :)

Scissors Mishap

Nathaniel did his first real naughty thing this past weekend. He chopped the front of his hair off! Jeff and I aren't quite sure when he did it. He has been really working on his cutting skills lately, he loves to cut paper and images out of magazines for art projects. I had a forgotten pair of baby scissors in the changing table drawer and last week I walked into his room while he was supposed to be getting dressed, and caught him holding the scissors up to his hair. I freaked out and took them from him, hid them away, and told him not to do it again. Then on Sunday Jeff and I both kind of looked at him at one point and asked each other, "Did Nathaniel cut his hair?" Apparently there had been TWO forgotten pairs of baby scissors and he found the second pair in the same drawer, and decided to give himself a little trim at some point. His hair was getting pretty long so a haircut was due, but now the situation warranted an immediate trip to the salon.



After getting a proper haircut yesterday from a professional, it's still a little noticeable, but hair grows so I'm not really upset about it. It's definitely not as bad a scissor mishap as when Jeff ended up in the emergency room after falling on a pair of scissors and cutting his arm at age 2. And at least I don't have to go through what Grandma Sandy did when Auntie Colleen decided to trim her bangs up just before our portraits were scheduled. We had to wait so long for her hair to grow out that my sisters and I all just barely squished into our fancy dresses for the photo shoot quite a few months later!

Date Night

You might think a post from me titled "Date Night" would include pictures of Jeff and me. But those kind of date nights are very few and far between these days! Last night I took Nathaniel to his very first movie. We thought about doing this for his birthday, but right about then he was going through a scared of the dark and monsters hiding in the curtains phase, so we put it off a bit longer. He is Mr. Dinosaur lately, so when I saw that Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs was in our dollar theater, I knew it was the perfect time. I figured this way we weren't out $20 if he ended up needing to leave 15 minutes in. We went out to dinner first, to "Old McDonald's", and I let him have fries instead of apple slices, and the chocolate milk he is always begging for but rarely gets. Then we drove to the theater. He knew he was going to get to see dinosaurs roar, so he was excited all the way there, into the theater and through the ticket line, down the hallway, up until the point where he glanced into the theater just before ours and noticed a large, dark, scary room with a big glowing screen. He stopped in his tracks and declared he wanted to go home. I coaxed him into our theater, which thankfully was still lit, and let him pick a seat. We were the only ones there, and no one else ever did show up, so that was a nice bonus! He was still a little unsure of the experience until 20 minutes into the movie the dinosaurs finally came on the screen and he finally started munching on popcorn and smiling. He really loved the rest of the movie, and afterward chattered on about it and how loud the dinosaurs roared for the whole car ride home.



Daddy and Mary had a date night of their own, too. Jeff took Mary to the Indian restaurant that recently opened up near our house, ran an errand, and then got groceries for the week. I think we'll do date night a little more often!

My Pumpkins at the Patch