Beautiful Bath Part 1

A while ago I presented Dave with a long list of places I wanted to visit before we left England.  Some of them were completely unrealistic, but this was a wishlist after all.  And Hilde added a few more important places to the list: India, Africa and Australia.  After some careful thought, Dave approved me planning some sort of excursion for the 3rd weekend of every month.  Hooray, now the planning could begin.  November brought Thanksgiving and Dave's trip to Rome and December was blocked with holiday festivities.  That meant our first trip was in January, over the MLK day holiday. 


Bath is somewhere I have wanted to go to every since I read my first Jane Austen novel.  It was a fabulous place and we had a great time.

First we checked out the Abbey:

 Then we headed over to the Roman Baths, where we discovered, much to our surprise, that our kids are BIG fans of audio tours.  The Roman Baths were so well done, it was fun for all of us. 

 After leaving the Baths we went over to drink the water.  Enoch said it tasted HORRIBLE.

Dave is a Proud Papa

Enoch loves his new dragon pajamas - he wears them all the time. But NOTHING was more fun than making Star Wars cupcakes. Thanks to Aunt Janet (on Dave's side - there is one on my side too) the kids made these awesome cupcakes. Hilde wanted to only eat the ones with Princess Lea. Enoch wanted to eat one of each. There were plenty of sprinkles all over, and they were pretty yummy cupcakes as well. Notice the chocolate all over the kids faces. Phinn was asleep, whilst we made cupcakes, or else he would have been a complete mess.

Future Fromagiers

One of the great things about going to the grocery store, is coming back with new and interesting things. At least, that is one of the great things for Dave - I generally stick to my list. Recently Dave came home with about a gallon of super cheap goat's milk, and a plan. Now, you and I might think small, but not him. He and Hilde decided to make our very own goat's cheese! And a few hours later we were eating home-made cheese, how cool is that? Hilde was as excited about the whole plan as Dave was, which led me to believe that we might have a cheese-maker extraordinaire in the making. Here are some pictures of the cheese-making process:






And here is a proud cheesemaker with her finished product:

Christmas 2010

This year Christmas was about as perfect as it could be. I really enjoyed having it be just the 5 of us, with nowhere to go and a perfectly lazy, self-indulgent day ahead of us. Although the kids threatened to wake us up at 3 in the morning, they don't have good internal alarm clocks, so everyone actually slept in until 8:30 - a Christmas miracle.

This was our nativity set this year. Some of the pieces came from the kids castle play area, and other pieces were bought for it throughout December. Phinn especially enjoyed stealing baby Jesus and running away as fast as he could - laughing hysterically.
The present opening lasted a good long time with a couple of breaks thrown in.

Hilde particularly loved a beautiful necklace Dave picked up for her while we were in Malta. It looks really great on her.
Phinn was smitten with all his cooking supplies, and to this day plays with them constantly.
I love these kids!

Our family Christmas tradition is to have Ebleskivers for Christmas breakfast. This is something my Grandma High made for her family and my dad, aunts, and everyone tell me how good she makes them. I have not had hers yet, but we have learned to make a pretty decent batch. In fact, the kids ate them so fast, I almost didn't get any!
You need a special pan to make them, this one is made by NordicWare. WilliamsSonoma now sells them.
This year we had three different fillings: Nutella, Bramble (blackberry) jelly and Lingonberry jelly. YUMMO!
The finished product!


This was Phinn's first year enjoying them, and he was a big fan.
While this year was fabulous, here are some things I vow to do differently next year:

1) Make Dave's stocking awesome - after 10 years, I still didn't get it right this year
2) Cut back on work functions
3) Use the advent calendar for something other than pure decoration

Cooking with Phinn

This video is from Christmas morning. From the moment he opened this present, there was only thing Phinn wanted to do: COOK.

December Moments

This December seemed busier than last year. Maybe it was three crazy kids. Maybe it was two crazy parents. Perhaps it was the endless work parties we went to (at least 5 that I can count off immediately). It could have been the effects of the amazingly short winter days. I barely had time to breathe, and I definitely left some of the Christmas to-dos undone. We did, however, have fun. Here are just a couple of snapshots:

Hilde dressing up as a butler. She disappeared for a few minutes and came down dressed like this. She proudly showed off her new uniform to the babysitter when they arrived. Maybe her middle name should be Jeeves.
Phinn spends a lot of time in his highchair, on the flip side he should be an excellent cook in 15 years. This shot shows one of our advent calendars hanging up in the background. I got it out, but never had the time or energy to fill it with anything. So it was purely ornamental, I have high hopes for next year though.


One of the early Christmas presents Hilde opened was a knitting kit from her Grandma Y. She immediately asked someone to help her. Dave took the lead until I admitted that I actually do know how to knit....a little. She loves to sit up against the radiator and knit.

Matching Jammies Rock

Growing up I would never in a million years have pictured myself as the mom who dresses her kids in matching clothes. How tacky, how cheesy, BUT OH SO ADORABLE. Luckily, Enoch is perfectly happy indulging my whims, and Phinn is too little to have a say. My only defense is the pictures.





What about the rest of you? What have you done that you thought you would NEVER do as a parent?