Christmas Recap

This Christmas was so much happier than the past few had been for us. The child that we'd waited for was finally with us.  We spread our celebrations out over three weeks.  The week before Christmas we spent a few days in Arkansas visiting my parents.  One night while we were there, we all went to see the Christmas lights at Garvan Gardens.  It was a very nice display. After we had finished walking through the garden, we went to eat at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. Samuel didn't want to eat the dinner that I had packed for him, which was sweet potatoes. So I decided to try to offer him the only that I'd ordered that he could chew - refried beans.  He thought they were great.

 We spent Christmas at home, and some of our neighbors came over for Christmas dinner. The main gift that James and I gave Samuel was a Fisher Price Nativity set. We didn't have it set up for him. I had just wrapped up the boxes. I'd unwrap one box & he would crawl away with a wise man. Unwrap another box, and he'd crawl away with a sheep and so on. I wasn't sure that all the pieces had been accounted for, so after he was put down for a nap I decided to set it up and see if we had all the pieces.  Well, we had everything except baby Jesus.  James and I both crawled around the living room looking under the furniture looking for it. No luck. I had already bagged up the discarded wrapping paper and taken it to the garage, so I brought it back inside so we could go through it. I was very glad that we found it mixed up with the crumpled paper!

The cake was my main contribution to dinner. James baked the ham.  This was my first time to try making fondant, and it was not as hard as I thought it would be.  I used marshmallow cream and confectioner's sugar. I blended them together in my stand mixer, which kept me from getting super sticky marshmallow cream all over my hands.  I flavored it with almond extract, and it tasted much better than boxed fondant.  Here's the instructions I followed: The Farm Girl Recipes

We went to Louisiana for a few days around New Year's to celebrate Christmas and New Year's with our family there.  James' grandparents gave us Sky Miles tickets, so we were able to fly.  Samuel did great on the plane. Not a bit of crying.  He will barely tolerate an hour long drive to downtown in his car seat without having at least a small melt down. He's learned how to crawl, and he doesn't care to be restrained for very long. 

 After having two very active dogs in our house for several years, I'd learned to put only unbreakable ornaments at the bottom of the tree. Samuel was excited to find pretty ornaments at the bottom of his grandmother's tree. We got to the ornaments before he broke anything. 

Samuel got to see his cousin for a little while.  I think these two will love playing together!