Merry Christmas!

From Our Home To Yours!

"Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!"
2 Corinthians 9:15

Valentines Shortbread Heart Cookies

One of our Valentine traditions is to make these delicious shortbread heart cookies! I have had this recipe for years and I think it came out of Family Fun magazine years and years ago. This recipe is a little time intensive, so we made parts of the cookies throughout our day: the dough in the morning, cut them out after lunch, I baked them during nap time, and we put the raspberry jelly on after nap. We will be delivering some of these cookies to our neighbor lady after dinner tonight, with some little valentines that the girls made. We'll be enjoying the rest ourselves over the next few days.

Shortbread Heat Cookies

2 sticks butter
½ c. sugar
1 t. vanilla
2 to 2 1/4 c. flour

raspberry jam

powdered sugar

• Take the butter out of the refrigerator let it sit for 20 min.
• Turn the oven on to 350 degrees.
• Mix the butter and sugar together with your hands. Add the vanilla. Add the flour a little at a time. Mix well.
• Press the dough into a flat, round shape. Wrap it in plastic and put it in the refrigerator for a half hour.
• Roll out the dough on a clean, dry counter top until it’s about a ¼ inch thick. Use hart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the cookie. Use a spatula to slide the cookie onto an un-greased baking sheet.
• If you make harts of different size, put them on separate sheets. Cover the cookies and chill in the refrigerator for 20 min.
• Bake the cookies until they’re light gold (8 to 10 min. for large hearts, 6 to 8 min. for small hearts). Slide the cookies off the baking sheet and cool on a wire rack.
• Use a butter knife to paint a jam heart on each cookie. Or put two cookies together to make a heart sandwich with jam in the middle. Press each side of the sandwich onto a plate of powdered sugar.

Christmas and New Years Highlights

Reading Christmas Eve Book Together

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We have had a fun-filled few weeks! We have spent the last few days settling back into our normal routine. We enjoyed having my sister Sarah, her husband Danny, and their baby girl Annika stay with us for a little over a week. They joined us for Christmas morning present opening and breakfast and then we headed off to my parent's house.

Miriam, Macaylee, Madisen, & Annika (All The Grandchildren On My Side Of The Family)

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Opening Presents On Christmas Morning

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We enjoyed having Christmas at my parent's new house and enjoyed having all of my sibling, husbands and children together.

Christmas Lunch At My Parent's Home

The Whole Gang

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We hosted New Years at our home where we celebrated an early New Years with the girls before having them head off to bed at about 9:30pm. We all kept occupied playing with a Wii video game system that our dear friends were kind enough to loan us for the evening. We also enjoyed some fireworks courtesy of Uncle Danny and Uncle Jeremy.

My Two Youngest Sister And Maddie & Miriam Enjoying The New Years Eve Confetti (Thank you Uncle Danny! They had fun!)

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On New Year's Day Sarah and Danny moved on to stay at my parent's house and spend some time with them. We then got our house ready to welcome some friends that we knew back when we lived in California, the White Family. They and their four children arrived on Saturday and stayed the night. We had a wonderful time catching up and spending time together!

I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year!

A Christmas Morning Traditions

Our days have been filled with much activity as we get ready for Christmas and enjoy the Christmas season: from an outing to see Christmas lights, shopping, a Christmas concert, baking, cleaning, our Jesse Tree, wrapping gifts, getting ready for out of town guest, Christmas music , food prep for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and much much more.

One of the things that the girls helped me prepare today was Sticky Christmas Rolls. This has become a new Christmas morning tradition for our family. Last year someone from our church gave us these Sticky Rolls as a Christmas gift and they were wonderful! We have made them several times since then. They are so easy to make, and you can make them ahead of time and just keep them in the freezer until you are ready to make them. This year I will be serving these with a quiche and fruit.

Sticky Christmas Rolls

1 pkg. Rhode's frozen dinner rolls (I buy a big bag of these rolls and use 12 of them)

1 sm. box butter scotch pudding (the cook and serve kind)

3/4 c. pecans (I usually leave out)

1/2 c. margarine

3/4 c. brown sugar

Grease a 9 by 13 inch pan. Cover bottom with nuts. Put frozen rolls on top. Sprinkle pudding over the rolls. Melt butter and mix in cinnamon and brown sugar. Pour over rolls (You can freeze them at this point). Place damp cloth over the pan and let rise overnight in a cold oven. Remove from oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Bake rolls for 30 minutes. turn onto a foil-lined tray when done. Serve hot. Enjoy!

Picture Courtesy of Allposters.com

Our Family Jesse Tree

Over the last three years we have done a Jesse Tree with our girls. Over these few years this tradition has grown very dear to my heart! It has been such a blessing to watch, with each year that passes, our girls learn more and more about why it is we celebrate Christmas.

We first learned about this tradition while we were living in Southern California when our senior pastor shared it with the congregation. Then a group of women got together to make and exchange the ornaments that go along with this tree. This is our second Christmas here in Indiana (away from California). Everyone at our last church hold a very special place in our hearts, it is fun to remember each lady/family who made each of the ornaments as we put them on our tree.

Each December we go through "The Advent Jesse Tree" by Dean Lambert. Starting on the 1st of December and leading up to the 25th. We do a devotional out of this book and then place the corresponding ornament on our little Jesse Tree. Each devotional has scripture to look up, questions to answer, suggested songs to sing and a prayer.

Each devotional helps trace and explain God's plan of salvation from Creation by detailing the heritage and lineage of Jesus Christ. It is wonderful to see through these devotions how God thought and planned out every small detail of Christ's birth and on up to his death on the cross. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:15 God's gift of His Son is truly an "indescribable gift".

This tradition is a highlight of our days leading up to Christmas. It helps us to pause amidst all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season and focus on Christ's birth and why it is we are celebrating His birth. It is a true blessing to see our girls answer the questions given in the book and with each year watch their knowledge and understanding grow.

December 5th

December 5th marks a day of much fun in our household. I know that for most of you it is probably just another day in the month of December. For us it is the day that St. Nick comes and brings all of the Christmas presents. That's right, it is not Santa Clause that comes to our house but St. Nick, the Dutch Santa Clause. This is what I grew up doing and what we have carried on with our girls.

This year our evening started with dinner out together. Then we made some special deliveries of our own. Then we came home to wait for St. Nick to come.

This is Macaylee just as we got home from dinner. In this snow suite, daddy calls her "his little pink marshmellow".

First we placed our wodden shoes outside our front door.

then we waited ......

and waited.............

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Then there was a knock at the door! We rushed to the door in hopes of catching a glimp of Him.

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Here is Maddie trying to get the front door open.

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You see, St. Nick and his helper Swarta Pete, leave the gifts in a burlap sack by the front door, knock and run away. We were not able to catch a glimpse of him this time, but there is always next year.

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Then we had fun unwrapping and playing with our gifts!