I looked at the entertainment center, and what did I see?

Look closer

closer . . .

A Brazil nut!

Ok, only my family will think that's hilarious.

You see, we have a slightly embarrassing family tradition involving Brazil nuts (come to think of it, it should be REALLY embarrassing)

When I was little, every Christmas among other stocking stuffers, Santa always left us a few handfuls of mixed nuts, still in their shells, which we did not enjoy and really only used to throw at each other. If any of us was interested enough to even try to crack open the nuts, we never could get the rock hard brazil nuts to open so they were always left sitting around. And we thought they looked a little like . . . well . . . ummmm . . . ok, they look like poop. And since we didn't know what they were called, we called them poop nuts. We used to throw them in each other's beds or onto chairs when anyone stood up and we would exclaim things like, "Oh, gross! Look what so & so just did!" Hilarious stuff when you're eight-years-old.

Anway, this went on for years, and when Candice was the first to get married she was mortified during Mark's first Christmas with the family when he stood up and the poop nut appeared and Eli said, "Mark, that's sick!" That same Christmas Mark created a family board game that the Borups play every year on Christmas Eve. It has all sorts of spaces that remind us of memorable family events or quotes, and in the middle of the board was the poop nut space. If you land on that space, you cannot continue in the game until you do a skit with a poop nut. That first year my mom landed on that space and refused to encourage our behavior or embarrass herself so she would not do a skit with the poop nut and she stayed on that space for the rest of the game, and it was a really long game. In the years since, as everyone else has conformed, I'm pleased to report that she has come around.

So when I looked up at the entertainment center the other morning and saw this, I couldn't help but laugh. Larry actually went to the grocery store and picked one Brazil nut out of the mixed nuts and purchased it for five cents and left it to surprise me. Now we have our own family poop nut. Great . . .

Do you think that I'm wearing Larry out?

Notice the lovely drool trickling down his hand.

And here's how he put on his hoodie the other day
He didn't even notice that it was upside down until I said something.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

Well, snow will be here tomorrow, but we made some snowflakes Wednesday night. I was glad that I had something to look forward to after dropping Marissa and Logan off at the airport. My friend Reba is moving away next week and she requested a snowflake cutting party for her going away party. She's the guest of honor at the head of the table. I reviewed how to make a six-point snowflake with everyone and then Amy taught how to make eight-point snowflakes. We also got to try out making 3-D snowflakes and they turned out so pretty. You can find a tutorial here. Of course the best party of the evening was just visiting with friends. The party was bitter-sweet because I'm not ready for Reba to move on.

We Need a Little Christmas, Right This Very Minute!

Even though Creed's not old enough to really get Christmas, we're excited to share Christmas traditions with him. First, we ordered a Little People Nativity set so that we had one in the house that he could play with.

There are a lot of nativity set for kids out there, but we liked this one because not only is it cute, but there are no small parts that Creed can fit all the way in his mouth. He loves this set because when you push on the angel, the star lights up and plays a song. If you're interested in getting one, they are not sold in stores. You have to buy them online and the best price is straight from the Fisher Price site. We also bought a mini set with shepherds to go along with this one. And did you know that Fisher Price sells other special holiday sets like the Mayflower along with a Thanksgiving Feast? I think that this nativity set would be a great gift for any family with a new baby. And speaking of great family Christmas gift ideas, Gabrielle at DesignMom just received a whole set of costumes for their family nativity pageant. Brilliant! Check it out here.


We also had to take advantage of Logan being in town to get a picture of the boys meeting Santa for the first time.

If you're in central Ohio and want to visit with Santa, note that Tuttle Mall "strongly prefers" that if you visit with Santa, you buy one of their photo packages that starts at $16.00, while Easton only charges $5.00 for a photo and "welcomes" you to take a picture with your own Camera. Unfortunately, we were already at Tuttle and The Santa was so cute and Creed was actually in a good mood so we went ahead while we were there. But isn't this face priceless?
We took our friend Jason's advice to get a good picture with Santa. Creed has a little stranger anxiety so we didn't let him see Santa and backed Creed onto his lap and took the photo right away. It worked pretty well for us.

And if you're looking for a tradition to help your kids focus on giving instead of receiving, my friend Anna had a great idea. This year, each year her family is giving service to someone else everyday. They do little things like scrape their neighbor's windshield. She says that her son Spencer has started asking her every morning, "What are we going to give today, Mom?" Wouldn't you love to hear that?

C is for Christmas and COOKIES!

After a lot of Christmas shopping on Monday, we decided to make sugar cookies.

We decorated all of them because we intended to give some away, but we ended up eating all of them over the next few days (which is funny because none of us alike to extra candy so we ended up picking all of it off again). Can you guess who made these two cookies? They were my favorites, although I wouldn't say they were Christmasy.

Tuesday we stuck around the house and spent a little time enjoying the warm weather.

Then that evening we made a gingerbread house, but since none of us are big gingerbread fans, and we had a lot of cookie dough the evening before, we made a sugar cookie house. I totally free-handed the shapes of the walls and roof so I wasn't too confident that it would all fit together, but it did!

And here's the final product.

I had a few requests for my sugar cookie recipes so I'm posting it here. It's from my friend Amy Hall and it is the BEST sugar cookie recipe because you don't have to chill it and it's still delicious! It makes a TON of cookies so you could probably cut the recipe in half, but we made the whole recipe because we used part of it to make our gingerbread house.

No-Chill Sugar Cookies

1 pound butter

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

6 - 7 cups of flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Add dry ingredients. Roll out 1/4 inch thick and cut. Bake at 375 degrees until edges just start to get golden brown. Makes 8 or 9 dozen cookies and frost with buttercream frosting.

Note: The recipes calls for baking SODA, not baking POWDER as I assumed the first time I made this recipe (are you really surprised? You know I'm a disaster in the kitchen). I'd already thrown in the baking powder before I realized my mistake and then without thinking I threw in the baking soda too so I was prepared for disaster when I pulled the cookies out of the oven, but they we fine.

Time flies when you're having fun

Thanks to $10 Skybus tickets, the Garners are here (well, they are all supposed to be here, but Mike had to work over the weekend so Marissa and Logan came on their own). They arrived Friday night and we've been having fun ever since. Saturday we spent the afternoon visiting with the Erneys and then we spent some time viewing Wildlights at the Zoo (out advent activity for the day). It was really cold so we bundled up. Doesn't Logan look cozy?I need to get some pictures from Riss because you can't even see the lights in my pictures. Creed loves lights these days so he was having fun looking around.We took a lot of breaks indoors to warm up so here we are in the gift shop. Don't worry, these freaky masks did not come home with us! Sunday our advent activity was driving around to see the streets lit with luminaries during Village Lights in German Village. It was fun to see the booths with free cider, and the musicians on the corners, and the homes all decorated for the holidays. We had to take full advantage of the minivan rental so we picked up Eva and Kirk and brought them along. The only picture that I have is all of us enjoying chocolate banana bread at Kirk and Eva's afterward because it was too cold to actually get out of the van to take pictures.

We've also been reading a Christmas book every day. It's so much fun to have family around at Christmas.

Merry Freakin' Christmas

So far this month is not going well for the Borups and the Fords. There was our car accident, and then Candice's computer died, taking all of her photography files with it, we found out my grandma is sick and is undergoing testing to find out how serious things are, Monday Creed had a nasty case of diarrhea which required both of us to change several times (that was lovely) and we also got the news that we need to spend a small fortune to replace our back door, then Wednesday I get a call from Larry telling me he got rear-ended by someone who couldn't stop in the snow on his way to work (yes folks, that's two car accidents for us this week, one in each car although this one was a lot less serious). Things were getting so bad it was almost comical. Then after I talked to Larry about his accident, I put Creed down for a nap and sat on the couch with our computer and looked up just in time to see our Christmas tree FALL OVER. Seriously?!?!?! I don't even know why it fell, there wasn't even anyone moving in the whole house. At least the fireplace caught it and it didn't fall all the way to the ground, we just lost a couple ornaments.

Anyway, that night I was commiserating with my mom, when she broke the news that Hobbes, our family dog was diagnosed with cancer that day after the groomer nicked him and they took him to the vet because it was a mess. So sad! Here's a picture that Candice took of him two months ago.

So that's when my mom said, "Merry Freakin' Christmas!" Which made me burst out laughing because if you know my mom, that's just not something you would expect her to say, and I told her that I had to blog about it even though she was embarrassed that she said it.

So I guess I shouldn't have been shocked when I woke up this morning to this, huh?

I really think we may be cursed! How can that happen a second time? Creed's pants-less in the excersaucer because I rushed to change his poopy diaper and then put him in there while I mopped up the water (since of course the last thing we did before we went to bed last night was fill the base with water) and started picking up glass shards. And you wouldn't believe how many more ornaments fell off as I picked the tree up. NICE! Luckily Jessica came over to help with the cleanup and she brought her much better base so there better not be anymore Christmas tree disasters this year!

I have to admit, I've had some really low moments this week. I mean, this is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, right? But then I started thinking about it, and I guess if all of this stuff has to happen to you, Christmas time may be the best time of the year for it to happen because everyone is in loving and generous moods and there are so many reminders around of the Savior and what's really important. And we have also had some really lovely moments this week. Like the other night when our advent activity was reading Christmas picture books under the light of the Christmas tree.

Creed seeing snow for the first time.And Wednesday, as I Creed was napping and I was shoveling the driveway with the monitor clipped to my jacket, my twelve-year-old neighbor Connor came over with shovel in hand to help. We talked as we shoveled and Connor said besides playing football, he really likes to spend his time helping people and sometimes he volunteers at the soup kitchen. And oh yes, this kid is totally for real. Then we're talking about Christmas and I know his sister wants an Ipod for Christmas so I ask him what he wants and he says, "Well, my dad is a chef and he has to work at an event Christmas night, so that's what I want for Christmas, I just want to have my dad home all day long."

It makes it seem like the world is not all that bad, doesn't it?

Creed at Eight Months

I took these pictures last week. I took one ok-ish picture

And then Creed let me know that he was NOT in the mood for pictures.I took a break to get him dressed, and then we tried again. He was shocked that I wasn't giving up.

He never stays still anymore so here's attempt #1

Attempt #2

Attempt #3

Oh well, at least he was having fun. I should just take his pictures while he's eating because once he was cramming food in his mouth, he was all smiles.

This kid amazes me every day. Now I get what everyone means when they tell you they grow up quickly. He loves to be chased. He's starting to talk a little bit. We now have no doubt that he says Mama, Dada (and sometimes even just dad), and something that sounds vaguely like Ball. He's everywhere and unfortunately he's fearless, which means he gets a lot of bruises like the one on his forehead in these pictures. I was talking to my mom about how he's always on the move and I said he must get that from Larry and her reply was, "Are you kidding me? That's coming from the girl who didn't stop climbing. You were on the counters, on the table, over the couches." So I guess we're doomed!

Creed Becomes Cultured

The Zozes invited us to join them on a visit to the Columbus Museum of Art to see the Monet exhibit there. Creed seemed to really enjoy the museum (or at least the fact that when he squealed it echoed really loud). We couldn't take pictures of the Monet exhibit, but here are a few other blurry photos.

Creed explaining the merits of this sculpture by Maya Lin (did you know she is originally from Athens, Ohio?) And here he is too busy looking at art to look at the camera

All that looking really wore him out

Saturday we decided to brave the cold and check out Holiday Hop. The first Saturday of every month, all of the galleries in the short north stay open late and the most random crowd you've ever seen browse the galleries and shops. Christmas time there is totally crazy and fun. We took a free carriage ride.

We shopped, saw a few exhibits, and tried to stay warm. There was so much going on, I don't think Creed even realized he was cold. There was a salon with models dressed up sort Marie Antoinette style with the craziest hairdos. Creed's not sure what to think about this one.

The Sort North was also holding a window display competition so there was holiday cheer everywhere you looked, which made for a fun night.

Six things about me

I've been tagged by Amber so I'm supposed to list six things about me. Since I listed 100 things about me last year, I'm going to list some current facts about me.

1. Our house is overflowing with my leaf plate and Mr. Potato head collections so I'm starting to collect something new, ampersands (the "&" symbol). I loved this picture that I saw from someone who collects the letter H, but a wall full of the letter F just isn't quite as lovely. Instead, I decided to go for ampersands because I love ampersands and they are a little more difficult to find, which makes the hunt all the more fun. Plus I love the idea of some day having a wall fun of ampersands over my writing desk so I could stare up at , "& . . . & . . . & . . ." as I write. So far my collection consists of one ampersand as pictured below (not much of a collection yet, but don't you love it?). PS-I thought this was an original idea and then Candice told me that one of her friends has a whole wall of ampersands.




2. I am currently car-less. We were in an accident on the way home from church today, and while we are all shaken, but fine, I cannot say the same for my poor Isuzu Rodeo. The damage is pretty ugly, and we're waiting to find out how bad it really is. I LOVED my car and found myself wishing it could have happened in our junky Hyundai, but it's probably for the best as we may have been hurt were we in the Hyundai. I am guessing we may have to rent a car this weekend while the Garners are visiting because we can't all fit in one car and we only have one car! And how am I supposed to be working on secret Christmas plans if I don't have a car?


3. My love for polka dots may be eclipsing my love for stars, and this is BIG news if you know me.


4. I'm currently addicted to Simply Apple juice. It taste so fresh, crisp, and yummy!

5. I hate to admit this, but I'm probably up to my ears in library fines right now because I have a stack of books that I've been meaning to review so I keep holding on to them. I've slowly been working my way through them on the Children's Literature Book Club blog.

6. I love buying gifts. Larry and I used to have very different gift giving styles. I keep explaining to him that when you need to buy a gift, you are not supposed to walk around any given store and force yourself to find something for that person while you happen to be there simply because you are already there. You are supposed to think ahead of time about what that person might really love and then you specifically set out to buy that item. I actually really enjoy thinking about it and I have to say that over the years, Larry has become a fantastic gift buyer and now he even starts shopping way before me.