The Tree as Art Form

Originally we were going to fully decorate for Christmas this year on Thanksgiving weekend.  We (and by we I mean the royal We as I simply watched as Rafe and Amelia did all the work) got as far as putting up the tree with the lights on before deciding it was too risky to put ornaments on the tree or decorations up with Destructor  Olivia running around the house.  

Somehow over the next few days, decorations still mysteriously appeared on the tree.  Every day I'd walk by, only to discover something new on the tree.  My photos are terrible, but you get the idea.  Toilet paper and paper towel tubes, musical instruments, windmills, necklaces, artwork and toys.  This is only the start... as the days went by it increased!  She even went so far as to make a Nativity scene at the bottom of the tree using mostly her imagination and just a few items.  Apparently I really fell down on the job this year.  At least one of us has the decorating gene!  She certainly didn't get it from me.  Must be Rafe's side of the family.  

This one touched me the most... her nativity scene.  The nest of branches is the manger, the piece of paper lying on the toilet paper tube is a drawing of baby Jesus and the tube is his crib, and there are drawings of the three wise men, some animals and something else.  The big tube is the star in the sky and of course the lovely parents to the left.  I think she's got a future in modern art.  

These are place settings she made... we all had one at our places at the table.

This was my only contribution to holiday decorations! :)

Hoppin' John - This year I'm making my own good luck!

A traditional Southern food for New Year's Day is Hoppin' John, collard greens and cornbread.  The foods are supposed to bring good luck in the New Year - beans representing coins, greens representing paper money and cornbread representing gold.  It's usually made with ham hocks, beans and rice with a bit of salt.

The leftovers are called Skippin' Jenny.  No clue as to why.  :)

Many years ago I worked as a Sous Chef at a restaurant in Kansas City called Cafe Allegro.  The Chef at the time (Sue Dubowski)  is one of the best chefs I have ever worked with - her knowledge and abilities were incredible.  I could never be half as creative as the Chefs I worked with, but I always felt blessed to be able to work under them.  She created a dish that went on the menu that I still think about to this day - Fried Soft Shelled Crab with Hoppin' John.  Her version is the best I've ever tasted.  The recipe below is as close to that as I can come.  I remember making it one night and asking one of the waiters there, who had lived in the south, to taste it as I was making it.  I added and adjusted according to his suggestions.  This isn't entirely authentic to what I made that night, but it is pretty close!  Below is what I cooked up yesterday; probably not quite the same as all those years ago.  In that restaurant, everything was cooked from scratch so the peas were cooked from dry and we used ham hocks and white rice, among other small changes.  With 2 kids and a busy holiday season, I just pulled from my pantry.  I made a roasted chicken and gave some away to a new mom down the street and we had ours with baked tilapia sprinkled with Paul Prudhomme's seafood seasoning.  Rafe loves this - I got an unqualified, "I wouldn't mind having this again" from him.  He's a guy who will eat anything I make but has just a few favorites.

I usually serve it with lemons and scallions for garnish, which is definitely not traditional.  The lemon really brightens up the flavor of the beans when squeezed over the top.

Hoppin' John
3-4 stalks celery, medium small dice
2 med. onions, medium small dice
1/5 bulb (about 6-7 very large cloves) garlic, minced or crushed
1/2 cup minced ham (or any smoky/salty meat - ham hock, andouille, bacon, smoked turkey, etc)
vegetable oil
Heat oil in heavy pan (I used a Le Creuset big pot) on high just till it begins smoking.  Add the celery and onions and let sit briefly to get color on the onions and celery, then stir.  Turn heat down and let sit for a minute or two each time between stirring - not enough to burn the celery and onion, but to start to give it some color and flavor.  When the celery and onions first begin to get a little tender and brighter in color, add the ham and garlic and stir.  Continue cooking till the flavor of the garlic has bloomed.

cooked brown rice
2 cans (15 oz each) black eyed peas
cayenne pepper
When the garlic has bloomed, add the peas and cooked rice.  Sprinkle lightly with cayenne.  Stir gently and simmer till rice has finished cooking.  Add more chicken stock as needed.  The end result should be thick and sludgy like, with beans intact for the most part.  Season to taste.  Serve with lemons on side and scallions sprinkled over the top.

Cooked Rice
1 cup brown rice
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp (approx) dried minced onion
2 cups chicken stock
kosher salt to taste
Cook in rice cooker till almost finished, but still slightly under done.  Add to pot of beans to finish cooking.

A valentine heard around the world...

Happy Valentine's Day from Beaufort, South Carolina to somewhere in Afghanistan. 

I'm seeing boats on the water and Spanish moss blowing in the wind; and you are seeing snow capped mountains. 

I see our children dressed up in princess outfits, giggling and laughing; you see sweaty men in military uniforms. 

I see our girls food smeared faces smiling up at me; you see the dirt stained faces of the Afghan children. 

Someday soon, we'll see the same things at the same time.  Until then, know you are loved and missed by your girls.

Valentine's Day Box

Last year Amelia had her first Valentine's Day at school, but I barely pulled it together in time.  If not for a dear friend of mine (thank you Lori W), I would not have even had valentines for her to take to school.  It was completely off my radar screen because of all the work Olivia was taking at the time.

This year, we received a notice early to have shoe boxes and valentines ready for tomorrow.  So my uncrafty self came up with a fun craft that Amelia and I could do together.  It's stolen and modified from a more complicated craft online, but I love how it turned out.  It literally cost me nothing, as I already had the supplies. 

The best part of it is the fun we have had making this together.  We worked on it a little bit each day, and she was always so excited to do her part.  She was able to do most of it herself, with just a small amount of input from me.  She can hardly wait to go to school tomorrow and show off her work.  Not only that, but she had a few design suggestions that were better than mine.  Seriously, I am very lame in the decorating department.  Bested by a 4 year old. 

Yesterday while finishing up, she was also rocking a pink fairy costume with pink/orange argyle leggings and black boots; she'd asked me to pin her hair up into "princess hair" and then she got dressed.  She definitely has some style.

Here is what we did:  (I took pictures, but on a video camera that I don't know how to download from)
1)  Covered a shoe box in scrapbook paper.  I cut the pieces to fit, she put glue on the box and put the paper on.
2)  She stamped the inside lid of the box with all kinds of her little stamps - flowers, birds, hearts, etc
3)  She wrote her name on a piece of scrapbook paper and that was glued to the side of the box.
4)  I took another, complementary vintage pinkish design scrapbook paper, drew 6 rectangles on them and let her cut along the lines using the scrapbooking scissors with the wavy lines that make pretty edges.  I didnt' care if it was perfect, she cut pretty well but it still looked hand made.  Nice.
5)  Then I picked out purple, pink, red, blue crayons and gave her a pencil sharpener to shave crayons with into small bowls.
6)  I tore off two sheets of waxed paper and laid one sheet on top of a paper sack on an ironing board.  The paper sack is essential if you don't want to buy another fabric cover for your ironing board.  I had also lowered the ironing board to its lowest height.
7)  She sprinkled the different colors around the wax paper.  One thing I would do differently if I did a project like this again is to have her leave a bit more room between the colors.  They spread pretty well once they melted.
8)  I put the second piece of wax paper on top and then let her iron, with my hand on top of hers on the iron.  She pretty much directed the iron; I just wanted to make sure I had it just in case. The wax melted instantly. 
9)  While the crayons were cooling, she wrote her name on the back of all the cards. 
10)  Once cool, and while she was still writing, I took the fancy scrapbooking scissors and cut out hearts free form. 
11)  She worked over a paper bag; put glue on the hearts and put them in the middle of the scrapbook paper on the pretty design.  Originally I wanted her to put the hearts on the white part of the paper, the back of it by her name.  I thought the hearts would show up better.  Shows  how much design sense I have.  She didn't like that idea, hence the change. 
12) She saw some purple ribbons and wanted that, so she picked out two types of ribbon and I cut them and made little bows by just wrapping the skinny one around the middle of the bigger one and tying it in a knot.  She glued those onto the cards.

All this took about 4-5 days, working a little bit each day on it to accomodate the attention span of a 4 year old.  It was a peaceful, fun project to do together.  I can hardly wait to see her excitement again in the  morning as she takes them to school.

A simple day at home...

I'm trying to post a bit more because Rafe has slightly easier access to the blog now than he did. Someday I hope he might be able to write a few words on here also!

Today was the first day back to school for Amelia. One of her first questions to me every day is, "What do we do today, momma?" No matter what is going on that day, I always tell her in my "it's going to be so much fun!" voice. This morning it was, "When you come home from school, we're going to do some cutting work and then eat dinner and go to bed!!!" She was so excited - "yayy, mommy!". I love her great attitude.

We worked on an advent project that was my mom's idea. I had wanted to get all fancy and have daily things planned out on a little calendar that we would open each day and do. Maybe someday, but this is all I can handle for now. And it is turning out even better than I imagined! I'm not sure what the end result will look like, but for now we are working on an advent calendar we are making ourselves a bit each day. While we do this, we talk a little bit about the birth of Jesus and the meaning of Christmas. Nothing too heavy. It's been a fun, low key way to get in the Christmas spirit. We talked about St Nicholas and his good deeds and persecution last night in the bath and tonight we laid out stockings on the church bench in the hallway. Tomorrow will be the first day she ever really gets the excitement of having a full stocking.

Olivia was a little pistol today. She pulled herself up in her crib for the first time ever, and wants to stand when you try to get her to sit on the floor. She keeps trying to pull herself to stand when you hold her hands. She loves to yap after hours of not making a sound - loud!

Amelia cutting out the tree Mommy drew

So serious!

All done! She did a great job cutting it herself.


Now she's marking numbers on the tree where buttons will go.

Livie right after pulling herself up in the crib.

Looks like it's time to lower the bed!

My beautiful girls!

It was hard to get a good picture that captured the warm colors and was still sharp. Olivia loves the Christmas tree. We joke around that Livie is VERY nosy. She has to always see what is going on around her. It's so cute! The contrast between this year and last year is enormous.

Still enthralled.

Isn't this face so cute!??!

Amelia wanted her picture taken in this chair as we were leaving.

Christmas Parade

Amelia's school had a float in the parade, so she was able to ride on her first float ever! The kids behaved great considering they had to sit on the float for about 45 minutes before it even started. About the time the Parade took off, several kids needed to go to the bathroom after waiting all that time! I felt for them.

Love the creative reindeer antlers made from Palm trees!My Christmas Elf

All the way to Kansas City, Mia kept telling me how much her best friend Logan missed her.
I think the feeling was mutual!


He is absolutely the sweetest, most wonderful boy! Their friendship is so innocent; they love doing stuff together. On Wednesdays, his mom picks them up from school and they head to the library for a while before going to Karate class. It's better than the days they spent pouring sand on each other's heads. You'd think they hadn't seen each other in years instead of just two weeks.

A view of some of the gorgeous houses we went past in downtown Beaufort.

And a not too shabby fur coat, either!

We had just enough time after the parade to have dinner and bath. I was watching a friend's child so we are going to start our St Nick's traditions tomorrow night. The joy of being four... sometimes if I'm running behind the day something starts is a bit flexible!! She will never know :)

Boat Parade

I started off this month with the intent to have a quiet month concentrated at home with family. During the month of October and November, Amelia had playdates almost every single day after school with one friend or another, and I just wanted to keep her home (and stay home myself!) and work on more things with her. I'm already not keeping to my goals very well! But we're having a great time.

I thought today would be my leisurely day, but ended up taking Livie for a synagis shot (love my doctor and synagis nurse - she wanted me to come in on a less crowded day and he checked Olivia over after our trip). She's a bit dehydrated and struggling to eat after the trip but bouncing back. We are feeding her every two hours and taking turns with pedialite and milk.

The rest of the day was a lot more fun - I went to help decorate Quarters One - the General's house here on base. The Parris Island Officer Spouse Club is in charge of decorating it each year. I don't think that is the tradition on most bases (but I'm not 100% sure), but here the General's home is quite historic and receives a lot of visitors. I know I worked for 3 hours with about 20 women all together and it was still underway when I left. Piles of magnolia leaves, pines, mistletoe, berries and pinecones had been gathered and deposited on the beautiful porch along with boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations from years past. The home itself features furniture that belongs to the house and the current occupants can add pieces of their own. The house also has a chef/butler/assistant Marine who is assigned to the house - and if I remember correctly, there are only 6 of him with his MOS in the Marine Corps. He's also a great shot and knows a TON about guns - he and Rafe talked for hours one time in the exchange about guns. The General and his family are very safe there! :) I wish I had my camera to take pictures of what I did. I can't decorate my way out of a paper bag so I was quite proud of my hours of hard work (although they would have taken another woman probably half that time at least!)

In the evening, I drove us all down to the waterfront to watch the Christmas boat parade. It was my first experience and Olivia was loving the lights. We walked around to see the shops afterwards and had candy cane ice cream. Not quite as fancy as the Plaza, but a WHOLE lot warmer!

Back Home!

We've spent the last 2 weeks traveling to Kansas City and back. It was a trip I dreaded but it turned out wonderfully. I love being around family, but we usually are stationed so far away from them that the drives are usually a day long of straight driving, which is hard on everyone. Since my mom is staying with me while Rafe is deployed to help with therapies and other family concerns, we drove up together and decided to make it a fun trip by stopping along the way. SO much more pleasant than driving straight through. I'll be posting pics in a few days but this weekend is jam packed with activity so I'll probably work backwards.

We came home very late Friday night and unpacked the van before going to bed. Mom took care of Olivia's meds while I was hauling stuff upstairs from the garage. It was a bit sad to turn the corner to our house and see the garage light on in my neighbor's house illuminating the completely empty garage. It was shocking to see their patio completely gone and just a bare layer of dirt below. They received orders to move to Virginia right before we left and the transition was quick!

My daughters and I loved Miss Lori and Mr. Jim. They have been supportive of us from the first day here - praying with us, for us, and in various ways at our side through the past 3 years. Lori is a hospice nurse who volunteered to come for 3 hours every Tuesday to take care of Olivia and give me a break during a time when I couldn't use a normal respite care provider due to the complications of Olivia's medical care and needs.

Amelia used to look out our window and give me constant updates on who was home - Mr. Jim or Miss Lori - by the cars in the drive. When she saw Mr. Jim outside she always asked if she could go "hep" him do something. He was very patient with her and spent hours answering endless questions as she followed him around like a little puppy when he was outside puttering around. Seeing Miss Lori was always cause for excitement and asking to go play with her. Along with two other women, we were the "Three Lori's and a Judy" - feeling a bit like the 4 musketeers as we had our adventures around Beaufort! They have been such a part of our daily lives, especially Lori, that it will be difficult looking out the window and seeing the gash in the dirt as evidence they are truly gone.

Yesterday was also exciting as we attended the retirement ceremony of the other Lori's husband (from the Three Lori's and a Judy). It was very moving to celebrate 22 years of service and dedication and I definitely cried during the process. Afterwards we went to their house for a party and I don't know who had more fun - us or Amelia. She was the only child, other than Olivia, at both the ceremony and party and she was on her best behavior making friends wherever she went. I can tell she misses Daddy because she really gravitated towards the male energy in the room and the daddies were so kind to play with her endlessly. To hear her giggle and laugh made my day. On the way home, she said she had a lot of fun playing with "those big tall boys!!". Olivia was passed around and loved on all night, and it was so much fun to receive compliments on how well behaved they were.

We drove around base housing looking at all the fun Christmas lights after the party and crashed at home. Today is a new day!

Safest place in America to trick-or-treat

We live in the ultimate gated community! There is only one way onto Parris Island, and the gate guard has a rifle. You need ID, insurance and car registration to get past him. The long causeway has water on either side of it, and in case you drove past the first guard without stopping, there is another one at the other side of the causeway to catch you.

We're surrounded by water - no one can get on without going through the front gate.

Military Police patrolling the streets in a car and on foot throughout the evening.

"Hi, Daddy!!"

Some of the neighbor gang... fun to trick or treat with your friends!
One of the military chaplains and his decorations.

Amelia with her favorite "Princess Hair". Her hair is so naturally curly that if I pin it up while it is freshly shampooed, it looks absolutely beautiful.

Home at last!! The best part... eating the candy! And this is how Olivia spent her second Halloween... very different from last year. She was snoozing in the hospital instead of at home in a nice cozy bed. Look, Rafe! She's lying on her side! No more nap nanny!

Asa, Steve, Eli, Dad, Zeke, Dylan, Braden, Todd, Paul, Noah
Paul, Mia

Mom and Dad opening their Memory Books

Making Cookies with Bamaw

She is covered in cinnamon sugar!

These two were hysterical, playing in the freezing snow. At one point, Dylan laid down to make a snow angel and Amelia was worried if he was ok and kept telling him to get up. Then she got into the spirit of the snow... She kept asking Dylan to pour snow on her head... over and over and over again. You can barely see her eyes because her hair is so covered with snow, but she's got a big grin on her face. Todd showing Dylan how to put in wiring
Note how HARD Todd is working in this picture!!
:)

Todd looking mean and Amelia not believing it for a minute!

Digging in to Chinese food together

St. Nick's Day

Trip Home

One last bedtime story... Melancholy little girl looking out the airport window at our plane

Random Photos from Colorado

Dressed to kill Everywhere I went in Woodland Park, these displays of books kept popping up. The library, beautiful little craft shops, you name it. JJ wrote a delightful little book, "Grandmother Told Me" (can be ordered on Amazon.com) and they were selling like hotcakes. Rafe is even mentioned at the end of the book!

Supposed to be watching Fantasia, but teasing Uncle Gramps.

Finally settled in to see what Mickey will do in Fantasia. I thought the movie would be too scary for her, but she loved it.

Showing off her artwork when Uncle Gramps came home