Ben in 2012

Ben2012Ben has had a really big year too. He’s changed a lot from January to now and it makes me sad to see how little baby is left in him.

He too had the major change of leaving our sitter’s and going to preschool. It was a big adjustment for him but now he lets us have it when we pick him up “too early.” He has a lot of fun at school. Playing outside and “music and movement” are his favorites. He naps grudgingly but regularly taken, at least at school.

At home he’s our little bundle of personality. We love the things he says and his comedic timing. Recently, after watching Home Alone, he was hanging out in the bathroom after brushing his teeth and out of the blue, he says “I made my family disappear” with the same inflection and timing as Kevin in the movie. Cracked us all up.

He loves to be outside, running and playing. He’s also big into his video games right now. He loves Mariokart and he got Skylander for Christmas which is a big hit too. He’s picks these things up really quickly and I’m amazed to think how these kids are growing up.

Big as he is, he loves to be snuggled and read to. When I ask him “Who do I love?” he always responds with, “Mommy loves Benji!”

Tabby in 2012

tabby2012

This was such a big year for Tabby. We got many comments on our Christmas card that she suddenly looks so much older. And man it’s true. I’m shocked every once in a while when I catch a glimpse of her and see her as this big girl! We at least in maturity. In actual size, she’s still tiny, but hey, her mama’s only 5′ tall.

Obviously, the biggest thing in Tabby’s year was starting school. We love her teacher and her school and we’re amazed at the progress she’s made. She’s reading like a champ (suddenly pointing out this word or that word all over the place) and making major mental leaps in every other area of her life. After school she’s been great at amusing herself while Matt is working. She draws a lot and likes to write adorable little books about bunnies and such.

Princess Tabby at your service.
Princess Tabby at your service.

She’s been taking climbing classes all fall and she’s been having a lot of fun with that. But now she wants to try some other things out and it looks like she’ll be taking ice skating or tennis next. I also want to get her back into swimming! At home we’ve been introducing new small chores as we see opportunity. She has responsibilities for her own possessions and school work and has to do things like empty the silverware basket and put the kid cups in their bin. She loves to help with cooking and she’s always keen to do any project.

I’m excited to see what 2013 has in store for her. She’s excited to get out skiing and already asking about what kind of party she can have for her birthday. I confess to missing her as a baby now and again, but she is so sweet and a I love being able to hear the funny and interesting things that go through her head.

Christmas Unwrapped

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We had a really really nice Christmas. We did what we have done for years and spent Christmas Eve at my parents’ house. We let the kinds unwrap a couple of gifts, left cookies for Santa and headed to bed. In the morning, Santa had paid us a visit and so had the snow fairy!! Nothing like a White Christmas.

Continue reading “Christmas Unwrapped”

2012 in Review: Cooking and Recipes

Meals2012Well, it has been a fab year in my kitchen, that’s for sure. We have been remarkably consistent about eating good, homemade food and I’m also pretty proud of the fact that we’ve shared many meals with another family going through rough times. It wasn’t always easy to get food to the table, but I’m really glad we persevered and I feel like we’re healthier for it. We made a ton of family favorites, but we tried new recipes just about every week and now we have some great new family favorites! I’m going to try to share those in the new year.

Recipes We Made Most Frequently: We have a lot of family favorites that I made on a nearly monthly basis, including veggie-heavy spaghetti, shepherd’s pie, turkey chili, berry french toast and sloppy joes. Recipes that have achieved the level of “New Family Favorite:” We absolutely LOVE Iowa Girl’s Homemade Hamburger Helper and Chicken Gumbo (a fair few other of her recipes too) and Skinnytaste’s Loaded Potato Soup and Swedish Meatballs. We also make Crack Broccoli or Broccamole almost every week!
Favorite Breakfast of the Year:
I can almost always get a great showing on steel cut oats cooked with either milk or water (though milk is creamier) and little pieces of apple and craisins and as a bonus we almost always have the ingredients. On the other hand, Berry French Toast is the most requested.
Handmade Masterpiece: I tried making caramels again this year and this time had great success with Smitten Kitchen’s Apple Cider Caramels. We made two batches and they were a HUGE hit.
Best Recipe Sources: In past years I’ve gotten a lot of recipes from magazines, but this year I’ve really moved all digital. I did glean a few from books during my Cookbook Challenge, but I find much better recipes online these days.
Tool of the year: As usual, I made excellent use of our stand mixer and food processor, but I really got into the stick blender this year. I used it on a ton of different soups and to make dressings and marinades. My mom had the great idea to get me a new one for Christmas and this one has a detachable blade. YAY!
Goals for 2013: The dinners have been great and I want to keep that up, but we need to figure out some other lunch options for Tabby. Without the ability to heat up food, she is frequently left with just a sandwich. So I need to figure out some other things for her to eat.

2012 In Review: Books!

2012booksI somehow managed to read 74 books (my goal for the year was 65). This is probably the only goal (of the ones I wrote down, I mean) that I actually achieved this year, so yay to me. Since I “read” audio books, it’s actually easier for me to keep on track when I’m super busy like I was this year since I “read” while I’m working.

Stats (cuz I nerdily LOVE stats):

  • 24/75 were non-fiction, 5 were fiction – I am pleased with this as I have been trying to read more non fiction
  • Sarah Dessen and Nora Roberts were tied for authors I read the most (6 books each) followed by Joshilyn Jackson’s at 4
  • I read THREE books about presidential assassinations: one on Garfield, one on Lincoln and one on Kennedy and I actually have another one on Kennedy waiting in the wings (it’s like 20+ discs and seems a bit daunting)
  • Other than novels, the type of book I read the most of was memoir. My favorites were Mindy Kahling’s sublime Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and the yummy Stuffed: A Restaurant Family.
  • I also read a lot of dystopian novels (all YA if memory serves). The only one that I really enjoyed was Thumped (the sequel to Bumped)I think I’ll avoid that genre for a while, at least until publishers stop publishing ANYTHING in a rush to be the next Hunger Games.
  • My favorite NF book for the year is a tie between Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me which are about as different as you can get. I loved Killing Kennedy because it’s probably the best history lesson on that period I’ve ever had and it was imminently readable. Mindy’s book though was pure comic genius. Like I said, toss up.
  • My favorite fiction book of the year was Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ The Great Escape. She writes such fun, fluffy, lovable, SMART chick lit and she’s one of my favorite authors.

I am really pleased with my year in reading. I feel amazed every year at the breadth of GREAT options available for consumption and I feel like I get really good knowledge and insight from these smart writing folk. I consider it to be as important as exercise. The other cool thing in reading this year was the fun I’ve had watching Tabby learn to read. I hope that both of my kids will one day love to read as much as I do.

 

The Petting Game

The Nichols household is currently in the throes of pet selection. It all started with our trip to Nashville. Tabby saw a mouse trapped in a sticky trap. It was all she told her classmates about her trip to Nashville. It is all she has wanted to talk about lately. And it culminated in some bizarre justice scales thing where she MUST HAVE A PET MOUSE. So she and Matt setup some system where she does her “chores” – which basically consist of keeping her room neat, putting away her backpack and lunch dishes, performing the small tasks we assign to her (put away silverware, set the table, etc.) – for 25 days, she could earn her pet mouse.

It’s all been a bit fuzzy because my Project Manager husband (engineer of this whole scheme) didn’t implement a chart or anything to track progress (hmmmmm). But it has been a constant with her – working on her chores and asking about the mouse. As M-day has drawn nearer, we’ve been hedging on the whole thing. Not that we won’t let her get a pet, we will, but to me, mice are something you … well find in a sticky trap or feed to a snake (sorry). They don’t really seem like pets. Add into that the fact that they smell a bit and don’t live terribly long and I’m just not convinced. So I have made some alternative suggestions to mouse ownership, namely gerbil or hedgehog ownership. So let’s meet our bachelors:

1. Bachelor #1 The Fancy Mouse –

Despite (in my mind at least) being more of the classification of “pest” or “food” these guys are really pretty cute. They are constantly active and everyone insists they can be tamed and make good companions. Their cost of ownership is LOW since they and their supplies are cheap and they require no veterinarian examinations. On the downside, they tend to be smellier than some other small animals and they do not live terribly long.

2. Bachelor #2: The Gerbil –

My sister and I had gerbils growing up. Matt and I had some gerbils when we were in college. We know and like gerbils. They, like the mice, are a low cost of ownership and they can also (we know first hand) can be very docile and friendly. Being desert creatures, they require little food and water and they have no discernible odor. They live slightly longer than mice.

3. Bachelor #3: The Hedgehog –

Hedgehogs are cute as hell. They are a sort of higher-level mammal and they seem to be very docile (we just visited some at a pet store yesterday) and nice to play with. They don’t have quite the same inherently jumpy twitchy personality of mice or gerbils (though as I said before, that can be somewhat calmed out of the mice & gerbils) and as an added “fun” thing, they can SWIM! On the down side, they are hugely expensive, especially if you want to get a pair. And there’s also the spikes. They can’t throw them like a porcupine, but they can become quite prickly when they’re scared or agitated. But they do live upwards of 8 years … which kind of goes both ways.

For her money, our Bachelorette, Miss Tabby, is not entirely certain what she wants, just that she wants a little snuggly pet. She seems to be most fascinated with the animal she last held, so I want to give it some time – we will not be getting a new pet in any case until we’re back from our post-Christmas ski trip – and really give her some time to make up her mind.

Howdy, December

Well I did better with the blogging thing last week … but I’m still a bit behind. We’ve been having all sorts of fun – I just haven’t had the time to sit down and write about it. But here’s a mini update from this weekend.

Friday I started the weekend off right with a run and a trip to Tabby’s school to volunteer. Instead of the normal reading groups like I’ve done before, we made Eric Carle paper for the projects the kids are going to do soon. Eric Carle (author of such classics as A Very Hungry Caterpillar) paints beautifully textured paper and then cuts it up for his artwork in his books. The kids had seen a movie on this process and were very excited to cover their papers with paint. COVER. They were adorable and so enthusiastic.

After school, I went Christmas shopping with my mom. We got a LOT accomplished but I’ve still got a lot to do. That night my sis and I went to our Bootcamp party. It was TONS of fun. We drank wine, ate a little food and chatted up our fellow gluttons for punishment. It’s a great group of ladies.

Saturday we got up bright and early and went to the gym for a swim. Then we headed back to the mall, but this time we were there for a different purpose. We picked four kids from the angel tree at the mall and spent the morning buying gifts for them. We had to order one thing (a remote control motorcycle) off the internet, but we should be ready to take them back in a couple of days.

Saturday evening, Kelly came over and stayed with the kids so Matt and I could go to my Christmas party. They were thoroughly spoiled with cookie baking, movie watching and Mariokart playing. Meanwhile, Matt and I had a fabulous time at the party. Everyone seemed extra exuberant this year and there was much dancing and merry-making.

We got home late but of course the kids were up early. We let them play independently for a while and then we ran a couple of errands. The normal fare for a Sunday. We spent much of the afternoon working around the house while the kids napped. In the evening we made some mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner which was a pretty big hit. And before long it was time to put the kids in the shower and get everyone ready for the week. It all goes so fast and I’m really starting to look forward to my week off in January!!

Deckin’ the Halls

The kids are at such a great age for this. Good understanding, amazing enthusiasm, off-the-charts cuteness.

Love them. They’re having so much fun. They make all of this so cool.