In my spirit:
- I’ve been rejoicing in Emmanuel come – and longing for Emmanuel’s return to “bid envy, strife, and sorrow cease, fill all the world with heaven’s peace.”
- Frustrated with the “2016 was an awful year” news stories. As if who is elected president of the United States (or whether Britons decide to stay in the EU) is what makes or breaks a year. (For the record, I was a never-Trump-er – and I think 2016 was a great year.)
In the living room:
- I took down the Christmas decorations yesterday and Tirzah Mae was devastated to see the stockings packed away. For my part, it feels nice to put the house back together again.
In the kitchen:
- I’m starting a four week cycle menu for the winter instead of coming up with a new menu each week. This is my first week, but menu planning and grocery shopping was already SO much easier since I already had the menu written. I have high hopes for this.
- I’ve cooked lasagna maybe once since Daniel and I got married – but I had odds and ends I needed to use up after Christmas so I threw everything together into a garbage-can-style lasagna dish. It was GOOD. Problem is, there’s no way I can replicate it, since it includes things like “leftover cheese ball”. However, the experience has encouraged me to think more about adding vegetables to both the sauce and the cheese mixture (that one had spinach in the cheese mixture and peppers and onions in addition to tomatoes in the sauce.)
In the nursery:
- Louis has started eating solids (just in the past WEEK.) When we left for Christmas in Lincoln, he was still exhibiting tongue-thrust and only minimal interest in food. Now? If we’re eating, he wants some.
- Tirzah Mae is currently obsessed with turning on light switches, washing her hands, and brushing her teeth. The heady power of being just a little bit taller and having access to a step stool means I’m racing to keep one step ahead of her (Nope, you can’t apply the fluoride toothpaste to your brush by yourself!)
In the craft room:
- Having my family over for Thanksgiving forced me to get my craft room cleaned up – and Christmas made me glad it was clean. I made Tirzah Mae a Christmas dress, Louis a Christmas vest, and hemmed up a dated skirt for my own Christmas outfit. And I made Tirzah Mae a Christmas stocking, since the “Baby” stocking now goes to Louis.
- I probably don’t do arts and crafts with Tirzah Mae nearly as often as I ought – but even just our few adventures with painting have convinced me that I need some way to deal with the onslaught of “art” in our home. Birthday cards have offered a solution. I’ve bought a bunch of blank greeting cards, and for January, we’re punching shapes out of Tirzah Mae’s paintings and then gluing those shapes on the fronts of the cards. Family members get a card and some of Tirzah Mae’s art – I get rid of a few paintings. Win-win, I think.
In the garden:
- I got a grow light for Christmas this year, so I’m looking forward to starting my own plants this year (I had some serious sticker shock after I bought plants last year!) But gardening is still a ways off as we’re currently enjoying a cold snap with highs in the mid 20’s.
In the library:
Currently reading…
- Acts from the Bible
- Church History in Plain Language by Bruce Shelley
- Paul: In Fresh Perspective by N.T. Wright
- Your Two-Year-Old: As they Grow by Parents Magazine
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Added to the TBR List:
- Pretty much everything on Karen’s list of books that can change your life)
- Some Writer! by Melissa Sweet (added based on Amy’s Review)
- The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (added based on Sherry’s Review)
Around the web:
- A Flexible Goodies Policy – You want your kids to eat healthy foods, but you don’t want sweets to become a forbidden fruit that they hoard and binge on. What’s a mom to do? Dietitian Maryann Jacobsen has some excellent suggestions.
In blogging history:
- 1 year ago – I described my personal reading categories
- 2 years ago – I told the story of Tirzah Mae’s birth day
- 8 years ago – My brother gave me an African violet (I killed it.)
I have loved seeing the pictures of your beautiful daughter and son. They are really growing up already! Glad to hear that 2016 was a good year for you. It was for me, too, especially if I don’t include politics in those thoughts. ;-)
I clicked over to catch up and found myself (well, my review) in your post.
Your babies are SO BIG!
We just got our Christmas stuff down yesterday. I always have mixed emotions – glad to get everything back in order, yet sad to see it go, especially the lights.
I had a similar experience to your lasagna with some vegetable and ground turkey soup recently. I had some beef broth I had saved that I used in it plus some other leftovers, and it was probably the best of that kind of soup we’d ever had – yet we’ll never have another one just like it.
So fun to see your kids! Timothy has discovered the thrill of light switches and stepstools, too – a whole new world!
That sounds like a good solution to the art situation. I can remember looking at a pile of my son’s papers when he was two, not wanting to throw them away, yet knowing I couldn’t store everything he did for the next 20 years. I told myself that if I kept representative pieces, I might look at them again at times: if I kept everything, it would all just sit in boxes in the attic.