Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Christmas Eve Eve and Hermit Crabs

Today I went grocery shopping for our Christmas dinner. The kid's Grandfather, who we call "Poppy" is coming for the holidays. Larry will drive to Connecticut tomorrow to bring him here to RI. We are very happy that he will be joining us although the holidays will be hard without his Mom. Morgan and Patrick helped me to make the Peanut Butter Creme Pie today. I do a lot of cooking with them and they worked together and followed the recipe. They did most of it themselves. Cooking is a great way to teach your kids fractions-it seems to make sense to them for some reason. The kids love to cook and often ask to cook lunch. A great book that we use a lot is Kids Cook by Betty Crocker. Their mac and cheese recipe is quite good. I also made a fruit cobbler, artichoke dip, minestrone soup, peppermint chocolate sticks, homemade pita chips for the dip and gathered two eggs from the chickens. Tae ran out to help his Dad with some errands. We needed Filet Mignon, shrimp and some wine for our Christmas Celebration. Larry's brother and his two girls will also be joining us on Christmas Day for dinner. We are very blessed to be surrounded by family. Tae was a little annoyed that he wasn't going to be able to help with the baking. When he got home I surprised him by letting him help me with the coconut macaroons. The macaroons are Poppy's favorite and we made them especially for him. Tae loves to cook and we call him Mr. Precision. He even knows how to level off the flour. Here he is with my mixer. I love my kitchen aid mixer and use it for everything. It's great for making dough. I found a great recipe in Mother Earth News (my new favorite magazine) that shows how to make dough for the week and have fresh baked bread every day. Ok-so I haven't used this recipe yet because of the holidays but I will soon.
Also of excitement this weekend was an early Christmas present for Patrick. He had four Hermit Crabs but three died during the molting process. This weekend I went out and bought him three new Hermit Crabs to add to the one he had left (named Sheldon). The Hermit crab above is named Hades. Hades has been checking out all the new shells and we watched him switch shells at least three times trying to find the perfect fit. It's really kind of gross watching them switch. Naked Hermit Crabs are really ugly.

Here is Hades checking out a new shell. Patrick has yet to name the other two Hermit Crabs but would like to stick with Greek God names. If anyone has any ideas please email me.
This is the unnamed Hermit Crab. He climbed to the top of the climbing rock and "hid" among the fake leaves.

I'm off to wrap some presents. Tomorrow we have the Christmas pageant at church. Both Morgan and Tae are angels....so to speak.

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