Holiday Fun

There is no doubt in my mind, KIDS are what make holiday's fun!

Here are a few snapshots of all the fun we have been having with two of my grand children. 

Rewind to Thanksgiving . . .

Although the majority of the meal was prepared by yours truly the rest of the family did help out. We even decided to all work together and help the kids make parfaits. This parfait is by far the kids favorite. All we do is mix up a batch of instant banana pudding and a batch of instant chocolate pudding, layer the puddings in the glass with slices of banana and top with whip cream and a cherry.

Sissy was quick to choose which one she wanted. Their smiles weren't quite so big when they were told they had to wait to eat the yummy treat.

Then of course there are the holiday concerts at the kids' school. Sissy plays the violin and little Bubba sang in the chorus in the morning performance. Unfortunately he then got so nervous that he lost his lunch and was sent home. Thankfully the school did record both performances so we were able to get DVD's of both performances.

The kids wanted to make presents for all their classmates. So Mrs. G found an easy no bake recipe for scented Christmas ornaments and the family once again got to work. Mrs. G helped sissy mix the batter, Mr. G rolled the dough and they both helped the kids stamp the designs into the dough. As you can guess, it quickly turned into Mr. & Mrs. G cutting out most of the ornaments. Sissy wrote each of her classmates initials on her ornaments, while Mr. & Mrs. G put the initials on Bubba's ornaments. Once they were all dry and ready to wrap name tags needed to be filled out and the ornaments wrapped.  This was the first time Mr. & Mrs. G had taken on such a large project and they soon discovered just how much work they would be doing. After an hour of helping the kids sort the ornaments and write name tags it was time for the kids to head to bed while I stepped in to help Mr. & Mrs. G finish. An hour latter we had tagged and wrapped 55 ornaments as well as made a replacement ornament for one that had gotten messed up. All so the children could give their classmates a gift the next morning.

The recipe we followed was for no bake ornaments and called for 1/4 cup cinnamon and 2 tbs of applesauce of course that only made 3 small ornaments so we had to increase the recipe and wound up making three or four batches of dough. I did a bit of looking around and found another recipe that is for 15 ornaments and easy to follow. You can see it HERE. We air dried all but the replacement ornament and it took five days for them to be completely dry. When doing the replacement ornament the night before we decided to make two and bake one and put the other in the dehydrator to see which would turn out better. The air dried ornaments were better than the baked one which darkened during baking and seemed a bit crusty. The dehydrated ornament looked just like those that were air dried, so that is the one we wrapped. Next time I will put them all in the dehydrator, 8 hours in there is better than 5 days on the counter....lol

Wishing all a very Merry Christmas filled with love, laughter and joyful memories!