Decorating Time

Now that we've shifted gears into Christmas mode, it's time to drag all those decorations out of the attic and get the house in the Christmas spirit.

On Saturday while the boys cooked and the kids took naps, Anna and I tackled the front yard. We found that it takes less time when the two of us just do what we want instead of asking the boys for help. It's just a sister thing that you automatically know what the other is thinking or when the other is going to fall off of the ladder (nice catch Anna...I still appreciate that!) or how we will next try to solve a problem. It's fun, and efficient, to have a person like that around. The front yard turned out pretty good too!



After all the family left on Sunday, the boys helped put up the Christmas tree in the living room.

Isaac was adamant that he would be putting the star on top of the tree.


He meticulously decorated and fell right into the routine putting ornaments where he remembered them being last year! 

 

Lucas was a little less help. All of the round ornaments that look like balls were put out of my little baseball players reach!

He sure is excited about having a pretty tree in the living room!!

 

My favorite part of the tree are the name ornaments that we have from Bronner's Christmas Store.

Our tree growing up always had our name ornaments and it was a tradition that I have continued with our Christmas tree. Some of you will laugh at this, but if you watch Days of Our Lives (yes, I've watched this soap opera religiously for as long as I can remember...one of my few girly traits!) they have a  name ornament tree that they decorate on Christmas Eve every year. It's funny, but I kind of feel like they copied our tradition!

In any case, our decorations are complete and we are ready to celebrate what I hope will be a magical Christmas Season!

Respect the Turkey

The city of Raleigh drives me nuts in that they always have their big Christmas Parade the weekend before Thanksgiving. We've already established that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, so you can see why this might annoy me a little. So while this blog is out of order in sequence of true event dates, it's in the right place in my book!

Last year we attended the parade with the Chesney's as Charlotte's first major event. We decided it should be an annual tradition, so we met them at the parade route again this year! I am just crazy enough to get up at the crack of dawn and go down hours ahead of the others to save the best parade seats available. I mean if you're going to go to do something you might as well do it right!

Aunt RaRa and Aunt Cindy changed their plans at the last minute and were able to join us as well. Here's the whole crowd in our awesome parade seats!


Isaac enjoyed eating all the candy while his brother wasn't looking!

Lucas spent a lot of the parade either yelling "1,2,3,4" at the bands or "merry christmas" at the people and the floats.

Charlotte was content with her sock mittens and really just wanted to join right in on the walk down the street!

I really do love our new tradition despite the fact that it's before Thanksgiving. It's a great way to kick off the holiday season with some of our friends!

3rd Annual Iron Turkey

On the Friday and Saturday following Thanksgiving, my kitchen is turned into the setting of the Slivensky/Raynor/Blevins version of Iron Chef America...what we call Iron Turkey. It's boys versus girls in the quest to make the most impressive and great tasting dinner. This year, in addition to the must have gong, we now have an official Iron Turkey trophy!



The rules to Iron Turkey are simple:
1) Three must use ingredients are drawn by the kids weeks in advance of the competition. A meat, a side, and a dessert item.
2) Those three ingredients must be used in recipes that the team has never made before.
3) The team not cooking takes care of the kids for the day.

Going into the 2012 competition, the score was tied 1-1 from previous years.
You can recap those competitions here:

2010- Girls’ Night  (click HERE); Boys’ Night (click HERE)

2011- Girls Night (click HERE); Boys Night (clickHERE))

The ladies' team:

Our must use ingredients were chicken & potatoes (main course & appetizer), and fruit (dessert)

The resulting menu:  

Appetizers: Chicken and Potato Florentine Soup, Bleu Cheese Stuffed Dates, and Potato Parsnip Pancakes 

Main Course: Pistachio Crusted Chicken, Scalloped Sweet Potato Stacks, and Green Bean Bundles.

Dessert: Chocolate Orbit Cake with Mixed Berry-Cassis Sauce.

Yes people, this is an actual picture that I took of our dessert. Nothing like a good fire to spice up dessert! It's amazing what you can come up with on Pinterest!
 

The boys' team: 

They beat us out in presentation that is for certain.

They even brought out their own chef Charles, complete with some crazy accent! (And people wonder why my sister and I act completely nuts?)


Their must use ingredient were beef & broccoli (main course/appetizer) and ice cream (dessert) 
The resulting menu:
Appetizer: bleu cheese salad and meatballs with a homemade marinara. (recipe HERE) 
Main course: broccoli topped Portobello mushrooms, stuffed peppers, and broccoli cheddar cornbread (recipe HERE).
Dessert: a salted caramel custard ice cream with homemade cookies

The girls were crowned 
2012 Iron Turkey Champions!

 

We have officially decided that between the boys presentation and serving techniques and the girls menu selections, we would make an entertaining catering team! 

A special thanks to Patti Stamp for being this year's Iron Turkey judge.

Got suggestions on how to improve our competition? Comment or send us an email. We're already planning for next year!!

Thanksgiving 2012

I LOVE Thanksgiving. To me, it is absolutely the best holiday of the entire year. The crisp fall air, the amazing food, and then add in that I get to spend it with my amazing family...it all makes for something I look forward to every year!

With Oma out of commission due to her thumb injury, Aunta and I got the opportunity to show off all the cooking skills that she's taught us over the years!



Opa completing his annual task of carving up the turkey!
 

Our special project for the kids, although I think the adults enjoyed it too. Aunta liked it so much that she ate the chocolate chip eyes that I had superglued on. Nothing like a little superglue to round out a Thanksgiving Day meal!

 

The boys kept Uncle Mark busy fishing for penguins.


The tryptophan kicked in quickly on the little man!


Black Friday shopping is always entertaining. We usually go out just to see what people are doing and how crazy they act. This year, midnight at Walmart, we purchased chicken breasts for the next day's meal!



The Thanksgiving fun poured over into the weekend. We took the little ones to decorate tiles for Oma's kitchen that would match the ones the big ones did 2010. Lucas was a good little artist!

 

There was time for cruising around the backyard. When I see the kids in this Jeep, I swear it's like a flash forward to when they're 16. I'm sure Audrey will be hanging out the front of the Jeep then too!

Nothing like sliding into a giant pile of leaves!

There's always time for a special donut breakfast. I'm pretty sure he enjoyed his!

Our annual t-shirt craft...which is also Isaac's annual meltdown to start the Christmas holiday season. You would have thought I'd told him to take his feet off and use them to stamp his shirt! But they turned out great any way!

 

The four best kids on the planet....the best of friends and the best of times.

 I couldn't be more thankful for my family and friends. I am so blessed to be surrounded by the most amazing people in the world....and that's every day, not just on Thanksgiving!

A Little Nervous

Isaac has had an eventful few days. It started with the unexpected on Friday and has hopefully ended with the scheduled today.

We’ll start with the unexpected which occurred Friday just after lunch. While tossing a ball in the living room, Isaac hit his head on the slate coffee table. (We had a great 4.5 year run going with this so far from baby proof table.) I heard him hit his head and waited…within a few seconds came the dreaded delayed scream followed by the handfuls of blood. Our neighbor, Lynn, saved the day by staying with Lucas while I took Isaac to get checked out at the pediatrician. All was good until the doctor wanted to look at his cut…that’s when he “got nervous” (his words not mine) and turned into a wet noodle that couldn’t sit on exam table without sliding off onto the floor. I literally had to lay on him on the table and hold his arms while he screamed hysterically that he didn’t want anyone to touch his face. As soon as the doctor finished gluing him back together, he was back to my confident little man.

He hasn’t complained about it once, but now 3 days later it looks its worst, all bruised up!

On the way home on Friday, we discussed how Isaac could not scream like that at his scheduled appointment on Monday morning to get his tubes back in and his adenoids out, as it would frighten all the other children. So this morning, we took things slow. I gradually got him to sit in the bed by drawing pictures with the markers the nurse gave us to decorate his sheet (great idea to distract kids at the hospital, but not so great when they ask where their sheet markers are when you get home!).

He drank his medicine down with no problem and as it’s supposed to it started to make him sleepy. But then came putting on the hospital gown and he wasn’t having it. I warned the nurse he was about to get hysterical (which he did) and forced the gown on him. It took putting his arms in 3 times before I actually got it tied tight enough where he couldn’t get out of it any more. Then, as loopy as he was from the medicine I watched 3 nurses try to keep him from jumping out of the bed on the walk down the hall all while he’s screaming “I don’t want tubes. I want my pajamas! I want my Mommy!” Talk about a rough few minutes for a mom, but in all fairness I was hysterical like that when I was a kid and we all know that payback can be hell sometimes! Forty-five minutes later we were in recovery waiting for the anesthesia to wear off (another pleasant experience) and then on our way home. He was in and out on the ride home, but at one point informed me of the following:

Isaac – “Mommy, I have a plan”

Me – “What’s your plan buddy?”

Isaac – “When we get home, I’m going to clean up the toys in my room”…[long pause, I’m thinking great!]…”and you’re going to give me money!”

Then he was back asleep. We spent the remainder of the day spoiling him rotten with tv, ice cream, and his favorite dinner. He’s back to normal now and will hopefully be feeling and hearing better shortly. He informed his daddy at dinner that he “got a little nervous” at the hospital. I’d really hate to see his definition of hysterical if all that was “nervous”!

Hopefully this brings to an end our couple days of excitement and doctor visits. I’m not sure Mommy is up for much more this week!!