The kids slept in ’til 8am, it was a Christmas miracle :) When Cassidy woke up and saw the tree she exclaimed “Oooh, presents!” We had a low key morning at home together (we’re headed out to visit family this weekend). One of my favorite moments was when Ben opened a gift of birdseed and peanut butter and said “Oh thank you I always wanted one of these!” Haha, he was super sweet, thanking us for all his gifts. He’s been wanting to make a bird feeder with pinecones he collected and now we have the peanut butter and birdseed to do it!
Andy and Ben received a little fossil dig set to do together.
The pirate princess!
Putting together some new Legos.
Their “big” gift this year was my Legos from when I was a kid. Thankfully my mom saved them and I was able to split them with my brother, giving us each a huge stash. The kids were so excited to dig through and find a bunch of new pieces.
The force is strong with this one. Awesome craigslist find for Ben *cough* mommy *cough*
Butterfly wings!
Dinosaurs and princesses!
Waffles or cashews?
The aftermath!
Cinnamon rolls, a Christmas tradition.
Merry Christmas!
A little tug on my sanity, but we did it! It actually wasn’t as messy as I thought it’d be and they had fun :)
We decorated for Christmas the weekend after Thanksgiving. The kids had fun helping with the tree and setting up a new to us train underneath it. Thankfully we didn’t need to gate the tree off this year, they’re both a little older and can admire without carnage. I finally have a spot for my nativity scene this year too. The kids even have their own Little People nativity set (even if pieces usually end up all over the house).
I smiled and said “You’re right Ben” and then told him about magnetism. Later that day he was showing Cassidy everything that stuck to his magnets and said in the most matter of fact voice “Now this is called magnetism Cassidy.”
Last year I shared a little bit about the deer harvesting process and my thoughts on it. This year, the kids are actually old enough to notice and comment on the deer hanging in the garage. We’ve just explained that daddy hunts for deer so we have food to eat, simple as that. I’m not sure if they’ll want to hunt when they’re older but we’d at least like to teach them respect for the animal in life as well as in death.
The one night Ben asked if he could go outside and help Andy in the garage. He’s the “soft” one, always loving on the kitties and saying how cute and fuzzy other animals are. So I was really surprised when he asked but we figured, hey why not?
Ben being silly when I asked what he thought. Honestly I don’t really think he cared too much about the deer and just liked hanging out with his dad. He told me he liked sitting on the lawn mower and that’s about all I got out of him.
Admittedly, deer legs on my kitchen table are not my favorite part of the process. Andy does do a really nice job of cleaning up the meat, getting rid of fat and trimming off the silver skin (thin layer covering all the muscles). If you were to take your deer someplace else to get processed they definitely don’t do as thorough work. Deer processing places also just lump your meat together with everything else they received that day when making ground venison too, so you’re not even getting back “your” deer.
Some of the meat will get cut up into steaks and chunks for grilling. The rest gets ground up for sausages, burgers, and plain old ground venison that we’ll used for everything from tacos to hamburger helper. In all honesty we do prefer the taste of beef over venison, but the venison is SO healthy for you and it’s “free” if you process it yourself (minus the cost of the hunting license). The deer lived a good life outside, not eating junk and not getting injected with anything. Venison is also incredibly lean and high in iron. Actually it’s so lean that you need to add a little oil to the pan when working with it since there’s so little fat.
The backstraps are the best cut! We marinate them for up to 24 hours and then Andy grills them up, sooooo good!
We spent a few days at Andy’s parents’ house for Thanksgiving this year. My mom, Paul and Gabby joined us for dinner and Kate popped over with Brielle for a little bit that afternoon. It was such a nice time spent with family. Dinner and desserts were pretty amazing too :)
Anyone want some leftovers? :)
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We really lucked out and had beautiful WARM weather (50s and 60s) over the holiday this year. We took the kids to the park to run some extra energy off. Minus a giant meltdown from Ben, it was a fun adventure and good to be outside at the end of November.
We also spent some time just chilling and watching movies together. Andy and his dad set up their Christmas tree too and the kids were super excited to see it when they got up from nap. Speaking of naps, I was telling my mom that Cassidy still stayed in her crib and had never climbed out of the pack n play and we were super lucky. Wouldn’t you know 5 minutes after having that conversation we heard a “thud” and “scurry, scurry, scurry” from upstairs. She climbed out of her pack n play for the first time and was wandering around the bedroom upstairs!
We headed home Friday night and as I was unpacking all our stuff, Andy was packing all his gear for another hunting weekend. Saturday morning I picked up an international student from our church and headed to Victor’s Christmas in the Village. Sylvia is from Uganda and had actually spent Thanksgiving with another family in our church, but it was fun to show her some of our holiday festivities with the kids. We did a cute story and activity time at the library and walked around the village for a bit. It started to rain so we didn’t do the wagon ride or some of the other events, but went out to lunch and had a nice afternoon. I didn’t get any pictures because it was hard enough keeping track of the kids and they weren’t being terribly cooperative, but it was still a pretty fun outing. I enjoyed getting to know Sylvia a bit more too, definitely neat meeting people with different cultural backgrounds and life experiences :)
