Gingerbread Time

Gingerbread houses are something we look forward to in our family at Christmastime...even me.  Although it can be a bit stressful.  First, even making the dough is a process.  I use this recipe (9 cups of flour per batch so you need a big bowl just to mix it).  I made two batches this year to make sure we had enough, then rolled out and baked enough pieces to make five gingerbread houses.  Then there's the assembly and decoration day.  I tried to plan it for a day when Scott would be available.  I've done it a few times on my own and it is not easy.  This year Scott was around.  It's so much easier that way!  Here's Anna working on her house.

I figured I would also need two batches of royal icing so I made one, then assembled all the houses (with Scott's help).  Then with the frosting left from that batch I let two children (John and Anna) start their house decorating.  Then we took a break to run some errands.  When we got back the frosting was firmed up.  I made a second batch and we could start decorating in earnest.  I think in the future I will assemble first and let them firm up like that before we start decorating.  It worked well.  And then I don't have five kids yelling at me at once to put their house together. 

Emma wasn't quite sure she liked decorating.  She wanted to put some candies on (and eat some) but she was distressed if she ever got frosting on her fingers.  We tried to get her to lick it off but she wasn't going for that.

She had fun in the end I think.

Anna with her nice house.

That's Grant's house on the right.  It might be Emma's on the left.

Grant had a row of cinnamon Santa's on the roof.  I think he came and ate one Santa every day.

And here are all our houses about a week later.  Little bits of candy nibbled away.

So our gingerbread houses for 2016 were a successful.  It feels like quite an accomplishment.

Anna's Play

Anna got to participate in her school play this fall.  The play was written by Anna's theater arts teacher (the same teacher who does theater arts at Matthew's school).  It was called Little Red Riding Hood Redefined or actually, "Little ReDefined."  The story is about the Little Red Riding Hood book getting mixed up with other stories.  So several other books are visited throughout including One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and Harry Potter.  There were original songs throughout.  Anna was a pirate from the book How I Became a Pirate.  She worked hard to learn her lines and enjoyed participating in the play.  Here she is after their final performance.

Anna's on the left, looking angry.

Anna was very expressive in the play.  I told her afterward that she was very "animated" and she told me two of her teachers used that exact word to describe her performance.  :)  So it must be true.

Anna pirating it up after the show.

Matthew helped Anna practice her lines and songs.  He was a very supportive brother.  Next year these two will probably be at the same school so they can possibly be in the play together.  We're glad to have theater arts in the schools!  Great job, Anna!!  ARRRGGGGHHH!!!

BONUS PHOTOS!!

John and Emma are my two at home these days.  It kind of reminds me of when I just had Matthew and Anna...except their personalities are so different.  Here are John and Emma dressing up.  I like how it looks like Darth Vader is comforting a storm trooper.

Scott had to be gone at reserve duty the week before Anna's play, so it was extra exciting when he came home on Friday.  We were all so happy to see him!!

Christmas Tree Time!

After Anna's baptism we went with the grandparents to get a Christmas tree.  We went to a local Christmas tree farm to cut our own tree.  It's the same farm we went to when we lived in Monterey ten years ago.  Wow, has it been ten years?  The trees that grow here are pines (vs. firs that grow in Oregon) so they have those long needles.

 We had a little trouble finding the perfect tree.  Here's Anna getting a ride.

Anna found many trees she loved.

Including some Charlie Brown trees.

Emma running through the trees.

Grant and John finding some tree pieces.

After an exhaustive search Scott found an acceptable tree.

Here are the kids by the tree.

The family.  Scott and I were too tall to stay in the shadows.

 Everyone takes turns cutting down the tree.

Here's Matthew having a go.

 Anna having a turn

 Emma getting ready for her turn cutting the tree

 Pa2 had to show us all how it was done.

Scott and Pa2 are the kings of tree finding.  :)

 We got our tree cut down and on the cart.

While they got the tree squared away the kids and I went on a small train ride around the farm.  Grant, John and Anna sat in the back of the train and Matthew, Emma and I were in the front.  When the man came to collect their tickets they told him to go ask the "orange mom" in the front of the train.

Here I am.  The orange mom.  I guess it was the shirt.

Matthew on the train in front of me.

Back at home Scott and Scott blow the dead needles out of the tree.

And the tree up in the house.  It's just the right size.

Scott watering our decorated tree.

I really don't like our tree topper.  We have had this one for years - I think I even had this since before Scott and I were married and I wanted to trade up for one that lights up.

So this week I finally got a new one.

The tree is decorated.  All is well.

And here's a bonus photo of our tree ten years ago in Monterey.  This one looks like it has shorter needles, but we did cut this one down at the same farm in Morgan Hill.  Mysterious!  And there is that same tree topper that I hate!  Also I see all the glass ball ornaments we used to have are long gone.  I think we broke the last of them in Colorado several years back.  Now we have sturdier plastic ones.  Unbreakable.  Merry Christmas!

Anna's Baptism

Anna was baptized this past weekend.  She turned 8 in August, just after moving to our new home.  In our new ward here they do stake baptisms once a month.  Other places we've lived they've been individual.  So there was only one opportunity per month and for various reasons we weren't able to have her baptism until December.  Here's Anna just before heading to the stake center for the baptism.

We got there about 45 minutes early and easily found the baptism clothes and got situated.

Here are our five ready to go.  Anna was excited.

Matthew and Anna.  Matthew imparted all his knowledge about being baptized to help Anna out and not feel too nervous.  Such a nice brother.

Emma was upset about something.

Both sets of grandparents were able to come for the baptism.  And I can't believe I didn't get any pictures of Anna with the grandparents!  Photography fail!  I guess I was preoccupied with other things.  All the grandparents helped to wrangle our other children during the baptism.  Including this little lady and her attitude.

Anna and Scott!

The baptism was nice.  We were told we didn't need to do anything for the program since its a stake baptism, but the weekend before I got an email saying we needed to provide a pianist, a talk, a prayer and a music conductor.  My mom played the piano, I conducted, Grandpa Guptill said the prayer and Matthew gave the talk.  Matthew did a great job on his talk too.  It was all very nice.  One other kid (a boy from another ward) was being baptized as well.  I'm so glad our parents were able to come for this special day.

After the baptism we went home and got changed then went to lunch.

I wanted a picture of the Gilroy garlic sign on the wall at the restaurant.  Superior.  :)

And look I did get a picture of Grandpa Keeler.

And here's Grant with Pa2/Grandpa Guptill.

There was some consternation at lunch about Emma's ice cream.  I think we were just trying to lick the drips and she was mad about it.   We got to see her angry face.  It was a wonderful eating out experience.  Six adults to five children keeps everyone happy.  :)  Well, almost everyone.  Emma was happy most of the time.

It was a beautiful baptism day!  Love you, Anna!

The Tech Museum

Over Thanksgiving break we went to The Tech Museum in San Jose.  I mean, it's Silicon Valley, so gotta go to The Tech Museum.  The museum had some cool exhibits and displays - a lot of great ideas but I think the execution could use a little work.  Having been to science museums all over the country I think this one needs a little work.  There was a lot of wasted space and some exhibits were only "single player" while others were overly complicated and took nearly an hour to "experience."    And other exhibits had cool technology on display with no explanation or information on what the technology was or how it worked.  A few other science museums come to mind that are better.  But it was still fun to go and we'll definitely be back.  We got to see two IMAX movies which is always fun.

The catching butterflies shadows.

You can hold still and a shadow of a butterfly will land on your hand.  

Walt Disney World has this in their Peter Pan line.  Lots of fun.

A building area.  Grant always has fun building.  He made an axle.  

John got in trouble here for waving pieces around wildly.

Here you could spell your name on the console and the robot arm would retrieve the correct blocks to spell your name.  We found a glaring bug in the system when the robot arm couldn't spell "Anna."  Not enough Ns that it knew how to get.  There were other N blocks there.  Great idea!  Fun.  Execution needs work. And a pretty easy fix to this execution problem.

Emma found something to climb in.  Can't remember what this was.

There was a cool exhibit where you could design a rollercoaster and then virtually ride it.  We didn't get a chance to do that one.

Checking out some of the 3D printers and learning a little about them.

Matthew and Anna both tried some basic computer animation software

Grant took the ninja test

Here Grant wore a noise sensor/microphone pack and tried to quietly navigate an obstacle course.  At the end they checked his stats to see how quiet and "smooth" he was.  He lost a few ninja points for stepping on the rubber chickens, but other than that did pretty well.

Playing with magnetic Tegu blocks.  This just convinced me that Tegu blocks are awesome and I wish they didn't cost so much.  :)

I am a big believer in blocks.  Build away my children.  Build away.  So we had fun.  We saw the IMAX movie about National Parks (in which I am convinced I never need to try ice climbing) and one about images of earth from the International Space Station.  My favorite thing was the earthquake simulator.  I thought the science museum in San Francisco used to have something like that.  I wonder if it moved to San Jose?  We got to experience an 8.something earthquake.  Scary!  We'll be back Tech museum.

"If everything you try works, you are not trying hard enough."

-Gordon Moore (of Moore's law/Intel fame)

I had to take a picture of that quote as we left because I also subscribe to this philosophy in life...as does probably every engineer ever.