Here is our picture a day video for 2020...and what a year it has been.
Saturday, January 30, 2021
Picture a Day 2019
This is my picture a day video for 2019. I made the video last January, but never posted it.
Saturday, January 23, 2021
Christmas!
Ah, coronavirus times. I feel like I have both too much to do and too little. In any case I haven't seemed to have as much time to update the blog. So I am quite behind. We had a nice Christmas this year. Here are a few pictures form our holidays.
Just before Christmas break we got new countertops in our kitchen. Here is the before picture. The island was a big slab of brownish granite and the outer countertops were granite tile.
And here is after. White quartz and white tile backsplash
It looks lighter now
Still trying to figure out how to change that wine rack for a regular cabinet. It can hold our Martinelli's in the mean time.
We made a bunch of treats
Jello popcorn balls was one treat we tried
New stockings
Our tree
Our advent candle
Our tree star had some issues this year. It stopped working regularly when our tree fell down soon after we decorated it. I eventually had to replace the entire light string inside and now it's good again. Hope it can last a few more years.
Christmas Eve dinner. The past few years we have done a big cheese/crackers/fruit/veggie plate with spinach artichoke dip for our Christmas Eve dinner. We started doing this because I wanted something easy since Moms are usually busy on the days leading up to Christmas, but now its gotten a bit more involved and not that easy since I make the spinach artichoke dip from scratch. But its good and Scott helps me. It's a nice tradition now.
We read the nativity story from the Bible and the kids help act it out each year on Christmas Eve. We have a little program with songs interspersed and its nice. Emma is the angel, Grant is a shepherd, Anna is Mary, John is Jospeh and Matthew is a wise man.
The kids with their special pajama pants from Ma2!
And Christmas morning. I made cinnamon rolls the night before and they rise in the fridge overnight. Then we bake them and German pancakes on Christmas morning. We also have fruit salad with 7up, a Guptill family tradition. It's quite the feast. We eat first and then open presents but the kids are allowed to go through their stockings before breakfast.
Ready for presents!
Their was a present opening frenzy!
Later on Christmas Day
The kids playing video games
Emma working on a gem craft she got from my brother
John was proud of his Lego creations
Matthew and Grant both had fun with Nintendo Labo creations
more Labo
And each kid got a bike this year...except Matthew
Everyone had outgrown their bikes and we got rid of most of them in Utah. Matthew already had a bike that was the right size and he got a skateboard.
Grant's bike is a little too big for him to start on. Maybe he can grow a few inches here quickly
Emma with her new training wheels bike
John is still learning to ride without training wheels and its been a little rough. We ended up putting training wheels back on so he can get comfortable on this new, bigger bike.
We're working on it.
Merry Christmas everyone!!
Saturday, December 19, 2020
Gingerbread Houses
We made gingerbread houses again this year. This is a fun tradition, but it can be a lot of work. I usually make the house pieces a day or two ahead of time and collect the candy over time. Many years I remember doing this while Scott is either sick or out of town which makes it seem even harder. This year on the day I was gearing up to assemble the gingerbread houses Scott was taken down with a migraine. Poor Scott. So the kids and I worked on these while Scott rested. I made the first batch of royal icing and assembled all the houses (structural assembly) and then started the decorating with the two youngest while the older kids finished up their activities. Here are John and Emma decorating.
I was surprised that Emma liked the gingerbread cookies so much. She is a picky eater and refuses to eat things as mild as plain pasta or white rice. But she loved the gingerbread cookies we made. We made lots of little gingerbread people with the extra dough. Emma ate a bunch of them, even with no frosting. I like gingerbread too, but its not for everyone. Here's Emma working on her house some more.
John making good decorating progress
After helping the younger two kids and running out of the first batch of royal icing I thought maybe we should be done for the day and I could work with older three kids the next day. Grant talked me in to making more icing. He didn't want to wait. I whipped up more frosting, per his earnest request, and the older three kids worked on their houses. Matthew said he is still interested in decorating a gingerbread house, in spite of being almost 14. His school even had a gingerbread house decorating contest in which you can take pictures of your house at home. I don't think the middle schoolers participated in their school contest, but I'm glad the older kids still had fun with this.
Our finished houses. It seemed that many of us did a rush job this year. I'm considering making smaller ones next year. Less dough to make, and you probably get just as much fun out of decorating something a little smaller. We will see.
Christmas Trees
and other December adventures
Earlier in the month we went to get a Christmas tree at a Christmas tree farm. Apparently there are several tree farms right in our little town, but we drove down to Oregon to get a tree with Scott's parents and his brother's family. We haven't been getting together much because of COVID - we're trying to really limit our interactions with people - so it was nice to see family outdoors in the fresh air. All the kids found trees they liked.
Matthew found a good one
Emma was a pretty good tree finder too
Here she is showing her perfect tree to her cousin, Ben.
She did a good job, maybe she will pick our tree another year
We found our tree!! It's a Guptill family tradition to sing "Oh Christmas Tree," sometimes with creative lyrics, around the tree once you find it. I would like to learn the lyrics in German for next year.
We eventually got it cut and carried it out
I didn't carry it at the farm, but later at the house I did. It was heavy.
The tree took up lots of space in our home. It was pretty full at the bottom and our living room is kind of small. But it will work. We decided the best place for the tree was in this corner, which kind of blocks the doors to the office, but we left enough room that you can still open the doors and get in there. Here we are working on decorating the tree. Finding all the Christmas decor post-move was a bit of a trick but I think we found everything...eventually. I wanted to buy new Christmas stockings this year, so you can see we have some on the mantle, but not all. I ordered them online and they came a few at a time. They have all arrived now so I'll get a better picture soon.
We started this tradition recently where each kid gets to pick a new ornament each year - my thinking being they can take those special ornaments with them when they move out. Many of the special ornaments they have chosen have been breakable (I try to choose non-breakable ornaments myself because of kids and moving a lot). Over the few years we've been doing this lots of their special ornaments have broken. And I couldn't find any of John's after our move. Eventually I found his special ornaments and he immediately broke one. :(. Oh well.
It was John's year to put the star on the tree. Next year will be Emma and she is very eager to do it. John did not feel comfortable or safe being lifted. Can you see the tension in his body?
He got the star on and Scott safely lifted him up and down but John was nervous about it.
And we got the tree all decorated!
We changed this ornament to have the star on Washington. We got it when we lived in Gilroy, then moved the star to Utah. Now Washington. About an hour after decorating stopped, our tree completely tipped over, spilling water from the tree stand all over the floor and breaking many ornaments. Luckily no kids were around so no one was hurt, but it made a huge mess of water and broken ornaments all over the wood floor. The lit up tree star also broke - or stopped lighting up consistently. I have been working on fixing it. The base of the tree had been a little off center in the stand and wasn't as stable as it could have been. I think it wiggled a little looser while we were moving it for decorating and then it tipped. So we recentered it in the stand and it seems much better now. Hopefully no more tree catastrophes.
Scottt and I replaced the fuses in the plug for the tree star - which was much trickier than I expected. They are so tiny! I replaced a burned out bulb, which did get it to work again for a time.
Resuscitated! It still will randomly go out and I'm not sure what's causing it. I bought a new small string of lights and my next step will be to try and replace the whole light string in there. It's limping along for now.
We got an advent candle and have been burning a little bit each night.
Some nights we have forgotten and had to burn more the next night.
The kids hate it when we forget.
One night we went to the Portland Zoo to do their drive through zoo lights. Normally you can walk around the zoo to see the lights, but this COVID year you get to drive through, which was also fun and possibly cheaper for our family.
A light snake at the zoo
Another night we went to an event in downtown Camas. Several of the shops in downtown were handing out individually wrapped cookies. We walked around to the shops and bought a few things here or there to patronize the small businesses there. Its was nice.
We found a few favorite places already including a bakery, where we got these tasty cupcakes, a soap shop and cafe with tasty hot cocoa. They also have a fun shop that sells shirt and things with our local high school mascot on them. We got a few things there for Matthew and Anna who will both be at that high school soon! Here are a few non-Christmas pics.
This is dumb, but I wanted to take a picture of this moment. This is the first time ever that we have finished a pan of enchiladas at dinner. I make enchiladas every so often and usually make a full 9x13 pan of them (vs. a smaller pan) even though they never get eaten. Sometimes we finish only 1/3 of a pan. Tonight we finished the entire pan! And I only had one enchilada. This is my current favorite enchilada recipe. I've tried a lot of different ones over the years but have had trouble finding a favorite, but after making this many times, I think the search is over and will probably put it on my food blog next time I make it. I have to get a picture before it gets eaten though.
Scott will eat just about anything I make, even if its not that good. So he's a reliable eater of enchiladas - these ones were good btw. But today Matthew, Anna and Grant all had some of the enchiladas!! It was amazing. Very gradually my kids have been eating more of what I cook. Anna is a pretty adventurous eater - she eats lots of things - she will eat sushi, loves hummus and is open to trying new things in general. Grant has been trying a lot more things lately and he is always the most likely kid to eat a vegetable. Matthew used to be more open to eating things but has been picky in the past few years. Now he's older so can be reasoned into trying things, which he does from time to time, and is often surprised that he likes them. Some of his current favorites are gyros and Indian butter chicken, which he nervously tried the first time. So its silly but it was an exciting moment for me when the dish of enchiladas got devoured. Hooray!
Also in eating news, this is a pot of Mississippi Roast getting ready to be cooked. We had this a week or so ago. This dish, which everyone likes, has become the center of a migraine controversy in our house. We think this dish caused several migraines in our house and this was even after I cut way back on the MSG content. Scott and Anna both got migraines after having this for dinner. Both have been feeling not quite 100% after their respective migraines. Scott has seen the doctor about his migraines. Anna hasn't yet, but she has had two recent episodes, both after eating things with high amounts of MSG that she doesn't normally eat (that's our current best guess for what seems to trigger them for both). So, time to go to the doctor for her too. I am working on revamping this recipe to make it migraine safe. The original recipe has a packet of au jus seasoning and a packet of ranch dressing. I replaced the au jus seasoninig with non-MSG substitutes because au jus seasoning packets has been a problem for Scott in the past, but even the ranch dressing mix, which has MSG too, seemed to be problematic. I'm making my best guesses at what the causes are. So either I replace a good ranch dressing mix with no MSG or we don't make this anymore. Trying to be smarter than the migraines. Scott was pretty wiped out for a week or so after and Anna complained of feeling nauseous and having headaches the following week. Not fun!
We got another frame from Ikea for our US poster. I've had this for several years and we finally hung it up. The world map we hung this past summer in Utah. We've already been using the maps a bunch.
Matthew helped me arrange things on this entry table in an aesthetically pleasing way.
Still a pile of mail sitting there, but it looked nice.
And here is John waiting for Emma at the bus stop with me. Emma goes to kindergarten two days a week and I had her start riding the bus. Since I have other kids at home to get on to school work, taking her to school and picking her up was getting to be a problem. And we are on the bus route, so I decided we would try it and arranged for her to ride the bus. Then I started feeling really nervous about putting my kindergartener on the bus. It turned out fine. Emma is excited to ride the bus, the bus driver is nice and Emma has her own little seat she is supposed to sit at each day. Rumor has it that the elementary and middle school kids may be going back to school in some hybrid form in January or February so we are waiting to hear more about that. When that happens all kids will ride the bus. But for now just Emma and it makes it easier for me to help the other kids with their school each morning and afternoon. More adventures to come.
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