Ginger Bread Houses!

This has become one of our new yearly traditions. We go over to our friends house put together a gingerbread house and decorate them! Craig is usually the one does the putting together, I decorate, and Lucas eats the candy....a lot of candy! It is a lot of fun. Our friend Spencer spent most of the time unwrapping the candy, while our kids kept eating it. It was quite awhile before he realized he was not getting anywhere with unwrapping the candy! I think our house looked pretty good and festive. I look forward to next year when Lucas can help decorate.

Thanksgiving!

On our way home from the Thanksgiving parade, we stopped at Cracker Barrel and had their special Thanksgiving meal! I thought it was pretty yummy. It was nice not to have to cook a really big meal, and then have only three people eat it. Later that evening, at home, we had our friends over for pie, we had eight different kinds of pies, to split between the four of us and three small kids! Plenty of pie! It was a very unique but memorable Thanksgiving!

The Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade!

If you are re-reading that title to making sure you read it right, you did. After much convincing and debating we went to The Thanksgiving parade. Despite some of you (you know who you are) thinking we were crazy (and granted we probably were a little crazy), we went! We thought if you can't spend Thanksgiving with your family, why not spend it with five million of your closest friends! After getting the 411 on the parade, parking, where to stand, drive and such, we developed a plan and did it! So here is the nitty gritty on how we survived the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We headed to New York the day before the parade and stayed the night in a hotel outside of New York City. We then were up, ready, and driving into New York a little after 5 am. We parked several blocks away from the parade route and walked from there. We found a front row spot on the corner of 66th Street and Central Park West. We hunkered down to wait for about 3 - 3 1/2 hours till the parade started. At first Lucas was able to wander around, but as it got closer to parade time more and more people gathered around us. By the time the parade started I felt a sardine packed in a can! From the beginning, Lucas was a concern; would he enjoy the parade? could we keep him entertained for several hours in a small confined spot? He exceeded all my expectations, and did really great! He was entertained by all the people and everything that was going on! He also did some of the entertaining himself: the police that were around got a kick out of him. They came over a couple of times, to talk to him, and at one point one of them put his hat on Lucas and said 'here, have your parents take a picture'! We did and it is one of the cutest pictures we have! Lucas did have one problem. Several minutes before the parade was to start Lucas decided to fill his drawers, and fill them he did!!! We were packed in and not going anywhere!!! So when we had to change Lucas' pants, he bared all, literally, in front of New York City and the police. It was hassle. We had to take of his snow suit and change him, plus I was trying to hurry because I didn't want him to get cold.

If I had to say one bad thing about our experience I would say it was the cold, but it could have been worse considering it was the end of November. On the plus side it wasn't snowing or raining. Next time, not that we will ever do it again, I would haul a blanket in, it would have been worth the effort.

The parade lasted about an 1-1 1/2 and it was really neat, the floats were put together really well, the bands were very entertaining, and the balloons! Let me tell you about the balloons: watching them on television doesn't even come close to actually seeing them. They are huge, massive, and it pretty cool to see! Lucas really seemed to enjoy the parade, though at times he was more interested in the handfuls of confetti that the people threw at us as they passed. And when I say handfuls, I am not overstating how much confetti came our way, we were covered in confetti. It is March and I am still finding confetti from the parade! All in all things went well and I left feeling like it was worth it!

Making Pies and Traditions!

For those of you who know me know that I am all about traditions, especially traditions that revolve around food! As such, Lucas and I had to make pies for Thanksgiving. I remember when I was growing up my Grandma Dot made the best homemade pies, crust and all! If we happened to be around when she was making one of her pies, she would take the extra pieces of crust sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar and bake them. These extra treats were very yummy! While making my pies this Thanksgiving I had some left over pie dough, so in remembrance of my Grandma, her yummy pies, and a childhood memory, I made Lucas some cinnamon sugar pie crust treats! He loved them and so did Craig!

Turkey Cookies

Seeing as Katie is letting me write some of these blog posts, I feel that I should issue the following warning: The opinions, circumstances and details expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Katie (or the actual truth, for that matter).

Contrary to what you may be thinking based on the title, we did not make cookies out of turkey. Though that may have been easier than what we actually did. Katie has a knack at picking out the most difficult recipes/activities for us to try. This episode of "Frustrate Craig through Cooking" dealt with making frosted cookies that look like turkeys (see Figure 1, although I think we needed to take the picture from a more over-head view to really see what it is).

The cookies, the frosting, and most of the decorating wasn't that bad. The infuriating part was making the legs for the turkeys. This required the precision cutting of pretzels to form something that looked like a leg and feet. I don't know if we picked a bad bag/brand/style/whatever of pretzels, but I cut ~80 pretzels (breaking most of them) to get about 14 usable turkey feet. Needless to say, Craig was not a big pretzel fan by then end (see Figure 2). (Not a very intimidating picture. Note to self, use bigger knife for next deranged serial killer picture.)


Not all of us were unhappy with the turkey cookie making, Lucas benefited and really enjoyed himself!

Christmas at the Mall

Craig here finally doing my dues on the blog. I've been busy the last year or so with my candidacy exam, but now that I've passed and it is behind my, I'm helping Katie catch up with the blog.

Our local mall (the amazing Nittany Mall, don't blink or you might miss it) had its Christmas kick-off the weekend before Thanksgiving. They had fun and games for kids and promises of Santa Claus showing up. We decided to take Lucas and get out of the house. The best part of the whole experience was the fact that Lucas was more interested in the guy dressed up as a Nutcracker than Santa Claus and the reindeer hat the Christmas Magician made for Lucas.

Art Museum

For playgroup Lucas and I went to the Art Museum on Campus. It was interesting and something different to do. The lady that gave us our tour was really good with the kids and making it kid friendly. She even brought a special friend to assist her on the tour, it was an ostrich hand puppet. It was fun to take Lucas to the art museum, which is something I would not normally do. Lucas did pretty well, considering he stayed in his stroller the entire time, due to the fact I did not want to find out what kind of mischief Lucas could get himself into.