So somewhere in there, we had my birthday and corresponding cake (chocolate with mocha buttercream inside and whipped cream frosting). Made my dad said he’d reconsider having this cake for birthdays for himself now instead of only pies!

We went to Full Moon Restaurant for dinner which is known for being a somewhat upscale food place, with room for the kids to play. So the atmosphere isn’t great but the food was pretty good, ok the apps and salad were great (nachos may be the best ever), the main course wasn’t anything special. Since they had a kids play area, of course Josie pretty much stayed seated for the entire meal. We went there because for breakfast we went to Flora restaurant and enjoyed a hearty brunch buffet. We didn’t think Josie would want to sit for another big meal that evening. Josie enjoyed major amounts of strawberries with whipped cream for breakfast and was very pleased to get to go to the fancy place that I had gone to with my girlfriends for a baby shower a few weeks earlier.

One idea I stole from another mom in the blog-o-sphere is to have a sand party in the winter! Josie loves her sand table outside but that’s not so much fun in 30 degree weather. So I made an indoor sandbox with a big bin from target and a big bag of rice from costco. It’s a great sensory activity and the mess wasn’t too bad when I kept the sheet under it by holding it down with chairs. Makes me vacuum which I generally always need to do anyway. She played for almost two hours straight which is a very very long time for Josie to do anything.

What’s a beach without digging your toes in the sand? It feels really good.

Another fun activity we did this year with Jordi’s side of the family while visiting was make some ornaments for our Christmas tree. We picked up some air drying clay from the art store and rolled it out and cut it out with cookie cutters into fun shapes. Pipita is an accomplished artist in this area so she helped us and Josie learn how to work with the clay and showed off her exemplary skills. Josie was hard to convince to put the string hole at the top of, not directly in the middle of all the ornaments.

The next day when they were dry, we painted them. We traded in and out for places at the table and Celia got some good holding time with various people.

All together we had a nice visit and spent a lot of time eating!

Seeing as I also like to talk about what I cook on this blog, seems I can’t let it go without mentioning our Thanksgiving food. We started the day off with a high calorie bang as I made some cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting. I had made them the previous week and frozen them. I think they came out well that morning, and promptly ate too many of them. I did manage to give at least one pan away to our neighbors Christina, Zach, Ethan and Chanh, but that was all I could bear to separate from. We had another two pans for Christmas but they didn’t come out as well, don’t know if I gave them enough time to rise that time.

We spent the morning cooking a few more things and then Pipita made us arepas for lunch. She let Josie help which was very gracious of her considering Josie just tries to eat the raw dough (ick).

Then we went home and got Josie and the rest of us a nap before coming back to eat the feast!

We had green beans with almonds, rolls, sweet potato casserole, carrot souffle, stuffing (meat and not), salad, turkey and veggie and turkey gravy. Plus I had made spinach dip for snacking on before dinner, not that we needed it. Yes that cranberry sauce is directly out of the can, I think it’s hilarious that it is can-shaped and insist that we leave it that way on the plate, sue me. I tried making my own one year and it was just terrible and there was TONS of it, so I haven’t bothered again. The new recipes this year were the sweet potato casserole and spinach dip. The spinach dip was pretty basic ho-hum recipe, cheese, artichokes, cream spinach and more cheese. The sweet potato we left the rather gratuitous cup of sugar in the potatoes out, leaving only the one on top plus the marshmallows and it was fantastic. This will be a definite addition to our table moving forward.

We ended the night with pumpkin and pecan pie with whipped cream, but didn’t make much progress on either, see above list of food for the entire day to explain why. With me nursing the girls I generally find I can’t ever eat enough to get stuffed, that was not true on this day with the whole day of rich options! There was wine and pina-coladas (?) for those who wanted to imbibe and it was a mighty feast indeed.

Just to back pedal a bit, this Thanksgiving we were lucky enough to be visited by Jordi’s mom, dad, sister and paternal grandmother since well we uh just had a baby and weren’t up for making the trip to Florida just yet. We did a big thanksgiving dinner and had fun Fall outdoor playtime (froze the southerners in the process).

Josie made special Thanksgiving place setting decorations. We saved a bunch of paper towel and toilet paper rolls and she painted each one. Then we glued ‘feathers’ onto them to make it look like native american headdresses. I don’t think Josie caught what they were supposed to be, but she enjoyed the process. Jordi enjoyed collecting the paper recyclables as it always seems like we should be able to do something crafty with them.

Happy (very) belated Thanksgiving!

We did an early Christmas at our house because we don’t have room to fit all the gifts and such on the road trip to my aunt’s house. Here’s Josie that morning when she came out.