Santa Lucia

     We delayed Santa Lucia by a day as well. Why yes, a pattern is emerging... But I digress. Charles was up early, so he helped me set up. I had to reattach a few candles. I'm afraid Lizzy is outgrowing the gown.

As usual, Lizzy enjoyed rousting her victims.

    They were less enthusiastic, but came down for the meal anyway. I didn't have much energy, so I only made the saffron buns and almond cake. The buns were so good!

After church, Charles donned his Star Boy hat and began racing around the house.

I could not catch him with a photo.

Luckily, I took a video!

Trevlig Lucia, or Glad Lucia!

Birthdays

     Devon and I share our birthday month with Jane Austen. For my birthday I took Teddy out to a new Mexican restaurant for lunch and discovered that he had never seen a ketchup packet before. He is a wonderful lunch date, he keeps asking when we will return.

    Daniel got me some beautiful flowers. This year, I had planned to do a mock blacktie mousse cake, but I was sick and didn't feel up to it. Instead, I made a strawberry shortcake as it is much easier to make. We ate it while watching The Muppets Christmas Carol. 

    Devon asked for a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream. He also wanted to go to The Olive Garden for dinner. So that's what we did.

    I can't understand how I have such children; they all declared themselves stuffed and had no room for dessert at all! Such lightweights! We had to wait for the following day to eat cake. I consoled myself in the meantime by celebrating Jane Austen's 250th birthday with the other members of the Jane Austen Society at the Wandering Vine, which is inside a castle! Daniel took me there for our anniversary. They do Teas now. So we had a lovely tea with an interesting presentation by Dr. Angela Rabin about Christmas Puddings. 

We each got a tea service with this fun timer for the perfect cup. I had peppermint.

A very blurry selfie. You are welcome.

    Everything was delicious; our only complaint was a lack of butter or cream for the scones. They were a savory, pepper scone, but a little butter would not go amiss.

It was wonderful and I do hope it will become a tradition. Finally to Devon's cake!

    He loves this blanket my parents got him. He declared it gives him the power to turn anyone thirteen just by covering them with it! He has been a complete menace, trapping unsuspecting victims and aging them accordingly. 

   Happy birthday Devon!

Return of the Wrestler

     The Wrestling season has officially started, and Lizzy is taking no prisoners. Her first duel was against Liberty. She pinned her opponent. The girls did really well, but the varsity boys didn't get a single win. It was hard to watch. The girls again did well against Park Hill. Lizzy pinned her opponent, but our other girls had some issues. One girl broke her toe, one collapsed, turns out she has a heart condition she didn't know about. We're waiting to hear from her cardiologist if she will be out for the season.

    In her second duel, she wasn't really feeling well, and she didn't want to perform. She won, but it was hard to watch. She didn't pin, but did get enough points to win. A review from Missouri Wrestling put it this way: "The Blue Springs girls wrestling team was awarded 24 points on open spots from Grain Valley and won four of six contest matches to cruise to a 45-24 victory. 

Senior Ari Batholomew (155), a returning state qualifier, controlled her match from start to finish against freshman Brooklyn Koepkey to take a 7-0 decision." Which is putting it quite diplomatically, I feel.

    Next came the Lady Pirates tournament in Belton, where she took third in the 155 division. Winning her coveted block of wood! 

    At the Staley duel, she won in a few seconds. We are excited to see where the rest of the season takes her!

First Snow

The day after it snowed. So we had an extended break, which was nice since most of us had a cold.  

    After freezing a bit, the kids came back to enjoy some cocoa, and Teddy had a Tim Tam on a lemon poppyseed muffin. 

So Thankful

     We planned for a laid-back Thanksgiving this year. Nothing too fancy, we hadn't heard anything from our close relatives, so we weren't sure what we would do, per se. I put out feelers about 2 weeks before and found out that the Blacks were going away for it. Later, we heard that some of the Milsaps might be coming.

     We had a final count a few days before. So we went to work.  Daniel is working crazy hours due to the shutdown at work, his notoriously busy time. We weren't sure when he would be home on Thursday, so originally I planned for a later dinner, but as luck would have it, he miraculously got the weekend off, so I upped the time of dinner. I had prepped most of the food beforehand, and since Daniel was home, I had him smoke a pork butt. After a nice brine and a compound butter massage, he added the turkey to the smoker.

It came out real pretty.

    We played a round of Bristol 1350. It took the first round to figure out how to play, then we locked in. Daniel made a miraculous roll of the dice, with it landing on its corner. We declared that made him safe, so he escaped the plague. It was fun.

    Floyd came, but Heather was not feeling well. We were sad to miss her. It was fun to see Cynthia, Marty, and Bromely again.

Henry was excited to get a turkey leg.

After dinner, we had a few rounds of games, and hilarity ensued!

Salem 1692 left us with a few witches. Ron accidentally called out Floyd, but he still survived!

It was a lot of fun. We had a great time. The next day, Daniel and Charles played Stratego.

Charles Turns 15

     Charles really wanted to go rock climbing for his birthday. Luckily, Daniel had the day off, so he took the kids who wanted to go with him. They had a fun time.

    Charles decided to make pancakes for dinner. This year has been hard for him with early morning seminary; he rarely gets a breakfast that takes time. He did a great job making them.

    He also wanted brownies instead of cake, unfortunately, he wasn't feeling well, so we had the brownies the following day. He did enjoy his gifts. Lizzy got him some Yu-Gi-Oh toys, and we got him some Dr Who things. He was very excited to get his new watch from Papa. He wears it every day. 

    Happy birthday, Charles!