A good weekend

We had a fun and busy weekend. (That is why I wasn't posting, Sorry!) On Friday Keren was over and we had fun making gingerbread men.

Everybody was helping. With 6 bakers it can be a little interesting but fun!!
We cut out big men and little men (and a few other shapes that had to be tried out). The recipe we used was one I had never tried before but was quite good. I got it out of the Relish magazine and here is the link to it. The one thing we did different was we used over 1/2 whole wheat flour, which was quite good. I also doubled the recipe.

On Saturday we frosted them. We gave pretty much all of the cookies away. We had fun taking most of them to church on Sunday night and passing them out. Here is one packaged up for a single person (tied to the card).

Here is a family of gingerbread.

On Saturday I had fun making Christmas cards. I made some like the one above and some that were similar. Ken really liked them so I was happy. I had run out of the color pictures that I had gotten, so I printed some on glossy card stock in black and white. I then used black card stock or paper for the card. I embossed snowflakes in silver and sparkly clear and decorated with them. For the inside I had printed (on the computer) on regular paper:

"For a child will be born to us,

A son will be given to us;

And the government will rest on His shoulders;

And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor,

Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace." Isaiah 9:6

I also put a greeting. I sent these out to local people (I took them to the post office on Saturday and I am hoping that they might have made it today. In normal times the mail goes that fast but I am not sure about at Christmas time. We also gave cards to people at church.

On Saturday I also did some shopping. Aaron and I went to the farm and got milk in the morning. It was fun to have the one on one time with him. After naps on Saturday I went by myself and did some shopping. I went to JC Pennys because I had two coupons for $10 off a $10 purchase. I found the brand of Jeans that Ken likes (the only ones he will buy) on sale for $19.99 and so with my coupon I got them for $9.99. Yea! I then went to the girls section (I had to have 2 separate transactions to use both coupons) and found a pair of jeans for Mara (she was low on pants) on sale for $11.99. With my coupon they were only $1.99! I also went to Walmart for the first time in over a month (I have decided to conserve on time that I will only go there once a month). There I bought a big grocery cart full of stuff, 1 Christmas gift and the rest were food and other necessities. Then I picked up some sale items at another grocery store. All in all the shopping went well.

On Sunday we went to church, had lunch and then naps. Here is my sweet Megan sleeping. I also had time to work on various projects in the afternoon.

After evening services (at which we sang a lot of Christmas carols ~I played the piano, Luke the guitar, Keren the violin and Jake the drums) we went over to the Hymes for a Holiday party. They had a lot of snacks and we all brought snacks to share. They served their delicious punch of Egg nog, strawberry ice cream and 7-up. Yummy!!! Here is a picture of my mom, Megan and Mara who all looked lovely in their red and green.

Five of us had a blast playing Jenga! By the end off our game we had a large crowd watching us and holding their breaths with every move. This is a very fun game!! We got it up to 31 stories tall. I guess if you are very good you can get it to 36. I don't think we did to bad!! :-)

What fun stuff did you do this past weekend?