Thursday, December 24, 2009

It's not Christmas Eve without a little baking in the kitchen!




Thomas and I made Kringlas today! They turned out beautiful! Up next are gingerbread men and more sugar cookies! We ate all of ours from last week so now we have to make more for Santa. Weight Watchers and gym membership...see you in 2010! ;-)
Here is the recipe we used:

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 egg
2 cups of sour cream (2 8 oz size containers)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
3 1/2 cups of flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease baking sheets.

Combine the sugar, beaten egg and sour cream together. Add vanilla extract and almond extract. Stir well. Mix in the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Blend thoroughly.

Gather dough into a large ball. Take a freezer size ziplock bag. Spray with a little nonstick spray on the inside, then sprinkle in about a 1/4 cup of flour and shake up. Place dough in ziplock bag. Cut off a 1/2 inch or narrower tip of the bag in the corner. Use to squeeze out little tubes of dough. This keeps your hands from getting super messy in the sticky dough.

Roll lightly with hands on lightly floured board into a tube about 6-8 inches long. Form into a figure "8" , and pinch ends together. You can wet your fingers with water if necessary if dough doesn't want to stick very easilly.
Place figure 8's on cookie sheet. Repeat with remaining dough. Bake at 350 degrees F for about 10 minutes or until tops are just starting to brown.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Happy First Birthday Oliver!

Here is a video of Oliver eating his birthday cake. He kept laughing at us while he ate his cake. I think he really liked all the sugar.

Friday, December 11, 2009

"On one hand, every single one of my ancestors going back billions of years has managed to figure it out. On the other hand, that's the mother of all sampling biases."

Just thought I'd share this funny XKCD today.


Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Countdown to Christmas!

It's December! And that means its time for Christmas sweaters. I found an old sweater from when Thomas was a baby and gave it to Oliver. It fit perfectly. Too cute for words.

Last weekend, Brent's side of the family visited and spent Thanksgiving with us. Reid and Jessie stayed with us Wednesday night and Todd, Kim and Kayla were in town Wednesday thru Saturday. We enjoyed some yummy Amana Colonies food and Kim was so nice, she got 3 pies to go. Unfortunately it was so good that we are already out of it! :)

We also put the Christmas tree and decorations up in the house on Thanksgiving. The tree is all decorated and most of the presents are all wrapped or hidden in the closet away from little eyes to peak at. Though, Thomas has been quite the sneaky one already. Monday morning we woke up to him ripping open a present. We had to explain to him that its not Christmas YET. Can't open the presents until Santa comes.

Here are some cute pictures of the boys today. Lindsay hiding in the background there in the picture. She stopped by to say hello today and see the boys. She was trying to get Oliver to walk for the camera. He is very close to full on walking. Last night he walked half way across the living room all on his own. Hard to believe how fast both of the boys have grown this year. I can't believe it's almost 2010 already!