Treats

I mentioned that my in-laws visited us and brought treats. And by treats I mean the best pears and almonds I've ever tasted, and more cocoa that I will try not to share. To best explain, I've included a list:

• White Chocolate Covered Pecans. From Alabama's favorite pecan place, Priester's. We have been allowing the children one pecan per day.
• Pecans fresh from The Farm. The Farm is what we're calling the land in North Florida that R's dad and uncle have been playing at working recently. It's land their parents owned and farmed. They have now harvested hay, field peas, pecans, and cabbage. 
• Cabbage fresh from The Farm. I put this on a ham sandwich because I thought it was lettuce. It turns out that Squirms really likes raw cabbage.
• Creme Brûlée Almonds. Wow. Wow. The brand is Squirrel's, and according to the can has been around since 1888. 
• Dunkin Donuts cake donuts. I only ate them in small segments. One can't just leave leftover donuts on the counter. I can only walk by them so many times.
• Pumpkin Marshmallows. Squirms adored these at Thanksgiving so Mamé brought the remainder for Squirms and the Great to share. They've been super helpful for bribing happily rewarding the children this week.
• Harry and David Pears. Juiciest pears ever. I didn't understand why this seemed to be a very special box of pears and it seemed very important to wait until they were ripe. It's a pear. But. It's not just a pear. If we buy you a Christmas gift next year, it might be pears. And you will probably be like, oh, great, a fruit I can get at Publix. And then you will take one bite. And we will become your favorite gift-givers.
• Spiced Pumpkin and Pecan Quickbread Mix and Pecan Pumpkin Butter. I'm going to make this for the moms' group I attend on Mondays. So I can seem fancy.
• Silly Cow Cocoa mix: Chocolate-Chocolate and Chocolate Moo-use. We all know who this is for. Me. Tonight the kids asked for hot cocoa and marshmallows. I offered them marshmallows only.

It's time to make some cocoa and keep watching the PBS show Chasing Shackleton on Netflix.

Shutter Problems

Our shutter is slowly dying on our camera. And I realized today how much I missed wearing my hair down. Living in a hot, humid climate, working in a clean room, and holding tiny babies who like to pull hair has equaled a lot of bun and pony tail styles. The Great and I were running errands today in feels-like 29 degrees temperatures and were a swirl of big coats and curls. Curls are warm.

Here are some Christmas celebration photos. Our Christmas day included reading from the book of Luke, Squirms being excited about stockings, a visit to my grandparents' home, flash flooding, hiding in a closet because of tornado sirens, power and water outages, and ear infections. It was memorable.

Christmas Eve at Great-Granny's house.

Christmas morning tree, and wagon!

Girl loves stockings.

They can both open their own gifts now!

Lunch crew. 

We are ready to start house hunting. I am addicted to Zillow. The Great is becoming such a little boy, and he loves to have iPad time (he loves it so much we have to restrict it so he will play with toys). Squirms really enjoyed Christmas decorating and all the celebrating this year. I am slowly coming to terms with her turning four next month. Four!!!! It seems so much bigger than three.

And R's parents came to visit us last weekend. They had to listen to me talk about prospective houses and look at pictures on Zillow, but we also let them play trains with the kids a bit too. They brought the kids even more trains and tracks so downstairs now is basically just train tracks. I'll probably need to do a full blog post on the different foods they brought us.

Time to go. Squirms started back to preschool today.