Holiday rewind

So I totally skipped blogging about Thanksgiving but that is only because Christmas snuck right up on me, that and the fact that I have a very mobilized baby and much less free time on my hands. I am only going to post one pic of Thanksgiving so you can see how sweet Tiny E looked and then I'm moving on. I know, I know you are totally getting ripped off but I promise to be more diligent with my postings and start doing a weekly update.

Here is my little butterball

A week after Thanksgiving we flew out to Ruidoso, NM to do an early Christmas with the Ensors. It was wonderful. It snowed which made the trip magical and very wintry I might add. Definitely contributed to the warm fuzzy holiday feeling we all need. Elsie loved playing with her cousins, she would get so excited to see them every day and after every nap. Of course she loved seeing her Aunt Jenn, Uncle Mo(Matthew) and her Jammie & Papa as well. We were able to do a walk through of Bethlehem which was a live nativity plus so much more. We also experienced the Festival of lights parade for the first time (well Elsie and I did at least) It was such a wonderful trip and I was saddened to leave... so was Elsie.

This is the view off of Micah's parents back porch!

Cousins! These two look up to something

Elsie trying to be a big girl too

awww

Although my face shows otherwise, she smells really good

All bundled up

Jammie and Papa

Speaking of Elsie she is growing up before my eyes. She is standing up on her own, crawling every where, waving hi and bye. She says, "Hi Don" every morning, afternoon, evening ok well all day, everyday. She is starting to say ba-ba-ba when waving good-bye. It's too much...way too much. In three months she will be a year old... which means basically I have less than three months to plan her 1st birthday.

Ok I have so much more to write but I will leave you with these photos instead and will update more next week. After Christmas of course.

I would like to regret that I had a baking slumber party with Nat (aunt Nat) and have no pictures to show for it, very unlike me, very unlike me indeed. I will say, however, that we made some fabulous baked goods and it was a very productive visit, which I doubted it would be because when we are together we laugh and get off track on about a hundred other things going on in each others lives. Now that I think of it, it was best there are no photos to share, we were both slumming it with ghetto pj's and no make up the whole time, so ya. Oh Nat when you read this know I adjusted the coconut oatmeal cookies. Like you said it was lacking something so I added the walnuts it originally called for but put them in my hand held grater and shaved a full cups worth of walnuts, just to disguise them you know but to add that rich flavor it needed, then I added 1/2 C. more of coconut and substituted 1 C. of M&Ms for the choc. chips and OMG, AMAZING! So Good. For all you out there that love baking something new, I would say whip up this lil number. Rich in flavor and perfect with tea, coffee, milk, breakfast, lunch or dinner.

REVAMPED Oatmeal Chocolate Coconut Cookie:

1 cup butter, softened 1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar 1/2 cup white sugar 2 eggs 2 tablespoons milk 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt (optional) 3 cups rolled oats 1 cup M&M's 1 cup grated/shredded walnuts 1 1/2 cup shredded coconut DIRECTIONS: Preheat oven to 375 degrees In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the milk and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the sugar mixture until well blended. Stir in the oats, M&M's. walnuts and coconut until evenly distributed. Drop by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 9 to 11 minutes in the preheated oven for a chewy cookie or 14 minutes for a firmer cookie. Cool for 1 minute on the cookie sheet and then remove to wire rack. Cool completely and then store in tightly sealed container.