Year: 2009

It has felt like a heavy week: Abigail lost her surviving gerbil, Mittens exactly two weeks after Muffin died. This was a very hard blow to her.

A good friend of our family’s spent much of the past week in the hospital with serious health concerns that appeared out of the blue; I am reminded that God is not surprised by these incidents, yet we in our humanity do feel shaken by such things.

And there are other rather serious concerns that weigh on my heart and mind…which makes this entry feel a bit frivolous truth be told.  But in the midst of various concerns, we continue to celebrate Advent, the Coming of Christ, and it has been wonderful to share this season again with our children, all of whom now cherish our Christmas traditions, and are excited about new ones.

One new tradition this year is the addition of lights outside to “festivize” our home! Little Josiah was adamant that he would like “Colorful Christmas Lights along the Roof of our House!” But Jay has not had much spare time to make that happen.  Aside from the fact that ladder-climbing is usually a precarious proposition for him given his physical constraints.

So we set our minds to decorations NOT involving Jay or the roof…and my little red-headed helper braved the freezing cold with me yesterday to finish out the lights lining the walk to our front door. Why we chose to string lights on the coldest day of 2009 I do not know…

Maybe it was because of the gorgeous sunset we got to enjoy while we worked:

And here is the finished product: I give you House of Horne Christmas 2009!

On Wednesday morning, we woke up to see SNOW pouring down from the sky onto our Texas backyard! What a wonderful surprise! The children bundled up in coats, hats and mittens…some of them didn’t even bother to take off their stripedy jammie pants, they were in such a hurry to play in the white stuff!

What do you suppose happens when on a totally innocent whim, the lady of the house puts an ordinary bag of tortilla chips:

into the microwave to warm them up before serving them to her family??

What happens at House of Horne is that you get Chips (and Bag!) Flambee (shout out to our good buddy Dave!)

Here is what it looks like after you stamp out the impressive-looking flames and douse the still-glowing embers:

Unfortunately, I cannot properly share with you the incredible smell that is created from such an occurrence happening in your very own microwave. You will just have to take my word for it: it is hideous!

Next time I’d like warm chips with our fajita supper, I will carefully place all chips into a microwave safe bowl before heating.

‘Nuff said.

Tonight after supper our family gathered ’round the kitchen table to begin our annual reading of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. If you haven’t read it, you must…it’s a wonderful tale that will warm your heart as you contemplate Christmas. We are going to see the play this coming week at the DCT, so we have only a few days in which to finish it.

This year I thought it would be fun to string popcorn and cranberries for the tree while we read our book, and while I figured I’d do the bulk of the stringing, I hoped the kids would be old enough to at least enjoy helping a bit. But I wasn’t sure they could handle the corn and berries without crushing them in an effort to string them into garland.  I shouldn’t have worried….

In the time it took Jay to read two chapters, I think I strung maybe a foot’s total length of popcorn and cranberries. The rest of the time I was kept busy cutting and finishing the ends of the children’s strings, and threading new needles for them to start new garland. Even little Josiah, who asked very matter-of-factly where his needle and thread were so he could string too, carefully threaded popcorn and berries along with his big siblings, and produced a very pretty little garland of his own.

I hope we can spend another evening or two stringing garland while we finish the story…but we made a great start tonight and managed 18 3/4 feet of popcorn and berries!

We enjoyed a quiet holiday yesterday. Earlier plans called for us to travel to St. Louis to be with Jay’s brother’s family this year, but several factors led to our staying here instead.  As my sister-in-law recently landed a wonderful new full time job that will begin in just a few days, we’d like to think we made the Thanksgiving weekend simpler and more relaxing for her by not descending upon her household with our large and noisy brood! But it would have been great to see all of them….

Jay’s folks (the Grammy and the Grandy as they are affectionately referred to over here) joined us for a fun and lowkey day. I would like to toot my own horn(e?) just a teensey bit and say that I worked very purposefully to not spend the entire day in the kitchen as I am often wont to do on a holiday, by sheer nature of the beast, er…..feast!!.  Abigail and I made three pies on Wednesday, and I baked our pumpkin bread for next morning’s breakfast that evening.  Jay also mixed up my Grandma Brunone’s celebrated shrimp dip the day before, so even our appetizer/lunch was all set. I still might have gone to bed later than I should have, given I stayed up past 1am feverishly working to hang over 60 little sparkly crystals on our new chandelier that Jay had just installed for me, so it’d be all spiffy for the Thanksgiving meal. But I digress…..

We chose prime rib for our main course instead of the more traditional bird, to simplify the sides for our dinner…if you ever make prime rib, you should try this recipe, it’s fabulous. It’s even more fabulous if you actually follow the directions and take the roast out of the oven at 120 degrees as directed, instead of making the incorrect judgement that it couldn’t possibly be finished cooking to medium rare already, and leaving it in to cook too long as I did! (The flavor was still excellent, even if the inside was a bit darker than we preferred, but next time I’ll follow the recipe more religiously!)

Our day was relaxing and fun; there was playing with and on grandparents:

Time spent outside in gorgeous, sunny weather:

Shrimp dip!

An impressive and competitive game of scrabble:

An impromptu nap by the littlest guy who was “just so tired of waiting to eat pumpkin pie with whipp-ed cream”….

The feast!

After dinner cuddles and snuggles:

Happy Thanksgiving to All!