I know it’s been pretty quiet here at RVThereYet, but I hope your days have been as full of family fun as ours have been!
The trip north - 17 hours
The trip south - 17 hours
The days in between - PRICELESS!
Here is our new family picture -
And a couple of my favorites….
Josiah and Ellie
A shot of my three men (while we were waiting for the rest of the gang for the official photo!)
And Hayley flying with some help from Daddy. She LOVES that!!!
And of course you can see the whole bunch of them if you go
here!
Time for a little show and tell!
My “big” project this Christmas was a bed quilt for Ellie. Her Mom had fallen in love with one at Pottery Barn and asked if I could make one like it. It was lots of fun to make and I think it turned out pretty well. Ellie seemed to like it, and it certainly looked cute on her bed.
And some details….
As soon as I get Christmas put away, I start on the wedding quilt!
Can’t wait!
We leave pre-dawn (the alarm is set for 4AM) tomorrow to head north to Marysville and Christmas with all the kids. Josiah arrives late Friday, and Lara comes in Sunday evening. The time will fly by - ah, the sweet chaos of it all.
The snacks are packed and the trunk is loaded. It’s about 16 hours, but the carrot at the end is worth the drive~!
Hope you all have a great Christmas!
Today I was “in charge” of the kitchen for lunch and dinner. Essentially that means I’m cooking for about 35 cadets and 15 staff/volunteers. The menus had all been done up, and I was reasonably confident (I had great help) that we could make it through the day without incident. Since the boys that are still here will be here through Christmas, (:-/ )I was hoping to be able to dress up the meals with a little pizzazz. The other volunteer working with me was also looking forward to giving those kids a little “gramma lovin’”. The trick was doing it within the boundaries of the program!
So here was the menu we were given.
Lunch - Ham and Cheese Sandwiches, Lettuce & Tomato, Chex mix, and fruit and a goodie.
Dinner - Spaghetti & Meatballs, salad, bread, cookies.
Since we eat right off of segmented trays, this is pretty basic cooking!
Right after I arrived we noticed that three egg cartons (those are 30 dozen cartons) had fallen over in the walk-in. A couple of the cadets I was working with jumped right in and we began sorting through the eggs, pulling out cracked ones, trashing the demolished ones, and cleaning up the incredible mess all over the floor. We virtually inspected every egg - if they were just cracked but not broken we put them aside for some “same day” use. It didn’t take us long to change those ham and cheese sandwiches to Cheezy Eggs with Ham, two sliced of whole wheat toast, and some great fresh fruit. We topped it off with a full size candy bar (it’s amazing what shows up after a parent’s weekend!) I was amazed at how excited the kids were (these boys are between 13 and 18) at the thought of those eggs. Don’t know if it was because they were so great, or if they were just different! But they were a hit! And we had a fun time cookin’ them all up.
Dinner went pretty smoothly - a couple too many tomatoes in the salad (I wasn’t watching until they had put them all in) and that pot of water seemed to take forever to boil. Since the bread that was being served with the meal was just whole wheat sandwich bread, we made that into garlic-cheese toast - another big hit! Doesn’t take too much to get a smile from these guys!
I’m in charge for one more day - Let’s see what I can do to Tacos (lunch) and Meatloaf (dinner). Hmmmmm.
OK, so it’s not Santa’s list, but it is the list of all the stuff we’re trying to remember to take to Ohio next week (NEXT WEEK!!!!!). But in the meantime, I have posted my “official” Christmas letter under MAIN to the right of this page. It’s a little catch-up on the family, so please take a moment to click over and see whazzup with the Conrads!
Hope your holiday is being bright and stress-free.
Right.
