Christmas Break :)

Christmas break was so much fun... I got to be home for almost 4 weeks and it was so nice to spend time with my family and my friends :) There were just a few things I got pictures of that I wanted to post :)

Carter, Hayden and I made gingerbread houses together... with REAL gingerbread! I used this lovely recipe for the caramel glue and icing.... and it worked great :)

TEMPLE SQUARE :)

I had to borrow some of Carter's photos off of Facebook.. like this lovely one of me photobombing/creaping up behind him :)

Such a handsome boy... :)

Amazing reflections in the reflecting pool :)

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

 I think this year's Christmas was the best my family has ever had... Because our Christmas money is going to our Europe trip this summer, we all made each other homemade and low-budget gifts instead. It was so much fun and cool to see everyone getting creative to make gifts that were extra meaningful... we kept talking about how we wouldn't have many presents under the tree this year, and the kids complained about having "no Christmas", but I swear when we came downstairs on Christmas morning there were more presents under that tree than ever before. It was kind of cool :) and wonderful to get a feeling for the true spirit of Christmas as we focused more on what we could make and GIVE to each other rather than making our lists of all we wanted to receive. It was a magical Christmas... I could do it like this every year :)

I made one minion shirt for Hayden, but then loved it so much that I just HAD to make one for everyone else in my family... including myself :)

It took me a while to come up with something to give to my mom... I wanted to do something she could use and appreciate. I just have the hardest time thinking of gifts for people though! But a couple days before Christmas she had been digging through our stack of favorite recipes and they were sprawled all over the counter after she was done... and I had the most brilliant idea! I decided to put all of our favorite recipes that otherwise don't have a home into one cookbook where she could easily find them and add more when she found new ones :) Some of our recipes are like ancient artifacts... family heirlooms almost.. so I couldn't just type them all up... instead I made the cookbook almost like a scrapbook. With recipe cards and old random sheets of paper we've had for years with certain recipes... so that's what I have below.. a few of the favorite recipes stuck in in all their glory :)

"real" (American-style) German pancakes

Adina's hand written recipe for her actually German German pancakes

Nice orderly tabs to keep it organized...

Fish taco recipe from the newspaper... stuck onto fish paper... I was pretty proud of this one ;)

 That's all I had pictures of on my camera.... but pretty much it was a fun break with lots of fun memories :) I wish I had access to more photos we took on the family camera... but this is it! :)