Family Selfie

For reasons I cannot now remember, we all wandered into the downstairs bathroom one morning recently.  Glenn decided to take out his phone and take a selfie.

So there you go.  I'm glad I was able to share that with you.  Have a nice day.

Volleyball, First of Many

And so it begins.  Last night was the first of many junior high volleyball games to come over the next several weeks.  And it was fun to watch Ellea.  Our little 8th grader has improved a ton.

I love the flag person behind Ellea.  She looks to be having so much fun.  If only she knew she were on my blog today.  That would make her day, don't you think?

It makes mine.

Ellea is a perfectionist (where does she get it?!) and man is she hard on herself, but she did great.  We love her and support her the best we can and with God's grace, we'll all come out better for it.

Good job last night, sweet girl.  Can't wait for the next game.  Believe in you, okay?

Sledding in Stubble

 Ellea and Morgan loved their snow sledding over Christmas break.  Nicole did too, but these two just couldn't get enough.

Sadly, we haven't had much snow this winter.  We often use inflatable tubes for sledding, but hay stubble sticking up through the snow is hard on inner tubes.  Darn that hay stubble.

But it didn't dissuade these two from making the best of it.  Despite how their mother feels about cold and snow and being exposed  the cold and snow, they're all about it.  I'm glad they didn't inherit my anti-cold tendencies.  Unfortunately, they expect me to join them sometimes, despite those tendencies.  I try.  I don't always say yes, but I don't always say no and in my estimation that's pretty darn good.  I'm just glad I don't live on the east coast right now! :)

Redneck Entertainment

Us country folk get excited about the strangest things....

On a recent trip to Lewiston we went through the automatic car wash and the kids enjoyed it more than one would imagine you could enjoy a car wash.

It was the best $6 we spent all day!  (You may notice that Ellea's expression is not exactly one of excitement.  She was a little nervous about the whole ordeal.  Maybe not her favorite thing we did that day!)

Duck, Duck, Zoom

We got to visit some our favorite Kaufman's last weekend, and somehow their cute little kiddos talked us into playing Duck, Duck, Goose with them.

It was loads of fun and we played for a long time.  Those two cute boys just couldn't get enough.

And they were super fast, apparently.  This was not Glenn getting all artsy and wanting to show movement.  This was Ben being all speedy and zooming around the circle!  I love this picture.  Good job, Glenn!

Brownie Pancakes

Our oven was on the fritz for awhile and we finally knew it was done fulfilling it's ovenly duties when Morgan made brownies and they were in there for twice their normal time and still were nowhere near done.  I like my brownies a tad gooey, but c'mon!

It was a conundrum figuring out what to do about it.  If the camper was here, I would have trotted out and put them in that oven,but alas, the camper is put away for the winter and not right outside my door.  I was beginning to think we'd have to throw them away, but how sad is that?  Really, really, really sad!

One of the girls mentioned they'd seen on Pinterest making brownies in the waffle iron.  Bingo!  Perfect solution.  I may not have an oven that works, but I have a waffle iron that works!  That has a sad ending though, too.  I sprayed the waffle iron liberally with cooking spray, but the brownie waffles were sticking.  It just wasn't working, and it was making me sad.

At this point, I was determined to NOT throw out this brownie mix, so I pulled out the electric skillet.  If I couldn't make brownie waffles, I could certainly make brownie pancakes, right?

Well, sort of.  They weren't the right consistency to actually flip over like a proper pancake, but I could kind of roll them over.  They ended up looking more like scrambled eggs than pancakes.  Actually, they didn't look much like scrambled eggs at all, as you can see, but they tasted an awful lot like brownies, so their appearance was irrelevant.

The moral of the story?  You do what you have to do to prevent throwing away an entire pan of brownies!  Amen and Hallelujah!!

Family Games and Agony

We are going to try to spend more time playing family games this year.  Ellea has a crazy game called Headbandz where you ask yes or no questions and try to figure out what the card on your head is.  For example, I think mine in the picture below is bacon.  I enjoy bacon.  Just sayin'.

You may notice that I have a kitchen towel on my neck.  It's an ice pack, actually.  I have a little arthritis in my neck due to an old whiplash injury.  Age is a terrible thing.  This is not my favorite picture.  I figure my family puts up with plenty of pictures on my blog that they deem undesirable, so I'm subjecting myself to the same agony.

See?  Like this.  I don't imagine this will be my girls' favorite picture ever, either.  You're welcome, girls.

Crazy Beautiful Girls

The girls have so much fun with sweet Jackie who is part of the group we camp with lots every summer.

They've gotten to be very close over the past year or so.  Since she lives in nearby Lewiston, they have been seeing each other often over the non-camping months lately.

They have fun being crazy together.  Who doesn't love being a a little crazy with their girlfriends?

What a beautiful super beautiful trio of girls.  Love you Jackie!

A Christmas Lesson and a Mistake

Our church hosted a fun family Advent activity where we made our own Advent wreaths and Advent calendar.  If you don't know, an advent wreath has four (or 5) candles and you light an additional candle each week as you count down to Christmas.  The optional 5th candle is lit during the Christmas season.

 Did you know Christmas is not just a day, but a season?  And, I don't mean the "season" of commercialized let's-shop-till-we-drop that leads up to Christmas!  But the time between Christmas and Epiphany (which is early in January) is still Christmas.  Epiphany is when the wise men arrived to see Jesus which was actually many months after he was born - they had to travel a long way!  But, I digress...

Some people in the family were more than a little skeptical when mom suggested we attend this activity together, but we actually rather enjoyed ourselves.  I know.  Crazy.  Mom had a good idea?  Who would've thought!  If only they'd learn from their mistakes.  :)

Of Christmas Trees and Cold Hands

I'm a fan of letting my hubby go pick a Christmas tree and bring it home, so I don't have to go out in the cold.  He's probably a fan, too, because (a) he doesn't have to traipse around looking at tree after tree only to come back to tree number one, (b) he can thin a tree from a group of trees, rather than picking one out in the open (he's a logger at heart, I get it), and (c) he can cut the tree that's in a location that's easy to transport.  But, the kids wanted to go along on the tree hunt.  Lucky him, that meant he got to....

(a) Traipse around.  This tree!  No, THIS tree!  No, let's drive over here - look, how about THIS TREE!!!  I don't know.... maybe this one is better.....

(b)  Cut down a tree that could someday be big and strong and ready to be harvested.  Sorry little tree.  You will not someday become lumber to build into something beautiful and long lasting, but you you will have the honor of displaying a string of lights and random ornaments for 4 weeks.

(c)  Drive back home riding on the front of the four-wheeler holding the icy-cold tree with his hands in thin knit work gloves.  That was a bad choice.  His hands were like ice cubes when we got home.  I was the lucky driver of said four-wheeler.  I had to stand up and drive because it was difficult to see through all the tree branches.  I definitely had the better job, though.  I would not have traded.

But we had fun.  You're a good sport, honey.  Thank you for that.

Poxleitner Party Animals

These are the yahoos who stayed up partying until crazy late (early) hours at our Poxleitner Christmas party while the more responsible individuals went to bed.  They were functioning quite well the next day, considering most of us got up for 8am mass.

Glenn was up with these goofs.  He claims he was supervising.  I'm not buying it.  He loves a good party as much as anyone.  I enjoy a good party, so long as it doesn't cut into my sleep time too much.  I'm fun like that.

Use Your Noodle

We pulled out the old pick-up-rigatoni-noodles-with-a-spaghetti-noodle-in-your-mouth game at Christmas.

A fun time was had by all.

Good ol' Hal was especially proficient at beating his competitors.

It's harder than it looks.

Really.

But Hal made it look like a piece of cake.  I bet he practiced at home before the party when he should have been out farming or feeding cows and such.  Or maybe it's just a special gift he has.

Glamour Poses!

Not sure what these were about, but they sure are fun!

Everyone loves cousin Shari! :)

Adoring Cousins

This sweet girl seemed especially drawn to her cousin, Morgan, when they came to visit for the Poxleitner Christmas party.

She's a major mamma's girl, so it was weird that she tolerated his affection so well.

She's not the only one who's fond of him.

But it's fitting, because Morgan's older cousins have always been especially patient and encouraging of him.  (These two are working on Legos.)

So, it's only fair that he returns the favor to his younger cousins!

Pot Pie

Ellea and I were feeling adventurous and decided to make a pot pie for dinner tonight.  She had her first ever pot pie at KFC awhile back and loved it.  (I know, weird - KFC has good pot pie?  I found that hard to believe, too.)  I've never been a huge fan of pot pie, but I thought we could give it a go.

Check out her beautiful new apron that she just finished sewing with her Aunt Nancy.  It's as beautiful as she is!  (And she thought of you when it was finished, Aunt Wanda since it's your favorite color!)


She decided we needed a selfie, but she insisted we use my big camera.  It's not really set up for selfies, but I was up for trying.

Nope.  Not quite.

Better, but she suggested I try for no double chin.  Always good advice.

But, should a person overcompensate for potential chin doubling by pointing your nose to the ceiling?  Maybe not so much.

 It's gonna have to do.  We have dinner to make.

And I'd say dinner was a success!  We used the Pioneer Woman Pot Pie recipe.  We even made Pioneer Woman's pie crust and it was tender and flaky.  Yay!  (I've made pie crust maybe three different times and never been too impressed, so I was pretty tickled.)  And look at the beautiful pattern Ellea cut into the top!  Beautiful AND yummy!

Turns out I DO like pot pie.  At least when Ellea and I make it!  Thanks for your help, darling girl!

Christmas Visitors

 

We hadn't seen Glenn's nephew, Brian, at one of our Poxleitner Christmas parties in quite a few years, so we were thrilled that he and his family joined us this year.

Little Kaitlyn is the cutest thing.  But she's a mama's girl, so it's hard for some of us to get our hands on her.  

We played this one-handed gift wrapping game which worked well for Brian's wife, Rellie, since she only had one hand available!

And they smoked the competition, who didn't have a child to hold.  Mom's are so gifted!