It's a good thing Santa already came . . .

. . .because this is the mood that William was in by noon today! Not enough sleep!

Bad penmanship

Yesterday afternoon, Dylan and I were in the bedroom wrapping presents. I had already wrapped a few when Nathan came walking in. Thankfully we weren't wrapping any of the kids presents at that time. As I was working on a present, Nathan asked, "Who's Farto?" I said, "What?!?" He replied, "This present says to Dylan Sr. from Farto." I looked at the gift, and it was one that I had made from "Santa", not Farto. But, it did kinda look like it said Farto. I've never had great penmanship.

A New Goal

As I was going through my china cabinet looking for all of my favorite Christmas recipes, I realized that I had a lot of unused cookbooks. Most of them are just those small booklets that you see in line at the grocery store, and some are just blank books with collections of recipes on cards. So I've set a new goal for myself. I would like to pick a new recipe from one cookbook each week to try. I'll share them if they are good ones, like this Snickerdoodle recipe:
The Easiest Snickerdoodles Ever

2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Betty Crocker Yellow Cake Mix
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
½ cup sugar
2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375°. In a bowl combine vanilla, cake mix, oil and eggs. Stir until well blended. Combine sugar and cinnamon in shallow bowl. Form cookie dough into 1” balls. Roll balls in cinnamon sugar mixture. Place cookies on baking sheets and bake for 8-10 minutes until cookies are set and lightly browned. Remove to cooling rack.

This was from a long time ago, when I shopped at Albertsons. Every week they had a couple of new recipes in a card dispenser, and no matter what the recipe, I'd pick it up. Some of them look kind of questionable, but some looked really yummy. These cookies are good, and very quick to make if you don't have time for the real thing.

We caved!

Well, we finally did it. We caved and got the boys a puppy. He is a Bassett Hound, (if you couldn't tell by his ears). His name is Blooregard Q. Kazoo, for those who don't watch Cartoon Network that is the name of a character from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. We call him Bloo for short. We almost named him Mort, after the little lemur from Penguins of Madagascar. Why? Because he loves feet. I was in the garage this morning with one shoe on and one shoe off, and he kept nipping at my foot in the sock! It was making me insane! It is fun to watch him trip over his own ears as he romps after the boys. We have had several, "Why did we do this?" moments, but the boys seem to love him.