I've got feet!

I am not a good baker, not by a long shot but I've been obsessing over french macarons, not to be confused with the coconut macaroons they sell at Costco. French macarons are like fancy little cookie sandwiches, and they are usually colored with bright fun colors, and come in flavors like green tea, lemon curd, chocolate hazelnut, ect. They are pretty tricky to make, mostly getting the batter consistency correct, but basically they are made by folding almond meal into meringue. But I was super excited to get a beautiful macaroon, with feet, on my third attempt. Especially since the last time I baked a dessert my feedback from Mil was, "Your pie is good as long as you close your eyes and hold your nose while you eat it.". But here is a link to the recipe I used if you want to try yourself, macaron

Aside from my feet, the other big news is that T spent the night at my Mom's house the other night. It's the first real time he's slept away from home without Mike or I. I was really nervous, but it helps that T LOVES my Mom. He wants to go to Ma's house all the time, and often talks about it when he wakes up from naps and in the morning. Despite my worrying he did great! In fact he didn't even want to come home, and already wants to go back to Ma's house.

All mixed up.

So, it's been what, two months? I wish I was better organized with the photos, or just in general, but I'm sure you get the idea. This set of pictures is from Christmas, obviously, and the kids had so much fun with it this year. We were going to get a real tree, but Oliver would not stop eating the Christmas decorations, so we thought it'd be safe to just go with artificial again. We decorated the tree almost exclusively with ornaments that Mil made in school this year, making it extra special.

We had Mil's birthday party at the Children's Museum this year, it was such a fun idea, MIke's if you can believe it. Milly chose a dinosaur theme, and I think all the kids (and adults) had a good time. I definitely recommend the Children's Museum for birthday parties, the cost was reasonable, their service was outstanding (I debated having Christmas there), our house stayed clean and the kids were all tired when they went home.

Skipping around a bit in time, these are pictures from Mil's Fall Festival at school. My Mom went with us, and the kids got to test out their shark costumes. Definitely Truman's favorite part was the cake walk, you should have seen him dancing around the squares with Mil and my Mom. He won cupcakes too!

This set of pictures is from the santa breakfast at Mike's work. We didn't stay long since Mike had work testing to do, but we had a good time. You know, Mike's new commute hasn't been that, that horrid. Yeah, it was nicer when he worked in Tacoma, but everything is working out fine.

These are few pictures of Mil and T from the Christmas event at Mary Bridge, I can't believe T sat still long enough to get his face painted. Unbelievable. And then Milly and her Christmas play at school, directly after Santa if you can tell from her dolphin face paint.

More pictures from the Santa breakfast, thanks SONJA for the gritty T's!