The Annual O'Dell Grandkids Christmas Eve Party

The next few posts are picture/video heavy!

Ready? Here we go!

Every year on Christmas Eve, my parents and sister plan a spectacular party for all the grandkids. There are now 11 kids, so it's pretty loud and crazy, but super fun! The kids love it!

We arrived at my parents house at about 3, and the festivities commenced! First, the kids decorated gingerbread cookies. They were going to make a gingerbread house, buuut it was decided that it would be too messy and too hard, since we would have to wait for the frosting to dry. So each kid was given a bit of the house and some frosting and they went to town!

A lot of Portia's time was spent eating the candy and frosting rather than decorating with it.

This is how Margot decorates cookies:

Next came presents! We gathered all the kids into the living room and started passing out gifts. They got books, teddy bears, toy octopus (octopuses? octopi? eh), and lots of other goodies. Even the parents got presents. Grandpa's gift was the most anticipated. Everyone was so excited.

He got a muppet! My sisters and I went in together for it, Carrie picked it up at FAO Schwarz in NYC. He was pretty tickled.

Then came the traditional Nativity play. All the kids dress up, and we read from Luke chapter 2, and the kids act it out.

(I'm glad there are so many grandkids now, because a few years ago there weren't enough babies for all the parts, and Carrie and I had to step in. It's great fun for kids, but it gets a bit embarrassing for a 19 year-old to be dressed up as Mary and drug in on a rocking horse. One year I was even a sheep.)

Next we went to Rhema. For those of you who aren't familiar, Rhema is a church in Broken Arrow that puts up thousands of lights every Christmas. Thousands and thousands. Really. A lot of lights.

Margot was entranced, the lights are really exciting for a tiny thing.
Portia thought Rhema was pretty cool, she just discovered Christmas lights this year, and loves them!

All in all, a pretty awesome night!

pregnancy brain

It's makin me crazy!!

Yesterday morning, I woke up feeling exhausted. I have been having a harder time sleeping lately. I blame it on the fact that I have to pee 30 times a night, or the fact that I am roughly the size of a barge.

Anyways, I woke up groggy and wishing it was already nap time, so I could lay back down. And then pregnancy brain set in.

At nap time, I was browsing the web, and happened across a cookie recipe that I thought sounded wonderful! Rocky Road Ice Cream Cookies. I had all the ingredients, so naturally, I printed the recipe to try it out.

Brandon walked into the kitchen to ask if I wanted to lay down for a nap, and he found me wild-eyed and wielding a whisk. He later said that he thought I'd lost my mind. I told him of my cookie plans, and he left me to my choco-mallow crazy-fest.

I made the cookies, following the recipe loosely. Quite loosely.

When I baked the first batch, I started to recognize my "improvements" probably weren't the best. The first 8 cookies had turned into a giant melty goo-cookie; the marshmallows had melted and expanded in the oven, and it didn't look appetizing. I tried a bite. It didn't taste very appetizing either.

But I thought that I couldn't let the rest of the dough go to waste, so I decided to tun it into brownies. I added a few more ingredients, and put the remaining disaster-mix into a brownie pan, and back into the oven it went!

Again, not a good plan. This time, the marshmallows formed a crust on top of the mixture, and frankly, it looked like poop. By this point, I knew that I had had a lapse in food judgement, and didn't even bother to taste it.

Portia then woke up from her nap, and I was mad at myself for not spending the last 2 hours asleep, like any normal human being would have done.

Brandon laughed with me, and we reminisced about my cooking mishap while pregnant with Portia, when I tried to make spaghetti sauce from scratch. For some reason, it had flour in it. A lot of flour.