Hymas Family Site: 21 December 2008

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Family Pictures, Brewers Style

These are some family pictures we had taken in late November at Miller Stadium. (Brrrrrr!) Amy Rahm, one of our friends from church, took them for us. She did such a great job! These are a few she got back to us right away, so we used the first one for our Christmas card this year. The other three turned out great too! We can't wait to see the rest of them and we'll post some more when we get them all back. Thanks so much Amy! You did an awesome job.

Christmas Day Fun!

We had such a great Christmas. It was so fun to be together as a family all day and just enjoy opening presents, watching new movies, playing new games, and thinking about the Savior. We are so blessed and it is nice to reflect on all those blessings at Christmastime.

Christmas Eve

We had a great Christmas Eve together as a family. I was so glad to be done with my rotation and home with my family to be able to spend some time with them. In addition to making cookies for Santa, we enjoyed a couple other traditions and some new things too...

The girls in front of the advent calendar. They really enjoyed putting the ornaments on the tree as Christmas got closer. Emily thought it was so fun to put the last ornament, the star, at the top.

Another Christmas tradition - new pajamas! (The kids were much more excited about the new jammies than they were to take this picture.)

Daddy always reads the pop-up version of The Night Before Christmas.

A new finding this year was that you can actually track Santa online by satellite! The girls thought it was so fun to see all the places in the world he had already visited and watch him get closer and closer to our house. When they saw he was crossing the ocean, they knew it was time for bed so Santa would know they were asleep by the time he got to Milwaukee.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

A business model for making Santa cookies...

To be successful at anything, all you need to do is follow a simple business model. The same is true when making cookies for Santa. All you need are the following:

Supplier

Public Relations

Quality Control

If you have all of the right players, you'll get an excellent end product!

Fine Print: You also need a daddy to make the dough, a mommy to help you cut the cookies out and bake them, parents to help put the icing on, and Santa to eat them.

A Mishap

Kitchen Mess-ifying 101...

Step 1: Obtain some leftovers. For best results, use something that is a dark color and at least partially liquid. In this example, we will use spaghetti.

Step 2: Heat said leftovers in the microwave, preferably with a loosely-place lid to hold in heat and steam.

Step 3: Remove leftovers from microwave, allowing hot steam from Step 2 to escape and begin burning the flesh on your hand.

Step 4: Scream.

Step 5: Drop leftovers.

Step 6: Scream.

Step 7: Allow the laws of physics (and Murphy's law) to take over.

Step 8: Stare in awe at the amount of projectile damage one small container of leftovers can really do.

Step 9: Make your husband clean it up (optional).

Note: To be fair, Amy did clean "most" of the mess up by herself. :)

Monday, December 22, 2008

Gingerbread Houses

This year, we made our traditional gingerbread houses with our friends the Kearls and Vernons. Despite a last-minute change of location due to some car troubles, it was really fun (thanks guys for bringing everything to our house!). We had a great time making pizzas together and then decorating our gingerbread houses. Tyce went all out this year cutting out and baking the gingerbread, so our houses looked amazing. Who else gets a split-level home with a bay window? We felt pretty spoiled! This is a tradition we have really enjoyed and we're glad we got to do it with our friends for at least one more year...