A Spaetzle Noodle In Our Streudel

Today is Oma's birthday.  She would have been 116. 

We always celebrate this day by having one of our favorite family dishes, a German dish Oma frequently made.

 Oma, age 57

Makayla and Hailey joined me in kitchen to mix the dough

and stir the lentils.

April 18, 1993 was the date Megan was suppose to be born.  She ended up running several days late.

Now that I know Megan, I'm not surprised.
We thought it appropriate to recruit her to squish the dough.

Megan was concerned about getting spaetzle elbow.
That would be bad.  She has some important tennis games coming up.

She got a little steamed about it.

We decided it was time to pass the noodle squisher and Stan stepped in.

Ta-da! Oma's Spaetzle und Linsen (Spaetzle and Lentils).

Makayla dug right it.

Even Hailey liked it.

 Makayla loved the lentils, something I couldn't eat without gagging until I was 31 2/3 years old. 

Now I love them. Old age will do that to you.

We always freeze the extra in individual serving size-one cup noodle, one half cup lentils. It is by far our most popular leftover.  I send frozen baggies of spaetzle and lentils off to college with my kids to give them a taste of home when they get homesick.

Now that dinner is over, I'm going to stay out of the kitchen and hope the clean up elves stop by before I go down to breakfast tomorrow.



Here We Go Again--Part 3--Grand Finale

Oh Christmas morning, our tradition is to sleep in.  I've taught my family that Christmas day doesn't start until 8 am at our house, so there is no point in getting up before then.

We begin the day by eating a big family breakfast.

We traditionally eat whole wheat waffles with strawberries, raspberries, and whip cream.  Just to start out the day by overeating right, we also have sausage, bacon, chocolate milk, and eggnog.



When we get done with breakfast around 9:30, we move on to presents. We take turns opening presents; after you open a present, you choose the next present for someone else to open.  As you can imagine, this part of our day takes forever.

We have discovered that Christmas is a lot funner when you have little children around that you can watch open presents.

Megan opened these gloves last week so she would have gloves to go skiing with.  Naturally, I rewrapped them and regifted them on Christmas morning.

Stan got some cool sunglasses. 
Sorry, Honey, this particular pair of glasses didn't come with a motorcycle.

We have one major tradition that comes from Stan's childhood. It is, hands down, my least favorite tradition because it guaranteed Stan and I would not be done setting up Christmas until 2 am.  Unfortunately, it is a tradition my kids LOVED growing up.  It is the famed "Christmas Present Treasure Hunt".  Each child had one gift they would go on a treasure hunt for.

This year, Amy sent Hailey and Makayla on a treasure hunt.

\

Hailey was pretty excited to look for clues.

 You know what this means, Amy.

This is the beginning of staying up way too late on Christmas Eve

to continue the family tradition

of over-tired moms and over-excited kids 

 on Christmas morning.

Here We Go Again--Part 1

Our family has a few traditions surrounding Christmas.  Our first tradition happens on December 23. Every year we have a family gathering at Grandpa and Grandma Jones's house.  Grandpa makes his traditional soup and lasagna.  This year we brought crackers with warm spinach dip

 and a plateful of homemade health food.

We have a couple of traditional games we play.

The Hat Game is a lot like musical chairs, only using hats.

Hailey thinks McKay looks particularly fetching in his pink hat.

Ashley says she prefers her man in a little French beret number.

The object of the game is to try and keep a hat on your head at all times.

When the person to your right takes your hat,

you grab the hat from the person on your left and put it on before the music stops.

On person is eliminated each round, until only one person is left wearing a hat.

We also played "Fuzzy Bunny"--everyone takes a marshmallow, puts it in their mouth, and says "Fuzzy Bunny".  One more marshmallow is added each round until you can't hold any more marshmallows in your mouth.

The person who can get the most marshmallows in and still speak is the winner.
We were surprised to learn Megan's mouth couldn't hold very many marshmallows.  I thought for sure she had the biggest mouth there.....

Sadly, our last 23rd tradition, a visit from Santa, had to be canceled when Santa had a last minute conflict.  Hopefully he makes an appearance in a couple of days.