The night we light parade.

Last night we enjoyed watching "The night we light" parade. It was chilly out but that didn't stop people from coming. The streets were quite crowded. There were quite a few fun floats. I took a video of one that was quite cute and one of a bell choir but I am not able to upload videos tonight.
The kids had fun collecting candy ~ now if we can just stay on top of the tooth brushing!

We dressed very warmly and brought hot chocolate with us and blankets but even so my toes were a little chilly but not to bad. Some friends, Linson and Priya and my sister Keren also joined us to watch the parade.
We are also lit up here at home. Ken worked yesterday and today and got all the lights up at our house. This is the finished product! The white lights are for me as they are what I like best (I would do only white if it were just me choosing.) and the colored lights are for the rest of the family.

All of this makes me feel like decorating inside. Hopefully I will get around to working on that next week. I hope you are also enjoying this time of year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We want to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving! I hope you had time to thank God for all the good things in your life.

"Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful song. Know that the Lord is God; It is He who made us, and we are His people, the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise his name. For He is good. His love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations." Psalm 100

We had a great day. I got to get up at 6 am to put the Turkey in. It was cool because I had a couple hours of quiet time before anybody else woke up. This morning I also made that bouquet of yellow roses out of coffee filters. It was a lot of fun. For how to make these roses go here. We went out to Mom and Dad's for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a lot of fun. It was a pretty international meal with 11 people from other countries eating with us. After the meal we had a lot of fun putting together a puzzle of the world.

We learned quite a bit about geography. Here is the finished product.


Megan got a little worn out from the days activities. And fell asleep on Mom and Dad's floor.

Alphabet Animals

For something else to add to the Alphabet adventures, go check out the alphabetic list of animals over at Eckert Escapades.

Work for me Wednesday ~Kitchen organization

Works for me Wednesday is hosted over at Rocks in my Dryer

and it is a fun day of learning about what simple tricks people have learned or just things that they do to make their life easier. I am hoping to start participating regularly as I think it will be fun. Also I am hoping to do a series of posts on organizing mostly because I thought it would be good motivation for me!! Lately I have been working on organizing my kitchen so I thought I would share some of the things that I have done that Work for me!

My kitchen is on the small side which when we moved here a couple of years ago was a huge adjustment for me as the kitchen I had before was quite large. I had barely gotten everything to fit and then I had been given gifts that went into the kitchen so it was full and overflowing and then my Mother-in-law gave me an early birthday present of two new glass cake pans. I loved them but had absolutely no space for them. I decided it was time for the kitchen to have a complete going over.

In the past few weeks I have gone through and cleaned out every cupboard and drawer and also completely cleaned on top of all the cupboards. I ended up with a big box to get rid of (give away or garage sale). I also figured out a few ways to make things fit better.

I have a drawer for baking supplies where my cookie cutters were rather taking over. I found this old cookie box and was able to fit all of them in it. That has made my baking drawer much more orderly.

My "junk" drawer was also a bit of a mess. I took the various picnic stuff out and decided to just store them in the picnic basket which sits on top of one of my cupboards, I took some various crafty stuff out and put them with my craft supplies. Then I took some extra mugs from my crowded mug shelf and used one to put twist ties in and the other for rubber bands and clips. I then lined the boxes up neatly and had space for my "bag bag" which I store grocery bags in which had previously been under the sink. I also made another "bag bag" to store food bags that I have washed out for reuse. (thought I am afraid I made it to small and I think I will have to make another). It is nice to have a much neater "junk" drawer.

Under my sink I was able to organize so that I had space to set up a place for recycling. I have a paper bag for paper and cardboard and then another place for cans and such. When these get full then I can dump them in our bigger recycling containers which are downstairs in our laundry room. This has been vary nice to have this upstairs and handy, as I was a little lazy about running little scraps of paper downstairs to recycling when the trash was so handy. Now both the kids and I have been recycling a lot more!


I also thought I would share with you an organizational tool that has worked very well for us. On the back of cupboard doors I have put our schedules. One is for the kid's chores, one is my daily jobs and the other is my monthly, seasonal and yearly jobs. On the inside of another door is our menu. I like putting them on the inside of doors as that makes them quite handy but also out of view as they aren't really decorative.

It is so nice to have it all clean an organized, hopefully I can keep it that way! I would to love to hear about some things that work for you in organizing your kitchen.

Making rolls to share

Today we made 12 dozen butterhorn rolls. We were making some to donate to the community Thanksgiving dinner and then some were for our Thanksgiving dinner. We also ate some today, because they are so very yummy fresh.

I thought I would share the recipe with you in case you were looking for an extra yummy roll for your Thanksgiving dinner.



Butterhorn Rolls

• 4 1/2 to 5 cups flour (I use around 3/4 of it whole wheat)


• 2 packages Yeast


• 1/3 cup dry milk


• 1 cup water


• 1/2 cup melted butter or margarine or oil


• 1/2 cup sugar


• 2 eggs


• 1/4 cup butter (melted for spreading on top)

In large mixing bowl combine 2 cups flour, yeast, sugar and dry milk. Add warm water that is around 125 degrees. Then add oil (or melted butter or margarine) and eggs, mix well. Stir in as much of the remaining flour as you can. On a lightly floured surface, knead in enough remaining flour to make a moderately stiff dough. (around 3-5 minutes). Shape into a ball. Place into a greased bowl , cover and let rise until double.

Punch dough down. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide in half. Cover and let rest 10 minutes. Grease baking sheets. Roll each ball into a 12 inch circle. Brush with melted butter. Use a pizza cutter to cut each circle into 12 pieces (like a pizza). Take the wide end and roll it to the point. Place point side on the pan and let it rise until nearly double and then bake at 350 degrees for around 10 minutes. Watch carefully so that the bottoms do not burn.

This is an extremely light roll even when made from mostly whole wheat. I hope you enjoy!