February 23, 2020

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELEANOR! and February Thingies

 Candlemas candles during Rosary :)

 Fog much?!

Beautiful Day = SNOW DAY! sledding at our church 




 We've been hearing about a new local library so decided to make a stop there.


 The boys made Irish Lemon Pudding for one of their history projects.


 Looks ugly but it was SOOO delicious! Very lemony! Super tasty.

 Peacock spotting!

 We've been blessed with a plethora of milk these days so Pippin wanted to make butter.

 Meanwhile, I was busy making yogurt.


 Kili was going with Galadriel to MN to visit her fiance so thought I should trim his hair. He insisted, "Don't touch my tuft!" :D

 We've gotten quite a bit of snow! We've actually had a very lovely winter. Snow, cold (but only a few sub-zero degrees), ahd the roads clear most of the time. We had only a few mild days.

 Dresses, dresses, dresses. With 3 weddings coming up it is a logistic all it's own just to make sure all the girls have something to wear and that we won't be too embarrassing and lack in coordination of our attire.

 Back to the yogurt, the girls are drinking the extra, warm "yogurt milk" out of wine glasses.

 I use a cooler with 120 degree water for the yogurt to set. I leave it in there for 6-8 hours but only 3 is required.

 Back to the dresses. I think this is what we'll be wearing for wedding #1.

 These 2 decided to give a concert (the blanket cracked me up!

 These are the shoes I'm wearing for the 3 weddings, except I put ribbon laces in instead of the plain ones. I got the idea of the oxford style from Andrew's fiance Belladonna. These ones are super comfortable, very soft leather. I got them free because I had a gift card. Woohoo! The comical side these *not-cheap* shoes came no problem. But the *not-expensive* laces required a signature to be delivered.

 Um... I don't know? You got any guesses?

We all went matchies to TKD one evening. :)



 In addition to dresses it's been a lot of practice on hair-dos.


 We took Eleanor out for her 17th birthday to Luigi's. Delicious pizza!

 Afterwards we went over to the ice cream parlor for a treat.  These 2 got mint chip, I got the darkest chocolate they have. Even though I'm a milk chocolate fan, dark chocolate ice cream is sooo good! Afterwards I gracefully slipped on some ice. I was sure I broke my knee, thankfully it was only just badly bruised. And thankfully it happened after we got ice cream because beforehand we might have just gone home. *phew* that was close 😂

 So, I decided to try making sour cream (this is 1/2 gallon). The directions were crazy. Holding for 45 minutes, etc.. in doing a little research Aragorn found a super easy recipe. Since we use raw milk, all we had to do was skim cream (which I did about 2/3rds) and then pour in whole milk (1/3rd) add in 1/8th tsp starter (for up to 4 gallons!) and set it on the counter for 24-30 hours. I shook it a couple times the first couple hours. It worked great and had such a lovely mild taste. It's a little less stiff than from the store but is great!

 Walking home from a flute lesson, it was beautiful!

 Now to celebrate with CAKE! Eleanor requested mint brownies.
 Happy 17th birthday to Eleanor! 
 She had also requested beef enchiladas.
 We've been saying a Rosary Novena and we've been starting a bit late to make sure everyone is home in the evenings. This evening Kili fell asleep under the piano chair.

 I should have taken a picture earlier in our meal but a friend and I went out to lunch at the Mediterranean Cafe. We had the falafel plate. It was delicious!

 Little peeps taking selfies.


 A gracious family member sent the first gifts to Celeborn and Galadriel. Holy Water font (a must!) and salt and pepper shakers (also a must). It was very exciting!

 hair, hair and more hair

 BWAHAHA!!! 😂 Aragorn had bought a book and the wrong one arrived. Simply NOT on our to-read list! Vampire Forensics?!

 The lessons in Catechesis are so good!



I had a day in which the ONLY child in the house was Marigold! No joke, crazy! When Galadriel and Celeborn returned from marriage prep I had to tell them to remember her in case they went somewhere else. Anyway, at some point while we were cleaning and organizing her room, in walked one of the boys.  They were going to work on a movie at Frodo's place while Merry went to a demo team training session.

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