Moran Family Fun

In last week's post I talked about sewing, snow, and more sewing.  I didn't mean for all of our activities to start with the letter S, but sometimes things just end up that way.  This week, once again, all of the things I want to share start with the letter S - snacks, sewing, snow, silliness, and slippery roads. Snacks - Jared spent the first half of the week in Belgium and he came home with an amazing variety of snacks.  Belgium is known for chocolates and waffles so there were bars and bars of chocolate, truffles, regular waffles, chocolate covered waffles, and even little crispy crunchy waffles.  He also bought madelines which kind of tasted like Twinkies without the creamy filling.  My favorite Beligan treat?  Speculoos - little crunchy cookies that taste sort of like graham crackers but have more of a ginger taste to them.  Even better than the cookies is the speculoos spread.  It's sort of like peanut butter made out of the cook...

January is a slow news month in the Moran house so I'm really stretching to find anything to write about.  No birthdays, no holidays, no vacations - just regular everyday life.  Still, it's the everyday stuff that often gets forgotten and will be fun to look back and remember someday, right?  So here's a few quick pictures of the normal day-to-day that's been going on around our house. I've done some sewing, hooray!  December was just too busy to sit down and sew (except for those cute pajamas pants) so it's been nice to spend some time with my sewing machine.  First on the line up, baby doll carriers for Samantha and Natalie.  These two cute carriers are another example of - according to Jared anyway - me going overboard with the whole sewing thing.  Do they really need carriers for their baby dolls?  Well, no.  But I couldn't watch Samantha rig up a makeshift carrier out of a scarf any longer.  Something had to be done! I already had...

Today was a special day for our family, especially for Samantha, because today she was baptized.  We are so proud of Samantha and the good choices she makes.  She's a sweet girl who always tries to do the right thing.  Her personality is more quiet and reserved than the sisters who are on either side of her, but she still stands out because she is kind, hard working, smart, and fun to be around. We were working on these cupcakes for after the baptism up until the last minute.  Samantha took over the decorating so I could take care of my hair and makeup before we headed off to church. I love these two wonderful people and I love that they look so much alike.  Jared is such a good father to our girls and perfectly makes up for my shortcomings as a mother, I am so grateful to have him by my side as we raise our children. I love being Samantha's mom.  She's an amazing person and a great example to me. This little girl was seriously...

There are many things we love about living in Germany, but this time of year we especially enjoy celebrating New Year's  the way the Germans do - with fireworks!  Our first year here we bought what we thought were a lot of fireworks only to be outdone by everyone else in town.  Every year since then we've invited friends over and everyone has brought some fireworks to add to the pile.  Last year (in 2011) the party got so big that we had to hold it at two houses with some families at our house and some families at another house nearby.  This year we rented the Burgerhalle here in town - a big space with a gym, kitchen, and large foyer area - so we could invite even more people to the festivities. We ended up with fifteen or sixteen families and that many people made for lots of food, fun, and fireworks. We pulled the ping pong table out of storage and set it up for the evening.  Emily and Jared spent some time testing it out before our guests arriv...

The week between Christmas and New Year's is maybe my favorite time of year.  The busyness of Christmas is over with, the kids are out of school, and there is so much time to just be together as a family.  We took advantage of that time one evening last week and went ice skating. Natalie, Samantha, and Abigail had never ice skated before and I had only gone once before so we were all a little shaky and no one skated very fast.   Natalie and Samantha used these penguins to help them stay on their skates.  It was a nice way for them to get around the ice without falling and it was nice for me too because I could pretend to be helping them but really just be trying to keep myself from falling down.  It worked out pretty well, my goal for the night was simple - just don't fall down - and I didn't fall! Natalie was not willing to let go of her penguin, but she did get more and more confident as the night went on.  By the time we were ready to leave s...

We were hoping for a white Christmas this year, especially after the snow that fell early in December.  However, the snow melted away in the middle of the month and rain started to fall instead of snow.  It rained every day for over two straight weeks.  By the day after Christmas we had our own little splash pad in the backyard.  Emily and Natalie took advantage of the soggy weather and went out to have some wet and muddy fun. If the water had just stayed outside I wouldn't have minded all the grey, rainy weather. I guess the water had to go somewhere but I wish it wouldn't have decided to make it's way into our basement.  It took a few days (and all the fans we own working around the clock) but the basement is finally dry and we're keeping our fingers crossed that it stays that way.  Splashing in puddles outside is fun, but splashing in them in your basement is not.

Last year after Christmas I felt like a terrible, consumerist American because of the obscene amount of gifts under our tree.  It was way more than anyone needed or even really wanted.  This year Jared and I wanted to make things smaller (less gifts given, less money spent) and we did but I still feel as if we could have given the kids less.  Maybe next year we'll really cut back? The girls slept in Christmas morning (hooray!) so we didn't head to the living room and start opening presents until around half past eight.  We have a tradition on Christmas morning that whoever finds the pickle ornament gets to open the first present.   I think this year it took longer than ever for them to find the pickle.  They just kept looking and couldn't find it anywhere until . . .  Madison found the pickle! I don't think she'd ever found it before so just finding it was pretty exciting plus she got to open the first present of Christmas. I think ...