20 Dozen

Viggo and I were in Illinois this weekend.
Nate stayed home with the girls.
They completely surprised Viggo and I with 20 dozen Christmas cookies.

I knew there were cookies waiting for us but I was not prepared for the amount and variety. There were several containers on the counter full of cookies.

I said to Nate, "Did you make these? All of them?" Not that Nate isn't capable of making them. But, I mean, that was a ton of work, and I have witnessed Nate purchasing plates of Christmas cookies for church fundraising. Made by people who have the time to make them.

Yes. He and the girls made all of them. He even went shopping to buy all the fixins' so he wouldn't wipe out my stash of ingredients. What. A. Guy.

They made sugar cookies. LOTS of them.

Chocolate cookies with chocolate stars, on the left.
Yes, those are chocolate cookies with Andes mints on the right, and no, I'm not sharing them.

Peanut butter blossoms with chocolate stars.

Christmas wreaths . . . not sure what these are made out of, but I have a feeling green food coloring is involved. With cinnamon red-hots. We're so super-festive.

Chocolate-dipped peanut butter balls.

The inside of one. It's crispy/creamy/crunchy/peanut-buttery heaven.

If you are not at our house right now, you are missing out.

But wait; there's more! Anything else that wasn't nailed down in the pantry was also dipped in chocolate. So there's some chocolate-dipped skorpa, and chocolate-dipped Nilla wafers.

I told the kids to have a Christmas cookie this morning and Elin pulled a stool right up to the counter and dug in.

Viggo said, "I know Daddy rarely cooks, but when he cooks, he cooks crazy-good things." Nate is amazing. I'm not sharing him either.

Fall Photorama

Today we're going back in time . . . just a little bit.

Happy birthday to Nate!

Nate got special gifts.

Special gifts from special little people.

Some coins from the V-man for Nate's collection.

Elin loves birthdays. Sharing in the excitement with Nate's was so fun for her!

Birthday hugs.

Cozy reading on the couch.

I got special birthday presents too, like this beautiful Ekelund tablecloth from my folks! It is so soft, I had to refrain from sleeping with it . . .

And I also got a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos . . . yes that's right, I love Cool Ranch Doritos, and I'm proud of it.

Funny fingers.

Crazy pumpkin carvers.

Beautiful handmade quilts from our wonderful friend Cindy!

Snacks in the kitchen with Dad.

Thanksgiving with the Woods family!

Eating huge turkey legs with cousins is oh so much fun!

Thanksgiving exercise.

Warm weather on Thanksgiving and being with family . . . what a gift :)

A date with Svea and Josh Groban

Svea and I went out today. Just the two of us.

We decided to go to Barnes & Noble.

After looking around for quite some time, Svea wanted to sit and play with the duplos, so that's what we did.

Svea loves to take pictures whenever she can, and since I was the only one around to take pictures of, well . . . here I am. I love her pictures. Some are really quite good!

Then we went to Scheel's. In front of Scheel's sits two statues of our founding fathers, but Svea is convinced that one of them is actually Josh Groban.

As you can see, the similarity between George Washington and Josh Groban is really remarkable.

And I got to have my picture taken with Josh Groban too.

While at Scheel's, checking the status of the live bait is always a must.

Our dates together are super-exciting!

Before we left Scheel's I took a picture of Svea with Thomas Jefferson . . . Josh Groban's twin brother.