This Week

Yesterday Luci and I got our hairs cut.

Luci, 7 years old, was admiring herself in the mirror at the beauty salon.

I look older now!  I look...(long, dramatic pause)...eight!
 

The kids' Christmas stockings; they each know for certain that they are my favorite!

And all ready for the New Year!

Chinese New Year Children's Song

Happy New Year!

Here is Luci doing her Princess Leia impersonation with her ear protection.

Happy New Year!

Our rural fire departments have fireworks sales for fundraisers. Which seems kind of silly to me--they use funds raised to put out fires caused by fireworks. Or, I guess you could see it as making sure their jobs are needed? Still silly, because they are volunteers.

Anyhow, the boys, since they are boys, like getting fireworks. When John is on his trips, I don't buy anything fun (according to the boys) because I am "Safety Susie." This year they made up for last New Year's Eve and last 4th of July. It rained yesterday, and wind was very low, so fire danger was low, and up went the rockets.

There were quite a few rockets that exploded overhead and some bottle rockets that whistled enough to scare most dogs in our area (and one 5 year old who lives at this address). Since I am still figuring out my camera, I did not get good shots of the fireworks or bottle rockets.

Here is what I did manage to shoot:

and my favorite:

Fireworks, Geek Style

Santa left this in one of the kids' stockings:

Install Mentos candy
Pull the "trigger," letting the Mentos fall into the Diet Coke
Watch it go!
Luci got into the spray of the last one, running into it "sprinkler style" and Mama wasn't happy. Bath time afterwards.

Odd Things

Okay, these party horns for New Year's Eve aren't odd...

Until you read the warning: For ages 14 years and over.
Hmm. That leaves out two-fifths of our family on New Year's Eve! JT missed it by just one year.

Turns out it doesn't matter anyway: the horns do not work! Luci nearly passed out trying to make some sound.
Here's the other Odd Thing:
Fruitcake Cookies! John likes them. He's the only one in our house who likes them. I think they'd taste a lot better if you took out the candied fruit and added chocolate chips instead.

For those of you who do like fruitcake (Mom? Anyone else out there? No?), here is the recipe I used.

Fruitcake Cookies

Makes 3 1/2 dozen (that's 42, for those of you who aren't up on your twelve-times tables)

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
3/4 cups sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped pecans
12 oz candied fruit for fruitcake (the chopped-up, colorful mix that comes in those huge tubs. I used 1/3 of my big 32 oz tub)

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Add egg, mix well. Put candied fruit and pecans in a separate bowl. In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Add 1/4 cup of this to the fruit and nuts, stir. (I can't remember why you should do this, but it seems to help. Maybe so they won't all stick together in one big, fruity lump.) Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 325* for 13-15 minutes until lightly browned. Cool on wire racks.

新年快樂 Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Here are some quick shots from today. We had our Chinese New Year dinner with our FCC group. Luci wore a dress we bought in Guang zhou and looked beautiful, as always. She also wore the jewelry that Daddy sent to her...garnets around her wrist and around her neck! With the party favor, a dragon!

Luci handled her chopsticks pretty well. She used them properly to pick up a square of jello! Wish I had caught that on film! (Yes, Feingold friends, I know it was a bad choice in food! She does have that red sauce on her plate for the chicken, but she didn't eat any of that. Just two jello squares and some bean noodles.)

Most of the girls played afterwards. Lots of fun! These photos are much more interesting than the "official portrait" of the girls all together, behaving. :)

And down they come! Right after this, these sweet, sweet girls began tickling Luci...she loved it! The mommas were appalled, but Luci is used to much sillier stuff with her big brothers, and thus enjoyed it!

I'll post more pictures later.