Merry Christmas!

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree!

This year brought a lot of changes for me personally and my family as a whole. I started my new job and lost two grandparents. In the midst of those changes though I have enjoyed the new direction I'm headed.

One of the perks of my job is that we get nice breaks for the holidays. Over Thanksgiving I was able to drive down the Arkansas to be with my family, it was so different not having my Granddaddy there, but it was still great to see my cousins, uncle, aunts and grandmothers. The day after Thanksgiving my great-grandma made pork chops and other goodies for us (because we were all starved after we had our turkey dinner the day before).

I think my brother Spencer was more jealous of missing the pork chops than he was of missing out on the turkey!

Grandma putting the final
touches on her pork chops.

The weekend after Thanksgiving Tulsa and Northwest Arkansas got hit with several inches of snow and ice.

Snow always puts our area in a tizzy, even if it isn't that much compared to other areas. For example, while we were complaining about our 5" of snow my brother Burns has moved to Montana where they measure snow in feet and the temperature was in the negative double digits.

Regardless, I didn't have to go to work on Friday since the roads around the museum and university were all coated in ice. Instead I stayed home and baked, napped and read. Pretty much the perfect snow day!

Can you find the street?

Notice the bowls full of snow for snow ice cream...

And of course I made snow ice cream...

On Saturday some girls came over for a crafternoon which was great. We all worked on projects that we had. Anything from knitting to quilting or embroidering. Perfect activity for the freezing weather.

Of course, the next round of winter weather was ice. I lost half my maple in the back yard the weekend before Christmas, but at least it didn't take down the power line or damage my fence, deck or house. And I should have firewood to last me forever once we get the wood chopped.

The morning after the ice storm I actually went to Salvation Army to help distribute Christmas presents and food. Despite the fact that we were helping load items in people's cars while it sleeted I was glad I decided to go help. One of my book club friends works for Salvation Army and she asked some of us to come and the weather meant we didn't have as many as we had planned, but those of us who made it got a lot done.

The fallen limb, you can see how
it is almost half the tree.

It was only after I got home that my power was out. Which really put a kink in Lydia and my plans for the afternoon. We intended to have a baking day at my house to get all the Christmas treats that we wanted to make done. Instead we played a game of musical houses. I packed up about five grocery bags full of baking ingredients to haul to my mom's house in Sapulpa.

We were only about halfway done (but luckily finished with everything we had already started making) when the power went out at Mom's house.

So we packed everything up again and went to Dad's house in Jenks. By this point it was nearly 11:00 and we were almost done for the day. We mixed the dough for apricot and prune horns and left it to rise overnight.

Of course, we only thought that was the end of the drama. I woke up Sunday and got started on the apricot and prune filling and rolling out the dough only to discover that Dad's oven had inexplicably stopped working. Which meant that we had no way to bake the horns. Luckily my power had been turned back on sometime the previous evening (which I was extremely grateful for since I didn't want to have to transfer the contents of my refrigerator again) so we packed everything up AGAIN and went back to my house.

Ridiculous.

Close up of the fallen limb.
Apparently the limb is mostly hollow,
a squirrel lost it's home.

We managed to get almost everything made and left Monday for my grandmother's house in southern Arkansas. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be allowed to stay for Christmas if we didn't get the buckeyes made for my cousins and brothers.

Gramma Getchell's Buckeyes

          2 cups peanut butter

1 box powdered sugar

3 cups Rice Krispies

1/2 stick Butter, melted

2-3 pkg. chocolate chips or baking chocolate

paraffin wax

1. Mix peanut butter, powdered sugar, butter and sugar in large bowl until well blended.
2. Shape mixture into walnut-sized balls. Makes about 60 balls. 
3. Melt chocolate and paraffin wax in double boiler. Using skewer dip balls in chocolate until coated and place on wax paper to set. Refrigerate until chocolate hardens.