Chocolates and Scales

Ken taught his last class at UVSC (for this semester) last week and the kids were so excited! To kill some time while they waited for him to come home we dipped pretzels in flavored chocolate. Since I took pictures of the rest of the kids Spencer didn't want to be left out. Check out those blue eyes. Instead of dipping he played with the measuring cups making us pretend food. Jessie did the lemon flavored ones. Part way through she looked over at the cinnamon ones I was doing with Abbie and was in awe of my uniform rows and said she wanted hers to look like she worked in a chocolate factory too. I think she did a pretty good job. I can't believe she is so big.

Mark did the orange flavored ones. Mark liked dipping the big pretzels rather than the sticks because he could get more chocolate on them. He was so proud of the one pretzel completely covered in chocolate with a puddle of chocolate around it on the wax paper.

Jessie and Abbie had been dancing to Christmas music before we started and if you ask Abbie you have to wear a dress to dance. She was super careful not to get chocolate on it because she is kind of sensitive to stains on her clothes.

I got a scale at the store and Mark and Abbie were having SO MUCH FUN seeing how high they could get the scale to go. It was funny to watch Abbie climb on Mark's back and then him pick up the weight and try to stand up without tipping over. They eventually got it to go to 220 pounds...after playing with the starting point.

I'm so silly.

When Jessie came home from school, part of the inside of one of her teeth had chipped off. I was a little worried until she told me that the tooth was also loose. She wiggled that silly tooth for 2 days straight (even at church grossing out her teacher and me). It finally popped out and we were all very grateful.

In our family you have to write the tooth fairy a reminder note and leave it on the kitchen table. The next morning Ken asked Jessie if the tooth fairy had come and Mark turned to me and asked how much she got and all I could tell him is that I sure wished the tooth fairy had seen that note. Luckily the other tooth fairy had remembered.

I found a really neat website that had a faux french braid on it and even though I can french braid it looked really pretty so we tried it for church.

Heather gave me this awesome bundt pan a year or two ago, but I've never found an occasion to use it. Spencer thought it was a castle and didn't believe me when I told him the towers were really trees around a gingerbread house -- not that it really matters as long as it tastes good, right? I made a chocolate almond cake that Ken and I thought was delicious, but Jessie thought it tasted like medicine.

We waited until the Saturday after Thanksgiving to put up the tree. The kids absolute favorite decorations were the red and gold strings of beads. They pretended they were lead ropes for horses and then fancy treasures. It was fun.