Lentil Soup for Gwyneth

My daughter Gwyneth loooves Lentil Soup.  So much that she will ask to have it for breakfast, which I often would say "no" to.  But, then I thought, "why would I say no?"  It's one of the healthiest foods I can think of so have at for breakfast all you'd like", I told her.  I"ve been meaning to find a good, easy recipe to pass on to her so she can make it herself.  This is it.

This recipe is found HERE, on another food blog.  We all thought it very delicious accept for a few and I won't name names but I will say they are naughty.  Yes, naughty for having to force down lentil soup, come on kids!, (actually it was just one kid, but still...)

It takes lots of carrots.

Gwyneth is peeling the carrots, eager to learn the recipe.

I think this is one of the ingredients that made this soup special.

Like I said, lots of carrots.

Starts out like any "ol" soup, a little Olive Oil, onions and carrots.

It's vegetarian, although this picture looks like it has meat in it, it doesn't.

If you don't have an immersion blender, hurry there are still two days before Christmas!!!!!!  It almost looks like chili down there.

This is just Garlic Sourdough bread, so good with any soup really.

Most of the soup was eaten up, but not that naughty little bowl to the bottom right there....you know who you are.  It's really good and unique in taste.  I loved it and Gwyneth did too, which is really the most important since she is the one making it now. (I don't know why the print is like this?)

The Temple and Fentons Ice Cream at Christmas Time!!!

Here we are another year and another moment to celebrate one of our favorite Christmas traditions.  Kirk and I love the temple and we want our children to love it also.  What better time to take them than at Christmas time?  We always go to Fentons in Oakland before visiting the temple.  Here's a look at what was had.....

Here is the line up, all six together about to have way too much ice cream.

Shane loves Strawberry ice cream with a few sprinkles....pretty good.

Georgia always gets bubble gum, her four year old self cannot resist this flavor.  I remember when I couldn't either.

Kirk got some Brownie Sundae and it was as big as their heads put together.

This is mine.  It's called Cookies Creation.  It has a big homemade baked  Chocolate Chip Cookie at the bottom with a scoop of Vanilla, Cookies and Cream, Caramel and on and on.  I usually never order anything like this.  But, before coming I prepared a nice Salmon dinner so I felt well fed and deserving of this.

Needless to say I felt sick afterwards and I'm not a kid anymore.  Next time I will stick to my scoop of ice cream with nuts.

Gwyneth got a Banana Split.   She's growing out of the temptation for Bubble Gum flavor....

Tumsy got a little bit.  She loved it, of course.

Kalen is definitely growing up as he got a chocolate milk shake.  Nice choice.

The after math.  It's always a fun time.

The beautiful Oakland California Temple...

Inside the visitor's center the children love watching the little clips.

Mesmerized...

Kirk is admiring, or trying to admire the Saviors ministry while Tums tries to get her mommy.

Shane is my only child that has been attached to a "Banky."  He needs it most places we go.  He looks like Linus from Snoopy.  So cute though...

This is a precious moment.  Kirk and Reece talking and admiring the Christ below.

Our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

They had a beautiful star projected onto the side of the building.

This is the best place to come during Christmas time.  The spirit is sweet and accommodating, strong and touching, if I had to describe it.  Everyone is happy here, everyone is smiling and kind.

Once you start talking to people walking around on the temple grounds you realize many are not LDS (Mormon).  As one man put it, "we live right up there across the street. We can see the temple from our house and my son calls it the castle, so I bring him here often because it has such a great feeling.")  Many people recognize the special spirit that can be felt here LDS or not.  

The temple has a special spirit that can be felt by all.  We believe this is a sacred place to visit and we try to visit it with the utmost reverence.  I'm so grateful we have a temple so close to attend as a married couple but also to have our children visit and gain a greater appreciation for it as well.

Another great visit to the temple at Christmas time, 2011.  Merry Christmas.

Prepared Grapefruit and naughty kids...

My kids have grapefruit almost every morning for breakfast.  I can't think of anything better because it's so good for you and so good to the taste.  If I let Shane he will have three grapefruit at a time.  I purchase the big bags of Grapefruit at Costco, it comes with about ten.

This last week I did my shopping on Friday.  By Sunday we were out of Grapefruit!  So I happened to be by Costco and "ran" in for another bag of this stuff.  The checker said it's the smallest order she'd ever done.  Funny, because she probably fills her biggest orders thanks to me as I officially need two carts when going to Costco, which means bringing Kalen or Gwyneth to push the other cart.

Blogging makes me want to become a photographer.  I love the way these first two pictures came out.  Grapefruit makes for some great art.  I think I could hang these pictures in my kitchen.

These pictures are done at a different time of day with a different "F" stop and with the kitchen light on.  I don't like them as much, but they demonstrate something I want to note.

I've created a bit of a habit, not necessarily bad but time consuming.  Since my first children were little I've cut the grapefruit for them.  But, not the easy way by cutting the skin off and then cutting up the fruit.  I cut the fruit in half, and then with a Grapefruit knife cut each individual section of the fruit, put it into one of these darling ramekins with a toothpick.

I tried serving the fruit differently once, put it into a big bowl with spoons and they all looked at me like I was serving them raw fish.  So every morning I spend about twenty minutes just preparing Grapefruit.....

This brings me to an actual bad habit that drives me nutty, but not my bad habit.  This is not just a random picture of cereal.

I mentioned in one of my posts that I only allow my children to have cereal two days out of the seven.  Why?  Well, because they always waste their milk!!!!  Luckily I have awesome friends who have experienced the same naughtiness with their kids and they advised me to strain the milk, so here I am below.

Picture all my six kids standing in front of the camera (yes even baby Summer because I know she'll be a milk waster too) saying, "STOP WASTING YOUR MILK.....

YOU NAUGHTY KIDS HAVE BEEN TOLD OVER AND OVER

NOT TO WASTE YOUR MILK!!!!!!!"

Do you see how my eyes are bulging out of my head, you'd think this would scare the dickens out of them to stop but I guess I am not that scary....because I'm still straining milk for Pete's Sake......

All things Christmas....

We love this time of year, who doesn't?  This is a look at the past week and all it had to offer.  Tumsy is definitely "all things Christmas" because she looks like a Candy Cane in bed with her Daddy.   I put her in bed to snuggle with him, because he can't really hold her the way he would like to with his broken collar bone.

We have had a great week ringing in a few of many Christmas traditions that we uphold in our family.

This is Summer's glow baby.  She loves this little glow worm dolly.

Last Sunday evening for our FHE we watched the Christmas Devotional given by the First Presidency.  After that we started in on one of our Christmas traditions.  The children gather all of the Christmas books we have and we wrap them individually.  We place them under the tree and after scriptures one of the children pick a present to unwrap and we read that Christmas story they've picked.   For December we do this in place of a "family novel."

Through the years we've collected quite a few Christmas stories.  This is a fun tradition.

Carefully wrapping.

Daddy is helping Georgia.

Georgia puts one of her finished products under the tree.

Here we are reading the first book picked.  It's titled, "Santa Calls."  This is in the top five of my favorite Christmas stories.  It's great.  It's about these three Texan children that get taken on a wild Christmas adventure.  A must read for your family.  We get it every year at the Library.  Just remember to read with a "Texan Drawl" during the appropriate parts.  :)

Next evening is Monday and our dear friends, the Stepans, invited us over to hold FHE with them.  They were doing their annual Ginger Bread house and we had to decorate our Ginger Bread men for our neighbors so it worked out great.

Gwyneth really enjoyed icing the Ginger Bread Boys.

If you are wondering if that Ginger Bread has a Toblerone for a face, you guessed correctly.  My kids love this chocolate so they thought our neighbors would too, no less as the face....

Kent was in charge of the Hot Chocolate and Apple Cider, as there was a choice.

Thanks Kent.

The Stepans.  From the left: Kent, Bishop Matt Stepan, Sammy (underneath Matt), Jeff, Joe, their mom, Wendy and the newest addition of pink, Brooklyn Stepan.  If you can't see her very well, it's okay because she looks just like the rest of them

Matt gave us a lesson and asked me to talk about the service I had planned for our family to do for this week.......

Every year I try to find something our children can do that's hands on service.  Last year a friend of ours was able to book an appointment for our children to play piano and read Christmas books in a rest home.  I loved it so much, they were so well received it was touching.

This year I thought we would do a "week of service."  Last week the children baked everyday after they finished school.  They built up a supply of mostly ginger bread cookies and chocolate chip cookies.

They stuffed our old stockings (that were left over after the new ones were made) with their baked goods, granola bars, apples, dollar gloves and a scarf.  We picked some scarves from our own stash as we have an over abundance of them, especially for being in California.

Here Georgia is grouping up cookies.

Gwyneth is stuffing her stocking.

We chose to give our stockings to the people that sit at the Goodwill trucks and take peoples used items. We chose this because the Goodwill makes it a priority to hire people with medical problems, and mental disabilities such as mild forms of Autism.  I'm grateful for these types of foundations that make it possible for these people to find self worth and meaning in life through a job.   Plus we drop off our "things" often enough that we have a good re-pore with two of the five trucks we handed stockings out to.

Tuesday we took goodies to our neighbors.  This is actually our second trip out (below).  We had to come back and put a few more bags together because as we were walking around we forgot a few.

Wednesday was my favorite day of service.  We chose to go the Costco/Trader Joe's parking lot and help people load their cars with their groceries.  The two boys, Kalen and Reece got into their Scout shirts and paired up, while Gwyneth and I were a pair.  I left the little ones at Mom's.

I told the children to focus on "elderly" people, that might have a little more trouble with heavy items.  It was so fun.  It was a little awkward at first but then we got into a real groove where I felt like we were able to help a lot of people.  When the boys asked to help, nobody ever told them "no."  We were there for a couple of hours and during this whole time only two people said "no" to Gwyneth and I.

After we came home, Gwyneth asked me why those two people said "no" to our help.  I gave her various reasons.  But, I also explained that we knew a little better what Christ felt on his mission here on the earth. Because, Christ offered the greatest help of all and so many people said,"no" to his help.

Today, we were going to the Carlton Plaza, a facility for older folks and medically assisted people.  We decided to delay this until next week so we can do service with the Stepans.  The children will play the piano and sing.

We've had a great week.   I love seeing the children with a little extra skip in their step because they are doing what they know is most important during the Christmas season.