Pancake Puffs

Pancakes are Tony's favorite food. A while back he saw a commercial for this special pan that makes pancake puffs. He thought they looked like something yummy he'd like to try, so we borrowed Grandmama's Ebleskiver pan (aka the pancake puff pan) and made some over the weekend. It was like a trip to Solvang without leaving the house....YUM!! Meagan liked them too- she ate them so fast, we couldn't keep them on her tray.

Monkey Business

The oranges are ripe here, and all the neighbors with orange trees have oranges coming out their ears it seems. (We have the same only its lemons, so if anyone wants lemons come on by- take all you like!) Tom ran into one our neighbors who likes hoarding his oranges. They worked out this "deal"- Tom traded this rusty old hunk of junk bicycle he found in the weeds along one of his trails at work for a 5 gallon bucket of oranges. Now, the neighbor thinks he got this great deal- apparently he's had his eye on the bike for some time now and Tom is pleased as punch with all his oranges. Who got the better deal, I'm not sure, but boy- those are some tasty oranges! Here are some pictures of the oranges and the silliness they inspired....

Happy New Years!!!

We're back from some fun in the snow at Nana & Papa's house. We spent the last week playing in the snow, fishing (the boys caught 17 fish one afternoon) and just having a good time. My cousins from Orange county made the trip up and spend the weekend before New Years with us. We had lots of fun sledding, making snowmen, playing games, celebrating some birthdays and whatnot. Here are a bunch of pictures from the last week....

And an update on Meagan- she is doing just fine. Her doctor saw her yesterday and said everything is clear, no infections from the jicama. We're glad to have her back to normal!!

Beware the Jicama....

We hope everyone had a happy Christmas. Ours was exciting to say the least. We had the family over for Christmas Eve festivities. Lots of fun, food and gifts... Meagan enjoyed all of it, including the jicama and dip. She liked it so much, she packed some away in the side cheek pockets of her mouth, I'm guessing so she could enjoy it later?? We didn't realize she had 'chipmunked' it and set her down to play. A few minutes later she started choking and gagging on it. She swallowed it, we thought, and went on about her monkey business. Later that night she started wheezing and coughing, but was still playful and her usual self. We kept an eye on her overnight and thru the next day (Christmas day) and she was the same- wheezing but normal. We called her doctor, who was out of the office until the 2nd., and urgent care who told us to take her to the ER and have her checked out. There we were told the good news was she would be taken care of, the bad news was she needed to go to UC Davis Children's hospital to have her lungs scoped because nothing was showing up on the xrays and there is no one north of Sacramento capable of performing this procedure on a child this small. So Meagan and I were airlifted to UC Davis and Tom drove down to meet us. She underwent her surgery (scope) and had a small piece of jicama removed from her airway. It was lodged at the top of her right lung, right after where the airway branches into the lungs, blocking about 80% of her airway on the right side. She spent the night in the PICU and was released the next morning. She's doing fine now, still a little sleepy from the anesthesia, but otherwise back to her usual self. The doctors said we caught it before any infection started and there was no sign on pneumonia, so we got lucky all the way around. They sent us home with these fun pictures of her lungs....the jicama is the white blob on the right

Sugar Shock

Now that I have sufficiently come down from my sugar overload, I can finally get to posting these picutres from our Baking Weekend last weekend....

Every year the girls in our family get together and bake up lots of yummy Christmas goodies. When the weather cooperates, like it did this year, we head up to my Mom's house and make it a full weekend of baking. This year's extravaganza included 7 types of cookies, 2 shortbreads, 5 types of chocolate candies, and a peanut brittle. Yum!

More Gingerbread Fun

My mom and I found these gingerbread kits at Costco- the house is prebaked and it comes with all the frosting and candies- all you have to do is put it together. My kind of gingerbread house!! Saturday afternoon she and Tony put this one together. Tony is very proud of it. He got really concerned when Tom mentioned that it looked so good that Santa might not be able to resist and eat a little bit of it when he came to visit on Christmas Eve. Tony whipped up this little note for Santa:

He asked us to spell the words for him, and he wrote it out all by himself. Not bad for a 4 year old....

Gingerbread boys

Tony really wanted to make gingerbread boys for his class, so yesterday we baked up a bunch. Then after dinner, we decorated them with Nana (who's been staying with us for the week), Robin & Richard. Lots of fun....

While Tony & I were baking the cookies Nana wanted to see how well Meagan can feed herself- and this is how she does....