Well, our Polar Express Party was full of family, fun, food, and lots of love. I think everyone had a great time and it all seemed to have gone well despite the bad weather we were experiencing.

The cousins had a lot of fun visiting, playing hide and seek, enjoying all the sweet treats, and having a special movie night experience. The grown-ups also got to talk and enjoy the movie… I love these special memories that our kids will be able to fondly look back on when they are older.

I will post links to items at the end of the post if you are interested in them.

We have been talking about maybe adding some ‘Reindeer Games’ to our next Polar Express party. The weather wasn’t very good this year but maybe next year everything will work out so that we can include some more fun activities.

Our menu kept changing as we couldn’t get some of the things we had planned but this was the basic menu:

We also had more cookies and treats that others brought so there was an abundance of goodies!

Here are links to some of the dishes listed above:

• Cheese ball
• Ranch Dip – use 1/4 cup of this mix and 1-2 cups of sour cream
• Potato Salad
• Baked Beans – we used venison in place of the hamburger but we also kept some without meat.
• Macaroni & Cheese
• Deviled Eggs
• Fudge
• Salted Caramel Cupcakes
• Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Sweet Tea
• Lemonade
• Cocoa in a Crockpot

The movie boxes are little caddies that I found at Dollar Tree some time ago and they hold the popcorn buckets perfectly along with a space for a cup/drink. Each child also got to choose a box of candy, and a hat. We also had a jingle bell necklace in each basket for them to ring towards the end of the movie.

Despite my oven acting up, we were also able to get some sourdough treats made for gifts along with a few little treat bags for the kiddos to take home. I found the recipes and a tutorial for the sweet treats HERE. We made a quadruple batch of the recipe and then used Nutella for two of the Christmas stars, homemade Rosella Jam for two of the stars, and cinnamon/sugar for the twists. I’ll link the gifting boxes below.

For the savory bread, we used the recipe for the beginner sourdough bread HERE. I made a double batch for each flavor and then made 8 mini loaves of each flavor.

For each batch of the basic dough, I used:

• 7 cups of flour
• 1 cup of active starter
• 2 2/3 cup of water
• 4 t. salt

The add-ins were as follows:

• Honey Oat: I added about 1/4 c. honey and 1/2 c. ground oats to the basic dough and then I sprinkled them with some whole oats before baking.
• Jalapeno Cheddar: I added about 1 cup of shredded cheddar and 1/2 cup of diced pickled jalapenos during the folds and stretches. I may add more cheese the next time but it was really delicious!
• Garlic Herb: I melted 1/4 stick of butter, and added 3 T. minced garlic and about a Tablespoon of Italian Seasoning. I added this in during the folds and stretches. I may not melt the butter the next time and just make a paste to spread in the dough the next time but the flavor was outstanding!

We didn’t have any proofing bowls so we just used an assortment of cereal and soup bowls that we had in the kitchen… the new pantry island was overflowing with bread! I don’t have any pictures of that mess though.

We also made a batch of each recipe of the chocolate, peanut butter, butter pecan, and peppermint fudge. We had a difficult time trying to find the Marshmallow Creme so I used marshmallows instead and they turned out pretty good. I did notice that they were a little firmer if I added about 1/2 cup more baking chips to the batches though. I forgot to get some more gift boxes for the fudge but we used some ‘to-go’ boxes for people to take home any goodies they wanted. We also found some Marshmallow Creme at the store after I made this!

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Sunday morning my sister came down to pick up my nephews who had stayed the night. My other sister had sent a basketball goal… the kids have been begging for one so they were so excited to see it. She also sent me a new Kitchen-Aid mixer! I had recently seen them on sale at Sam’s Club but it just wasn’t in the budget to get one right now … plus my old one is still working even though it is over 20 years old. It just needs to be babied a bit with the big batches of bread dough.

I was am still in disbelief that I have a new mixer but I am so very grateful for this very useful gift and I was able to gift my old one to someone else who has been dreaming of having one. They also gave me two older laptops that I can restore to use for school… such a blessing!

Then on Sunday afternoon, we had Christmas dinner at Nanny’s and Papa’s house. I was so excited to give them their gifts as the kiddos had told me that Papa had really been wanting to watch ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ but that he hadn’t been able to find it on TV. I just happened to spot it at the Dollar General a week ago and I grabbed it for him… turns out the kids were mistaken and he had been talking about Buster Brown, not Charlie Brown. Oh well, I tried and I think he liked his other gift. I’ll link the grandparent gifts below.

The kids were very excited to open some gifts. They got some new shirts, shoes, and insulated cups that they love!

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Last week I had made up the Event Planning worksheets and managed to get our menus printed for Christmas and New Year’s dinners but someone got rid of them. Thankfully my printer was having some issues when I printed them so I ended up with a couple of partial copies that I could put together so everything wasn’t completely lost. Even our temporary annoyances serve a purpose sometimes!

I’ve also been trying to get a jump start on the New Year by printing out a new set of Bill Planning sheets so that I can get all the bills transferred over before it’s time to pay them again! I know that we have some projects coming up and I really need to keep my budget in check so that we can focus on getting these things taken care of as frugally as possible. Keeping track of the money that needs to go out helps a lot when planning for things that aren’t a part of our normal budget. I asked Mr. Awesome not to get me anything as I know that we will need the extra money for these projects but I think he got me a little something anyway.

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All in all it’s been a very busy week and I know the upcoming week will be just as busy. We are all looking forward to seeing some of the older kiddos who will be coming to visit for Christmas. I would love to have all the kiddos together under one roof but I’m not sure if that will happen this year or not. I don’t want the younger kids to get all caught up in what’s under the tree or what they did or didn’t get… I really want them to appreciate the time with family and try to help them to better understand what a blessing it is to see our family again and to take the time to cherish being with them and create special memories.

I really do LOVE the Christmas season because I am so grateful to have a God that loved us so much that He sent His son to save us from our mistakes. Seeing the pure excitement on our littlest one’s face reminds me of God’s blessings and miracles and encourages me to keep trying to create these memories so that maybe my kids will know the pure joy of what God has done for us and the reason for celebrating the birth of Jesus.

This is a great sermon for this time of year!

I’ve got to get off of here and pull some leftovers out of the fridge for dinner but I’ll try to check in with you all again soon. We do have several posts already scheduled so I’m hoping that they will help someone with something they may be facing. We pray you are all doing well and that you are getting through this season without too many challenges.

God Bless!

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Links:

• Treat Boxes
• Clear Bakery Bags – you could also use wax paper to wrap your bread
• Brown Bakery Boxes – these really made our gifts look so pretty!
• Santa’s Workshop Backdrop (cloth)
• Winter Train Backdrop (cloth)
• Jingle Bells necklaces
• Train Engineer Hats
• Christmas headbands – we used a couple of these for our goats but they quickly destroyed them, however, the kids loved them!
• Small storage caddies for movie boxes – these are similar but not the same – check Dollar Tree
• Retro popcorn holders – check Dollar Tree first!
• Reusable cups for coffee/cocoa – check Dollar Tree first!
• Treat Bags - we placed a pack of hot cocoa mix, a bag of popcorn, gummy snacks, stickers, a golden ticket, and a few candies in each bag.
• Nanny gift – My favorite people call me Nanny T-shirt
• Papa’s gift – Papa knows everything T-shirt
• A Charlie Brown Christmas
• Reindeer games like Antler Toss

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I almost forgot… our chicks hatched and are doing well! The goose eggs are on ‘lockdown’ and should be hatching later this week 🙂