{"id":617,"date":"2010-12-16T11:03:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-16T16:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/thursday-december-16-2010\/"},"modified":"2010-12-16T11:03:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-16T16:03:00","slug":"thursday-december-16-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/thursday-december-16-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday December 16, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s snowing!  Aside from a hair-raising, sweat-producing, tire-spinning drive back into the mountains to transport school children, I am overjoyed about this snow.  It feels Christmas-y and cozy and happy.  Funny though that we seem to be the only school for miles around that didn’t cancel and we are located furthest back in the mountains where snowplows are rarely seen and guard rails haven’t been invented yet.  Funny.  Very funny.  Or not.  I suspect the school program tomorrow night may be the significant factor in this equation.  At any rate, my drive for the day is history and I am happily staying inside until it’s time to build snowmen.<\/span>

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<\/a> <\/font> (Liam’s salad … every now and then we fudge the rules and let him have a little bit of grated cheese.  It makes him supremely happy and gives me fragments of hope for the future.)<\/span>
What makes your salad happy?  We are enormous salad fans around here.  Tossed Salad.  Cashew Pear Salad, Strawberry Spinach Salad, Throw whatever you have together salad, Greek Salad, Caesar Salad, just don’t give me seven layer salad ever.  Please and thank you.  What’s the salad topping you least like to do without or your favorite specialty salad?  <\/span>
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Last night we were having leftovers so I thought I’d spruce our meal up with salads and apple pie and ice cream.  The salads turned out to be so big and delightful we ate almost no leftovers and left the frig in its same overcrowded state.  Sad.  But the salads were happy.  Lettuce, carrots, broccoli, cucumber, red onion, avocado slices, hard boiled egg, fresh mushrooms, cheese, and croutons and topped with a Red Wine Vinaigrette dressing you really should try.  It’s delightful and so easy.<\/span>

1\/4 c. red wine vinegar<\/span>
1\/2 c. sugar<\/span>
Cook until sugar is dissolved.  Add:<\/span>
1 t pepper<\/span>
1\/2 t salt seasoning<\/span>
Slowly add <\/span>
1\/2 c. oil <\/span>
while blending.<\/span>

If only there were cherry tomatoes outside in the garden …<\/span>

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Tuesday night we seriously fudged the boys 8 o’clock bedtime because I wanted to make gingerbread with them.  I had visions of delicious gingerbread but that would have meant making a regular version and a gluten \/ dairy \/ everything else free version for Liam and it looked like too much work.  So we opted for a Liam-friendly version only.  I’d never tried the recipe and in spite of adding lots more rice flour than the recipe called for, it was too runny.  We couldn’t cut out shapes at all.  <\/span>

I tried to form a gingerbread man and two snowmen but they started spreading before they ever hit the oven and came out shaped like nonsensical blobs.  The two snowmen even turned into siamese twins joined from head to rounded bottom.  We re-shaped them with a knife, made one kind of glaze for each boy and let them have fun.  And did they have fun.  See for yourself.<\/span>
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This is one of the boys’ favorite activities in the winter.  I think I learned this game from <\/span>Amber<\/a>.  It’s great fun … especially when you go down belly first or sit on a blanket to make yourself slide three times faster.   They also like to prop it on pillows to make a ramp for their cars.  Who knew table boards had so many purposes?<\/span>

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Last year Adam and I made a paper chain to count off the days til Christmas.  It was so much fun I made one for him again this year while he was in school.  David said I am a cool mom.  I said cool moms would not have thought it was more fun making it by themselves.   I wrote a note inside each one and extended it til New Years Day and he loves it!<\/span>

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Dove chocolates.  There are only three left.  I try not to think about that.<\/span>
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Monday night the boys wanted fruit after they were done with their supper.  I looked at Adam in his red pajamas with the green pear he chose and then I looked at Liam in his green pajamas with the red apple he chose and a deeply embedded coordinated gene inside of me jumped up and down for joy.  Some days it doesn’t take much.<\/span>

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What made you feel happy recently?<\/span>
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It’s snowing!  Aside from a hair-raising, sweat-producing, tire-spinning drive back into the mountains to transport school children, I am overjoyed about this snow.  It feels Christmas-y and cozy and happy. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39ynQ-9X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}