Caleb or Maddie?
I love how they've been painting the entire surface of the paper, from edge to edge.
(The first & third are Maddie's, the second & fourth, Caleb's.)
And it was a good thing I did, because Braden declared this to be the best meal I've ever made. And the way to My Man's heart is most definitely through his stomach!
While the pasta was cooking, I minced a few cloves of garlic and threw them in a saucepan with a little olive oil and butter and cracked pepper. Sauteed for a couple minutes and threw in the raw shrimp to cook.
While the shrimp was sauteeing and the pasta still cooking, I quickly made the pesto...which by the way if you've never made a pesto, make one! It's one of the simplest 'sauces' you can make for your pasta. Since Braden loves cilantro, I decided to forego the traditional basil and use cilantro instead.
However, not being a big fan of cilantro myself, I didn't think I could tolerate a pure cilantro pesto, so I did equal parts cilantro, flat leaf parsley and watercress (healthy galore!) The overwhelming flavor was definitely cilantro, but the parsley and watercress kind of mellowed it out. So into my blender went the wads of herbs, fresh garlic cloves, pine nuts, olive oil and a little bit of parmesan cheese.
That's a hefty portion of pesto and a full pound of shrimp with just a half pound of pasta. We like lots of the good stuff with our pasta.
The rolls had been baking in the oven along with...
the roasted asparagus. Just a little salt, cracked pepper and olive oil. 
And there you have it--or should I say, there IIII have it since I'm the one who has to remember this. And there I have it, my husband's favorite meal!
Oh my, lookie here. We've already got the non-chalant, one-finger driving action going on. We better watch out...in about 12 years.
He doesn't call them anything, but golly, don't they look like pears? And they look awfully like the first thing Maddie started drawing, which she DID call pears. Kind of crazy, huh?
Maddie didn't want to be left out of the fun, so she made one too, "the mommy lion," ...though I think hers looks more like a spotted polar bear, don't you?
Anyways, I was making the roast. This one required all kinds of chopping...bacon, carrots, onions and so on. I had a hefty, half-full dutch oven, by time I was done. Added in seasonings, put on lid, slid in oven, started closing door...and realized I had forgotten to add the MEAT! Leave it to me! I could just see myself realizing this about 5:30pm and ending up with a sorry stew sans beef. The picture is the roast going into the oven. I'll bet it looks even better when it comes out. It smells SO GOOD! I'll post the recipe in my sidebar.
Look what I found still growing in my 'dead' garden pots...my thyme! I was shocked. I picked some and used it in my dinner that night. 
discarded toys
mommy tracks
kiddie tracks
bunny tracks
popeye tracks
If you click on this picture, you will actually see snowflakes. I promise.
And to prove it really was snowing, this is what it looked like about an hour later.
Oh, I hope my kids get one big dump this year!
But Braden is so sweet. He was making a hospital visit for work and was passing by Anthropologie, so he ran in and found this ornament. It's velvet!
And speaking of taking down the tree--there she goes. This tree was our absolute favorite, we should have named her. She looked beautiful and did not drop a needle. She even sat for 2 weeks after Christmas never watered and still looked lovely. What a tree!
Caleb painted and repainted and mixed and re-mixed colors so much that his turned out all brown...but it was okay because, after all, it was a gingerbread man.
I also played a game with the kids that they really liked, which we (so creatively) called The Opposites Game.
We like good food around here, so we snacked on pretzels, pears, pumpkin seeds and pumpkin chocolate-chip bread. We also made our own soft pretzels. Isn't preschool the best?!
This recipe called for boiling the pretzels for 60 seconds in water & baking soda prior to baking. It makes the pretzels chewy.
The only salt I had was Hawaiian Salt, so red it was!
They were so yummy hot and fresh from the oven! The kids loved them.
Now that you've seen this charming post, I'll tell you what really happened. I made the pretzel dough yesterday, but our day flew by so quickly, it was clear by about 3pm that that wasn't going to happen. I threw the dough in the fridge to retard the rising and pulled it out today to let it rise. But then the kids took long naps and slept late. So I got dinner cooking early to wait on the stove so we could still make the pretzels before dinner.
