Lisa and John

In No Particular Order….

Avy with almost ALL of her Christmas clothes on at once… eating her giant candy cane from Santa.

I just love this leopard print dress.  Isn’t she an angel??  You can’t really see the black tights, but they add nicely to the outfit.

Sledding at the skate park.  Reed has such a cherry face and Ivan looks all tough!

Mary on her donkey….

Christmas Nativity

Ivan’s Peanut Family he made.  Cute, huh?

Merry Christmas!

It has been a busy month, but we are loving every minute of it.  I have lots of posts, but no time to share them.  Ha!  I was able to swipe some pictures off of Ivan’s new camera and make you another Smilebox Slideshow.  Here are a few pictures of what Christmas looks like around the Pratt house.  (Taken by mostly Ivan and a few other family members.)

We just want to wish you a Merry Christmas and we hope your day is special in many ways.  This was the first year that our Children actually woke US up for Christmas.  Apparently Calvin was up around midnight and could not go back to sleep!  Too funny!  Avalon LOVES all her new clothes and is wearing just about all of them simultaneously.  There is a fire in the wood-burning stove and we are toasty and happy in the love of new presents and warm monkey bread.  Just being together as a family on this special morning is wonderful.

Have a blessed day celebrating Christ’s love for each of us.  We love you!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Ivan was baptized this past weekend.  My folks came from Oregon for the special occasion.  So did some other Pratt family members.  We had a lovely weekend and the baptismal service was beautiful.

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Ivan and John are all dressed in white for the ordinance.  The spirit was strong at the baptism and I’m so glad that Ivan has taken this important step in his eternal progression.  Baptism is the first step toward living with our Father in Heaven.  He also now has the gift of the Holy Ghost to guide him throughout his life.  What a beautiful gift from God.

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Here are most of us.  We took some more pics after the baptism, but I haven’t got any of those on my camera.  Oops!  Maybe someone can send me a couple?

I made a smilebox slide show of a few of the goings on:

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I’ve had a couple of questions about the ice cream cake.  I’m sure there are many ways to make ice-cream cake, but this is how I do it.  It is easy and it tastes so good.  You can serve a cake with ice cream, but there is something about them being together that is so fun and so tasty.

Here is what I usually do:

• Make a cake into two round pans.  8-9 inches will do.  I like to bake my cakes from scratch.  Sometimes the boxed mixes don’t taste well after freezing.  Well, sometimes they don’t taste that good even if you don’t freeze them.  Ha!  Plus, when you make your own, you are using fresh ingredients and no chemicals.  No chemicals is GOOD!
• Once the cake is baked, let it cool and freeze the layers.  Clean out your round cake pans.  Let your ice cream soften a little while you line your round cake pan with parchment paper.  I think wax or even plastic wrap would work, too, but I haven’t tried that.
• Take the softened ice cream and scoop it into your lined round pan and squish it all in there.  You can make this layer of ice cream as thick or thin as you like.  Flatten the top and make everything really smooth.  Put this back in the freezer and freeze it solid.
• The day of your party, take the cake layers and the ice cream layer out of the fridge.  Pop the ice cream out of the pan and put the layers together.  Cake–ice cream–cake.  Then, frost as normal.  With an ice cream cake I just like to use whipping cream.  Whip it thick, like the consistency of frosting, add a little sugar and then frost the cake.  It is easy and isn’t so sweet that it overpowers the ice cream.  Put it back into the freezer until ready to serve.

Ok.  What have I forgotten?  Any questions?  Have fun!  My favorite, I think, would be chocolate cake with a layer of Breyer’s mint chocolate chip ice cream in between.  I did a white cake with sherbet between once and I will never do it again.   The boys LOVED it, but it was way too sickeningly  sweet.  Gag!  Good luck and let me know if you try this in your home!

Ivan turned EIGHT today and we had a GREAT birthday party to celebrate.  He invited several of his closest guy friends and we decided on a Science theme.  It was a blast.  Literally!  We got this idea from a website where they list hundreds of different party ideas and someone had posted a “Mad Scientist Party” idea where they had hired a guy from a company to come in and do science tricks.  (They lived in LA!)  I thought to myself, “I can do that!”  And, the idea was born and took off!  John and I really had  a lot of fun putting it together.  And, it was pretty low key, too, so that was nice.  We got some pics from the fun and you can look at this slide show.  Not pictured was the diet coke/mento experiments or the cornstarch slime ol’ stanby.  Also, for party favors we gave out glow sticks, pop rocks, and they each took home lots of slime.

The boys absolutely loved it.  They said it was the best party they ever went to.  One child also said, “Boy, you sure have to wash your hands a lot at this birthday party!”  Another child said, “Wow.  I only sit at home watching tv and being bored.  You have a lot of fun at your house.”  Ha!

Anyway, just thought I’d post these pics before they get lost in the rest of my “to do blog” ideas.

Make a Smilebox slideshow