Cookies and Crayons

We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving this year. We decided to celebrate on Saturday because we weren’t sure if Scott would have to fly out on Sunday night. It was a nice bit of family time.

This was our first Thanksgiving at home with Dougie so we made sure to expose him to all our various family traditions. One of these is pickles with dinner. Dougie had never tried a pickle before but they were a bit hit. Clearly, he is truly a Sharabura.

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Scott and Dougie did more baking this weekend. This time, it was oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. This was Dougie’s most complicated recipe yet but he managed to do great!

It was a team effort

Not a tidy experience

Apparently, the chips had to go in individually

There are no pictures of the finished cookies because they didn’t last long. They were the best cookies I’ve ever had. Here is the recipe for those of you who are interested.

Cowboy Oatmeal Cookies

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup margarine
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
3 cups quick cooking oats
1 cup chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla

DIRECTIONS

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream margarine, oil, brown sugar, vanilla and white sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time. Gradually stir in the sifted ingredients until well blended. Mix in oats and chips. Chill mixture for 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Drop from a teaspoon onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in preheated oven, or until edges are golden. Let set up on the cookie sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

A while ago, we shared with you a video of Dougie climbing onto his high chair. Since then, we have always been sure to put the tray on to ensure he can’t climb up there. He’s an excellent climber but his coming down skills still need work (see post from yesterday).

Apparently, our tray method is no longer effective.

Clearly, we need a new plan. We should just be happy that he’s active, right?

Poor Dougie started this week off poorly. He was playing with his cars on the coffee table when something possessed him to get on it. He then attempted to get off but somehow slipped and fell onto the tile floor. Not good.

Once the crying stopped, he was just quiet but then he threw up. I had managed to do a quick search for “when to take your child to the doctor for a head injury” and that was top of the list. I call the doctor’s office.

The nurse told us that bringing him in there wouldn’t help because if he needed an x-ray of his head they weren’t equipped to do that. She asked that we bring him directly to the children’s hospital. So, off to Fort Worth we went. Several hours and one CT scan later, Dougie is just fine, though we certainly won’t be posing for formal pictures anytime soon.

Here he is post hospital having a drink

A while ago, we bought a Learning Tower for Dougie. We finally managed to get it assembled and tried it out this weekend.

His first task was to help with dinner. Dougie was in charge of making the potatoes.

They turned out great! No lumps or anything. So next, we thought he could try his hand at baking.

First, there was a chat about who would be in charge

Dougie won

Okay, Dougie let Daddy help a little

Looks like we have quite the budding chef on our hands… now that he can reach the counter.

We heard rumours that, sometimes, children just fall asleep while they are doing something else. I had even seen pictures of other people’s children sleeping in strange places. That sort of thing is just not something that happens with our child though, until today.

Today, we took Dougie to his very first grape stomp. The winery up the road does one every year. We’ve both been wanting to go for a while but just never did. Knowing how much Dougie loves to stomp his feet, we knew that we would have to take him this year. The day started off with some harvesting.

Then, we headed back to do some stomping. First, they loaded the grapes that had been picked into a machine that removed the stems. The grapes were then shot through a hose into the bucket.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any great pictures of Dougie stomping grapes. He did go in there but hated it. Normally, he loves to stomp his feet but the texture must have been a problem for him so we got him out. We did get a picture of post stomping feet though.

We all had a wonderful time. Dougie was feeling a bit under the weather so he didn’t get quite as into it as he normally would but we will definitely be back next year.

We wanted to apologize for the lack of updates lately. My computer was randomly crashing and we were concerned about unloading the pictures on it (several files had become corrupt). We ended up getting me a new computer which has finally arrived. So, we’ll be posted various updates from the last several weeks over the next few days. Hope you enjoy them!

My dad’s birthday was last weekend and my sisters and I all flew out to spend it with him. It was great to actually be able to be with him on his birthday. We each brought a bunch of little gifts so he’d have one to open for each year. Our “special” gift was to pull together a great scrapbook of our family’s history. We all had a blast flipping through old pictures of the family.

Dad with his presents

Dad beating Les at crib

The girls (and Dougie)

Dougie enjoying playing during the rain

Hanging with dad

Playing with the dog

Playing ball

… with Auntie Lou

… with Grandma

Dougie loves to read to himself. We caught a little on video: