In just a few minutes, I am expecting a very excited little boy to wake up bouncing and inform us that it is now Christmas Eve!! Caleb has been so fun this year and Christmas has been in high gear at our house. We have had it all including great tantrums, a good case of the "give-me's", and so much excitement and sweetness you just have to love the crazy 5 year old no matter what! Christmas Traditions have been fun to create as a family. It interesting to see what traditions you keep from each other's families and what things you come up with on your own. Last year I changed our tradition a bit and made my life much easier. It worked out great and so I am really looking forward today.
One Christmas tradition Brydon and I started together is "Gingerbread Pancakes". We found the recipe our 2nd Christmas together and have had them for Christmas morning breakfast every year, except last year. Last year I moved the pancake making to Christmas Eve morning. These pancakes take some time to make, are slow cookers, and making them Christmas morning is a bit stressful. Everyone is starving and you create a big mess when you don't really want one. So Christmas Eve became the better choice. They are super yummy and we will have fun making them this morning.
Not long after we started this tradition, we found these amazing pancake molds. We could make Gingerbread pancakes into Gingerbread men! However, every Christmas I failed to make them work and I had yet to create an actual real looking Gingerbread man using them. I could not get our molds and this particular pancake recipe to work together. Last year was success!! I had to take a ton of pictures to prove it! I learned a few tricks and now we can make our Christmas pancakes. I am very proud of this accomplishment!
Gingerbread Pancakes
1 c. all purpose flour 3 T. molasses
1 ½ t. baking powder ½ c. milk
½ t. cinnamon 1
T. oil
½ t. ground cloves 1
egg
Mix together dry ingredients: flour, baking
powder, cinnamon, and cloves. Place in a
medium bowl. Add molasses, milk, oil,
and slightly beaten egg. Mix well. Drop batter by ¼ cupfuls onto a hot non-stick
griddle or skillet. Turn when bubbles
form on the surface; heat until both sides are golden. Makes 9 pancakes.
*Add more milk if you want to use molds. The batter needs to be runny.
The rest of the day will be spent, listening to Christmas music, baking goodies, and watching Christmas movies or reading Christmas books. Caleb is quite my little cooking buddy and we love making goodies together. I have some fun new recipes to try out today.
Last year we discovered Oreo Truffles. They are so yummy!
After making my family's traditional Christmas Eve Potato Soup with crackers and cheese meal. Then we will make the traditional Gingerbread Train. We don't do houses here, we are a train family!
Then decorate the cookies for Santa.
After reading the Christmas story in the Bible we will each open one present. Check out Caleb's thumbs up of excitement as Daddy is opening his present. So cute!
Then of course we have to make sure the cookies will taste good for Santa, before we try to get a very excited little guy off to bed.
Tomorrow we will wake up to these. Overnight Sweet Rolls and a big bowl of fruit salad. A much easier breakfast for a family who's child will be up at 5:30 am ready to open presents. It will be a crazy Christmas. Tomorrow I get to speak and sing in church and finish delivering all the new Primary material. So no being late or skipping church for us tomorrow. Then we will make Brydon's family's traditional holiday food items and have the Missionaries and some friends over for Christmas Dinner. What an exciting couple of days?!! Hope you all have some traditions to carry out in your home that help you enjoy one another and get into the Christmas Spirit!
