More snow, more soup...I'm sensing a pattern here

If you're in Boise, you know the weather has been a bit crummy and the roads are even worse.  This is where I'd normally complain or make a sarcastic remark, but this is a positive blog, remember?  Hadley did not want to go down for a nap yesterday, so naturally, I bribed her.  I told her that if she took a nap, we could go play in the snow after dinner.  She held up her end of the deal, so I had to hold up mine.  The problem was, by the time we finished dinner it was raining outside.  What to do?

I brought a shovelful of snow into the bathtub.  The kids had a blast!

I made Ina Garten's cheddar corn chowder for dinner last night.  I omitted the butter, cut the chicken stock down to 8 cups, and used white cheddar cheese (about 3/4 pound).  Many of the reviewers said that it was more of a soup than a chowder, so I blended about 4 cups of the soup than added it back to the pot, just to thicken things up a bit.  We all liked it and it made a lot of food.  We ate the leftovers tonight and I froze enough for at least three more dinners.  

I forgot to take a picture of the soup, maybe because we were busy enjoying it.  I did, however, take plenty of pictures of the sweet potato gnocchi with maple cinnamon sage brown butter sauce that I made a few nights ago.  A coworker made this last week and brought me a sample.  It was really delicious and I was excited to make it for my family.  Unfortunately I must have done something wrong, because it ended up tasting like cinnamon roll dough.  Don't get me wrong, that's not a bad thing, it just wasn't what we were expecting for dinner.  In fact, the kids and I ate the leftovers for breakfast the next morning.  

Remember the fruitcake from last night?  Although it may have been tasty by fruitcake standards, it still wasn't very good.  My solution?  Add some cream cheese frosting, roll into balls and dip in chocolate.  Yum!

The fruitcake might not taste good, but at least the box looks cute, right?

Blake is getting into the Christmas spirit, too.  We were in the grocery store yesterday when a man with a short white beard walked by.  Blake said (loudly), "Ho, ho ho!"  

If I had planned ahead, I think bottles of homemade vanilla would make great Christmas gifts.  Buy some vanilla beans in bulk, find some cute jars and a large bottle of vodka or rum = thoughtful, useful and relatively cheap gifts.  They say it takes 2-6 months for the vanilla to be ready to use, so I suppose you could give it to somebody at Christmas with the reminder to wait until springtime to use it.  Hadley must have heard us talking about this last night, because when we were reading bedtime stories she said, "You want some vodka mom?" I can't say I ever expected to hear those words come out of my two year old's mouth.  

This post is getting way too long, but I want to leave you with a few links:

Who could complain about free greeting cards? 

I'm impressed by anybody that can run more than a mile, but this girl is really impressive.  So is this one.

Not my gumdrop buttons!

Happy weekend!