Baking Sugar Cookies with my boys

The snow started falling on Wednesday and so no school! I decided it was a good day for baking. The boys and I made up some sugar cookie dough with frosting sprinkles and all.

Grandma Katie's Povitica

While reading my monthly subscription to Family Fun I saw a picture of some bread, I was so excited because I knew that it was povitica. I quickly turn to the recipe and sure enough it was.
You see my Great Grandmother Katie use to make this for the holidays. My sister Deanna and I have made it a couple of time over the past few years, but it always seemed to be quite challenging. Grandma Katie’s way of making it was that you rolled the whole batch of dough (enough to make 4/5 regular loaves of bread) over the entire kitchen table and tried your best to spread it as thin as you possibly could without tearing it. Then you would spread the yummy nut filling across the whole kitchen table that had the dough on it and then do your best to roll it all up like you would cinnamon rolls, again without tearing it. As you can see this became an almost impossible task.
When my sister came to visit I showed her the recipe and she said yes, it seemed like the recipe, but Grandma Katie’s used ½ -n- ½ instead of milk. No this isn’t a lowfat kind of bread.
I decided to give it a try one day, and I was surprisingly amazed it wasn’t all that hard, when you don’t roll all the dough out at once. Now, why we didn’t try this earlier when attempting to make it with my sister I am not sure, maybe because we wanted to make it just like Grandma Katie? I ended up making 4 loaves and I must say they are quite tasty. I am going to make some more when a couple of days before Christmas so they will be fresh.

The search for the Perfect Tree

I love the smell of a fresh cut Christmas tree. Every year we go hunting for the perfect Christmas tree. Of course this take a little time and when we think we have found one that everyone will like, someone decided it not quite perfect and we have to move on to the next. This usually take 30 minutes or so, but we all have a great time. The last two years we have gone to Ames Tree farms not to far from us. They have really nice trees and they are cheap compared to every other place.

This year the boys decided they wanted to cut the tree down. They discovered it is a little harder than it looks. They both gave it a good shot, but in the end Dad ended up cutting it down.

Halloween
What fun the kids had. They don't celebrate Halloween in Germany, so Marja had a fun time dressing up and going trick or treating. The kids got lots of candy and chocolate for Mom! Actually, my favorites are smarties and the kids were fine giving me those as long as I didn't take their chocolate.

Marja the Pirate, Abbigail "Hannah Montana"
Austin "Venom" and Steven "The Ninja" without the mask since he couldn't seem to find it.

CANDY!!!!! Lots of CANDY!!!!