Elfin Goodness

Merry Christmas from the Morgans!

Bountiful

The pecan crop this year is CRAZY. We can't get the yard cleaned up because we keep getting distracted by the pecans on the ground. I guestimate that we've harvested around 100 lbs so far (from 2 ~60 year old trees) and we might not be done. We've given away many goodie bags of pecans to some friends and teachers as "Thank You" gifts and the recipients all seem so grateful.  I checked out the prices of pecans at the store and I can see why at $8-10 a pound. We still haven't made that pecan pie, but soon...



Also, all of our original lady birds stopped laying a few months ago as the new gals starting laying. We thought it might be the stress of Ozzie because he stressed us all out. About 6 weeks ago, Norman passed an ordinance allowing residents who have average sized lots to have up to 4 hens and no roosters. I was so happy that the ordinance was updated so that more folks could have urban chickens, but it left us non-compliant with Ozzie. We were not surprised as the mayor lives across from us and she was probably tired of hearing his constant crowing. So anyway, Ozzie departed about a month ago and life in our back yard is so much more relaxed.

The hens are more social with us and I can rake leaves and tend to chores without fear of being attacked unprovoked. I was hoping and praying that my Easter Egg hen would start laying again and she did!



It's nice having a flow of food coming in from the bag yard again. We are planning to set up a few more garden beds soon so we'll have more things to harvest next year. Any ideas on what a family of 5 absolutely must have in their garden?

Feeling Crafty

The other night we personalized our stockings.



One of Emi's classmates gifted everyone in class (and a few of us parents) with the coolest snow sleds around. We might have to try our hands at creating something similar soon!



And while we're not huge fans of gingerbread, we wanted to create something yummy from something yummy. So we went Scottish...



We had a Scotch Shortbread base and pitched roof which we had to change to a flat roof in the end (bad design). It was a yummy disaster...




Engineers, we are not!

In My Life

We've been super busy and super tired from being busy lately. We spent an evening at Barnes & Noble, attended a Dirty Santa/Ugly Sweater Party, Christmas shopped and made a few decorations during the past few days. Tonight we decided to punt the scheduled Adventivity (actually we rescheduled it) in favor of Pizza and a Movie because we are so drained. Looking forward to some much needed down time...

Hope you are taking it easy in the midst of all of the craziness that can be this holiday season!

Hot Chocolate (Braum's Style) aka Adventageous