Christmas Card 2013

In true form, Christmas cards will not be going out on time this year. If this year proves to be anything like previous years, I will start sending them out around June, lose several before they make it in the mail, then lose my list of whose were actually sent before I give up and throw them in a shoebox. So here is the digital version for all my friends and family who would like to receive a Christmas update from The Holden Family free of tiny peanut butter finger and/or foot prints. (or worse.)

 

Merry Christmas!

(Or whatever Holiday is closest by the time you get this.)

At this point, I'm not even sure how many years I've missed doing a Christmas letter. Did I mention I've got 3 kids? (That excuse is sounding pretty tired to me, too, but it's all I've got.) So ... 2013 ... our big news is that JAMES GRADUATED!!! (There is just not a large enough font for that.) Just stating the number of years he has been going to school makes us sound ridiculously old. It's been our whole married life and all of our kids' lives! Finally, as of May 2013, we are DONE!

We got a slightly rude awakening this summer when we slowly realized that graduating with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, AND a minor in Sustainable Manufacturing Engineering, AND earning your Engineer In Training Certificate doesn't equal "awesome-engineering-job-and-big-bucks." Who knew, right? So after all these years of having a very focused plan, now we've sort of been in a little bit of a limbo with our plans, and that is pretty foreign to us. Every time we think we've found the direction we should take the door pretty much slams right in our face just as we try to walk through it.

Graduate School?

Um ... No.

 ... Moving for an awesome job?

Um ... No.

... How about this job?

Yeah, NO.

Ok, ... well ... let's buy this house.

NO!

Ok ... what about this hou-

NOOO!

So we're still a little confused about what our next step should be, but in the mean time James is enjoying working for a great company that loves him. He gets to do some engineering and we get to stay in Paradise which has been a happy surprise for all of us. We're learning that we don't necessarily have to be working towards the next big thing and to enjoy the pretty fantastic spot we're at in our lives right now.

Sam turned 6 in January. He has loved kindergarten and now first grade. Seven-years-old is just around the corner! *gasp* He's getting to be a big, responsible, amazingly helpful boy. He loves hiking. Especially hiking anywhere that he can ...

A: Climb on rocks, trees, etc.

and

B: collect cans to recycle for $$$.

He loves rocks and crystals, planets and space, inventing and building all sorts of things, and that baby sister of his has him wrapped around her little finger.

Jonas turned 4 in August. He's enjoying preschool two mornings a week. He has the same teacher that Sam did so it's been fun for them to talk about preschool together. Jonas has discovered that he loves to read and it's been fun to see him comprehend more and more and enjoy it. He keeps us laughing with his funny perspective on the world and will one day make me rich when I can get a book deal for his witty quotes.

Soraya turned 1 in July. Her first year of life she was the sweetest, EASIEST baby I have ever had the privilege of knowing. She is now making up for every bit of that in her second year. She is still sweet as pie. Easy, however, she is not. She is the most amazing climbing baby I have ever seen. If it was an Olympic sport I would be working on getting her a fake birth certificate for Rio, 2016. She loves her brothers almost as much as they love her. (Jonas, she loves torturing, but the love is there in those twinkly eyes when she steals something and begs him to chase her.) She loves pistachios, peanut butter straight from the jar (no utensils required), and she loves to sing. REALLY loves it. From the time she was a tiny baby she made it obvious that she loved when we would sing hymns at church. Now SHE'S the one singing them. She is one happy, confident, strong little girl and I am hoping she stays that way.

Seriously, I wish I could bottle the way Soraya says "Am! Am!" over and over when she steals my keys and tries to convince me that it really is time to pick up Sam from school ...

RIGHT NOW.

Or this un-spellable squeal she makes when she hears the door squeak and knows that DADDY IS HOME!

Or how she surprises me when she stops nursing for a second just to reach up and give me a kiss on the lips.

Or the way the boys look at her, and snuggle her, and take care of her, and teach her things.

Besides the mountains of laundry that can make me feel buried in things demanding my attention that I'd rather ignore, we truly are blessed with an abundance of laughter ... 

and happiness ... and joy ...
And dirty dishes. Also an astonishing amount of dirty dishes.

Wishing you a wonderful 2014!

Love, The Holden Family

Snow Ball Cookies

These cookies transport me straight back to Christmas Cookie baking with my Mom. Straight back.

A March or two ago I was in the Relief Society Presidency and we planned to have a Mad Hatter Tea Party to celebrate the Relief Society's "birthday." I brought these very tea-worthy cookies and the coolest thing happened! I was sitting at a table with a bunch of ladies around my Gramma's age. (Now I may be age-ist, but I always think that ladies from that generation have super-duper baking skills.) So what happened next was really exciting for me ...

One of the ladies tried one of my Snowball Cookies and then she said to the ladies around her,

"Now THIS is a GOOD cookie." :O

So then the other ladies started trying theirs ... They were all complimenting how great they were! Someone even used the phrase, "Just perfect." :O

I was too embarrassed to say anything. Then one of them asked if anyone knew who made them. I'm sure I was bright red when I finally spoke up. I thought it was a great compliment, and in a weird way it made me really proud to be able to say that they were my Mom's recipe. She doesn't bake anymore. But I know she looks back at the time when she was able to be a stay-at-home Mom with pride. It sorta made me feel proud that I knew I could tell my mom her cookies were totally impressive among a crowd of ladies I've completely stereotyped in my head as being a tough cookie crowd. Kinda like, "See? You really did do a good job. You were really good at the home maker thing even when you didn't think you were."

I have another memory about these cookies that isn't exactly a pleasant one, but worth remembering. I shared the story with one of my friends that I visit teach, so maybe I'll just include the letter I wrote to her ...

Hi Ginger!

Sorry I missed you this month. I’ll call you soon so we can get together sometime in September. I hope things are going well for you!

The Visiting Teaching Message this month is about temples. I thought that was an appropriate lesson for you since you guys are taking the temple prep classes. When I first read the article it didn’t really stick out to me much. Maybe it’s because I don’t go to the temple much these days. (I’m just not a big fan of leaving my babies for that long!) But I know there’s a season for everything. Someday I’ll be more available to attend the temple regularly, but for right now my job is to remember the covenants that I’ve made there and live accordingly.

I read the article again today and tried to think back to my first time going to the temple. Then I remembered … it really sucked! I was 18 and had only been a member for a few months. I was going down with my (then boyfriend, now husband’s) family to the Oakland Temple to do baptisms. I was excited and happy as we pulled into the parking lot. Then I realized I forgot my temple recommend. James’s mom assured me it would be alright; they could have the temple workers call our Bishop and he could let them know I was worthy to attend. Well, they couldn’t get a hold of our Bishop … or anyone in the Bishopric … OR our Stake President. I was SO embarrassed and disappointed, and I really just wanted to go back to the car and be alone, so everyone went ahead and did some baptisms and I went back to the parking lot. I still could have had a good time there. I could have gone for a walk around the temple grounds or gone to the visitor’s center, or a million other things, but I was SO sad! I’m pretty sure I cried the entire time they were gone! (Ok, I know I did.) That sounds so silly, and I remember thinking, then, too, that it was silly to be so sad about a simple mistake. But, it definitely taught me that I never wanted to find myself in that situation again. Not just that I never wanted to forget my temple recommend again … (Now that I’m a mom I’m a million times more forgetful than I was then!) But that I never wanted to find myself unable to enter a temple. Or maybe even more than that, I never wanted to find myself separated from the ones I love. Thinking back to how I felt crying alone in the car, is a strong reminder to me to live worthy so that I can always be with my family.

So … the cookies? This sounds silly, too, but these were the type of cookies I made for the trip. I don't even remember if we ever got around to eating them or not. I thought I was being really cute how the powdered sugar made them white like temple clothes and all. So today, when I remembered the story and Sam asked to make brownies I thought these Snowball Cookies would be an appropriate treat to share with you. Maybe we should call them "Temple Cookies" instead. Or maybe "Stuck-In-The-Parking-Lot Cookies!"
I hope you guys enjoy them. See you soon!

Love, ellie

Snowball Cookies

1 cup Butter (2 cubes)

1/2 cup Powdered Sugar

2 cups Flour

2 tsp. Vanilla

1/4 tsp. Salt

1/2 to 2 cups chopped Walnuts (I actually made them with Pecans the night of the R.S. Tea Party)

More Powdered Sugar to roll them in

Cream sugar and butter. Add other ingredients. Mix well. Chill batter. Shape into 1 to 2 inch balls. Bake at 350 for 15 min. Roll in Powdered Sugar.

 

Chocolate Crinkles

Whenever I see these cookies, taste these cookies, or THINK of these cookies I am instantly 5 years old and dangling my legs over the olive green counters of my mom's very olive green kitchen. These were her signature cookies. Simple and delicious and very chocolatey. She never tried to be an over-achiever in the kitchen. (Her kitchen was the kitchen she inherited from Gramma, and the only make-over it ever got was the addition of a tiny white microwave my dad bought her from K-Mart one Mother's Day in the 80's.) If my mom had a good recipe she stuck to it. I think some of us Pinterest-saturated moms could take a lesson from her. If we're always trying to make the latest style of cake pops or fondant-covered-fad, are our kids really going to remember it? Are they going to miss out on that familiar taste that transports their tushies straight back to laminated countertops from the 60's? And how much time will we be spending trying to achieve the culinary perfection we see all over the internet when we could be spending it WITH our kids rolling balls of chocolate dough in powdered sugar and burning our fingers trying to eat them before they're cooled?  I vote for out-dated kitchens, imperfect cookies, messy kids, and memories that make you giggle.

Chocolate Crinkles

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup oil
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate melted and cooled
2 tsp. vanilla
3 eggs
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
sifted powdered sugar

Mix: Sugar, oil, chocolate, and vanilla. Beat in eggs. Stir flour and baking soda into mixture. Cover and chill. On greased cookie sheet, Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes. Roll in powdered sugar. Makes 4 dozen cookies.

Chef Levonne's (magic) Strawberry Jello

After high school I started working as a behavioral therapist for a little girl with Autism. Her name was Marisa and she was 4 years old. It didn't take long for her to steal my heart and get me hooked on trying to help this captivating little girl figure out how to make her way in a world that wasn't very welcoming for her.

For the next 2 years I pretty much just followed her around. I went to kindergarten with her as an instructional assistant for the classroom and then went home with her and tried to make our therapy goals match what she would need to know at school. (Usually, it was a whole lot less of the academic stuff and a whole lot more of trying to help her understand what people want when they walk up and throw a bunch of words at you.) My primary job was to help Marisa "fit in" so to speak, in a typical kindergarten classroom. I worked with all the kids, but I was sort of Marisa's "person" and pretty much served as her interpreter. Marisa and I knew each other in that sort of way where we really didn't need words to communicate most of the time, but in the "real world" people need words.

 

Most of the time Marisa loved school. She knew darn well she was a Princess in a Fairy Tale, and now she had all these other kids to play with and sing and dance with. Recess was heaven. And because she'd been in therapy since she was 2, the academics of kindergarten were a breeze. But as the year went on, more and more was expected of all the children. Marisa wasn't the only one falling behind. She knew everything any teacher ever asked her ... colors, numbers, letter sounds ... but bridging that communication gap (without me) was pretty tough. The other kids were always very accepting of Marisa. She was a really cute little girl and everyone loved her. But while Ring Around The Rosie is totally fun at the beginning of Kindergarten, after a while it's a little more fun to experiment with some games that have a few more rules ... hide and seek, freeze tag, red light/green light ... Marisa just couldn't keep up. And when she got frustrated in the classroom she screamed. Maybe I should write that differently ... she SCREAMED. That girl had some lungs on her and could hit notes that would make your hair stand on end. As the social stuff got harder and harder for Marisa to understand, it became more and more clear to everyone that Marisa just didn't "fit in."

For first grade we started a new adventure. Marisa would attend a school called Guiding Hands. I had never even heard of a school like it before. The premise was that typical children and children with just about any disability (from autism to spina bifida to cerebral palsy to childhood schizophrenia) would all learn together in the same classroom. Marisa wouldn't need me at this school. The entire staff there was familiar with working with children with autism. The public school I'd been working at loved me and wanted me to stay. But, Marisa's mom, Shirley, was terrified to send her baby to school almost an hour away without anyone there who knew her. She convinced me to apply for a job there. Even though I wouldn't be in Marisa's classroom, I would be in the same building, and if anything happened Marisa would have "family" there. It was a cut in pay, but it seemed like a really interesting opportunity to work in such a pioneering school, and I had to take it.

I worked mostly in the pre-kindergarten classroom with 4 and 5 year olds and in the preschool classroom with 2 and 3 year olds, but I also ventured down the hall to help with math in the 5th grade classroom for children up to 16 years old. There weren't many more than 100 students in the whole school, so you really got to know everyone. I think I was really fortunate to have that experience. I learned a lot. I only spent one school year there before heading off to college, but it's definitely one of those times in your life that you never forget, and you always wonder what became of those kids that snatched your heart.

Partway into the school year we got a new cafeteria lady. Not just any cafeteria lady, a real chef. She'd never been a cafeteria lady before, she was a caterer. But she came to our school with this incredible attitude. She was SO excited to get to be a part of all this. She talked to EVERYONE for ideas. She SO wanted to make nutritious meals the kids would enjoy. There was nothing "cafeteria" about her style. She made these kids food. Real food that she put a lot of thought into. It was incredible. She was magic. Overnight, lunchtime became magic.

One day she made this jello that I loved. I'm not exactly a jello sort of gal, so the fact that I loved this recipe is saying a lot. A whole lot. The funny thing is that this is not exactly an easy recipe. In fact, I've never actually made it. Whenever I pull the recipe out it just always seems like a little more work than what I had in mind at that moment. Which makes me respect Chef Levonne even more. She made trays and trays of this beautiful dessert for 100+ kids and every one of us that worked there. And it wasn't anything special. It was just a regular lunch day.



Chef Levonne's (magic) Strawberry Jello

2 6oz. Boxes of Strawberry Jello

1 Large Container Frozen Strawberries

1 Small Container Frozen Strawberries

10 Bananas

2 Cans Crushed Pineapple

1 Large Container Sour Cream

2 Cups Cold Water

2 Cups Boiling Water

Dissolve Strawberry Jello in 2 cups boiling water.

Add 2 cups cold water.

In a large bowl mash the bananas and add 2 cans of pineapple with juice.

Add both packages of strawberries (thawed).

Add Jello mixture.

Fill Pyrex dish 1/2 full.

Chill until firm.

Spread sour cream over firm jello and fill with remaining Jello mixture.

Set overnight in the refrigerator. (Must be made the day before it is needed.)

Sienipiirakka (Mushroom Pie)

During the 7 1/2 months I spent at the end of my mission serving in Franklin, North Carolina, I was fortunate enough to meet someone I will always consider one of my very best friends. Denise Kolousek.

If I could have invented a person that embodied what I wanted to be when I grew up, that was Denise. The Kolouseks were this cool sort of new-age hippie Mormon family with the cutest, neatest, smartest kids you ever met. It was rumored that their family was vegetarian, but it turned out they just ate more vegetables than most southerners were used to.

Denise bought cage-free eggs from the Winn-Dixie even though she was probably the only one in town that did because every time she got to the check out line either the clerk or another customer would wonder out loud why anyone on earth would spend $3 on a carton of eggs.

She knew about politics, the Gospel, world cultures, child development, history, and how to make bread from scratch. She home-schooled her kids and the North Carolina department of health sent her nasty letters on a regular basis because they didn't like her kids' lack of vaccinations.

She's got an amazing sense of humor - the whole family does, and when we went to their house we felt like we were at home. We could joke about the idiosyncrasies of southern culture, we could unload our frustrations of trying to help people change their lives and trying to figure out how the heck the Lord was trying to use us. They fed us GIANT, loaded baked potatoes just about every Sunday that came from their local CSA, and they were out of this world.

They lived in this old barnhouse that Matt had renovated. It was pine everywhere and their living room and kitchen were on the second story with an amazing view of those trees and hills that are Appalachia. Somehow Nora Jones was always playing in the background during dinner, and her music still reminds me of the time we got to spend with them. Denise was always positive and funny and could make someone she just met feel like they'd been friends for ages.

Denise was just the coolest.

She invited us to their family's Christmas party and she made this dish. I've only made it a few times, but it's delicious and totally worth every bit of effort it takes to make it. My boys do love mushrooms ... it may be time to make this again soon ...

Sienipiirakka (Mushroom Pie)

Filling:

2 1/2 cups chopped onions

3 Tablespoons butter

8 cups chopped mushrooms

1 teaspoon salt

lots of freshly ground pepper

8 ounces cream cheese

Crust:

2 1/2 cups unbleached white flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter

1 cup sour cream

flour for coating the dough and

board for rolling

Glaze:

1 egg

1 tablespoon milk

To make the filling, saute the onions in the butter in a large skillet. When the onions are soft and translucent, add the mushrooms and thyme and saute for a few more minutes until the mushrooms release their juices. Add the seasonings. Cut the cream cheese into small pieces and then stir it into the mushrooms until it melts. Remove from the heat and set aside until the crust is ready.

Preheat the oven to 400.

For the crust, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Using a mixer or by hand, cut in the butter just enough to achieve an evenly textured crumbly mix. Stir in the sour cream to form a soft dough. Generously dust the dough with flour and form it into a ball.

On a heavily floured board, roll out 2/3 of the dough to fit a 10" pie plate. Trim the edges. Fill with the mushroom mixture. Roll our the remaining dough about 1/4" thick and cut into 1" strips. Weave the lattice over the filling. (or use cut out shapes for top crust.)

For the glaze, beat the egg and milk. Thoroughly brush the crust, give leftover glaze to the dog.

Bake pie for 25 to 35 minutes, until crust is puffy and golden.

Yields 8 big servings.