Sarah's friend, Rebekah, flew into town on Wednesday with her 10 month old baby, and her sister. We've been enjoying their company a lot. This is her sister Rachel, who is learning to play the ukulele. Rachel is usually seen snapping pictures with her high tech camera. By the time they leave, Rachel should be pretty proficient on the uke!

This little guy is a bundle of joy. Khy rarely fusses...and when he does...it's usually because we kept him up to midnight on New Year's Eve or some other terrible ordeal.

Khy loves men...he smiles every time Allen and Mike walk by. A real man's man.

What a cutie!

Of course, dinner time is always more fun with a baby! It's amazing that I have a hard time taking a picture of him smiling...it seems he is always smiling.

For dinner tonight, we made fried chicken from a recipe that my friend Bonnie gave me. It was delicious! I had just read in a recent magazine article that replacing half your flour with cornstarch keeps your fried foods from absorbing a lot of oil...thereby making the batter crispier. It sure worked with this recipe. I tried to find a link to the recipe but you have to sign up to see the ingredients. Nevertheless, here's the link for America's Test Kitchen Crispy Fried Chicken. (Thank you, Bonnie!)
Using cornstarch is half the secret...soaking the chicken in a simple brine is the 2nd part of the secret. The brine ensures juicy chicken meat. Delicious! If you want the recipe but don't want to sign up, send me an email. To accompany our chicken, we had roasted butternut squash (thanks Lynn!), peas, potato salad, and leftover rolls from our New Year's Eve party.

This is the only picture of our New Year's Eve party that isn't blurry! We had 19 folks come over...a perfect amount of folks. This picture must be after dessert when we are getting ready to play games. We played Phase 10, Dutch Blitz, and another card game called Fill or Bust that seemed to be a hit. Our friends Doris and Dick brought that game...which is a card and dice game. That's one game I'd like to try.

For Christmas I gave Maggie this doughnut hole baker.

And this morning Maggie made blueberry and regular donut holes. Yummy! And I mean yummy!! These melt in your mouth. The blueberry holes have a glaze and the regular holes are rolled in donut sugar (available at our amish store). I can't wait for her to try some of the other recipes that came with the baker.

So it's been a fun but busy weekend. I am almost finished putting away my party stuff...then maybe I will start gradually with my Christmas decorations. Monday morning will be a shock to our systems when we get back to our normal bedtimes, schoolwork and practices. This month we have our dentist checkups as well as getting Anna her passport and immunizations for travel.

Many blessings ~ Kathie