Zelda Muffins

February 20 was National Muffin Day. We made muffins.

February 21 was the 40th Anniversary of the Legend of Zelda. Some family members played Zelda games. We didn't do anything big to celebrate the 40th like we did with the 35th. 

What we did do was Jeremy, Jet, and I went for a walk at Farmington Bay and got to see some birds. 

February 23 was National Rationalization Day and it was National Banana Bread Day. I rationalized making banana bread and I did.

 

February 25 was National Chili Day and National Toast Day so I made chili and we toasted bread and had chili on toast. 

Chocolate Chip Muffins

I'm thankful for Jordan Page and the things I've learned from her.

The other day I followed a block schedule and had a really productive day because I devoted certain things to certain blocks and wasn't trying to get everything on my to do list done all at once.

When my youngest wanted chocolate chip muffins, I knew I could pull out Shelf Cooking 101 and go to the Build-Your-Own Recipe section for Muffins and use what I had on hand instead of finding a specific "chocolate chip muffins" recipe.

I'm also thankful my youngest helped me make the muffins. He helped get out ingredients, he helped count the cups and teaspoons, he put cupcake liners in the muffin tins, and he helped me eat the muffins (I think there's a "Little Red Hen" lesson in here somewhere). 

Foods Without Jeremy

While Jeremy was gone to South Carolina, I let the kids request foods they wanted to eat since normally I care more about fixing food Jeremy likes (I do take into consideration my kids, don't get me wrong, but if I think Jeremy will like it, I'm more likely to fix it when he's around).

Nichole loves chicken drumsticks so I made sure to make some for her. 

We had Copycat Crunchwrap Supreme (I had been wanting to make it for weeks but hadn't gotten around to it) from A Season of Family Meal Plans, volume 3, by Jordan Page.

Lucky loves Chicken Caesar Salad Wraps so we had some, of course, along with woo-woo for FHE treat.

Jr. Jr. helped me with menu planning for October (including using A Season of Family Meal Plans) and one of the things we planned and made was French Dip Sandwiches. Mmmm. I made this last year and liked it and I liked it again this year. 

 

Late night baking. I had some bananas that needed to be used so I made Calico Bread from The Fablehaven Cookbook. The neighbors upstairs texted that it smelled good. The next morning I brought some up to them.  

Also from A Season of Family Meal Plans, volume 4, I made apple cider muffins. It did not take long for them to get gobbled up.

Catching Up February 2025 part 2 (more like 3 because my Valentine post fit in with the catching up)

February 17 was President's Day. Jet helped me with the flag picture that day.

It was also National Cabbage Day. I made egg rolls one of the days around that holiday.

 

February 18 was Pluto Day. I watched one of the many episodes of Psych where Gus said, "You heard about Pluto?" The subtitles had it wrong, though.

 

February 19 was Chocolate Mint Day. I had another Peppermint Patty.

February 20 was National Muffin Day. For dinner we had... muffins again. We made all eggless muffins again. Cornbread muffins, blueberry muffins, and raisin bran muffins.

 

February 21 was the Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda. The kids requested Deku Scrub Cheeseball, which I made. Because Nichole is the one who usually sculpts the cheeseballs nowadays, some of the boys were surprised to learn that I was the one who made the original Deku Scrub Cheeseball way back in 2017. Jet helped put the bay leaves on top.

Jet and I haven't had a chance to do as much baking together as we used to. When we do get the chance it's so nice. I've missed it.

He helped me grind wheat one day, which was nice. My big helper. 

Jet also enjoyed making tracks in the snow (when we had snow. We've finally made it to Spring but I'm still blogging about Winter).

Speaking of snow, a few of us made the trek to the Snow Goose Festival in Delta this year. It was so foggy at first that we couldn't even look for the geese in the fields and when we got to the reservoir, we couldn't see anything there, either.

We entertained ourselves while we waited for the fog to lift.

Finally the fog lifted and just like last year, we found out that the geese had landed on the other side of the reservoir. Except that this year they were so far out, we couldn't get a good look or good pictures.

We did get to see a few fly in from time to time but we've had more exciting years. Oh well.

 

The day after the Snow Goose Festival was National Banana Bread Day, February 23, so we had some banana bread Pop Tarts.

It was also National Rationalization Day so Jeremy made something he'd been wanting to make for a long time- bangers and mash. 

That night was a multi-stake fireside with Camille N. Johnson, the Relief Society General President in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A couple friends and I walked to the building where it was being held. I did not get a good picture. There's a better picture of us when we had banana splits back in January.

Bad picture aside, the fireside was really good. I appreciated the things Sister Johnson shared with us. One of the things she shared was that every morning she has her own personal devotional with President Nelson, prophet and president of the Church. She will put on a talk that he has given in the past and will listen to that while she's getting ready. After that, so many sisters in our stake, including me, took that same challenge and started listening to President Nelson every day. It was talked about when we gathered together for the Worldwide Relief Society Devotional and Testimony Meeting a few weeks later. I went with my ministering sisters.

 

February 24 was Tortilla Chip Day so we had tortillas and dip of course.

 

Jeremy's birthday was in February. Jet wanted to put the candles on the cake so he decided how many of each color and placed them. What a sweetie.

November 15

November 15 was Steve Irwin Day. Jet and I saw some living fish. I remembered to call them "gorgeous." I also thought about how their species have been around for millions of years.

November 15 was Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day. We ate leftovers.

 

November 15 was Raisin Bran Cereal Day. Jet and I made muffins from The Fiction Kitchen Trio Cookbook. I love my baking buddy.

 

That was November 15.

Muffin Night

February 20 was National Muffin Day. It's become tradition for that evening to become Muffin Night! We haven't done one of those in a while. Last year we made all eggless muffins. This time we decided to use Shelf Cooking 101 Build Your Own Recipe Muffins section.

We had cheese and bacon muffins, apple cinnamon muffins, and mini chocolate chip mini muffins.

We could have had more variety based on the book, but that was all we had time for that night. They came together pretty quickly.

More Celebrating in December

December 17 was Maple Syrup Day. We tried out for the first time our four waffle waffle iron we got from my in-laws when we were visiting them this Summer.

Jet couldn't wait so he got a waffle to eat while I was still making them. The following happened when Jr. saw-

Jr.: Can I have a waffle, too?

Jr.: Sorry. May I have a waffle?

Jet: May you?

Jr.: Yes.

Apparently Jet learned that from me. I had no idea I did it. "May you?" Chuckle.

 

That day we also had the opportunity to go caroling around the neighborhood with other people in our ward. Jr. Jr., Lucky, and I joined the people going out. We caroled to several people who live alone. Some aren't able to make it to the church building on Sundays so have to watch church from home. We could tell that our brief visits and singing really meant a lot to some of them.

Jet joined in on a couple of the songs which was so sweet and said, "Merry Christmas," to a few people. I hope my boys learn from these experiences that it feels good to do service and I hope they want to find more ways like this to do it.

December 18 was Answer the Phone Like Buddy the Elf Day. When Jeremy called for family prayer that morning, I answered this way. "Kristin the Human. What's your favorite color?" He laughed and told me I was awesome but never told me his favorite color during that phone call.

We had Buddy the Elf type breakfast for dinner. When I put together my plate of food, I remembered it was supposed to be mixed by hand then shoveled into my mouth with my hands. Wow. That was disgusting. But funny. I did wait until after my kids had eaten most of theirs with a fork before doing that.

We started the movie, Elf, and ended up pausing it at this spot where one of these elves looked... um... kind of... crazy looking? 

Speaking of that particular elf with the glasses, did you know the actor who played that elf, Peter Billingsley, played Ralphie in A Christmas Story many many years ago? 

Speaking of A Christmas Story, during the holiday season I daily passed a house with a full size leg lamp in the window. It's a yearly tradition for that house. So awesome. I didn't get a picture of it but I love it.

December 19 was Oatmeal Muffin Day. We ate those.

 

We got Nichole home from college for Christmas Break. Yay. Just in time for some celebrating. The new Percy Jackson and the Olympians series was premiering so we had blue foods to eat while watching. We didn't have any blue jelly beans unfortunately but had some fun with blue pancakes, blue scrambled eggs, blue milk, blueberry bagels, and blue butter on toast.

The butter totally looks like frosting so there is a certain taste that is expected from it but it does not taste like frosting. I would not want a spoonful of that to snack on. Ugh.

There were no food coloring fiascos during this, either. Hooray.

By the way, it's been a few weeks so there have been a few episodes we've watched now of the series. We're enjoying it. We are book lovers of course. Most of us have read the Percy Jackson books. Lucky is reading them now for the first time. The discussions while watching the show together have been fun. I love family bonding.

 

The Winter Solstice was on December 21. It was a perfect excuse for another Fablehaven Feast using recipes from The Fablehaven Cookbook. Told you we're book lovers and love to find ways to celebrate based on books.

This time we had more Ogre Stew (it's a favorite). We quadrupled the recipe so we could have extra to freeze. Yeah, it was gone in about three days. Didn't end up freezing any of it.

We had Muriel's Pretzel Knots and Olloch the Glutton's Caramel Biscuit Bars.

For months Lucky has been wanting Zombie Cake Eyeballs so I finally made them. Wow. That is an ambitious recipe from the book. It's not so much hard as time consuming. Definitely not one I'll make often like Ogre Stew. We didn't even decorate all of the cake balls we made. There was another jarful of just white chocolate covered cake balls.

 

December 21 was also Humbug Day. It has become tradition to watch The Muppets Christmas Carol on Humbug Day if possible.

Back in 2020, Nichole said, "Happy National," before Scrooge said, "Humbug," then she said, "Day," after he said it each time. This year I said, "Happy Humbug Day," after he said, "Humbug," the first time. This is what happened then-

Nichole: We forgot to do the traditional...

Mom: We've done it like one time.

Nichole: One time makes it a tradition.

I love this family. I love finding reasons to celebrate.