Our Mum's birthday November 2014

Our Mum's birthday was November 9th 2014...

it was a Sunday, so we had a light dessert at night and decorations which were easy to prepare...Valerie decorated actually. (above picture)

Mummy and her youngest!

Our Parents!

Of course we didn't dream of missing celebrating our Mum's birthday in depth, so on the 13th of November we did a real birthday, complete with a theme for her. 

This is the last birthday of 2014, and the last until March so enjoy. :) 

Our Mum especially loves Croatian folk music, and although we had done a birthday of that country for Nikola several years ago, we thought it would be nice to quickly do one for our Mum!

A picture of a Croatian dance I took a couple of years ago.

Jessie, being her artistic self, quickly whipped up these carved napkin rings the night we were decorating! They had found a bunch of plain wooden napkin rings at a thrift store, and we have wood carving tools...

Needless to say, Jessie was brilliant that week! She thought of digging holes into this loaf of bread we also found at our thrift store (just kidding: it's a small charity thriftstore which also sells St. Louis bread co. donation bread) in which to thrust votives! I bet you never thought of that one!

We ate the bread the next day. :) 

breakfast time!

Nikola made these traditional Croatian pastries which were delicious!

I created some egg casseroles which were even more delicious. ;)

Following breakfast and Bible time, we gave several of our gifts to our Mum..

All was happy and cozy....

(cozy)

...Then someone had the brilliant idea of going out into the freezing outdoors. 

I won't say for sure, but I believe it was Nikola who had this amazing idea. 

The plan was to go take a walk, get frozen 

(you have to know my sisters to understand this unusual goal), 

come home and have cider and cookies! (that dream, I'm sure everyone can relate to!)

Of all days during the fall/winter it was SUPER cold, windy and snowing! The snow was hilariously amazing. The largest, fluffiest flakes ever! 

It was cold!

We went to a certain park and we walked by the river; it was the coldest moment of my life ever!!! 

As in wind whipping straight through one's poor body!

Example:

Various degrees of suffering, or: a good example of the different reactions of different brain types to difficult situations!

We warmed up by laughing at the shock of it and by scuttling back to the car to try walking in a warmer portion of the park. It was funny; we didn't really do much that day at the park on account of the frigidness yet the memories are good because of the laughter we enjoyed over it!

Oh- and when we got home we kind of forgot about the cider btw. 

Oh well. 

We started driving away without Sam.

Some people just didn't seem to be cold at all after all the exercise! Don't ask me what that face is for...they were having some sort of contest or battle or something- despite trying to catch their death of cold, that is!

When we got home, Nikola and I whipped up supper while simultaneously watching a movie with everyone downstairs. Don't ask me how that happened, but it apparently did!

 My family repeatedly warns me about sharing pictures of food that just isn't photogenic, so I'll just mention that it was a Croatian recipe of crepes filled with ground beef (that surprised you, didn't it!) which was cooked with onions which had absolutely no flavour (remind me never to go on a culinary tour of Croatia, people), so to which I cheated and added a generous amount of paprika, oregano and garlic. The crepes had a thick cheesy sauce and we served them with a green salad.

Twas such a pleasant day!