best ever hot cocoa recipe

I love getting crafty and I love it even more when I'm paid to do it. Everyone is working on projects at the office (it's slow season) and I offered to make some gifts for agents, attorneys and clients. There is always a lot of baked goods going around and it is so hard not to eat cookies and donuts when they are sitting around the office all day. 
I wanted to do something cute that can be taken home and used over time.  I decided to come up with my own recipe for hot cocoa and put the mix in mason jars. 
The best hot cocoa recipe ever:
2.5 cups instant non-fat milk 1 cup cocoa powder 2 cups powdered sugar 1 teaspoon corn starch 1 teaspoon salt 2 pinches of cinnamon pinch of cayenne pepper
Mix ingredients well and store in air-tight container. To serve, mix with hot water. I preferred about 2 tablespoons of cocoa to water ratio, Joe likes his more like 2 to 1 water to cocoa.
Top with marshmallows and miniature chocolate chips for fun!

oh, christmas tree

It was an especially cold day so we thought it would be fun to go by a local pastry shop to get some hot cocoa and then go pick out a Christmas tree. Doesn't that just sound like a quaint family movie? Emmy, however, doesn't respond to sugar bribes yet and she had two meltdowns before we left the house so we decided to make the trip as fast as possible and cut out the cocoa. 

 
Emmy also recently graduated to the "wait for no-one stage" where she runs off in the direction of whatever her heart desires. Everyone says she's so cute, giggling and laughing down the aisles. They aren't the ones chasing her. 

We always go to Home Depot for our trees. My brother-in-law is kind of  a connoisseur of Christmas trees and converted me and my sister from fake trees to real ones. He recommended Home Depot for price, quality and service and they have always been amazing for us. Their employees are cheerful and our trees last over a month and are beautiful.

Emmy didn't like them climbing all over our car to get the tree secure. The two guys who helped us tried to make her laugh but it didn't work. 

When we got home we searched all over the house and couldn't find any lights. I vaguely remembered tossing all of them out last year because so many had burned out. Joe wasn't thrilled but he went back to Home Depot.

While he was gone, I pulled out the box of ornaments and Emmy immediately smashed 2 of them. If I looked away for one second, she had her sticky fingers on something fragile. It's like the Christmas tree turned her into a naughty little gnome; sneaking ornaments and throwing them on the ground as hard as possible then running off giggling. I made her some hot chocolate and she chugged it, downing that full cup of sugar in 5 seconds. 
Joe got home with the lights only to realize that we had totally underestimated the size of our tree. He bought 700 lights but headed back out to Home Depot for 600 more. I wanted to mix colored lights and white lights and you know, you can't just mix in any box of colored lights - they have to be consistent. Home Depot was sold out of the exact lights he had just bought. So, he headed to target, carrying a picture of the correct box with him and possibly grumbling a bit but definitely not offering to stay with Emmy.  
Emmy's sugar wore off by 6 and after an epic whine/sobfest, I took her to bed.  Even though we knew she would wake up at night starved and hangry, we let her sleep so we could get this d*mn tree finished. I'm not sure that anyone really enjoys putting up their tree, it's a lot of work and it's dusty and prickly and sappy. 

Like how evenly the colored lights and white lights are mixed? Yeah, we really needed another strand of white but this was just going to have to suffice.  

Still, look at how good all these pictures came out and you know, we definitely made memories that we can laugh about later. And every morning when Emmy wakes up she runs straight to the tree to ooh and aww over the lights.   Yeah, she usually promptly hulk smashes an ornament but hey, I put all of my favorites on the top and everyone in the Henson house is happy. 

a tale of three thanksgivings

Before Emmy was born, Joe and I decided to stop going to every family Thanksgiving we were invited to. We wanted to be able to stay in one place long enough to really enjoy the family time and not travel so much that we feel exhausted at the end of the vacation. 
This year, we decided that we wouldn't make any decisions about our Thanksgiving traditions and we would just see as many people as possible. My family lives in Birmingham and Joe's family lives in Huntsville and northeast of Gadsden. Each Thanksgiving trip is 4 hours of travel and 3-4 hours of family time. It can be exhausting, Emmy's schedule gets completely off and it's hard to adjust back to our schedules in time for work. 
When it's all said and done though, I am so thankful for our families. We are so loved and it is so fun to make memories together. I also appreciate my dad who said we could just do lunch sometime so we didn't have a 4th Thanksgiving!
THE SHUFFLE:
On Sunday, we had our first Thanksgiving at my mom's house. We always dress up a little, eat at the dining table with the fancy china and drink sangria. It's calm, we have Christmas music in the background and we take turns talking about all the reasons we have to be thankful.
 This is the Thanksgiving that most resembles how I grew up and I love the food and I love the tradition. 

Next up, we spent Thanksgiving day at Joe's maternal grandparent's house. They live on a lake and are just the sweetest grandparents anyone could ever have. Joe loves his Nanny & Papa Bill and we are so grateful for all that they have done for Joe.
 It's a completely different style of Thanksgiving. There are maybe 25-30 people (all family!) and a TON of food. Everyone brings food so there is an abundance of options and unique family recipes. We all grab paper plates and reverse fight for seats (that's where everyone argues trying to give up their seats for each other). It is much more laid back and people usually come and go quickly. We stayed late this year to soak up the time with Joe's Nanny and Papa to make the trip count. Emmy started to have her tired-baby meltdown and we headed home. 

On Friday morning, I had some of my girls come over for mimosas so we could all catch up and make plans for the Christmas parties.  On Saturday we hosted friends for the Iron Bowl. We had 6 people over so in all we had 6 Alabama fans, 1 Auburn fan and 1 neutral party. It was such an intense, incredible and terrible game. Joe still hasn't fully recovered. I don't think he will until we beat them next year. Lucky for me, my awesome brother-in-law stayed late to help Joe fix our sink. Poor Aunt Yellie (Danielle) had to wait on him so I convinced her to get cozy on the couch and Rufus helped her out. 

On Sunday we headed up to Huntsville for our last Thanksgiving. I was really excited about this one because there are actually kids. LOTS OF KIDS. Joe's cousin has 3 children, aged 6,5 and 3 and all of them are ridiculously cute. Emmy was shy for about 15 minutes and then started following around the older kids as if she were as big as they are.  Joe's paternal grandparents have a little farm; they grow their own vegetables and it makes for such a fun space for the kids. We were lucky it wasn't too cold and they were able to play outside. Everyone ended up coming out and I was so proud of Emmy laughing and playing and just being herself around people she doesn't know all that well. 
Sometimes you know that you are making memories that will stay in your mind forever. This day was one of those days. 

Emmy is so adored by her whole family, especially all the men in her life.  She is one lucky girl.