Check out this decorative bow that a very creative Texas Artist

made with a rib bone from a buffalo!

We had a booth next to her at the Market Days and when she saw how much Mooky liked this bow, she offered to barter for soap! He was thrilled with the gift (which we did manage to keep a secret until Christmas) , and it's already hanging on the wall in his room.

Mooky has been feeling really bad for a week or so. Mostly stomach troubles, with some fatigue.

I thought it was what we call "His Usual", until I got the same symptoms! I've had it since the evening of the 25th and am finally feeling better. Erinn is starting to feel "blah" and nauseous now. What fun.

Mike and Claudia had a baby boy!

Matthew Alexander was born 1:38 PM Dec 19, by C-section. (The little gymnast had wrapped his cord around his neck 3 times.)

He's a healthy 8 lbs 6 oz, 21 inches long.

Congratulations!!!

GF Banana Lemon Loaf

Gluten free banana lemon loaf

(adapted to fit the ingredients I have on hand!)

1 cup rice flour


1 cup buckwheat flour (I used 1.5 cups rice flour and .5 of sorghum flour mix)


3 tsp baking powder


1/2 tsp salt


1 cup plus 2 tbsp margarine or butter


1 1/4 cups sugar


23 oz bananas (I used 3 average sized ones)


4 large eggs

I added 1 TBSP of lemon zest and

1 tsp of gf lemon extract to the original recipe

4 tbsp icing sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350

Sift flours with baking powder and salt.

Beat the butter, sugar and bananas together until smooth and then briefly stir in the eggs.

Stir this into the flour mixture until blended.

Pour into a large loaf pan and bake for about 1 - 1 1/4 hours or until a skewer comes out clean and the cake is just firm. It overflowed my loaf pan! Burned on the bottom of the oven, and created a mess that will be HARD to clean up. (Any volunteers to come over and wash the pan for me?) But, it's delicious! It has way too much sugar so it isnt something i'd make very often.


Cool for 10 minutes and then mix the sugar with the lemon juice and drizzle over the top.

Isn't it UGLY??? :o)

Do one EXTRA nice thing for each person in your family every day this week!

Ok, this is for all of us, including you Damien! :o) (I really liked your hangman game BTW. The word was hummingbird and I got it right before being hung.)


See if you can do one EXTRA nice thing (something you dont normally do) for each person in your family every day this week. Dont stop doing all the nice things you already do though!

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This is Erinn's new cat Annie that Teresa and Rob gave her.

She is REALLY really sweet.

24th

Oh boy, Mooky is really sick and we dont know what caused it. Usually we can figure out what he ate that he shouldn't have, but this time I have no clue!
We are going to spend the day at GB's tomorrow, and he will probably just lay down most of the time. He is as sick as he used to be for that LOOOOONG time period while we were learning to TOTALLY eliminate gluten from his life.
GB has worked hard to make most of the main dishes for tomorrow's meal gluten free! And she also is planning to make some gluten free brownies from a Bob's Red Mill mix - isn't that nice? Mooky is going to be thrilled. We are taking a GF green bean casserole. I made the "soup base" for it yesterday - homemade cream of mushroom soup. There can't be any french fried onions in it so I added onions to the soup and will sprinkle potato chips on top for CRUNCH. We've done this once before and everyone liked it.

December Kerr Market Days

We had a really great day yesterday selling soap in Kerrville! We sold twice as much soap as last month and not only that but we bartered for Christmas gifts for the kids. So, rather than spending money which can be really hard to come by, we "spent soap". :o) The kids have NO IDEA about this as we did it when Rob and Mooky went to pick Erinn up from GB's house. (And they rarely read this blog, so as long as I keep them away from it for a few more days and nobody spills the beans, the secret is safe.) Selling soap at the Fredericksburg Trade days turned out to be a waste of time and money and we didn't even sell enough to cover the booth fee or gas. Rats.
We even had some repeat customers from last month! We gave out a lot of business cards and sold 3 of Kris' Washer Toss Game Boards! Mooky sold 2 of his tomahawks and Erinn sold two bars of soap. She hadn't made anything to sell this month - those 2 bars were just leftover from last month. She is feeling much better finally. Hasn't had to take anything for pain since Friday morning. Thanks GB for taking such good care of her Friday and Saturday! She really enjoyed spending the night with you and sleeping in the famous Miracle Bed.
As always, we enjoyed Teresa and Rob's company and help so much and we really appreciate them! I think they kinda got the short end of the stick, having to drive all the way down here, and work all day for nothing but sandwiches and leftovers... but they didn't complain. :o) Thanks very much to both of you!
Susan sent me a great link for $5 dinners, a lot of which are gluten free! And from that link I found another gluten free blogger with some good recipes, one of which is for a GF cranberry lemon loaf that I bet Mooky would love. Thanks Susan! And thanks so much for loaning us the extra table yesterday!
Mooky is going to be baptized today!!