Christmas Eve Brinner 2011

Every year we hold a Christmas Eve Brinner, where we make a big fancy breakfast for dinner. The best part about Brinner is not the eating but the cooking. Everyone invited chips in with the cooking and even the kids get to help, sometimes unsolicited. Like when I was whisking the eggs and I set them down to grab some milk and Aidan decided to climb up on the table and do some whisking himself.

The Chef.
(Ignore our Kitchen....it's itty bitty..you are literally looking at the entire kitchen minus the stove and we have 8 people in our family....deal)

Ashlynne...concentrating hard on mixing the eggs just right

Aidan "helping"

Usually we try to invite some friends over and this year we were excited to have our sweet missionaries Elder Davies and Elder Tauteoli over to celebrate with us. They jumped right in with the cooking and we found out that Elder Davies is a better pancake maker than his companion. (Elder T. got booted out of the kitchen for making his pancakes too small)

Elder Davies mixing up some pancake batter

Elder Tauteoli made a special, authentic Tongan drink made using mangoes called Otai. The most hilarious and horrible thing happened to that first gallon batch of Otai.....Elder T. slaved away for over half an hour cutting and shredding mangoes with a cheese grater to prepare the Otai. When it was done he put it into the fridge to chill while we finished cooking dinner...er, um, brinner. Well, I happened to open the fridge to pull something out and just as quickly as I opened the fridge Aidan (he was definitely on one that night) pulled on the gallon pitcher of Otai spilling it ALL OVER THE KITCHEN. I mean ALLLLLLLLLL OVERRRRRRRRR. I seriously wish I would've gotten a picture of the mess but I was near tears upset. I may have even said a small swear word under my breath when it happened. After apologizing profusely, I cleaned it up best I could, grabbed my car keys and ran to Walmart (which was going to be closing in the next 15 minutes) to grab some more mangoes to make another batch. *sigh* We laughed about it later and Elder T. even commented that it was probably a good thing because he thought the second batch was definitely better than the first. (I have a slight feeling he was just trying to make me feel better)

Making the First Batch of Otai

We trapped Aidan in the high chair after the Otai mishap....he doesn't even realize he's done anything wrong!

Dinner was delicious and there was so. much. food. We had breakfast for about three days after....for lunch and dinner....we even sent the missionaries home with a baking pan full of food!

After dinner we laughed, talked, and made gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. I think my Graham Cracker temple wins the best in show award but I might be a little biased.

Ashlynne's Creation

Brinton hard at work on his "gingerbread" house

Elise's Creation

Jeremiah's House....show off....

The Elder's....ummm.....Graham Cracker houses?!

The Most FABULOUS Graham Cracker Temple by Moi!

All in all it was a great evening and we were happy to have the wonderful missionaries with us. I'm seriously going to miss these two when they get transferred!!!!