In case you were wondering why our posting has slowed down in recent weeks, we really do have a wonderful excuse–we were busy making family memories. For the past month all six grandkids and our two daughters have been together at our house and joined part of the time by our son and two son-in-laws.

Remember our summer Grandkids (Cousins) Camp? It takes a little more creativity to spend a month together in the winter when you are confined more inside the house, but we did it and had a great time together. The weather for the month ranged from a few very warm spring-like days to lots of snowy cold days.

The three year old “twin” cousins picked up right where they left off last June and were inseparable.

The baby boy cousin “twins” were constantly in motion with one perfecting crawling and the other learning to walk and climb and move barricades. Hard to believe it’s already been a year since we were awaiting the arrival of Songbird’s little brother. (The babies will have blog names one of these days!)

With so many mouths to feed it’s a good thing my girls love to cook, and we ate some amazing meals. Since our freezer was stocked with venison my husband brought home last fall, we came up with many meals using our free range, grass-fed meat. Actually, you can substitute venison in just about any recipe for beef. My favorite way to cook it is in a crockpot with chopped onions, chicken broth, and some herbs. It can be eaten like roast or chopped up for chili, stroganoff, soups, barbecue pizza, sandwiches, tacos, enchiladas and the list could go on. Those are just some of the ways we used it.

Kara brought her sourdough starter and taught us to make delicious sourdough bread. Now Melinda and I each have a starter to feed and make our own sourdough bread. If you want to make some, this is where Kara got started.

Melinda taught us how to make homemade tortillas. She uses this recipe. Of course, we also had homemade waffles a few times as well as biscuits with chocolate gravy. Homemade pizza has taken first place over store or restaurant pizza for our clan. This is an easy recipe for crust and you can freeze the dough for later use.

Kara also decided to tackle making Kringle. Kringle is a Danish pastry that has been a favorite of our family from years ago- only we bought it already made because it is a several day process to make. Hers turned out wonderfully tasty, and we have decided to add it to our list of items that we make for the family at least once a year.

So what did we do besides eat and wash lots of dishes?

Here’s some pictures to give you a hint.