Dad's Birthday Dinner

This year for Dad's birthday, mom and I decided to cook him a special Czechoslovakian dinner, with recipes that my family use to make.  I made some Rohlicky (crescent rolls with poppyseeds).

Mom made some Kolaches, fruit filled pastries, sometimes filled with cottage cheese or a poppyseed filling.

For dinner mom cooked some duck.  Not neccesarily a Czech dish, but when we went over to my grandmas for a special dinner they would make duck.  We also had sour beans, another regular dish at grandmas.  And we made a dish called Bubke.  It's sort of like a crumbled pancake topped with lettuce and a slightly sweetened vinegar and cream sauce.  I hadn't had that in years, so it was fun to try again.

For dessert, mom and I attempted to make Babovka.  This is a ring shaped bread that has a poppyseed filling.  I don't think our recipe was quite what Dad had had before, but it was still pretty tasty.  I had never had it before and mom hadn't made it before either, so we gave it our best effort!  It was a fun dinner to do, and it was pretty fun getting back to my "roots".  Happy Birthday Dad!

Christmas Tree Hunting

This year we decided to go out in the wilderness and chop down our own Christmas tree! It'd been a few years since we had done that, and our friends wanted to go. So we met Jimmy and Sarah and the boys in Stanford and headed up Dry Wolf. The boys were really excited to go sledding. It was a pretty cold day. Libby got in a little sledding too before we sat in the pickup with Sarah and Charlie trying to warm up. But we did manage to find 3 beautiful trees.

Thanksgiving

This year we hosted Thanksgiving again at our house. The whole VanKuiken side of the family was in attendance, about 25 people! It's so fun to see the next generation of cousins all playing together. They had a great time. And Libby had a great time playing with cousins and aunts. We hardly saw her the whole day! And of course, what's a little family get-together without some skeet shooting to top off the day!