Petrini's, Parties and Purple Potatoes?

This will be a modge-podge of pictures, but nonetheless an update on the family.

I promised the kids as soon as Thanksgiving was over, we could finally pull out all the Christmas stuff and decorate the house, and boy did they stick me to it. As soon as we got home from our fabulous thanksgiving trip to Orawan Cabins, we were decorating our tree within an hour or two.
I let the kids do most of the decorating, and have given up on ever getting a bigger and better and more beautiful Christmas tree.



After the kids finished decorating it, within minutes of letting Amelia out of her crib from her nap, Mia the Mennace, had already broken one ornament, and pulled the whole tree down on herself. I took a few minutes to baby-proof the tree more (pulling off my favorite ornaments), and just brushed it off and told myself it was the kids tree and it would get ugly (kids re-arranging all the ornaments and having everything unevenly spaced and unbalanced....breathe...it's just a tree Melissa....in a few years, they will be grown and you will have your big beautiful breakable tree). :)

With the Christmas season in full swing and ALL MY CHRISTMAS SHOPPING TOTALLY DONE (WHOO-HOO!), we can now get down to business and party! We've already had two christmas parties, one with our church and one for the kids sponsored by the Navy.
Navy Kids Christmas Party:





Yes, she really did have this reaction when Santa held her..she was not happy!

But that's nothing a Candy Cane can't fix, right Mia!


Church Christmas Party Santa:



At each party, Ben has asked Santa for the same thing...a Polar Express Train of his own....now, last year, Santa gave our family a nice Polar Express Train for us to share (to solve any sharing or hoarding problems that it would create if one individual owned it out-right...Ben) but now he wants one of his own that would not carry any restrictions.

I have already purchased our family Santa gift (a Nintendo Wii) and so I was a little worried that he would be disappointed. So I gently reminded him about how much he wanted a Wii before when we visited my parents over the summer and how cool it was. He of course, realized that was a way cooler gift and grabbed a crayon to write Santa right away to fix the problem.

Ben's Letter to Santa that he wrote all by himself:

"Santa, I DON'T want a train (train twice?) for Christmas. Santa, I want a Mario Cart We (Wii) for Christmas."

Don't worry Ben, Santa got the Memo. :)

Potatoes with an E
When we were on our thanksgiving vacation, one of our friends made the most delicious and mouth-watering sweet potato dish that I have ever tasted....it's almost scandilous how good it was....I'm sure I had more than my fair share of the potatoes.

Anyway, if you want to make sweet potatoes with Okinawan Sweet potatoes, then your in for a special treat....they are purple!

Look at the sweet "milky" stuff that comes out when you cut it....pure goodness!

The first time we made our sweet potatos mashed-style, we were a little hestitant, but one taste and you think you are eating candy.

They make so many things out of their special purple potatoes, and my favorite is the beni imo sweet potato ice cream....best tasting flavor around...no joke!