Blog

About ten minutes into their project, as my kids are working on writing their Christmas journal paragraphs, I hear a knock on the front door.  I cross the room to answer it. 

As I open the door, Lyric stands before me, surrounded by snow.  Astonished, I look past him.  The sky is violently raining a flurry of massive snowflakes down upon the earth.  My eyes travel to the street.  It’s already covered by fluffy white crystals.  

Hmm.

“Lyric!  Did you just drive over here?” I ask, astounded at the amount of snow on the ground.  And just slightly horrified at the likelihood that Lyric drove through this mess.

“It was barely snowing when I left home a few minutes ago.  The roads are awful now.”  He dusts off his feet on the mat in front of the door before stepping across the threshold. 

“Come in,” I greet him unnecessarily as I step back.  He’s already moving in my direction.  “I’m glad you got here safe.”

He smiles at me.  Then his eyes move past me, and I can tell that he’s already seen Janna.  He heads her way.

I open the weather app on my phone.  It doesn’t look like this siege is going to end anytime soon.  I got stuck on a road once when it was snowing this heavily.  Traffic moved at a crawl.  The roads were extremely slick.  Not a good time to be traveling down the street.

I sigh.  The tiny twins and I won’t be doing any shopping this morning.

I break the news to them a while later as they’re putting the finishing touches on their books.

“We can’t go buy toys?” Abner asks with wide, disappointed eyes.

“Not right now.  But,” I grin as I glance outside, “if this keeps up for much longer, you could all go play in the snow.  Maybe even make a snowman!”  

This is a rare treat for us.  Building a snowman is not part of our Christmas traditions because a lot of years we don’t get enough snow to make one.  But maybe…just maybe this year my kids will get to!

Alastair’s eyes fly wide open, and he runs over to the window.  I watch as delight flows across his face.  “I wanna make a snowman!”

“What would be really cool,” Kookie opines as he joins his little brother at the window, “is if it snows all day long, and we get enough to make a snow fort.”

It’s happened only once.  The year Kookie and Janna turned nine.  My husband helped them turn the snow into bricks.  It was the perfect kind of snow that year, heavy and durable.  Great for packing.  They built a fort and a snowman.  They even had a snowball fight.

Everett’s eyes light up.  “Do you think we’ll be able to build a fort?”

Kookie shrugs.  “Maybe.  This snow looks wet and heavy.  It’s the right kind.  Let’s wait about an hour.  Then we’ll head out and play in it.  Hopefully, we’ll get lots.  It’s coming down pretty hard.”

“Would you all like a project to work on in the meantime?” I ask.

“What’s left on our list?” Janna asks as she mentally reviews our twelve Christmas activities.

But Kookie responds before she can.  “Can we start making the fudge?”

I grin.  Fudge making is one of my favorite activities too.

“Absolutely.  We can get a head start on our gifts for our friends.  We’ve already begun making the cookies.  We’ll make some of the fudge this morning.  It keeps a long time in the fridge.”

“What kind should we make today?” Alastair asks.

“Peppermint!” Everett turns from the window with a huge grin on his face.

There are a couple of grumbles from my non-mint-lovers, so I offer to make two kinds.  Janna and Emmie opt to skip making peppermint fudge.  I encourage them to decorate more cookies while six boys follow me into the kitchen.  Lyric seems particularly excited.  He’s never had my peppermint fudge before.

I’m laughing because he definitely doesn’t have this in common with Tae who once admitted to a dislike of mint chocolate chip ice cream.  Our peppermint fudge combines the best of dark chocolate with peppermint and white chocolate, so I’m assuming Tae wouldn’t care for it either.  But Lyric is standing near my stovetop as a huge grin of eager anticipation swallows his face whole. 

Apparently, his taste in fudge flavors is not something he shares with my daughter who is currently seated in the dining room frosting cookies with her best friend.  I’m actually surprised that either of the girls has allowed herself to be separated from the object of her affection.  Even for an hour.  But here we are.  

I smile at the six boys crowding around me.  Just then, my husband enters the kitchen, his eyes growing wide as he surveys the crowd of young men standing around me. 

“Do I now have some competition?” he jokes.

I take note of the fact that I’m surrounded by seven males.  Hmm…now where have I seen that number before?

“It’s peppermint-fudge-making time.”

His eyes light up too.

“Care to join us?” I ask.

“Nope.  But I will enjoy the end product,” he flashes his gorgeous, white teeth at me before disappearing into the living room again.

“Where were we?” I ask, but my eyes are still lingering on the doorway through which the love of my life just walked.

Finally, clearing my throat, I turn back to the half dozen boys assembled in the kitchen and ready to work.  I start issuing commands to my little army.  Yes, I know.  ARMY.

“Alastair, we need the nine-by-nine metal pan.

“Abs, I need you to grab the aluminum foil.

“Everett and Noel, can you run down to the pantry and grab a bag of semisweet chocolate chips, a bag of white chocolate chips, and a can of sweetened condensed milk?

“Kookie, can you grab the peppermint extract out of the top of that cabinet?” I point to the door next to his head.

“Oh!  Lyric, I think there’s a box of candy canes on the dining room table.  Could you go grab it, please?”

This will give him a chance to say hello to Janna while helping me.  I’ve now assigned everyone a job.  I show Alastair and Abner how to line the pan with the foil.  Then I grab my double boiler, fill the bottom pan with water, and set it on the stove before placing the upper pan on top of it.  I turn the burner up to medium heat and wait for our ingredients to arrive.  Lyric returns with a box of mini candy canes.

“Are these the ones you wanted?  I couldn’t find any bigger ones.”

“Those are perfect.  The smaller, the better, for this project.  Kookie, grab a gallon-size Ziploc from that drawer, okay?  Lyric, can you dump all the candy canes into the Ziploc bag?  Then squeeze all the extra air out and seal it.”

Kookie grins, releasing the glories of his chubby, white teeth.  He gets those from his father.  My eldest son announces, “Now comes the fun part.”

Lyric quirks an eyebrow.  Kookie mimics him.  They look like mirror images now.  At least, in expression.  I suppress a giggle.

“Fun part?” Janna’s boyfriend asks.

“Smashing the candy canes.”

Lyric’s mouth spreads into a wide smile.  “We get to smash candy canes?”

He and Kookie look gleeful.  I chuckle.  Boys will be boys.  Do they ever grow up?

Kookie reaches into the drawer in our kitchen island and withdraws a hammer.  

Lyric laughs.  “We get to smash them with that?  And you keep it in the kitchen?”

“We believe in smashing our food,” I respond jokingly.  “Gently,” I admonish him.  “Gently.  Don’t break anything but the candy canes.”

I pull the hammer from Kookie’s hand and place the bag of peppermint canes on the countertop.  Slowly, I begin to swing the hammer until it contacts one delicate cane.  The candy shatters.  

“See?  That’s all the pressure it takes to smash it.  Concentrate on contacting a specific candy cane.  Don’t just thrash around being destructive.  I don’t want to have to buy a new kitchen island.  What I mean is: you don’t want to have to buy a new kitchen island.”

Kookie grins at me.

“Can I do it?” Lyric asks.

“Buy me a new kitchen island?  Well,” I purse my lips, “I kinda like my old one, but if you insist…”  I let my voice trail off as I smile widely at him.

He chuckles.  “No.  Can I smash the candy canes?”

But he’s followed by a chorus of boys who want to shatter the candy canes too.  Laughing, I assure them all that there’s plenty to smash.  Everyone will get a turn.  

“How about we start with the youngest and work our way up?  Abner, Alastair, Noel, Everett, Kookie, Lyric.  Three swings each.”  I hand the hammer to Abner.  Then I turn to Kookie.  “Will you supervise please?”

“Sure, Mom.”  

He beams at me again, and I realize how much richer my life is with him in it.  With all five of my children in it.  And with their friends too.  I watch them all for a few moments.  Everyone takes their turn, and the candy canes are no more.  Now we have lovely, little shards of peppermint sugar awaiting their dunk into white chocolate.

“Now comes the warm part,” I begin.  “We need one and a half cups of chocolate chips and half a can of sweetened condensed milk.”

I let the three youngest boys each measure half a cup of semisweet chocolate chips into the pan before Everett pours out half of the sweetened condensed milk into a bowl on my kitchen scale.  Then he adds the milk to the pan.  They take turns stirring it while it melts.  Once it’s melted, Lyric pours it into our foil-lined pan.  I instruct Kookie to set it in the fridge to cool.

After I wash out the top of the double boiler, we repeat the above steps using white chocolate chips and the remainder of the sweetened condensed milk this time.  I let Lyric add the half cup of crushed candy canes once the mixture has melted.  Kookie pours in the half teaspoon of peppermint extract while Lyric stirs the fudge until it’s smooth.  Kookie rescues the chocolate fudge from the fridge.  Then he pours the peppermint fudge over the top of the chocolate and uses a spatula to spread it out.  Finally, he pops it back into the fridge.  

My eyes travel over this crowd of hungry boys.  “Success!  You’ll get to sample the result of your efforts in two hours.  Who wants to play in the snow now?”

They all rush out to the living room and glance out the window, oohing and ahhing over the three inches of snow now lining the ground.  This is some serious snowstorm.  It’s been only an hour since it began.  And it doesn’t look like it’s planning on stopping any time soon.  I’m wondering if perhaps we’ll have an extra guest staying over tonight….