Saturday, December 30, 2006
Oops I Did It Again!
Friday, December 29, 2006
Resolution Time Already?
Jeremiah 29:11 -14a
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the
Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a
future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to
you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will
be found by you," declares the Lord,...
- Seek God with all my heart
- Trust God with all my heart
- Give God daily control of myself so that His plans may be accomplished
This my mind and personality gets. I can break it down. I can do it day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute. I pray for God's grace to do that in 2007.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
How Easy Can It Be?
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrRIRcsBwAI
I had to link because ever since I went to new blogger for some reason I cannot post anything from youtube.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
Merry Christmas to all my blogging friends. May love, joy, peace and health be yours & your family's this Christmas. Thank you for being a part of my life this year. You'll never know the blessing you've been as you've encouraged me, challenged me, stretched me, made me cry and made me laugh out loud!
So Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night! Be back around Thursday or so!
Photo by Luis Francisco Cordero, Equador, unrestricted usage
"We Wish You a Merry Birthday"
At my house, all of a sudden in the midst of all that joyous celebration of everything red and green and white, what is that we hear? "We wish you a merry .... birthday? As we leave the chaos of the living room with it's paper and ribbons strewn everywhere so that it looks like a bomb has gone off, we follow the sounds to the kitchen. And what to our wondering eyes do appear? Birthday balloons, birthday tablecloth, birthday gifts? And yes, we leave the Christmas chaos, and make a new chaos of birthday party in the kitchen. Off come the Santa hats, on goes the birthday hats.
For you see, my baby girl decided she just had to make an appearance on Christmas Day. Noon. Christmas Day. Joy to the World!
It all started earlier that year when the great debate was on. We had the "millionare" family. Dad, Mom, one girl, one boy. Should we try for another? Should we, shouldn't we, should we, shouldn't we? Oh, I guess we are! And what do you mean, dear ultrasound person, that my due date is December 23rd? You're joking right? Haha. You're serious? Okey, dokey, then.
Well, that's just too much stress for me. So what does any self-respecting, good Christian mommy do? Why she believes God, implores God, that the babe would be born in the beginning of December. She prays, she confesses, she won't accept anything less. When asked when the due date is, she answers honestly but always with the add on of: "But we're believing she's coming early". Even to her doctor, who let's just say, doesn't quite hold to asking God for a specific due date. Especially when the mommy's first two babes were not early, but in fact, came exactly on their due dates! So mommy's good doctor finally in exasperation points this out. But the mommy holds strong. Fast forward to December, past the beginning of December, moving on to the middle of December. Mommy is still very pregnant! Mommy is still believing that baby is going to be early.
Okay, now it's the evening of December 23. Nothing, not a twinge. Still big as a house. So now what does this good, faith-filled mommy do? Why, she starts believing God that the babe would come after Christmas, because this would just add too much to all the Christmas plans you know. So believing that the babe is not coming till after Christmas, she throws a Christmas Eve party for all the relatives. House full of people! Very pregnant mommy. Out of her mind mommy!
Christmas morning, after all the chaos of opening gifts, mommy is in the livingroom watching her new music video, kids are off playing with whatever it is they got that year, and Daddy is in the kitchen, making waffles with his new waffle maker. When all of a sudden, hmm, okay that's gotta be too much shortbread and eggnog from the night before. Oh, there it is again. Okay big one now. Does anyone know God has a sense of humor? Mommy goes out to the kitchen to tell Daddy it's time. He says: "But I'm making waffles." Mommy gets on phone to grandma, who is supposed to take kids when the big event happens. "It's time," Mommy says. "But I'm stuffing the turkey," Grandma says. "Well, you better get over here right now," Mommy says. " 'Cause I'm unstuffing mine". Grandma can't quite believe it and is quite flustered being she had her hands up the backside of the bird and all, and now she has to do something with all this but she makes it over in no time flat, just in case the Mommy is not joking.
Nope, not joking. Precisely, at 12:05, noon, Christmas Day, (Did I mention God has a sense of humor?), precious baby was born. Two hours from start to finish. Doctor lady thanks the Mommy for letting her get home in time to cook her turkey for supper. Ha ha, doctor lady.
Seriously, that was the best Christmas present ever. Nothing could ever top that. Our lovely little lady was born on Christmas Day. They brought her to me after her weighing and all in a cute Christmas stocking with a knitted Santa hat on her head. The best stocking stuffer ever, I tell ya!
Happy Birthday, Apple Dumpling. You've blest us everyday of your life. You're turning into a lovely young lady with a sensitive heart towards blessing others. And we are so glad God chose us to be your Mom and Dad.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Fall into Reading Finale
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Done, done, done
I am so glad I'm done. At least with shopping. Other than a few groceries, we'll live with what we have. Now I just gotta wrap. And I gotta do it today, 'cause the kids are home starting tomorrow. And it's impossible to sneak wrap anymore. If I wait until they are in bed I'll be wrapping at midnight. And I'm just getting to old for that!
Now I just need to cook, bake some more, clean, make beds, do laundry.... I guess I'm not so done after all. Okay repeat to self: "What gets done, get's done. What doesn't, doesn't." Repeat as needed.
"A Christmas Carol"
Painting by Warner Sallman
"What means this glory round our feet?"
"What means that star?" the shepherd said,
'Tis twenty hundred years and more
But it was said, in words of gold.
All round about our feet shall shine
So shall we learn to understand
And they who do their souls no wrong,
- by J.R. Lowell
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
Busy, busy, busy
Today I was pretty much missing in action around blogland today because I was busy making this:
These cookies are perfect for those who cannot have a lot of sugar.
1 container (250 grams/1/2 lb.) McLaren's Imperial Cheese [the one in the red container with black lid] *Update: here is a link to this cheese. Apparently it is a Canadian product but I guess made by Kraft so I'm thinking it would be available for you south of the border!
http://www.ioriginals.net/imperialcheese.htm
1/2 lb. butter
2 cups flour
2 Tbsp. light brown or golden sugar
Bring cheese and butter to just room temperature. Mix all ingrediants together with mixer. Push into a ball in bowl, cover and refridgerate 1 hour or more.
On large square of wax paper, spread a little flour down. Place half the ball of dough on wax paper, folding the paper over the ball. Now roll into a tube like shape. Do the same with the other half of dough so that you have two rolls of dough. Place in freezer for 1 hour for easier clean slicing. Cookies will be pretty much as large as you made the roll and as thick as you slice them.
Preheat oven to 275 degrees F. Place sliced cookies on ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from pans immediately and cool on racks. Makes about 2 1/2 - 3 dozen cookies depending on size and thickness you make them.
If you don't consider rolling pins an instrument of torture you can roll and cut them with cookie cutters.
We also made these today with the 2 - 3 year olds:
Then I just cut out the "balls" and let them glue them where ever they wanted and gave them a hunk of curled ribbon to glue on where they wanted. Voila: handprint wreath.
With the 4 year olds I made this Christmas countdown.
They traced and cut out the star shape (some with a little help), then cut strips of construction paper. I made 7 for the 7 days left for Christmas. With older children you can do from December 1 as their countdown. I find that is a big concept for a 4 year old and 7 days is plenty. They grasp that easier. We glue and sparkled the star, then made a chain of the strips. Each night at bedtime they tear off the bottom circle. When only the star is left it is Christmas Day.
So that is why I didn't get to visit to many of you today. I will catch up tomorrow.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Come On In!
Welcome, Welcome! Thanks for stopping by on your bloggety Christmas Tour of Homes. Wasn't it great of Boomama to host this again? You can go on over there to add your home or to jump in on the fun!
Please ignore the nice pile of papers that my son delivers. They are a daily fixture on our step. I wish I could figure out how to make them look like they are part of the decoration.
Here's my deal of the year. A whopping $5 at Shopper's Drug Mart on clearance. I wanted a wreath for years and this satisfied my
Coming into the living room our stockings hang. Why not from the fireplace mantle? Glad you asked. Because the 6 little rugrats that run thru my place each day will not leave them alone. So up they go. The patchwork ones are my kid's. Notice teen girl's hanging off the lamp in the background? Nice designer touch don't you think?
You've seen this one but seeing it's my favorite thing in the room here's my nativity.
My tree, day and night
I used to collect stacking Russian Doll thingy's. This is one of the only ones I kept. It sits on top of the fridge.
Thanks for coming by. It just occurred to me I forgot to have my little red cup (turned around this time to show the snowman) follow us around like in the last tour. Ah well, maybe next year! Merry Christmas!
Christmasey Tour of Homes
Today's the Day! Boomama's Christmas Tour of Homes is officially on! Grab a coffee or hot chocolate or eggnog, some cookies and let's go touring! As you can see, I'm not quite ready for company yet but I will have the house ready later today. Something to do with being totally over-committed and ultra-busy but I'm getting on it right away! Meanwhile, click on the button and tour away!
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Perspective, Thanks and Link Love
Thanks so much to everyone who weighed in and gave me some great advice over "The Big Dilemma". I tell ya I'm sorta glad only one of my kids is in sports. I don't think I could go through some of this stuff with three of them. And when you see your kid really hurting that old Mama Bear instinct just rises in me. You know; protect your young. But you all are right. This is a perfect opportunity for her to learn that life is not fair and how to walk through it with grace and leaning on Jesus.
We've never quite experienced this kind of coaching in her "career" as a basketball player. Her former coaches have always been very supportive and treated players fairly. Her last that she had for 2 1/2 years, was very competitive yet was able to balance playing the girls fairly, at least communicating to them exactly what he wanted. And she also had him as a coach in club for two years where it was very much a family atmosphere and parents and the coach talked freely. So this is a huge learning curve for me also, this negotiating the choppy waters of competitive high school sports and new parent-coach relationships, or lack thereof. I think what's been the most frustrating for her is going from a top player in junior high to having her position changed and then not being played as much last year as they decided what on earth they wanted to do with her (they said she was no longer tall enough to play post), then deciding they were going to change her around, the learning curve of learning the new skills and then all of a sudden being thrown into something she hadn't worked on in a year and then sat out because her performance wasn't there. Anyhow, it's a day past it and she went to practice and still worked hard. Good for her, I don't know if I could have been so mature at her age of 16.
Anyhoo, all that to say, thank you all for helping out this mom to have a little perspective on the situation and for granting to me your sage advice and your prayers.
And moving right along, there have been some awesome posts out there in the last few weeks. I wish I would have wrote them all down but I'd like to pass on a few that I remember.
~ Barbara H. at Stray Thoughts posted a wonderful Christmas version of I Corinthians 13 here
~ Kari at Oodles of Blessings has had a wonderful series running where she takes different characters from the Christmas story and gives us their perspective of that wonderful event. It started a little while ago but if you go now you can catch up. It's well worth it. It starts here and then you can see the rest of the posts in here sidebar to get to todays.
~ Linda at 2nd Cup of Coffee posted this hilarious perspective on a popular Christmas gift exchange.
~ Christine at Fruit in Season had a great post on the atmosphere in your home here and she has Mr. Linky set up with others writing on the same subject.
~ Carol at She Lives had a great post on what you can learn from each character involved in the Christmas story here.
There have been tons more this week. I really need to write some of these down. Enjoy the ones I remembered.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
What Do Ya Do?
This is what teen girl wanted to be doing in last night's game.
This is what she did the whole. second. half. (Not the holding the head in the hands thing, but the growing cobwebs thing).
Help me out here. What do you do with a coach who last year changes the position she's played for 5 years, plays and trains her in this new postition in practices and then in the game throws her into her old position which she hasn't practiced for a year? And then when she doesn't do great sits her on the bench for the whole second half. What do you do with a coach who tends to only play his hot players while the rest of the team sits on the bench? What do you do with a girl who is very, very frustrated but is horrified at the thought of you calling up said coach for a chat? Even when you promised you'd just inquire for her what his thoughts are and you swore on a pinky promise you would not act mad or tell him off or tell him what to do, even when that is exactly what you really, really want to do. When everything in you wants to tell him he's dunking your kid's self-esteem into the toilet!! And to knock it off! But you promised you'd be nice. But she still doesn't want you to go anywhere near the guy. What do you do when it's really irking you to sign a cheque for $225 for her to sit on the bench for half the game? But she loves the game.
Help me out what's a mom to do? You who have older kids on teams, what do you do? Call the guy anyway and tell him your conversation better not get back to your daughter or affect the way he treats her or plays her in any negative way or you will hunt him down? That if he makes your little girl cry one more time you will threaten him to within one inch of his life? And what do you do with the guilt feelings that come when your feelings do not match up with your Christ-like walk? Sigh!
But I'm proud of my girl 'cause this is what she did while she was on that bench! She didn't pout or cry while there.
She cheered her team on as they came back from a 15 point deficit to tie the game in the last minute but then give up the last basket in the final 30 seconds and not get it back.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Monday, December 11, 2006
Susie, HomeBaker, I am not
So needless to say I was less than thrilled when my ladies group decided that the thing we would do for our December fun night was to have a Christmas cookie exchange. Drat! The thought of bringing home 8 dozen other cookies was no problem. My kids and hubby would be thrilled. Let's just say they don't get a lot of homemade cookies and baking. I'd bring that home any day. But it was the thought of baking something other than your standard chocolate chip or brownie that was giving me nightmares. And to top that off, 8 dozen of 'em. And have them taste good. Where on earth is Paula Dean when you need her anyway?
Then I came across this little recipe. And being Hungarian how could I resist it? Lemon and poppyseeds? Heaven. And you don't have to roll them out or have them make a certain shape? Ok, sold. I tried a batch out on my unsuspecting little family unit. With bated breath I waited for the verdict. They loved them!! Raved about them, even! They were so thrilled with them, that guess what, not only do the ladies group get them tonight in lovely little Christmas bags, but I present the recipe to you especially any of you my friends, who like me, are a little baking challenged. Barb & Beck, well, you're welcome to take it too, if you don't feel it's too easy for the likes of your baking prowess. And I mean that in the most standing in awe of your talents kind of way!
2/3 cup granulated sugar
glaze: 1 cup icing sugar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Beat granulated sugar and butter in large bowl at medium speed until creamy. Beat in egg and lemon peel. Combine flour, baking soda and salt, gradually add to butter mixture. Stir in poppy seeds at low speed.
Drop dough by teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheets. (I used the Pampered Chef small size cookie scooper thingy). Bake 7-9 minutes or until lightly browned. (Start with the smallest amount of time and keep an eye on them for the first batch and then you're okay for the rest with the time. The original recipe said 11 minutes but mine were done in 8). Let stand 1 minute and then transfer to wire racks.
Mix glaze and drizzle over cookies. Let sit until glaze fully sets.
Makes about 3 dozen.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Word for the Weekend
Friday, December 08, 2006
Christmas Tree Treasures
Morning Glory is hosting a fun picture linky today called Christmas Tree Treasures to let us have a peek at your Christmas tree ornaments.
"You are invited to post as many photos as you want, of the special ornaments that you hang on your tree each year. Share with us why they are special to you. Maybe they are family heirlooms, things your children made you or you had as a child, or special theme collections -- whatever it is that you put on your tree that brings you pleasure each year as you decorate it. "
Please join us and share your favorites.
Here's a few that I love to hang, although these do not cover everything.
I started collecting snowmen ornaments quite a few years back. My mom gave me this one. It's one from my childhood that hung on our tree then. It's older than I am and would be considered antique. Hmmm, does that mean I'm an antique too? Anyway, I just love him.
I also love pinecone ornaments and this, too, my mom gave me from my childhood. So it's also antique. This is the biggest one and then I've got a gold one, a blue one, and an aqua colored one that are a bit smaller.
This is the one I got for Dave and I when we were first married. And the snowman is one from my kid's ornaments. I get them each one every year. There is no theme or rhyme or reason for their ornaments, it's whatever strikes my fancy for them. They each got one of these cloth snowmen, each is a different color and silver threads make it look like snow glistening when the lights are on it. I'm sad now that I didn't get myself one because I just love these little guys!
These next four snowmen are special because my sister got them for me as a gift one year.
My son got me a couple of these snowpeople one year for Christmas out of his little allowance. You know that's gotta mean it's ultra special!