Tuesday, December 15, 2009

On the Second day of Christmas...

...I am grateful for,
  1. The fact that I live in a time with all the comforts of life that we enjoy.
  2. The fact that I live in a time where I have easy access to doctors and medicine when needed.
  3. The technology that we have today that allowed me to hear the heart beat of our unborn child, that never ceases to amaze me(I guess that is the unofficial announcement).
  4. The fact that for the most part I have easy and asymptomatic pregnancies.
  5. Three previous healthy pregnancies and the delivery of three healthy, active girls.
  6. Three beautiful girls that can almost always bring a smile to my face...sometimes in unexpected ways.
  7. For my sister-in-law, because she is always willing to watch my kids for a few hours when I go into Lethbridge.
  8. The energy that I have been blessed with so far this week, so I can actually get things done.
  9. The fact that it is nearly bedtime for my three girls.
  10. The silence that will follow my three girls going to bed.
  11. The chinook that rolled in today raising the mercury from -23C(-10F) this morning to a balmy 1C(34F) this afternoon, thus bringing to an end(for the next week anyways) the frigid temperatures we have been "enjoying".
  12. A comfy bed that I will be retiring to in the some what nearish future.

Past Days of Christmas
1st day

Monday, December 14, 2009

On the first day of Christmas...

...I am grateful for,

  1. Our attached garage. I never really know how cold it is until I reach my destination...this of course is a blessing and a curse.
  2. Our nice warm reliable van that we park in our attached garage.
  3. Our nice warm house that our garage is attached to. On days like we've had lately, there is nothing nicer than the the protection and warmth that a house provides.
  4. The bountiful storage space that our attached garage provides.
  5. The smell of our fresh Christmas tree that make memories surface and helps create new ones.
  6. The smell of nuts and bolts that lingers in the air today after a day of baking them.
  7. My large family that all pitches in their share of ingredients so that we I can make a large batch of nuts and bolts and then we all have plenty to enjoy over the Christmas holidays.
  8. Great-grandparents that made my daughters day today by sending her a letter(with a little money in it) thanking her for the letter she sent them with some "gold" in it that she found while panning for gold at Fort Steele.
  9. My husband finally taking the table and chairs back to the church.
  10. The dishwasher that will be loaded after I am done typing this...which means that I don't have to do the dishes by hand.
  11. The talent of being able to sew marvelous things. I love the satisfaction I get from creating beautiful clothing or crafts. And I love sharing them with others.
  12. Finally having my sewing machine back from the sewing machine fix it place, so now I can go sew...after I am done loading the dishwasher of course.

Ooooh...that was fun! I look forward to doing that again tomorrow.



Sunday, December 13, 2009

Just a heads up

For any of you who missed a couple of posts back, or who just need a reminder. Tomorrow is the First Day of Christmas. This means that tomorrow I will start my Twelve Days of Gratitude.I am hoping that there are others out there who are willing to take this challenge on this Christmas season. If you are interested, here is the plan. For each day of Christmas the challenge is to write twelve things that you are grateful for that day. I will be doing my posts in the evening of each day so that I have the whole day to be thinking about, or looking for things, or to just experience the day. Then I will reflect on my day and come up with my twelve things. I don't think for a minute that this is going to be easy, but I believe that it will be a wonderful way to close my day. I got the idea from this blog. So come along and join the challenge and see what you have to be thankful for this Christmas season.



Friday, December 11, 2009

I love Christmas Surprises!

When Daniel brought home the mail last night, it contained a Christmas card that did not have a return address, but the postmark told us that it had been mailed right here in Milk River. We joked about that, why you would spend the money on a stamp when you could just drop it off at the house. Cuz is it really worth it to have the post office ladies walk over and put it in our box? But then we opened up the card. It simply said "Hope you have a Great Christmas", and in the card was a little extra something to brighten anyone's day.

I don't feel like we have ever been in need at Christmas time. We have always had enough. But over the 8 years that we have been married, we have been blessed more than once with Christmas surprises.

Our first Christmas we were in Saskatoon. We knew our car had a heating problem, but we didn't realize how bad it was until we started our journey home to Lethbridge after work on the 22nd. It was cold....really cold. We got to Rosetown, about an hour out of Saskatoon, and our car had yet to produce any heat. We stopped at the gas station to see what could be done. There was a nice little family on the road for Christmas. Dad was a long haul trucker, and was almost always gone during Christmas, so that year they had decided to be on the road together in the extended cab. They had a son and daughter both somewhere between 7-10years old. The dad helped Daniel on the car to see what he could do while I warmed up in the cab of the truck with the rest of the family. They even had a little tiny tree. In the end, there was nothing that could be done. The thought of another 5 hours driving in the cold with out any heat was not a pleasant thought. So we turned around and headed back to Saskatoon, disappointed that we would not be spending Christmas at home with family. When we got back to our little basement suite we called our parents to tell them the bad news. Both Daniel and I had to be back for Boxing day because we were both store managers in the Mall, so we didn't see how we could get home and back again in so short of time. We went to Church the next day and made plans to spend Christmas with a family that had all but adopted us. They had a little boy that was the same age as my youngest brother Tyson. When we got home from church there was a message from both Daniel's mom and my parents saying that they wanted us to come home for Christmas so they would each pay half of the cost of a car rental. So that is what we did that afternoon. We rented a car, on our parents dime, and went home for a quick trip.

A few years later, we were living in Edmonton. Life was fairly comfortable. Every Sunday we drove Sister Wright, an elderly lady in our ward to church. On a Sunday near Christmas she gave us a Christmas card. When we opened it later, it contained a little extra something, I don't remember the amount, I believe it was a $100 bill. She had written in the card that it was to help with gas. But you see that was just silliness. She lived in the very same apartment complex as we did, so we never actually went out of our way to take her to church, which means that we did not use any more in gas to take her with us.

Again a few years later, we were Living in Lethbridge and I had been serving as the Relief Society President for just a few months. I was busy that year putting together food hampers and gathering presents to help out a number of families in our ward that were in need. I was astounded by the generosity of the sisters in our ward when the Bishop and I had asked them to donate inexpensive gifts to hand out to the some of our less fortunate children in the ward. They young men and young women got in on the fun to, they offered to wrap the present and then to have one of their leaders dress up as Santa Clause and deliver them just before Christmas. One sister came to my house with not one or two gifts but bags of gifts. She single handedly took care of at least two families in our ward. Daniel's Aunt Jane had found out that I was making jamma pants for these kids as well and had told me to come go through boxes of fabric that she had in the old house. With that I had enough material to make the needed jamma pants. It was a busy Christmas. The night of our Relief Society Christmas party was a good one. As I remember it, all went well and everyone had a good time. After the party was all cleaned up, the bishops wife offered me a ride home, we only lived half a block away, but I had a number of boxes of things to take back home. As she helped me carry the boxes to my door, I discovered on my front step, a box full of Christmas goodies, things like, steaks, cheese balls and crackers, mixed nuts, candies, and other things that I would not normally spend money on at Christmas or any other time of year. Not only was there a box of goodies, but there was a Christmas tree leaning up against the house. I don't know who did it, but it was safe to say it wasn't any of the sisters at the party...maybe their husbands, but I always suspected somebody else(my parents) although they have never admitted to it...so I could be totally wrong. Regardless, it was unexpected and very much appreciated. Who doesn't love those kind of Surprises?

The next year was a crazy year. Daniel was working a full time job and a part time job, as well as coaching basketball at Winston Churchill High School. I was nearly three months in to my third pregnancy and suffering from ridiculous hormone headaches. I was still the RS president, and keeping busy. One day at church a sister who was a mother of two and who had been really sick and in the hospital off and on over the months came up to me at church on Sunday and told me that each year their family likes to choose another family and do something special for them at Christmas. At this point I thought she was going to ask me who I would suggest would be a good family for them to treat. But instead she said that they had decided that our family was the one they would like to do something special for and wondered what day would be a good day to come over. I burst into tear right then and there (I blame that on pregnancy hormones...which could be true, even as I sit here and type this I am tearing up again), put my arms around her and said thank you for thinking of me. We weren't in "need" like so many others were that year. But it had been a stressful year. The thought of this Young mom, who had been so sick, who I had gone to visit in the hospital so many times, wasn't thinking "woe is me, I am so sick", but that she was thinking of how she could make someone's Christmas special that year was overwhelming. They came the next day with dinner, and boxes and bags of presents to make our Christmas tree overflowing with gifts. I'll never forget that Christmas, I didn't know until that moment that I had needed someone to serve me, someone to love me enough to share this kind of Christmas surprise.

And now this year, a random someone in our little community cares enough about the "Court Family" to share a little Christmas cheer, to help make our Christmas a great one. Funny thing, earlier in the day yesterday, we were wondering how we were going to pay for my sewing machine repair....darn thing likes to die on me at Christmas. Well, that's taken care of now, along with a few other things. So thank-you mystery Milk River and area resident, your card showed up on just the right day. 



Friday, December 4, 2009

The fates were aligned against me...or a lesson in Gratitude

Finally this week is over...and what a week it was.  This week I had the Relief Society Christmas party to pull off  on Wednesday and then the i had a table at the Milk River Craft Sale on Friday. I think to best give you an idea of how this week went, I'll write out the time line.

Saturday
afternoon(11am-6pm) -  head to Lethbridge to do some grocery shopping and pick up some material to fix a dress for  my sister-in-law.
6pm - head home to Milk river, eat supper in the van so the kids aren't cranky with me.
8pm - put kids to bed
8:30pm - start sewing on the dress for my sister-in-law
8:40pm - sewing machine dies....dead, just stops. I believe I blew a fuse. This is not good. I have projects that I have left to the last minute that need to be done for the craft sale on Friday.
9:00pm - call my mom and beg to use her sewing machine for the week. Of course she agrees, because she is my mom and she loves me.
9:10pm - call Daniel at his mom's house in Lethbridge because he is stay over night (because he has a stake meeting in Lethbridge at 8am Sunday morning) to tell him to go to my mom's house to pick up her sewing machine to bring home.
11pm or so I head to bed after working on some other projects that don't require a sewing machine.

Sunday
Morning - go to church, teach my class and do the sharing time for primary and briefly say hello to my husband somewhere in there.
Afternoon - Say good bye to my husband as he is off again, this time up to Calgary for business until Tuesday night. I send with him my dead sewing machine to drop off at my mom's because she is going to drop it off at the sew machine fix it place on Monday.
Evening - fairly relaxing, just hanging with the kids. I head to bed early.

Monday is a fairly productive and uneventful day My mothers sewing machine sews like a dream. I think I might steal it. Again I head to be early.

Tuesday - I feel stressed. I need to get to the church to set up for the RS party that is on Wednesday night, but I don't know when Daniel is going to be home from Calgary and he is not answering his cell phone. We can't start setting up until after 8:30pm because the YW and YM are in the gym. My kids will be in bed by then and I can't find anyone to be at my house so I can go set up. I do get some sewing done for the craft sale, but not nearly as much as I had the day before.
4pm - Take Kathryn to Clogging lessons
5:10pm - come home, call to double check on the babysitter I had lined up for Friday afternoon while I am at the Craft show. She says she is still good to go.
5:20pm - Check phone and see that Daniel has called. I call him back. He is in Lethbridge already! Horray, that means he can be home by 8pm so that I can go to the church to set up. Feeling Less stressed.
5:30pm - I go to phone Sue to tell her that I'll be at the church at 8:30 to set up and I notice that I have a voice mail message. I check the message. It is the babysitter that I thought I had lined up for Friday saying that she won't be able to babysit because she forgot she was going to be away.
5:31pm - enjoyed my 30 seconds free of stress...now I have to solve a new problem.
5:32pm - call Sue, tell her that I'll be at the church, she asks how I am doing, I hesitate, she tells me to spill the beans, so I tell her my dilemma. She talks it through with me, offers to tend my kids when she gets off work at 4:30pm. So now I just have to find some one to watch them from 1-4:30pm. She suggest a few people. I make a note to talk to them on Wednesday.
8:30pm - Daniel gets home from Lethbridge, I give him a kiss and head out the door to set up at the church
Midnight - come home from the church, go to bed, but lay in bed talking with my husband for a couple hours...after all we haven't really seen each other since the Friday morning before.

Wednesday- I am tired...exhausted. Today is not a productive day. I don't get any sewing done. I try to have a nap, but my girls don't think that is a good idea. I make a few final preparations for the RS Christmas party. Have a shower, hoping maybe it will rejuvenate me. When Kathryn gets home from school we head to the church to finish setting up for the party.
5pm - done setting up, so I get changed into my nice clothes, put some makeup one tell myself that it's going to be a fabulous night...once Daniel gets there to take the kids away.
5:45pm Start greeting the sisters as they arrive.
6pm - the party officially starts.
6:15pm - Daniel arrives and takes the girls home.
6:16pm - I finally relax and start to enjoy the evening, which turns out to be wonderful. The theme was "Celebrate with Gratitude". We had over 70 sisters there, and I believe at least a third of that was non-members(I love being part of a small community). After all was said and done, I had so many people come up to me and tell me that this is what they needed to hear, both members and non members. Perfect. That is what I love to hear. It is so satisfying to know that you were able to put together something that really meant something to some one, or touched their heart. The evening was a success.
10pm(or there abouts) after the clean up is done, and all the stuff is packed in my husbands car( he took the van to get the girls home) I go to start the car...and it is dead.No big deal, I'm feeling to good to let this bother me. Good thing the bishop is still there. With his van and Brother Mclaghclan's cables we get the car going.

Thursday - I still haven't figured out a babysitter for Friday. I talked to a few people at the RS party the night before, but they were not available. Then I got into the party and didn't think about it again until today. Once again I am exhausted. I have no motivation to get working on the few things that I have left to do for the craft sale. I try calling a few people to see if they would be able to help me out in the babysitting area. But I can't get a hold of anyone. I guess the worst case senerio is to take them with me for the first little bit until Sue can get there....that does not sound like fun. Then suddenly I have a brilliant thought. My friend Jakki, who live out in the middle of nowhere, mentioned that she was going to be in Milk River for her massage on Friday. Maybe she'll be done in time to come to my house and watch the girls until Sue is done work....I call her and ask. Perfect! Her massage is at 11:30am, I have to be at the Civic centre by about 1pm...this is going to work. Awesome, Jakki I love you! I call Sue and she is good to watch them at 4:30pm. Awesome, I love you Sue! Suddenly I have a boost of energy. All my stress is gone...and off I go to finish the few things that I wanted to have done for the craft show...not only that But I have the energy to clean the kitchen, cook supper, start decorating the house with Christmas stuff with the girls and after the kids are in bed I start on cresting a few jerseys for my husband.

Friday - I feel surprisingly relaxed. I finish the three jerseys for my husbands customers. Then do a few things around the house before I start getting ready for the craft show.
1:15pm - I head to the craft show...and all in all it was a success. A lot of what I sold was stuff I had made this past week...so that made my efforts worth it. It was a success...but I am glad...so very very glad that it is all over.

OK, after typing that all out...in away it doesn't seem so bad...hectic? yes...but I survived. Yes at times I felt like the world was against me....but...in the middle of his crazy week I had the opportunity to take a few hours and focus on Gratitude, to listen to others share their thoughts and experiences about gratitude. To share my thoughts and experiences...and then I issued a challenge to all the sisters in attendance. I had made a book for each of the titled the "Twelve day of Christmas". Each book had twelve pages, each page had twelve lines. The challenge was for each day of the Twelve days of Christmas to write twelve things that you are grateful for that day. This is something that I am going to do here on my blog(starting December 14).(I got the idea here

I challenge any of you who read my blog...and who have made it through this really long post...to do the same if you are so inclined. But for today...this is what I am grateful for this week

  1. My mom, for letting my borrow her sewing machine, even though I know she had things she wanted to get started on this week.
  2. My husband for being willing to make his work work around what I needed from him this week.
  3. Sue, for helping me talk through the stress and help work through the problem...and being part of the solution.
  4. Jakki, for being willing at the last moment to adjust what ever her schedule was to help out a friend in a bind.
  5. for my sewing machine dying...because maybe I just need to learn to slow down and not try to do so much all of the time. I have since rethought my sewing list for this Christmas, and I am working on narrowing it down.....funny...the same thing happened last Christmas....almost exactly....you think I'd learn...maybe this time :)
  6. for this coming Sunday!!! Good Friends are coming over for dinner. It is going to be a glorious time.



Friday, November 20, 2009

Pumpkin Pie in a Jar


Here's a great recipe that I came across in my trusty 4H cook book. Now you can easily make pumpkin pie at any time of the year with fresh pumpkin. I always use up the carved pumpkins after Halloween because I feel bad just throwing away perfectly good pumpkins.


Pumpkin Pie in a Jar

Peel, remove seeds and cut pumpkin into small pieces. Bake, steam or boil in small amount of water until tender. Then put through a sieve. Measure the pumpkin pulp and any juice remaining. Then to each 3 cups of pumpkin add the following:

2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp molasses (optional)

Mix well together and bring to a boil, simmering until quite thick. Stir often to prevent sticking. Seal in hot sterile jars. May be put in hot water for 10 minutes to be sure that they seal.

TO MAKE PIE

2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 1/4 cups prepared pumpkin

Beat eggs well. Add milk and pumpkin, mix well together. Put into unbaked pie shell. Bake at 375F until golden brown.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Sometimes it takes something extreme to get ones butt in gear

...you know, like when your baby girl is just learning to crawl and you haven't put up a baby gate yet because you don't have one yet, and really she isn't moving that fast yet. Then one day while your back is turned she pulls herself over to the wooden, non-carpeted stairs, and takes a little tumble to the cement basement floor below. Thankfully she comes out of the ordeal with out a scratch or even a bruise. but the very next day you go and buy that baby gate.
Or more recently...like yesterday. We went down to Coutts for the community Remembrance Day Ceremony. After which, since Daniel had the day off work and the girls didn't have school, we decided to go for a little adventure. Daniel had grabbed our passports and the girls birth certificates, which we were keeping in a brown Government of Alberta envelope. I have been meaning to make a nice fabric passport and birth certificate holder for quite some time(since July to be exact when we got our passports). Daniel had also tossed in the envelope his wallet, which really isn't a wallet it is just big enough to hold his drivers license, credit and debit card and a very few other important cards. The plan was to take a little drive through Montana, have lunch, and maybe do a little shopping.
We first drove down to Shelby, where we stopped at the Town Pump(12:30pm) for some munchies and a potty break. While we were stopped I decided to get rid of some loose papers that were just on the floor of the van. One of the papers was brown paper wrapping from a package I had received recently and just had to open in the van before I got home. I collected up all the paper and what ever other garbage I could find and tossed it into the garbage can in front of the Town Pump Convenience store. Then we were on our way again, towards Cutbank where we would stop for lunch. The drive was beautiful. The sky was a beautiful blue and the rolling prairies were a gorgeous golden colour from the recent harvest.
After spending some time in Cutbank(leaving at about 2:30pm) we headed on our way to Browning and then headed up Highway 89 through the Hills where it was snowing steadily. The road was completely snow covered and the going was slow. Daniel kept his cool and you couldn't even tell that he was concerned. He later admitted it was a "hair raising" drive through the hills. It was pretty impressive how the snow just stopped when we descended down to St. Mary's lake. We then took the road from Babb to drive up close to Chief mountain to admire that impressive mountain.





Daniel had wanted to climb it again this year but just didn't ever find the right time or the people to go with him. We admired, then made our way to the Carway border crossing to start our journey home. Just as we were coming up to the border crossing, Daniel reached down in between our seats to get the brown envelope with the passports and birth certificates, and it wasn't there. We frantically searched the van, but no envelope. As I sat and thought about what and where we had done and been that day. I realized with horror that the envelope must have got mixed up with the brown paper wrapping that I had thrown away way back at Shelby. When Daniel suggested we go for an adventure, I don't think this is what he had in mind. The girls and I stayed in the van and Daniel went into Customs to see if he could use the phone to call the Town Pump in Shelby to see if they would look in the garbage for our envelope. Kathryn started to panic that we would never get home and that we would have to live in a hotel, and that would cost a lot of money. I told her that it wasn't going to do any good to panic, the only thing that she could do right now was to pray and ask Heavenly Father to help us find our passports and birth certificates, and Daniels wallet. You may wonder why we didn't notice the wallet missing sooner, but you see, Daniel had taken his credit card out of his wallet and just had it in his back pocket. and that is what we had used to fill with gas and buy lunch. So we all prayed in the van while Daniel was on the phone inside customs. When I saw him hang up the phone, I could tell that he had not got good news. He came back to the van and we began our trek back to Shelby(5:00pm) to go look through the garbage ourselves. It wasn't an option. We had to have them. To avoid the hair raising drive through the hills on snow covered roads in the dark, we took the Duck Lake Road, which was clear, no snow to be seen anywhere.

I felt calm the entire drive back to Shelby. I knew that we would find them and things would be OK. On the drive I often heard Kathryn offering a prayer in a whispered voice. The return drive was relatively quick and uneventful. When we arrived(6:30pm) the cashier thought we were crazy to want to go through the garbage. But it wasn't an option. While I was getting some popcorn and juice for the girls to munch on, Daniel disappeared with the maintenance man to the trash compactor. After about 15 or 20 minutes later Daniel reappears with passports and Birth Certificates in hand. Thank you Lord for making that happen. Tansley happily announced that "Daddy save the day!" as we headed on our way to home sweet home. We were back home before 8:00pm. I got the kids something healthy to eat, on Kathryn's request, put them to bed and then I began planning the passport holder that I had been meaning to make. This morning I sewed it all together. I think that this will be less likely to get accidentally tossed in the trash...what do you think?