Tuesday, December 8, 2009




OH My! I started this out once and meant to retell my crazy morning with the family plus our three grandsons that are here, and right in the middle of that my DH called and told me that out #2 son and his wife and our little 8 month old P-Jo had just had an accident on the slick roads, and turned their car over on it's side in a deep canal and he thought it was in pretty bad shape. BUT our kids were fine! Not hurt at all, only scared and shook up and concerned about the money end of a ticket and a totaled car. And I think about my morning again.....and I'm glad even though it was sooooooo crazy we still found the time to have our family prayers. What a total blessing! The car crossed the road and slid backwards across the other lane of traffic, but no other cars were involved. The car, the money it will cost, is nothing compared to their lives and well being!
The kids called my DH and he turned around on his way to work and was there with them and also a dear sweet neighbor on her way into town stopped and is stayed with them, keeping Angie and P-jo warm in her car.


I'm so very grateful today for a little miracle, and blessing of safety.
And once again for my DH, whose very presence seems to give us all strength and comfort. :-) I'm glad he was able to be there with them.
I'm also thankful for our friends and neighbors and the good people we are surrounded by. For their love and concern and watchful care over each other. Thank you, thank you, thank you Carey for your help and love this morning!

Dear friends, Thank you all for your well wishes for our little Evie. Hold your families a little closer and kiss them a few more times. They are the very most important blessing in our lives!



Enjoy your day. Be safe on the roads today! :-)



Monday, December 7, 2009



Look who came on this VERY VERY SNOWY Pearl Harbor Day morning.
Evelyn Verbena
"Evie"

6lbs 15 oz, 19 inches long






Her 7 yr old brothers, when they saw these pictures, said it looks like she came a little shinny! LOL

I'm so grateful for a safe labor and delivery. That both mom and baby are healthy and well. Truly there is no greater blessing in our lives than that of a fresh from Heaven child!
Once again our hearts are so full. Our cup really does runneth over!
Welcome to our family little Evie. We've all been waiting for your arrival!

Enjoy your day.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Old Fashioned Christmas Swap Goodies.....and "flop" for breakfast

LOOK WHAT CAME IN THE MAIL !


The day before yesterday I received my swap package from Marie from Spun by Me, who was my swap partner. Oh my, it really is a pleasure to get a package in the mail you know it!

We participated in an Old fashioned Christmas swap on Chars blog, The pickled Pepper Patch. I have been spoiled. I love all the beautiful treasures Marie sent to me. Thank you again and again and again!
Wild card Item. Fabric covered box with a banner that says PRIMITIVES. I'm not sure yet if this will find it's way up to my sewing area, or if it will find a home in my bedroom. I love it.


Lighted item. I love this little grubby candle. I have everything I need to make some of these, but have never gotten around to it. Now I have one! I love this Marie!


Wooden item. How cute is this little Christmas welcome!

Smell good item. Ummmmm. They do smell good. But I think my favorite thing about the smell good item is the old? jar and the zinc lid! Thank you for this!

Textile Item. This will be going up to my sewing area, cuz it is going to be staying out all year!

Three ornies. These are my very favorite treasure that was in the package! Oh I do love them! Little embroidery and appliqued tucks/ornies!

Thank you again Marie! Very much. I hope your package came yesterday, and that you found it pleasant. :-)

Is it cold in your neck of the woods? It is here. -1 this morning at 7:30 which is our normal walking time. Needless to say, we waited until it warmed up before we walked . We waited until 10:30 and by then it was a whopping 12! LOL
What did you make for breakfast this morning?

I made a FLOP.
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Dh ate his, but the tween gagged, which is and of its self not a hard thing to make him do. He gagged the other night over chicken enchiladas .
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I would say 99.99 percent of the time I don’t feel sorry for him, nor do I make him different food. We eat what I fix.
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However, this morning he had a right to gag!
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DH spent the night in the hospital doing the second part of a sleep test, ( another post for another day lol) and his plan was to come home before work and do his morning chores, and eat breakfast . So with that in mind, and keeping in mind that it was cold outside, I decided to have hot cereal. Are you asking yourself how a seasoned hot cereal cooking mom can make it gaggy? Geeeezzze! Picture this……
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I’m in my pj’s, wearing my warm fuzzy sox, my fav walking cap is on my head, mostly to hold my hair down, and I was humming Christmas music.
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Pure domesticity huh. I stoked the fire and added more wood, I patiently urged my tween out of bed, telling him if he got up before I got back to the kitchen I would cook his fav hot cereal, if not, I would cook mine, which is oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins. (Raisins also make him gag…...) Well, it was his fav, which is germaid with brown sugar and maple. I buy germaid bulk. 25 lbs at a time, an I use an old barrel shaped pickle jar for a canister. Well, my pot had boiling water in it, I was still humming, all was going very nicely, until I decided I didn’t have enough germaid in the pan, so while whisking with my right hand, I began adding more germaid with my left hand. Just a little, it wasn't enough, so just a little more, I didn’t want to get it too think. Who wants lumpy cereal? Certainly not moi! Anyway, it sill wasn’t enough, so I add some more, only this time, I dropped the whole jar in the pan. I grabbed it out as fast as I could, didn’t get tooooo much water in the jar……however, I ended up with just a small fraction amount more germaid in my pan than I wanted, which called for more water. Did I add it? Hummmm of course I did. Well you guessed it, it made it l.u.m.p.y. SO now I had a pan full of lumpy germaid, enough to feed at least 7-15 people instead of the 3 of us. What would you have done? Well, I‘ll tell you what I did, I was thinking real quick I was (yeah or something else…) and I went ahead and added the brown sugar, and the maple, and threw half of it into the blender. Slapped the lid on it, and blended away! Ahhhhhhhhhh! It was straight down hill from there. WHAT WAS I THINKING? It was about at that point that I remembered I had forgotten to add the salt to the water in the first place… Oh it was nice and smooth, and sort of shinny….. and it kind of sat there, all thick and shinny and smooth on the spoon….. I wouldn't go so far as to say the texture was....odd....., well maybe. I didn’t really look at it until after DH had already eaten his, or it would never have passed his lips! (I’m so sorry sweetheart!) The tween just looked at it in his bowl, as he tipped it this way and that way, asking as he did so, “what did you do to it? It did have a “different” look to it than the normal bowl of germaid. Honestly? It really was gaggy!!! Well, of course the bus was nigh onto being there, DH was full ( of kindness towards his wife) ( gotta love a man that eats what I cook!) and …..the tween implored me beseechingly with his eyes, to be let off the hook this time. What would you have done? Well no questions asked, hands down, I hurried and threw (almost literally) him a speedily peeled hot boiled egg! Ummm.
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Any thing had to be better than gaggy “flop” for breakfast!
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P.S. ………………..I also ate a boiled egg for breakfast.
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the dogs had "gaggy flop
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I'm grateful humor. Sister Marjorie Pay Hinckley said, "The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache." It's true. I love to laugh, and don't do it nearly enough. It's good for the soul to laught at yourself.

Enjoy your day.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

brrrrrrrrrrrr!

OoooooooOooooooOOooooo! Brrrrrrrrrr. It was cold walking this morning! 11 degrees.
AND, it's snowing now! I was sure it wouldn't because it's almsot too cold to snow! Silly me.
If we lived in the humid areas of our nation instead of the dry arid west, I don't think we could do it. My fingers took an entire miles worth of walking before they warmed up!




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PFATT blog is hosting a Christmas giveaway! There are lots of beautiful handmade items being given away, an they have kindly invited us all to enter.


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Wahoo!!!!! Our daughter and son in law are getting their baby on monday December 7th, if the tiny sweetheart doesn't come on her own by then. Lucky little baby girl, she has three big brothers! We are all getting very excitied!

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OK, because I still don't know much about what I'm doing........I tried to get an adobe account, but was toooooo impatient, and it got messed it up, sigh, so now I will have to fix that, but in the mean time I wanted to get this out today........please bear? bare? with me while I learn how to work the computer! :-) ANYWAY, here is a Christmas story for your books. I believe I got this from a woman's day type of magazine.....but I really can't remember. It's been forever ago. So, with that in mind.......... hopefully I'm not stepping on any copy right toes. :-)

so, I think..... you can right click and save as a picture to your picture files, which is what I post it from, and then open it and print it and it will be the right size. OR, I think maybe you can just click on it, and print your screen?

Sorry for all the rig- a- ma- roll, good luck. For the next story I'll try to have my ducks in a row! LOL




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OHHHH! Linda, from Behind My Red Door, just shared with me this link for some Christmas stories. Some of them I already have. They are good ones, especially Wallys Christmas pagent! Thank you so much Linda! Plus and also....she said that yes, all she had to do was right click and print her screen and the above story printed off. Wahoo! and, while I'm at it, if you love prim homes, you should go see Linda's home all decorated for Christmas. It beautiful.

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Today, I'm grateful for Starlings! Yes, Starlings. Wacky I know. They are considered to be a trash bird, for lack of a better word........I love the song birds in the springtime and summer time, but I also love the starling in the winter time. I love to watch them fly. I don't even know how to describe it, other than like a sheet of paper gliding and twisting and turning in the wind . They fly in huge flocks, and they all turn at the same time, this way and that way, spiralling down, then twisting over, and then surging upward. Who gets to be the lead bird? Who gives the command to turn? They fill the trees like giant black leaves, and then, at once, they take flight! Starlings do sing after a fashion, and I like it. There is something happy and thriving about the sound of birds........I'm just grateful that all birds don't all fly south for the winter! :-)


Enjoy your day.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear......



I love it that we can catch simple moments on film.



I think my "11 days away from being 13" son took this picture the other day while we were eating our tail gate feast after we had gotten our trees........just a passing glimpse of a fun day, caught in the mirror........ :-)



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So, do you have a Christmas book? One filled with Christmas stories that warm your heart?
One year for Christmas my dear brother and his sweet wife gave us our very own Christmas book.
This is what the first page said
Dear family,
A Christmas book is an essential part of every home. If you will read one story for every day of December, you will be surprised how the Christmas spirit will fill your hearts and home.
Keep adding to your book and making memories. Traditions are the best part of Christmas. With love....
P.S.
Don't forget to read the most important story of all!!!



We have loved our Christmas Book. It's getting worn out and the rings don't all stayed closed anymore. It has been the best loved gift we have ever received! We read these stories out loud, each taking a turn reading. Sometimes it was hard to do every single day, some days we missed and so we would read double the next day. We have read as we munched on warm cookies, or hot popcorn, sitting around, as well as quietly working on projects. One year as we read stories, I made......I say made, because that's how some of the kids felt at the time......that they were being made.....anyway, I was tying a rag garland and decided they could help tie while we read our story that night. We all tied the garland, and each took a turn reading. When it was all said and done, we had a nice long garland that goes around a pretty big tree, and we read longer than normal because they didn't want to stop, and......every. single. year. my kids will finger this garland, talk about how fun it was to tie, and then tell me that they think it would look better on their own tree at their house than it does on mine! :-) We didn't stop with filling our books with stories, but started to collect other Christmas books to read out loud as well.



As the kids grew older, and were involved in more and more things at school, grew up, left on missions, got married etc, it became more difficult to find time to read at all. Some years seemed to zoom by with only one or two stories being read. Those were the years that it felt like something was lacking in our Christmas preparations!



We have made some of these ourselves and given them as gifts, and I often wonder if they have become as loved as our own Christmas book.



Her are some random shots of our book
























As you can see our Christmas book is a 2" binder with a Christmas fabric cover. Each story and picture is in a protective sleeve. There are stories from magazines, stories from church, stories from fliers, stories that came home from school, stories from everywhere imaginable. Pictures from the same places, as well as from old calenders.





Today is December the 1st, and I am ahead this year! We started reading last week.



The other night, our tween read his dad and I to sleep! How sad is that....he has such old tired parents! LOL



We've gone from 8 of us reading, down to just 3, but the Christmas book and stories still works it's magic!



I would encourage each of you to begin a Christmas book of your own if you don't already have one. It is a great family tradition! Maybe you could even make a book or two to give away.......:-)







We are starting week 8 of our Gratitude Attitude.



I'm grateful for this time of year! For the Beauty and Sacredness of the Christmas season. For the blessing of being able to stay at home and be the keeper of my home. For the joy and happiness that doing that brings me!

Here's a picture of our GS that just turned 2. I "borrowered" it off of his mom's post....I couldn't help myself LJ ! How could I pass this one up? I love this little cute face boy!




Enjoy your day!



opps.....I have to add this....I just read it.....Simple~needs, posted this on her blog a few days ago. Makes you stop and think.....



now, Enjoy your day!