Snow

Annie cheerfully trudges through the backyard to do chores.

Thanks

Since we were hosting everyone for Christmas Day, we had a smaller group for Thanksgiving.  All the adults could even fit at one table, which is a rare occurrence, indeed. 

 

These pristine pictures are so very misleading.  I don't even know why I post them because the kitchen was piled high with dirty pots from floor to ceiling.  Perhaps pictures are my way of creating order out of what is often anything but.

 

Still, a near all-nighter spent baking and cleaning plus extra help from Deb in the morning made those sparkling pictures above a reality...for one day, at least.  

John had to work, but I made sure to make him a name card during the middle of night, too, if only so that I could eat more than one.

I took these pictures before my Mom arrived with her portion of the food.

When she showed up with a SECOND turkey and as many side dishes as I already had on the table, we had to fill the counters, too.

 

Thank goodness we could squeeze all the pies onto the stove.  

The girls helped decorate their table; yup, that's a chicken feather in the place of honor.

 

We ate leftovers for the next week, and each bite was evidence of the wealth God has allowed us for this time-- measures heaped up and spilling over.  May we never take it for granted.

And here's the luxury of a lingering Thanksgiving evening-- slow moments, easy conversation with people we love, and lots of reading on the couch, cookies in hand.

 

To Make Brother Joel Regret Leaving One Day Too Soon

I asked for ideas, and while Klondike bars tempted me mightily, we went with hosting a Gobble-Gobble Garden Par-Tea two days after Thanksgiving, instead. The benefits of this were twofold: Thanksgiving guests were still in town to attend, and we could use those guests as an excuse to make donuts and other goodies (but especially donuts). Thanks to Titi for alerting me to this recipe.  They were divine.

I know you're all curious about the menu, if only to know what has been contributing to my newly acquired talent for trouser-splitting.  Here you go:

-Assorted herbal TEA (of course), along with hot cocoa, roasted hickory nut tea, and leftover fizzy punch from Thanksgiving
-Sandwiches: cream cheese & jelly, grilled cheese, and turkey salad (it was 2 days post-Thanksgiving, after all)
-crackers/cheese/sausage
-butter mints for melting in one's mouth
-crispy chocolate chip biscotti for dunking
-cinnamon taffy for chewing

All three preceding recipes will someday find their way to buildabelly, but the butter mints took top prize.

 -DONUTS...with extra glaze, because if you're going to make donuts, you might as well make extra glaze.






-rice crispy pumpkin edible place cards, which no one ate because we were full to bursting with donuts.







I took these pictures right before everyone pulled in the driveway.  The kitchen smelled like burnt grease, the counters were piled with every pot, pan, and baking sheet we own, and my hair looked like Einstein's.  We ushered everyone through the war zone to the dining room, and then we began to feast.  Sorry for the lack of any more pictures.  I was too busy.  (gobble, gobble, gobble.)

Things I Like to Find Around the House

Susannah's pass to Millie's dance academy:

 

One of the responses (dictated to Susannah by Piper):

dear Briar, 

as you can see I'm chief, of the indian's camp I need Lesson's of School, gimnastics ballet and ball's so goodbye.

p.s. I need close to do it.

(I'm thinking Susannah could use some Lesson's herself, but in other areas...)

And here's an oldie but a goodie.  A Pip original from last fall.  This word search includes "Japanese, birds, tooth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and.....dum?!"  Uh-oh, Pip...

The Last, Late Canning

 


You know how it's fairly easy to become accustomed to not having something, so if a time comes when you once again have it, it feels like the luxury it truly is?  Our glamorous, flat-top stove only had one working big burner for over a year, but at the end of the summer, the remaining large burner gave up the ghost with a "pop!" and sizzle-- its spirit rising to heaven in a puff of curling smoke-- and I knew those boxes of apples in the basement were going to rot. 

Canning was a fool's task using the small burners.  I tried, and it took a couple of hours just to heat the water bath canner to boiling.  (Sloth justified!) We couldn't fix the large burners because the cheapest price that we found was $250 per filament, due to the fact that the parts were now rare.  Even repairing it ourselves would still cost nearly $500 (!) for a 15+ year old stove that we received free.  So, nope.  Not gonna do it.

We figured we'd keep using the stove until we found a cheap, used replacement somewhere, and it served us well for several more months.  It would have served us well until a future pop-n-sizzle, too, but the generosity of my cousin and his wife made that unnecessary when they arrived in our driveway a few days before Thanksgiving with "something they were wondering if we'd want."  A stove of theirs had been collecting dust in the workshop for the last couple of years, and they ferried it out of their van and into our kitchen before I could even think "Jack Robinson."

The funny thing is that five minutes before they pulled into our driveway, I'd tried to buy two used stoves from Craigslist, only to find that someone had already bought the one and that the other didn't match its internet description.  God let me feel slight disappointment for only a few minutes before delivering a stove for us.






These coincidences are no such thing. They are clarion calls of the Father's beneficence, a ringing affirmation that He is present in all things, and that His fingerprints mark the small no less than the large.  What better way to enter into Thanksgiving week than with that knowledge?

So I didn't get to let all the apples rot, after all.  At least Zekie Boy volunteered to test the contents of every last bowl for me.  Little angel.

Since the Apples Were Rotting

...and I no longer had a broken-stove-excuse to avoid them, I decided to slay four giant pumpkins, too.

 Here's a trick.  If your pumpkin crop is sparse from too many summer monsoons, roast up the giant pumpkins your husband bought for $3.00 each.








It'll take you all night, an irrational hatred for pumpkins will consume you, and orange will coat you from head to toe, but the yield will be over eighty cups of pumpkin puree to freeze for winter breads and soups,



 

 

along with ten cups of salty seeds to crunch between your teeth.

It's worth it in the end, plus you can brag about it to your brother who's reading so serenely by the fire.   (He won't be impressed, but it's still worth it.)

Leftovers

For Uncle Andster, Aunt Wendy, & Co.:
Millie shows off her warm brownie. (She shared it equally.)

 

For Uncle Luke (YOU KNOW WHY):

I found Ezekiel thusly one morning when he was suspiciously quiet.  Yes, that's a sugar bowl, Mister.

Our last hurrah in the garden before winter whooshed in with a vengeance involved woolly bears, layers of dirt from the neck down, and a lovely row of garlic that John planted in the knick of time.

John Wayne waiting in the early morning sun.

One of many snowy days.

Annie took this picture of our back door.  The girls love it when this happens.  We're snowed in....FOREVER!

I took this picture of Pip because one blizzard-filled morning, I watched her meander outside like this before she came back in and exclaimed in surprise, "Oh!  I forgot to put on boots!"  (Phil and Heidi can easily believe this, I bet.)

A common view from the kitchen window:

A common view first thing in the morning:

Playmobil villages: a common sight all of the time.







Of his own volition, a good, little boy will fetch the broom and dustpan when he spills the crispy oats.  Then, when he lacks the finesse to use the broom, he'll use his fingers, instead.  (Given my scant knowledge of boys, I'm not counting on this being anything other than a one-time behavorial anomaly.)








Millie made some big, clip-on earrings just for Zeke.  He loved them for about 3 seconds.






I saved the best for last.  One of the girls wanted to take this picture of the meal they made and served me one night when John was working.  I'd painfully ruptured a varicose vein a couple of hours before while jumping off a tall, kitchen stool I'd hauled outside to lazily use instead of a ladder while I nailed a Christmas wreath to the house-- deep breath--, and I was doing what I could to avoid going to the walk-in, which I had to do when I ruptured another varicose vein when I was pregnant with Luci and a stray dog pulled me whoomp! to the ground-- deep breath-- which included but was not limited to putting on compression stockings, wrapping my leg with ace bandages, icing the area, and wearing John's pajama pants, all without removing the winter coat I'd been wearing when the incident occurred.

The meal was a royal feast of apple slices, milk, and air-popped popcorn. I should rupture those ugly veins more often. (Aren't I elegant?)

Never mind.  This one's the best.  I've given Piper very little writing instruction, so what she does is on her own, for the most part, and relies on phonetics.  One day last fall, I wrote a sentence in her play notebook for her to read.  Half an hour later, I saw she had written-- and erased-- a "naughty" word below.  The juxtoposition of the two made me laugh.

Lazy Holiday

 Recovery from too much fun is easy.  It's best spent sleeping and reading. Or reading and sleeping.

Real Time*, or, More of the Same

I just overheard Susannah making up sentences with this week's spelling words and laughing at them with Annika.  What on earth could be so funny?  (You just had to ask, didn't you...)

"Mama swelled, and split her jeans, and she squashed a wasp."

I'm completely innocent of wasp-squashing, but the rest, unfortunately, is all too true.  Yup, right down the seat, folks.  We're still laughing about it three days later. 

Bring on the cookies!

*I apologize for these "real time" segments dealing almost exclusively with my burgeoning self, but they make me laugh, which is valuable these days, and they take almost no time to plunk out.

p.s. Aunt Karen, I DO have the beginnings of a monster post forming, though, just for you.  :)

Real Time

I've given up on blogging for the last couple of months, and signs are promising that the absence will continue, but here's a quote from 30 seconds ago that I'd like to remember.

Millie caught me admiring my plump, pregnant self in the mirror-- curves and rounded edges everywhere one can grow them-- and chuckled.

"Boy, Mama.  You are getting SO nice to spank!"

Yup.  Cookies three meals a day will do that to you.