Christmas Eve

Never thought I'd buy a blanket, after all you make blankets, but we were gifted 

a super-soft blanket. It became the center of a few battles so I decided to find them

for the rest of the family.

The picking choice wasn't the greatest when I got there so we wrapped them and let the "chips fall"

Which would be why someone was saying "why do I have a white one?"

He decided it would be OK afterall.

Then this young man turned 19. The cake was a sponge cake with strawberry jam and lemon curd. It got a funny "waist" because I tried to cut it with dental floss but apparently floss does not cut sponge cake like it does a regular cake?

This was the cake that earned the comment, "It is a very good cake even though it looks like a landslide."  (lemon curd sorta wasn't thick enough)




I will leave you with a public service announcement courtesy of Shekinah " Gummy vitamins are not good dipped in ketchup"

Christmas Eve's Eve

This year we made some gifts, like doll clothes for the girls.

Found some bargains at outgrown shops...like boots for each of the girls and a loom that doesn't look like it was used.

Then there were some "boring" gifts like a set of tools for Zeke, but Shekinah thought they looked very interesting and thought she would like that kind of gift next year.

I remember her skill with the screw driver last summer and think maybe we could hold off.

The doctor's kit with real stethoscope and BP cuff, real digital thermometer, and actual pen light are not quite as dangerous at this point.

Then there were the fun gifts...new touch screen kindle

and the tablet ...supposedly in order to read more books and to organize the crazy printed-out recipe file that lives in my kitchen.

  Gotta work on those poses...and the smile...

Then Christmas day with family and our traditional layette bundles for CAM.

Standing Desks

I have this re-occurring shoulder/neck pain. It is eased by a visit to the chiropractor, but the next time I spend hours finishing a sewing or computer task I end up needing another adjustment. Insurance covers a bit of the chiropractor visit but I was wondering if I could find a less expensive way to cure the pain. I decided to try a standing desk.

Hubby added some extensions to the legs on my desk and my sewing machine got moved to my cutting table.

I've been using them this way for about 3 months and now my feet hurt! 😏

Actually, I do like the new set up and if I add walking to my lifestyle improvements maybe I'll only need new shoes.

Those cords under my desk are annoying when viewed on a photo.  Should I paint them white?

Thankfully someone with a good camera snapped a picture of Shekinah with her friends at their Christmas program.

My princess practicing her posture.

What did Zeke call that thing!? I think it was a dodecahedron ...maybe not.

Annual preparations for the Christmas Eve party at our house. The local Asian food market was out of round dumpling wrappers so I was forced to learn to make my own...I was too stubborn to use won-ton wrappers...they're square.

When the hot chocolate is too hot, you sit on the cold porch.

I finished her lifebook yesterday. I used a $5 photobook offer from Photobook America. I'm anxious to see what it looks like.

Ben was here for supper the other night, he met Cocoa. Yes Hope is training a new bunny.

It was good to have Ben here again. The crazy quotes that fly between he and Zeke keep me on my toes.  Last night it was "Odessey", "The Pond", and "Freddy the Pig".

Me to Shekinah: "Don't be running alot out there in the cold" (she has a nasty cough)

Shekinah: "No we're not running, we're selling ice."

She could probably sell ice to a snowman.

Of Christmas Programs and Nativity Scenes

When you spot a size 8 dress at the Re_uzit Shoppe (added "e" makes it classy, not?)

Add some lace from another garment, a zipper to bring in the neck

find a sweater at yet another shoppe.

Thankful for left-over scraps from my niece's Liberian fabric and some other fuzzy fabric someone off-loaded on me and Shekinah had a jumper with sweater.

Once more we were treated with a great Christmas program from our elementary school.

We have some wise men for the nativity scene (gotta take pics of the rest of the crew)

double-sided permanent tape is your friend in a project like this.

We almost can't stand our exciting household here we are watching candles burn. 

A few minutes before they were all watching.

There was something said about watching a candle rapping...or was it wrapping?

I Like My Sewing Room Better

I think I like my sewing room better than my kitchen. I spent most of last week and Monday and Tuesday of this week cooking batches of food. I like to eat and therefore need to cook, but somehow sewing and working with fabric seems more relaxing.
Last week it was prep work for hubby's family get-together. We were in charge this year so that meant supply the venue, meat, table settings/decorations, and bread for about 65 people. We rented a place, bought ham and went mostly plastic  for the tables. But you can't just send people home with full bellies you need to do something extra.  Some years the hosts gave flowers to the ladies and ring bologna or candy (something like that) to the men. Another year, it was holiday mugs gathered from thrift shops and filled with chocolates.

We decided to make some chocolates and Hope found some little custard cups at Dollar Tree and we made chocolate. Peppermint patties from here , crockpot candies from here, and a Brownie Truffle sorta from here.
I found out that Peppermint patties are much easier to dip if they are made into round balls.

Crock Pot candy is delicious when you add caramel candy at the end and pretzel pieces with the peanuts.
And, Brownie truffles are great with some cream cheese mixed in the crumbs to help hold the mixture together.

All three candies were a hit. The crock pot candy was so easy, the most difficult thing was to make sure that any hot spots in my cooker didn't burn the chocolate. I think I will probably just use the warm setting the next time.

This week I decided to start on the egg rolls  and pot stickers for Christmas Eve. I made a trip to our favorite Chinese food store and they were out of round wrappers for my dumplings/pot stickers. I used wonton wrappers for some, but I don't like the way they look--picky- picky.

I guess I will resort to making wrappers and finish up Christmas prep next week. I will need to make more egg rolls too, because someone ordered 2 dozen from me....again- next week.

This week I want to make the three wisemen for the Nativity Scene that I started...I figured if I make two or three figures every few days, I can keep up with the date--right? I need to take a picture with some of the figures on it. I got the patterns from here

AND the Christmas program...had no idea of the date and really!? you need new dresses for that? Who knew? Guess what I'm doing the rest of the week.

Then the other day I had this startling thought! In a few short months I will hit 50! I've been wondering if I accomplished what God had planned up to this point?  I had some ideas of things I will do ....sometime. Maybe that is a blog post for another day...any thoughts of what is on my bucket list--I don't have a 5 or 10 year plan, my plans are truly the "bucket" type, just thrown in there and some things swim to the top occasionally. Wonder if that is how you are supposed to do things?

Math Facts and a Change of Pace

So this year we start a new chapter in our lives...maybe. The first-grade teacher has identified Shekinah as a student that is struggling with math facts. It came as a surprise to us because the very experienced kindergarten teacher last year hadn't mentioned anything. So now our evenings are spent with flash cards, xtramath.com and if we still have her attention, a math game disguised as a fun family game.  For the most part she is OK with working hard at this along with also doing the reading word lists and Bible Memory.  I try to go over Bible Memory every night at bedtime. Tonight I declared that "wait don't tell me!" does not appear in the Bible and I don't need to hear it at every pause like a "selah".

I've decided to try something a little different for the months of November and December. Instead of trying to fit quilt-making into every spare moment, I am going to do charitable sewing...in other words "fun stuff".  If you look around there are a number of places that are looking for people to put their sewing machines to good use. There are little dresses, boys shorts, and sanitary napkin patterns (go read why) at http://www.littledressesforafrica.org/blog/patterns/    Christian Aid Ministries is always looking for donations of kits with new clothes for specific areas, that information can be found here.  I know there were a few places that took baby bibs to different orphanages especially for the cleft babies, so that would be another option. So I'm going to see how many dresses, shorts, bibs, or other items I can make in the next two months along with the other crazy stuff you usually end up doing in November and December.

Oh and we are babysitting son#1 little Yorkie, between the rabbit and the dog, life is not boring when the kids are in school.  Rabbit? you say. Yes, we have gone round the bend, Hope decided she wanted to house break a bunny. Lo and behold, it can be done. She uses a litter box. The dog is about the size of the bunny and the two do not think much of each other, therefore I could not get both of them on the same picture. The dog stays in the kitchen mostly and the rabbit stays on the carpet because the kitchen floor is like an ice rink to a rabbit :)

We Had a Vacation!

We went to the beach in October!

Sort of risky I know, the weather was predicted to be cold and windy.

It was...

but not THAT cold and not THAT windy.

I did something else we don't often do, I found a condo, online and went by the reviews 

and picked one that looked good. We were happy with it.

Shekinah had never been to see the ocean,

 but she loved  chasing the waves as much as her sisters did.

I loved the little kitchen, it was missing a few things,

like a toaster and a pancake flipper.

We managed to prep 5 pounds of shrimp and make them two different ways--

deep fried and oven- grilled (on skewers even!)

I had plenty of good help.

The water was still warmer than the air.

And the beach has few shells left on it...the rest are at home in my house! 

The living room area

The beach is right there! straight ahead. We had to drive a bit to get to the 

boardwalk. I figured these people who hadn't been to Ocean City before needed

to see the board walk.  They walked the whole three miles of it too.

Tracking my daughter wasn't hard.

There wasn't a lot of Jana and Ben time...there was a LOT of

Shekinah and Jana time tho'...We did take care of our own kids

some of the time and let the two of them have some time alone.

Really! the beach and winter coats, I was glad I insisted on packing them.

The remains of the shrimp

The sun over the bay

Good-by Beluka Halfmoon Condo. I hope we can manage another trip next year.

Tho next year I plan to actually put our bag of clothes IN the van and not beside the van in the garage. Thankfully the house had a washer and dryer and Jana had a dress along that fit me.

It did give DH and I reason to buy souvenir t-shirts. 

#NEAS2016 and My Runners

This past weekend DH and I attended the NorthEast Adoption Summit in Lancaster PA. While we were there, my niece watched the girls, Joe worked and Zeke had a quiet day on his own. The girls were able to attend a 2.1mile benefit run. It was a first for them. When I first told them about it, Faith asked if she HAS to run and Hope thought maybe she would walk it. I was a bit confused because one of these girls can be seen running in and out of the drive quite often and both of them can run like the wind during track and field. I decided it wasn't my worry, walking it would be just fine, the point was the fun and fund-raising part of it.

Well I got a text from my niece on Saturday afternoon--"Faith came in third for the girls" I figured it was an age-divided thing and she did well for her age group.  No-- she was the 3rd female to cross the finish line! Her time was 18 min and 21 seconds, Hope got side-stitches and made it in 20 min and 10 seconds. Shekinah trotted the whole route with no stops and made it in 28 minutes.

Along the route she and my niece would encourage each other with the phrase, "french fries and hamburgers and pizza"  (That was waiting at the finish line)  After awhile Shekinah said, "I'll just say it in my head now."

Had no trouble putting those girls to bed when we got home.


Now the conference--Enjoyed it of course, some big names were there--that is if you are constantly looking at information on "kids from hard places" and how to help the families.  Dr. David Cross, Mandy Howard, Heather Forbes seemed to be familiar friends because their faces show up so often on the videos I scour for information.
I was sort of disappointed that I couldn't go to more of the workshops, but there were only so many hours to the day.

We listened to Bishop Aaron Blake as he told the story how he and his wife became foster parents after they were empty-nesters. Not to the  tiny babies that needed homes, but to big 16 year old boys who needed a home because their current foster placement wasn't working out. Within a year of bringing home the first son, they had six boys in their home, all of them played on the highschool football team.  He challenged his church to stand with them and become foster parents. Their church with less than 200 members had around 75 foster children at one point. Hmmm

We heard a lot about the foster children of our state and nation, part of me was ready to rush into it and say "sure, we could do that!" Then thankfully, one of the speakers said, "not everyone needs to be a foster parent, nor SHOULD be a foster parent, but everyone should care and help in some capacity."

OK, got it.

One of the speakers mentioned that he would like to see "In this world you will have troubles--Jesus" needle-pointed on a pillow. I am so tempted to make one for him, but I think the other side of the pillow needs to say, "but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."  I am trying not to be too down, this week, it seemed that 75% of my phone calls were hard stuff from the adoption world and yesterday I touched base with two moms that I haven't talked to in awhile and ...more stuff to add to my prayer list.

One "small" peeve I had with the conference was the volume of the "music". Sorry, I'm from an acapella singing church, I enjoy instrumental ACCOMPANIMENT not dominance. I had to think of the comment Karyn Purvis made on "The Sensory World" about pastors driving our sensory kids out of the church with the noise. I confess I had the urge to just scream loudly like Shekinah does when I run the blender, but I pulled up my big-girl undies and did deep breathing---hubby went for a walk.