Thursday, December 25, 2008

Christmas pictures

Mishael, Mom and  Martha wearing our beautiful scarves from Peru.
Maria, Miriam and Moriah.  Maria and Moriah  accidentally wore the same shirt.
Just the girls, all 7 of them.


Joe and Miriam


Rick just likes to make serious or weird faces for pictures.  In reality he was very happy.  I gave him these chocolate covered almonds that I made with  dark chocolate.  Moriah got him a book on the Beatles, Martha gave us a picture of the boys all blown up.
Our silly family picture
I thought this picture turned out pretty good for no planning.  

Monday, December 22, 2008

winter update

The snow is coming down in nice powdery flurries.  It's so pretty.
It's very dry snow that doesn't stick together very well.
Well today the children and I are heading to Kalispell in this winter wonderland.  I'm wondering if this is wise!  We are going to spend the night so we can drive during the day.  Since these are the shortest days of the yr, it gets dark by 5 pm and doesn't get light till after 8 am.  
The plan is today we do our shopping, Costco, Lowe's, Kmart, Glasses ( I need glasses).  Tomorrow we go to June's to make ravioli's.  The girls are coming over too and we will make as many as we can. If we don't make enough Tue then we will make more on Christmas Eve up here.  It's the tradition.
We have a few more traditions too.  Like Apple cake for dessert.  I'm not sure why, we just started that years ago and we do it every year.  An anti-pasta platter.  This is usually beautiful. with olives, salami, peppers and cheese etc.  We snack on this all day, and eat our raviolis later.  
We also have a wonderful punch we make every year.  We used to have a shwan's man come by.  they gave us the basis for this recipe and we changed it around.  It's got a little cinnamon in it, plus some cranberry sauce.  You freeze it and it's a little slushy. 
We have also decided that finger foods are for Christmas Eve.  So I made some Calazone's last night.
We tried to make a gingerbread nativity scene, but my dough was not cooperating.  So we just ended up with some yummy gingerbread cookies.


So it's true I lost my camera.  :(  I am so sad about it.  I had been thinking it's probably getting to be time to get a new one anyways, as this one was getting pretty old, and I was having trouble with blurry pictures.  But I don't have the money right now for one.   It was a future thought. How am I going to make it without a camera through Christmas.  Plus all our pictures from our trip are gone and Mark's singing in the choir.  The blog and my camera have become my journal.  I'm hoping someday to be able to print it all out and have a photo journey of our lives for our great, great grandchildren.  I just think how I would love to read and see a journal like this of my great, great grandmother. 
Well it's 8:17 am and I'm finally seeing some daylight.  It's really snowy out there.  Wonder if I should leave my cozy home to drive 100 miles, shop in crazy stores...... but then this evening we plan to watch an old movie at Martha's in her nice cozy house.  Maybe I should buy a camera instead of my glasses!  :)  Priority's you know!  lol.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Children's Christmas program

The children had their Christmas program at their school.  It was a really cute play and I was so proud of them.
James was an Inn Keeper, Mark was a main character, a newspaper reporter and Monica was a king.  Monica sang/said a rap, and Mark sang a solo. 
 If I was up in front of all those people, I would have froze and gone off key or forgot my lines.  But not one of them did that.  They spoke clearly and seemed to enjoy acting.
The most amazing thing to me though was Mark's voice.  He sang  a solo. It was serious song, and his voice was really, really good.   Everyone mentioned to me afterwards how amazing his voice is.  I remember him being so little and just barely talking and he could sing entire songs on key.  He defiantly has a talent.  I just pray he will use his talent for good. 
Today Monica, Mark and James have a piano recital.  It's snowing and cold outside and I do wish I could stay home in our nice cozy house.  We have a beautiful Christmas tree this year that Jon and the boys got from our forest and our house is really feeling like  the homey picture in my imagination. Warm house, spotlessly clean, drinking hot chocolate and baking cookies with the children. Well it's sometimes sort of like that.   Well it's never spotlessly clean, but we try.   
We are planning on going to Kalispell on Tuesday to make our ravioli's for Christmas.  Part of our tradition of eating ravioli's on Christmas has become to make them together.  Now with my sister living close this has been fun to work together on this.  So we will make a day of it. 
Hopefully I can get some pictures.  But this time I actually lost my camera ( not just the cord).  I'm really grieving over it.  I lost it on the trip.  The last I remember taking pictures was a Gina's work. So she is going to look around and see if she can't find it.  I don't know what I will do if she can't find it.  I really love my camera, although I think it was starting to act up.  It's already a few yrs old and was just a basic one to begin with.  

Sunday, December 14, 2008

We are home again

Trips seems to be a bit harder as you get older, or maybe it's a trip in the dead of winter!!
It was still fun and still good, but we are so glad to be home safely.  :)

Our trip started on time and most went as planned.  All except the end.

We did our site seeing trip to Helena.  The governors mansion, the capitol, etc.  James and Monica got stuck in the elevator in the capitol, that made an exciting moment.  Miriam met us up  in Helena and we took her out to eat at a mexican restaurant.  We didn't know where the restaurant was, and so we were going to follow Miriam.  It's a busy city and we just were watching her car. It  turns out we didn't notice and she led us onto a one way street going the wrong way!  She quickly turned into a parking lot and we just thought she was taking us on a merry goose chase.  lol 
We spent the night at her house.  She is renting from Maria. 
 Maria bought a  big house for less then $40,000.  It's really a nice house.  Needs a new kitchen and lots of paint.  But it has a great foundation and roof.  No major problems.   Miriam was very hospitable and got us all air mattress and beds for everyone.  

We went to the Caverns next and the boys climbed way up in a huge cavern.  
The cabin was really nice, but it was way to cold to have our BBQ outside. Inside was very cozy.   For some reason when they told me there was  a BBQ outside I thought they meant a gas BBQ.  I don't know what I was thinking.  It was  a BBQ pit.

Next we picked up Gina from her work at Wendy's.  She got us dinner for  half price.  
Watched her sing at her school and it was beautiful.

We were sleeping in our little cabin at the Lewis and Clark caverns when this horrible windstorm woke us up.  Of course I'm thinking that a tree is going to come through the roof.  After I woke up a bit more I realize there are very few trees in Eastern Montana.  So on Friday the weather was dry and clear, on Sat we woke to a blizzard.   Roads were icy and you could hardly see a road at all!

We finally got to the school  through the snow storm and over lunch decided that it was best if we drove during the day or plan on getting stuck in Bozeman. Weighing our options we knew we better skip the evening concert and head towards home. 

 It was so cold outside and the wind was blowing so hard, I asked Gina if there was a way to pull the car up to the cafeteria. She said "yes, can I move it"?  Gina still doesn't have her drivers license.  I began explaining how she doesn't know how to drive on snow, etc. etc.  Rick said, "let her do it, she will be OK."  So off her and Jon run to get the van.  A few minutes later, she runs in saying she wreaked my van.  I thought they must be joking, but  they wern't.  She had slipped and ran into a parked junk car.  My poor van got a broken front corner,  and poor Gina, she felt so bad.  We laughed as it was so ridiculous that I had just warned about this very thing! 

We took Gina to a big dollar store and visited a bit more before we left at about 3:00.  It was a slow drive home on icy roads, but the snow had slowed so at least we had good visibility.  It was very cold. -1 F. and at some places -9.  In the east it was horribly windy too.  So with the wind chill it was probably -40 degrees Fahrenheit.  We got home about 1 am. to a very cold house and a beautiful winter wonder land outside. 

 It's zero here this morning and the heaters been running steady all night.   Frisky was in the garage and happy to see us home too.  The trees are white and it's absolutely beautiful.    It's supposed to be cold like this all week.  Our furnace won't keep up, so we will have to add some electric heaters too.  Also I have ordered a few new bedroom windows.  Ours have lost the seal between the panes and one has a big crack, so they are not insulating well.  Hope the pipes don't freeze.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

run, run, run

Another day of running around!  We have so many things going this December.  A play at church, a play at school, pathfinders, piano recitals and lessons, Mark's Choir, Jon's basket ball and Gina has a choir performance in Bozeman.  So last night Rick and the children had play practice for church and Mark had a choir performance, Rick had a radio meeting, and 2 children had a pathfinders meeting.  (pathfinders is like a boy/girl scout club) Plus we are trying to get ready to leave for our  little family vacation.  So I ran some kids to one place, picked up someone else, went back and dropped off one kid here and the other 2 somewhere else, then back to watch a performance!
We leave tonight right after Rick gets home from work.
Our plans are to drive to Moriah's tonight and watch old family movies with my sister and some of the girls.  Today is one year since my mom moved on to heaven.  So we thought we would all spend some time together eating Italian sandwiches, and watching home movies.
Thur morning we will leave for Helena, the state capital.  Here we plan on taking a tour through the capitol, the "governors mansion", the catholic cathedral, and go ride a carousel.
Then we will spend the night with Miriam in Butte.  
Fri we are off to a cabin we rented close to Bozeman, where we will have a winter BBQ.  Then off to see Gina sing.
Sat our plan is to go see the Dinosaur museum.  James is very, very excited about this.  Sat evening we again hear Gina's choir and take off right away towards home.  We hope to at least make it to Kalispell that night, as Sunday we have to  be at the church here in Libby by 2:30 for the church play and another performance for Mark Sunday evening.  
Isn't it a crazy life I lead!  At least I have no babies due!
So I better get off to work, packing clothes, food, bedding.  

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Saturday

Since the children go to a 7th day Adventist school they have church on Sat.  The children will take part in the meeting about once a month or so.  Every time they have this meeting it really throws me off.  Going to church on Saturday.
So the children sang songs, and they play chimes. Over the few years they have been playing the chimes they have become pretty good.
Then Monica and I decided to go the ballet.  I've never been to a ballet and I thought it might be a good experience for  Monica.  It costs $15 for both of us, and I let her invite a friend.  
It was the Nutcracker done by a ballet company in Kalispell.  Well it was an experience, but I don't think it was our thing.  
Sunday morning, we went to our church, I had a prenatal appointment, and we came home and had to clean the house.  Such a backwards weekend.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Small towns

I love our little town.  Every year our town starts out the Christmas season with a tree lighting ceremony.  
It starts out with a parade.   A parade in winter!   It was probably about 30 degrees out last night, while lines of people were watching a short parade.  Our town loves parades though.  We have 2 big parades a yr.  One in the spring and one in the fall.  then we have a few more small parades throughout the yr.  Nordic fest, Logger days, Opening day of baseball , Christmas, etc.  They always throw candy for the children, wave and a clown comes through, lots of fire trucks and sirens going.  Now when I was young a parade was exciting because of the marching bands.  We might see a marching band once in a while here, but it's nothing like when I was young. I miss that.  I grew up with orchestra music and marching bands and I feel like my children are missing out.  
After the parade everyone gathers around this big tree at the end of the "gut".  The gut is a culdesac at the end of main street.  The select children's choir sang a couple of songs, Mark is in the choir.  I forgot to bring my camera, but they were so cute.  They wear little tuxedos, and the girls wear long black dresses.  The whole thing started with a prayer for our town, and then the middle school principal read the Christmas story out of Luke 2.  Then they lit up the Christmas tree and everyone claps.  Santa came in on a fire truck because city ordinances say they can't bring reindeer in the city!  
I was really blessed how our town is bold enough to honor God and declare that Christmas is about Jesus' birth.
"He who honors me I will honor", I pray God will keep our little town through this economic crisis.  We already had an economic crisis before the national crisis!
After the town tree lighting Mark's Choir went over to the memorial center.  Here they were having a Hospice tree lighting.  It was a sober, fancy meeting with a huge tree.  They lit one light at a time as they read off names of people who had died this last year one by one.  It took about an hour for them to light the tree this way.  I didn't know about this, or I could have had my mom listed. Hospice was so wonderful to us.  Helping us through things we would have no idea how to handle.
  The choir sang a couple of songs again at this ceremony and that was our interesting evening in our small town.
True we don't have a lot of things to do like the big city to does, but we do make fun out of anything we can.  At least we never lack for things to do!