Thoughtful

It's great to have people who know you well enough to know how to give a gift that makes you happy and touches your heart. Tracy was recently the recipient of such a gift. Our kids are also very thoughtful gift givers. Here are some of the Christmas gifts I received this year. I believe that most of these ideas and the execution of them came from the girls, although I know that guys can give thoughtful gifts, too.

My mom has had one of these for awhile and I've always admired it and wanted one. Tracy made this one. For someone who claims to not be crafty, Tracy is always doing crafty things.

Shannon stayed up until 3:45 am on Christmas Eve/Christmas finishing this calendar made with pictures of our beautiful grandbabies. It brought tears to my eyes.

Emily designed and made this cross-stitch picture. She made almost all of the gifts they gave this year. Very creative, Em. I need to find a good place to display it.

I received TWO flannel nightgowns this year. Woo-hoo! For those of you who are uninformed, it's getting harder and harder to find real flannel nightgowns and they are getting more and more expensive. Rene and Joanna and Ben put in the time, effort and expense to get me these this year.

Over the summer, we played a game owned by one of Sarah's roommates called Rapid Recall. It is no longer made. I really enjoyed it, and looked to find it online. To my dismay, it's really expensive because it's "vintage." I had forgotten about it, but Sarah searched diligently and found it for me for Christmas.

Like my sister Susan, I have a foot that has been bothering me. I read about "Yoga Toes" and thought they would help. They are expensive, however, so I didn't get them. I told Janet about them and she searched around and was able to find a deal on them. Here is Ben, modeling them. Susan, you really need some. I think they do help.

In Matthew 7:11, we are taught that our Heavenly Father gives good gifts to them that ask him. It makes me happy to see our children emulating this Christlike trait.

Christmas trip to Utah

Our friend, Casie, got married in the Manti Temple over the weekend. She asked us when she got engaged if we would come and we decided that it was important to support Casie. AND it let us spend time with Sarah and Brian, who aren't coming home for Christmas.

The wedding:

On Friday night, we went to the Carl Bloch exhibit at the Museum of Art at BYU. It was seriously awesome! The church has used many of his paintings in church publications, so they are familiar. We all liked the exhibit a lot.

After the wedding on Saturday, we went up to the Riverwoods Mall in north Provo. It was really prettily decorated--very sparkly. We wandered around, found some really fun stores, and rode in a carriage ride. We got the long version, because no one else was waiting for a ride at that point.

It was a quick trip, but worth it. At the airport in SLC on the way home, our plane was late getting in from it's destination (which was Minneapolis). When it did get in, we were just sitting there watching people get off, when Janet nudged me and said, "Hey, that's Rachel Brown." Haha...we were getting on the plane they just got off. I got to say hi briefly and I met baby Forrest. He's a cutie!

No more, please!

Lots of people in Wisconsin listen to country music. Ugh! I dislike country music. Hence, I don't have many radio stations I enjoy while I'm driving around in the car. Lots of times it boils down to Rush Limbaugh or the "mix" station, which has been playing Christmas songs since Thanksgiving. And, not to offend anyone, sometimes I've just had enough of Rush and can't listen to him anymore. So I've been listening to a lot of Christmas music lately. I love Christmas music and when you consider the number of songs performed by hundreds of artists, there must be many, many permutations. However, I seem to hear the same songs over and over. So, here is my list of 5 Christmas songs I wouldn't mind never hearing again:

5. I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas
4. Santa Baby
3. Do They Know It's Christmas?
2. My Grown-Up Christmas List
1. Christmas Shoes

And if you're the people who have been calling WLJY and requesting the above songs, knock it off, would ya?

Under the tree

About 26 or 27 years ago, my sister Kathleen made a tree skirt for us for a Christmas present. We have used it every year since then. A couple of years ago, I made tree skirts for Joseph and Tracy and Ben and Shannon. It was obvious last year that Emily and Preston also needed one. And when Joanna and Sarah both got married this summer, I decided to make three tree skirts for this Christmas.

Now, the tree skirts I made earlier were panels, where all I had to do was apply batting and backing and sew them together. But tree skirt panels seem to be a thing of the past in just two or three years time. I'm way too cheap to buy a pattern, so thank goodness for the Internet. I found this awesome tutorial and used it to make the three tree skirts. I had to change it some for Emily and Preston's because I already had fabric for theirs and wanted to make sure I used what I had. For the others, I did have to buy a few pieces of fabric, but I was also able to use some I had around here and some I got from a swap meet at church this summer. Plus I used up a bunch of peices of batting that I had hanging around.

This is Joanna and Ben's. I think they all turned out well. Hopefully, they'll get as much use out of them as we have from ours.

Into December

I wanted to do something for the kids this year that was inspirational for Christmas. I saw this tutorial and went from there. I think these little advent calendars turned out well. I compiled my own thoughts to put on the little cards. It was fun, although it was way more work than I anticipated (plus I made 8 of them!)

Through the woods and over the river

Our trip to my Mom's for Thanksgiving was great. It's always wonderful to be with family. I inevitably come away uplifted and inspired to be a better person. Although the weather was cold, cold, cold, our hearts were warm.

We didn't do anything too strenuous or exciting. We did do a lot of this:

and this:

Lauren was a big help when it was time to clean up:

On Saturday, a group of us ran the Warner Wobble Gobble. Warner is a teeny town 10 miles south of Aberdeen. Janet's blog will have the full details. It was very small townish and lots of fun.

We are thankful for all of you. We wish we could be together for every holiday, but are happy for phone calls, emails, blogs, facebook, Skype, and letters to keep us close. You are all an essential part of our happiness and we think of you and pray for you always.

New in the Neighborhood

I guess WPS got tired of the drug dealers parking on their property. Just kidding....sort of. More than 5 years ago, Wisconsin Public Service bought a bunch of properties at the end of our street and tore down the homes. But they couldn't do much about the paved streets. Russell St. ends in a cul-de-sac down there. People drive and walk down there all the time. WPS has tried to stop that by dumping a huge pile of dirt at the end, putting up sawhorses, not having it plowed in the winter, etc. I guess this is their latest attempt. There probably aren't a bunch a drug dealers (that's kind of an inside joke) but there are lots of deer hunters who try to sneak back there and hunt.

The bad news:

About 10 days ago, we started to notice an awful smell coming from our upstairs bathroom. It got worse in the next 3-4 days. After lots of sniffing, we pinpointed the smell to the linen closet. I gingerly (and I mean gingerly!) took all the towels out, one by one, expecting to find a dead mouse. Nothing. There's a basket on the floor of the linen closet which holds tableclothes, placemats, etc. I took everything out of there, very carefully. Nothing. I took everything off every shelf. Nothing. The only conclusion we can reach is that some furry little rodent climbed or fell into the wall and died. It's so gross. For a few days there, I thought I was going to throw up every time I went in there. We've managed to contain the smell pretty well by closing the doors and keeping the fan on. I think it's abating now, although it may be that our sense of smell has been obliterated by the stench. Hopefully, it will all be over soon, because the only other option is to tear out the linen closet.

Rene's snowblower, which came with the house and is pretty much an antique, needs repairs in the neighborhood of $450. That doesn't include some other problems that Rene didn't even mention to the repair guy. So this weekend, Rene and Ben enjoyed scouting out and purchasing a new snowblower. When you live in Wisconsin and have a big yard and long driveways, a snowblower is a necessity. I didn't much enjoy the sound of $$$ being siphoned out of our account.

The good news:

I made this cake over the weekend. I made it a couple of years ago for Emily's birthday and it is soooo good! It originally came from Betty, but has not been in her cookbooks for a number of years. Good thing I'm old and have old cookbooks. Levi didn't appreciate it, though. He pronounced it "weird."

The aforementioned snowblower has HEATED HANDLES!

I'm working on a number of projects that I need to get done before Thanksgiving. One of them, while cute, is taking way longer than I anticipated and I'm making 8! I also have three sewing projects that need to get done by then. I'll post pictures when they are done and when they have found a home with their intended receivers. On that note, I'd better get busy.

Homemade

I have had fun making some things for our little grandaughters lately. Here are the goodies:

A dress for Lauren--I want to use the same pattern to make one for Afton and Macey.

A special shirt for Macey with her hero on the front

And a Minnie Mouse skirt for Afton.

They all turned out well. I'll let their parents post pictures of them wearing them :)

Goofy

Play Dough glasses

Lady and the Tramp--I'll let you decide who's who.

Fake sleeping--I wonder where she would have learned that?

Lately

What have we been up to lately?

Well, a little bit of this...

Some birthday celebrations...

She liked her presents.

So did she.

A visit to Minneapolis to go to the temple and hang out with the kids...

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today is my Dad's birthday. He would have been 82 today. Sadly, he passed away over 10 years ago at the age of 71. I still miss him. Even though we were all long gone from home with families of our own, he was still a source of wisdom, advice and spiritual strength. His passing certainly left a hole in all of our lives.

In many respects, he had a hard life. He was born just before the Great Depression, the tenth of thirteen children. I remember him telling us that one year the whole family got a basketball for Christmas. That's it--one basketball. Dad suffered from physical ailments which affected his ability to live a normal life at times. He worked hard physically his whole life, even after he received his EdD and was teaching at Northern State College in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He and Mom struggled to make ends meet for many years.

Maybe because of all that, Dad was a spiritual giant. Because we lived in a family setting and dealt with the ups and downs of family life, I don't think we always recognized the spiritual wisdom he had. He fasted often; he sacrificed to help others. He was a keen student of the scriptures. I think he had the gift of discernment. He was able to see into the hearts of others.

He wasn't perfect. He was absent-minded. He was a little kooky, eccentric, unique--I don't know exactly what adjective to use. There are some pretty funny stories anyone in the family could tell you. At Ethan's wedding, Todd Hendrickson told us his "10 cow wife" story. Let me just say that Dad enjoyed it as much as Todd did. I remember his attitude toward the solid double lines in the middle of the road which indicate no passing. He believed that those lines didn't necessarily apply to him--they were for those who did not have good judgement of their own.

In the ten years since Dad has been gone, I have felt him very close to me on a handful of occasions. I'm thankful for that evidence of continuing love and support. I have found this quote from the book TheLife Beyond by Robert L. Millet and Joseph Fielding McConkie to be comforting:

"When a righteous man ora righteous woman die, they do not cease to love their family in the flesh, they do not cease to pray for them, they do not cease to labor in their behalf. As their family was their primary concern in this life, so it will continue to be their primary concern on the other side of the veil. We would demean the nature of their labors in the spirit world to suppose that they had nothing more to do than to conduct a daily watch over those they left behind; yet the love and interest is still there, and on special occasions their presence will be felt and in some instances, as appropriate, they may be granted the privilege to more fully manifest themselves, though these treasures of heaven will not be common." p. 85-86

I don't think I ever saw Dad change a diaper. Men just didn't do that when he and Mom were raising their family. But Dad loved children. All of us have sweet memories of Dad dancing with our kids, singing to them, cheering them on in sports, loving them. A small measure of comfort has come to me thinking of Dad and Logan being together on the other side, talking of things of eternal importance, working together, singing together, looking down on us occasionally, maybe even shaking their heads and tsk, tsking over the state of BYU football. I'm thankful for their continued love. Happy Birthday, Dad! Thanks for everything. I love you!

I made these scones for breakfast the other day. They were pretty good, but I think they would have been better with some crystallized ginger on top. I was too cheap to buy any. But a few days ago, I saw Alton Brown demonstrate how to crystallize your own ginger. Anybody want to try it with me?

Well, it is definitely autumn here. I think the autumn foliage is already past its prime. We haven't had any frost yet, but we've been close and I don't think it will be long.

Last week, we had 4 inches of rain in about 36 hours. The ground was already pretty wet beforehand, so there was a lot of water around here. Old Business 51 in Rothschild was closed from Wausau Tile to Lignotech because of water over the road. Water was rushing from the river through the area where the bike path is (where Sarah and Dad went cross country skiing and Joanna and Janet rode their bikes to Briq's) and covering the road. It was doing the same thing on the other side of the river and there was water in all the low-lying area along the freeway and in the big pond thing that's always empty along that same bike path. The dam near Domtar had lots of boats and docks stuck in it, having been torn from their moorings. Many people had water in their basements, but not us, thank goodness!

Progress

Afton's photography skills are improving. Here are some of her shots taken with my camera a couple of weeks ago. Notice that they are not of her face but are real pictures. You go, Afton!

Really?

While I was in Virginia, we went to a farm where kids can pet baby animals. It was fun. But what really made me laugh was this sign that I saw when I got out of the car.

Happiest Place on Earth

Afton has outgrown her Elmo obsession and is now focused on Mickey Mouse and Co. One morning recently, Tracy had done her hair in two buns on either side of her head. Afton adored this hairstyle and told her mom she looked liked Mickey Mouse. Later that week, we went to a craft store to pick up a few items. While Tracy was busy choosing frames, Afton and I wandered around the store. We walked past a display that had a bunch of headbands. There was a red one with white polka dots and Afton immediately identified it as "Minnie!!" What could I do? I had to buy it for her.

Maybe because of Afton's current obsession, or maybe just by chance, or perhaps it's the slick Disney marketing machine, but the Virginia Scoresbys have also been getting Disney junk mail, including some inviting them to visit Disney World--"The Happiest Place on Earth."

I beg to differ. Losing Logan two weeks ago has only confirmed my belief that the temples dotting the earth are the happiest places on earth. As Preston said, if there is any comfort for us, it is the knowledge that Joseph and Tracy knelt across an altar in the Manti temple in 2003 and were sealed by the power of the priesthood. Logan is theirs forever and because of that same sealing power, all of us can be with him again, too. I'm thankful that we have beautiful and obedient children (and you know that includes the in-laws!) who have chosen to live righteously and to marry in the temple. I'm thankful that Afton and Logan, Macey, and Lauren are sealed to their parents and to us and their great-grandparents and so on in a powerful chain of priesthood ordinances.

We may someday get to Disney World with Afton and our other grandkids, but we can and will be in temples together often and I'm so very thankful for that blessing.

Food Snobs

There's no cooking like home cooking. Seriously. Over the years, we told our kids that they ate pretty darn well and that someday, they'd realize it. I think that as they left home, they did come to realize that it was true, at least to some degree. During the 15 years that I taught early morning seminary, Rene made breakfast every day. While he did insist on serving hot cereal a couple of times a week, the other days he made good old-fashioned farmhouse type breakfasts--bacon, hash browns, pancakes, omelets, fruit, etc. While we generally did not have a lot of meat, we did have veggies and fruit of all kinds, canned and from the freezer. We made our own cider , dried our own apples and canned apple and peach pie filling. Mmmm...besides canning our sour cherries, we found a yummy recipe for sour cherry jam. It's still one of Joanna's favorites.

There were some notable failures, the aforementioned huevos rancheros being one. I also once made an eggplant dish that no one liked. My mom, who was visiting, ate it to set a good example but told me later that it was disgusting. Once Rene grew a bunch of Napa cabbages and those were not popular either.


Our recent trip to Chicago brought this topic to my mind. We went to dinner with a group from Rene's work at Geno and Georgetti's, a famous Chicago steakhouse.


Afterwards, Rene and I realized that we both thought it was okay, but not great. I had lamb chops, which were tender in the lean parts, but awfully fatty. The house potatoes and salad were pretty average. Calamari--meh. My favorite was the creamed spinach. It was really yummy.

The taxi ride back to the hotel was exciting, though. That guy went 50 mph on city streets, weaving in and out of traffic.

We rarely ate out when the kids were little. In fact, for many years our end of the school year treat was the annual trip to McDonalds. We still do not eat out that often. I guess maybe we are food snobs. We're pretty content with our own cooking.

Millennium Park

Awesome! Why are the trees yellow and orange? Ya got me there!

Beauty

This week, I went with Rene to Chicago, where he attended some meetings and a trade show. We stayed in a hotel right downtown, so it was handy for me to walk wherever I wanted to go. One morning, I walked the mile south to Millennium Park and just past it, the Art Institute of Chicago. I spent about four hours at the museum and enjoyed it. I saw some beautiful and famous paintings and some not so beautiful but still famous paintings. Since they say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I thought I'd post pictures of the two paintings that spoke most strongly to me. Why? I guess because I have some kind of emotional attachment to the subjects and found the paintings interesting.

Yep, one is a painting of two potatoes and the other is one of four in a series by Homer Winslow about croquet.

While I was in the Contemporary wing of the museum (think Picasso, Dali, and even more abstract and bizarre art), I overheard a little 3 or 4 year old girl say to her mom, "Mommy, when can we go back to where the grownups did the paintings?" Ha ha. It was hilarious and so true.

One of my favorite things at the museum was the "miniatures". I couldn't take my own pictures of them because the glass cases reflected badly, but here are some taken by others. These are rooms on a scale of one inch to one foot. One woman commissioned architects to make these for her. They are like dollhouse interiors, but on a very elegant and upscale dollhouse. There were kitchens from Virginia, parlors from New Hampshire, kitchens from Georgia, etc. There were also rooms from periods of European history. They were all simply awesome! It would be so fun to be able to indulge yourself in a hobby like that.

Least Favorite Breakfast, EVER!

No, not according to me. When the kids were little, we made this a time or two because it uses lots of tomatoes and we had all the other ingredients. Although Rene and I thought it was okay, the kids despised it, pronounced it disgusting and even went so far as to tell everyone on the bus what a disgusting breakfast their parents had fixed for them. Even now, they pretty much shudder when we mention it.

Well, we had Huevos Rancheros for breakfast today and it was yummy. What's wrong with you guys, anyway?

Grillin'

When we got up a week ago, we noticed that the stove was flashing "F1". After a little research, we discovered that it was the electronic control panel and would cost about $350 to replace. The stovetop works fine, it's the oven that's not working. We were a little disgruntled--it's been an expensive summer!--but by the end of the week, we had visited our local Sears store where we purchased a whole new stove for $399, including taxes. Unfortunately, because I don't like black or stainless steel appliances and white doesn't match our refrigerator and microwave, the new stove had to be ordered in bisque and won't be here for 10 days.

Well, we are not among those who never use their oven. We bake a lot. What were we to do? Here's our solution:
Both of these lovely items were cooked on our gas grill. The bread turned out great and was delicious. The blonde brownies were a little overdone on the edges and a little underdone in the middle, but overall, very edible. I have to give Rene credit for operating the grill. I feel good now. In the case of emergencies, I'm glad to know that we can still make bread and yummy treats. (As long as the propane tank is full, that is!) And by the way, the stove is no longer flashing "F1". It is now flashing "F3".