You know you have placenta brain when…

After cutting up all your veggies, you dump them into the garbage, on top of various things you WOULDN’T want to rescue them from… and you don’t even remember doing it.  but sure enough… there they are!

So you dump a can of green beans in instead… sigh.

still here

Freezing away in Alaska… lots of snow and ice fog and pink skies… the view on my header is out the north side of the house on one day last week.   My little camera can’t come close to catching the hues and magic.  But its beautiful, nonetheless.

We’ve been busy baking and wrapping and reading and making memories.  Bryan began working the day shift.  Its been a great shift overall, but those days ARE long!!  I’m VERY ready for him to be home come 8:00 pm.  however, the days he is home, he is much more awake and energetic since his body isn’t trying to figure when is wake time.

nothing amazing to post, although later I’ll get you a picture of a ‘professional’ volunteer wrapping job done outside of REI.  Truly spectacular.  Wait for it!!

Unplugged Theme: Fluffy OR Weather

Unplugged

SNOW ICECREAM

This project would have worked great for both last week (weather) and this week!

We got LOTS and LOTs of snow… so there was LOTS of shoveling together, and walks pulling the sleds… it was a little too soft for great sledding and skiing.  We’ll wait until it packs down a little more.  BUT it is PERFECT for snow icecream.

Sorry there is no pictures… but here is the recipe (the one we use… there are plenty of variations:

I use the pasteurized egg beater stuff for raw recipes like this and eggnog, so it always means a special trip to the store!

2 eggs

1/2 – 3/4 cup sugar

1 cup milk or cream

2 tsp vanilla

pinch of salt

FRESH SNOW until its a good consistency.  (I usually put a bucket / bowls out to collect it as it is falling, so I KNOW there’s nothing nasty I can’t see when I scoop it up)  We saved a big bowl of it outside for a couple days so we could make it AGAIN for our home church.  You can keep it in the freezer as well.  But its a little more icy when it comes out.  STILL, it’s very VERY yummy!!

The holiday season and what we are ‘doing’

Or I should say PLANNING on doing… since we all know just because we SAY it, doesn’t mean it will actually happen!

We have started “The Glorious Coming” by Ann Voskamp again this year, hanging the matching ornaments in the sun room on an extra tree we borrowed.  Sometime here, we might try something different, but it really works well for us, and without researching I haven’t seen anything else I like too much.

We have a calendar with service type acts inside… I just tried to think up enough service projects / themes for each day through December, and wrote them on bits of paper to stick in each pocket.  Simple things like “love on Dad” day, and “write a letter to the grandparents” day, and “take a box of food to the Food Bank” and tomorrow’s project, “drop a surprise meal off at someone’s house”… most are smaller things, not making extra meals, etc… but still.  So far its good…

Our church’s themes this year are the “Three Gifts”.  What? you say.. but there are four Sundays!!!  mmm…. its a surprise… you have to come on the last Sunday to find out what the fourth gift was!! 🙂  Just kidding, no church people read this.  Worship is the last one… So far, its been good.  We have celebrated Jesus as King (gold), this week is Jesus as priest (Frankinsence) and the third will be Jesus the suffering servant – or something like that (myrrh)… and they all bowed down and worshipped… a gift we too can give  Jesus.

Good night!  I must try to get a little song and order started for Sunday, since it is already late Friday night.  I’m not sure if I’m fortunate or not that my pastor does things last minute… we don’t really help each other out in the ‘last minute’ department!!

Good to Better

YES – I am back to the DARK look of the blog… to go with the DARK days of winter…  Thank you Jesus for a house with lots of windows, and being a stay at home mom to see every minute of sunlight there is no matter what angle its coming from!!  The picture is one my brother in law took while they were up here… Portgage Glacier.

This was a day that I looked back on and thought… NOTHING… ACCOMPLISHED!!!  well… almost.

Then I told Bryan what we did today…

• up… oatmeal… a wee bit of school and piano practice (that took way longer than it should have, which is part of what had me feeling like it was a non-productive day!)

• Off to cousins to play… the kids all played outside for an hour in the mound of snow in the cul-de-sac on sleds and a snow machine, taking turns pulling Shand around on the baby sled… lunch and play time with the cousins…

• listened to Story of the World in the car.

• Got home, and remembered that I PROMISED Thad I’d play a game with him, so I played the Lorax twice, then Keenan joined us for a game of Clue (though I REALLY wanted to do school work before Shand woke up)

• Shand woke up with diahrea poop all up her back (Keenan wondered if she had been standing on her head) and NOT happy at all… only a short nap and so rudely awakened by her bowels…

• Sat and cuddled off and on all afternoon to appease her.

• Folded three loads of laundry WITH the kids.

• Did one science experiment.

• Fixed dinner. and ate. and did dishes.

• Read a bunch of books before bed… for each child.

Looking back?  It was a good day.  I made a lot of BETTER choices, though it didn’t get the GOOD things crossed off my list.

All that really could have been changed was… my attitude at times.  Hmmm.  interesting that.

oh yeah, and Shand’s tummy ache.  I am sure she would have enjoyed that change.