Merry Christmas!

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.  

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.  And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. 

And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.  And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.

Luke 2:8-18

There was no little drummer boy at Bethlehem that night.

The animals did not know how to talk.

The wise men didn’t make it on time to see that sight.

But shepherds, ah yes,

Were out upon the hill ‘neath starry sky.

To them the angels came with message rare –

Glad Tidings of Great Joy … to shepherds.

A man who tends a flock of sheep by day,

Watching over them all through the night,

Searching for the one that’s gone astray

Until again the lost one’s in his sight;

Who leads his followers to pastures sweet

And keeps them safe from perils they can’t see –

This kind of man, this kind was first to see

The King of Kings. They knew that it was He.

Why shepherds?

Why were they the first to view the babe?

Because, He was a shepherd, too.

Teresa Bateman

A Wedding in Our Family!

As I was sitting down this evening to do a little blogging it occurred to me that I was noting that Maulbeere got engaged, which happened earlier this week, without ever having posted about Schwartzbeere's wedding, which happened last August.  I am remiss. Forthwith let me fix that.

 I like to take pictures.  I like to take pictures a lot.  So I do. As you can well imagine, at an event like a wedding, an event that usually takes up a large portion of the day, a lot of pictures are taken.  The hard part becomes paring them all down to pick a few to post and share.

 This wedding was a little different from any other that has happened in our family in the past.  A few wedding traditions were observed.  So the bride got to take the walk down the aisle. And what's more, she was accompanied not just by her father but by her father and her mother both.  I thought that was nice, a nice recognition of two people who have been important in her life up to that point.

Another fun thing that has developed in our family is that we have a cake expert or two in the group.  So Heidlebeere was in charge of the cake.  She did the engineering, though she did have a bit of help from several people, including her oldest.  What a team.

Schwartzbeere and his bride picked the figurines that went on top of the cake.  Initially the plan had been to not have any figurines on top.  But the day of the wedding they were in a store and saw these and decided they would be perfect.  So that's what ended up on the cake.

 The cake, when it was done, turned out really well.  It looked near perfect.  That was quite the trick considering it was baked and decorated to about 85% done and then packed up and transported 70 miles to where the wedding was held.  Then it was carefully unpacked and assembled.  When the finishing touches had been added it looked real nice.  More on that later.

Lots of family, lots of pictures.  The bride's family welcoming the new groom into his family. The grooms family welcoming the new bride into her new family. Two families coming together to celebrate a new family getting started. Certainly a time for celebration. That's what its all about.  Maybe that's one reason the Lord, in the scriptures, speaks of time passing and life going on as "marrying and giving in marriage."  It is the cycle of life.

Now every wedding has its memorable moment.  Some more humorous, some less so.  Some that take a while to be able to laugh at, some that are instantly hilarious.  I'll let you decide where this one fits into that continuum. After the cake was all decorated and on display, looking absolutely perfect, the room got warm.  Warm room and cake icing don't always play together nicely.  And so it was that the icing warmed up and softened up and something I've never seen happen at a wedding took place. The top two tiers of cake slid off of the bottom tier.  Yup.  It really happened.  And you'll notice in the picture that batman and the princess survived the ride quite nicely.  So what to do you?  You paste it back together as best you can and the wedding went on.  And the nice thing was that, other than Heidlebeere being a bit mortified, everyone took it quite well.  And at the end of the day, it was a good day to be alive and together.

Christmas Cookies!

Yesterday we went over to Blaubeere's house to watch her kids while she and her husband went out to a Christmas play nearby.  We decided a fun way to pass the time would be to do cookies so Brombeere made up some cookie dough before hand and we took it and all the stuff we needed to decorate them with us. We also took a few cookie cutters, Christmas shapes; a star, a Christmas sock, a snowman, a gingerbread man and a Christmas tree. Fun.  Sugar cookies are pretty much my favorite kind of cookie and so far this year I haven't had much opportunity to have any so that's what we decided to make.  

So the grandkids got to help roll out the dough and cut out the cookies.We worked at the kitchen table and everybody got to practice taking turns.  

When the kids saw the few shapes we had brought they decided that wasn't enough to work with so they went and got some of their own cookie cutters.  Never mind that they weren't particularly Christmas shapes.  That was okay.  So we had fish, kangaroos, dolphins, teddy bears, cows, a blue ribbon (which I thought could have passed as the Christmas star if you used a little imagination) and a rhinoceros.

We didn't want to make a whole ton of cookies because, after all, what can you do with cookies but eat them and who needs all those calories?  But we still ended up with probably just over two dozen cookies.  We didn't actually count them.  Ah, well.

We took the stuff to make frosting.  We also took sprinkles put on the cookies. The original plan had been to make several different colors of frosting but when it came time to actually make it we forgot to separate it out before adding the coloring so we ended up with only three colors, red, white and blue.  How patriotic.  But that's a different holiday.

 Brombeere had a real good idea for the frosting.  She put it in squeeze bottles and let the kids put it on that way.  She's smart that way, maybe it was a trick she learned from teaching kindergarten and working with little kids a lot. I have actually never frosted cookies that way but it worked pretty good.  You have to make the frosting just a little thinner to do that but it worked quite well.  We got the blue a little thick at first but once we added a little milk to it to thin it out it was good as the other colors.

 So everybody frosted, sprinkled, frosted, sprinkled and we all ate a few, too.  Some ate more than others, some struggled with the idea that we weren't going to eat them all, some just ate decorations and not much in the way of cookies.  But when we were all done everyone had fun and we ended up with some fun cookies, too!

 This is one I frosted.  Turned out pretty good, I think. It was a fun time.

A Fun Week

This has been Thanksgiving week so we have had some of the kids home to visit for the holidays.  That's always a very nice thing.  We like that. Especially when there's grandbabies involved.

Erdbeere and her family came. They brought their cute little boy. He's so fun right now.  He's getting so he can talk pretty good, We have a big tub of toys we keep for the grandkids when they come.  He was quite taken with the dump trucks.

We got a rousing card game going, that was fun.  We might have to get that one for ourselves for Christmas or something.  The one we're playing with right now is borrowed from a friend.  Its called Spite and Malice and its pretty fun.  Simple enough that even I enjoy playing it.

Maulbeere is still here, she's been staying with us for several months.  Unfortunately she is planning heading back to her sister's place in a few days.  Stachelbeere will drive out with her and fly back. We will sure miss her when she's gone.


Schwartzbeere and his new wife stopped by for an overnight visit, too.  Its always nice to see them.  Our newlyweds.

No slight to the kids but I have to admit the funnest part of having kids visit is the grandkids they bring. And Townsend is at just that perfect age where he can play, interact, express his desires and speak his mind.  He's a sweetie.

Sadness - in a few days the holidays will be over, Erdbeere and her family will have gone home, Maulbeere and Stachelbeere will be gone and it will be just me and Brombeere rattling around in our house alone. Even if only for just a few days until Stachelbeere gets back it will be strangely quite. We'll miss them all.  Happiness - Christmas is coming fast and there will be more visits!

Fun With the Grandkids

Yesterday Blaubeere and her kids came over for a visit.  That's always nice.  Life for our two families has been so hectic that they haven't been over for several weeks so it was especially nice that we were finally able to get together again.

Anyway, the scout troop that our church sponsors was having a fund raiser and had asked for donations so we decided to make some cookies to donate.  That was fun.  And as it turned out, a very profitable idea for the scouts, too.  But we'll get to that in a minute.

So Braumbeere found a cool recipe online that we decided to give a try.  After all, it did seem very appropriate for the season, this being Halloween season and all. So we went shopping to make sure we had every thing we needed and were ready to get down to business.  After all, malted chocolate candy and chocolate covered raisins are not something we normally keep around the house - had to go get some.

The cookies are essentially peanut butter cookies that are decorated special so we decided to just use the cookie recipe for the basic cookies.  That turned out to not the best decision because the peanut butter cookie recipe we normally use turned out to be way better than this one.  But it was okay anyway, it didn't seem to affect how well the cookies did in the auction at the fundraiser.

So Braumbeere made the cookies and cooked them up and all.  Then the grandkids helped with the decorating.  Or the grandkid, mostly.  One was too hooked on the Wii to come play in the cookies.  But Hero had a good time and did a real good job, as well.

So Grandma made the cookies and Hero put some of the decorations on. One on the cookie, one in the mouth.  No, not really.  He was real good about staying on task and getting his part of the decorations done.

Then, after Hero had done his part, Maulbeere put the finishing touches on with the frosting.  Very focused on her work; careful, steady hands and the end product turned out to look really good.  Even a lot like the pictures!

So we took seven plates of five cookies per plate to the fundraiser and they were auctioned off.  One of the scouts was auctioneer and didn't do too bad a job, especially after he got into it and got his rhythm going. As it turned out each plate sold for between $6 and $8 per plate.  Over a dollar per cookie - that was amazing.  I was a little surprised.  All totaled, the scouts did real well for their fundraiser.  Probably the best they've done since we moved in and got involved with this troop.  Certainly better than back when we were doing brat frys in front of the local grocery stores. That was a lot of work for a small return.

So almost all the cookies we made went to the fundraiser, there were only a couple left that went to "reward" those that helped make them.  It was a fun afternoon.

A Fun Evening

Tonight is Monday so it was Family Home Evening.  Only we decided not to stay in for FHE this time.  We went out.  We went geo-caching.  We looked up on the internet and found that the little park a few miles away had like seven geo-caches in it so we piled everyone in the cars and headed for the park to see if we could find a few.  The first one was real easy to find.  We parked and walked about 20 feet and found it on the sign by the soccer field.

Okay, that was so easy there was plenty of time left for another one.  The nearest one, according to the site we were using, was some 80 yards away, out in right field somewhere on a baseball diamond at the park.  That one turned out to be a little harder to find but we did find it eventually.  It was tucked into the fence around outfield.

Then we took a break from searching and played on the swings there by the diamond.  It was evening and relaxing and the grandbabies with us were having fun on the swings.  While we were playing on the swings the sun was going down.  That's a real nice time of day, and the sunset was pretty nice, too.

Then, when it was time to go we decided to do one more, since it was on the way out of the park.  It was too dark by then to get any pictures and it turned out to be the hardest one of them all.  There is a little shopping center next to the park that has a clock tower in it.  We figured it had to be somewhere near the tower but there was a lot of stuff around the tower, shrubbery, and decorative stonework and so on.  It took us nearly 20 minutes to find that one but we finally got it.  A successful and enjoyable evening!  We might have to do something like this again.

Happy Fourth of July!

Yesterday was the Fourth of July, a favorite holiday. One where people actually play instead of work on projects the whole day. Yeah, maybe some project work gets done but then people come out and play. So anyway, we putzed around in the morning getting stuff done and then in the evening went to see the fireworks.

Where we go they shoot them off at the river. Most people sit on the one side and the fireworks are launched from the other side. Its almost always a really good show so there's always a really big crowd. They block off several streets and limit it to foot traffic. Street vendors and small-time entertainers come and work the crowd. Its a pretty good time.

To be able to get a good seat, where you can see the fireworks you have to get there a couple of hours ahead of when they shoot them off. So we did.  That means you have time to kill while you wait. Fortunately, being on the river bank, there's usually plenty of interesting things to see while you wait. This year the most interesting thing was a family of ducks that was also swimming along the river bank, working the crowd. Near us a couple of people were throwing popcorn to them so they came over to get it. The baby ducklings were pretty cute.

There were also lots of smaller fireworks that people were setting off. This year something new that I'd never seen before. I'd seen pictures but never in real life.  Someone had some floating lanterns, candles with a cover so the heat from the candle carried the cover and all up into the air. So someone was lighting these things off, they'd float up above the town and then drift off until they got so far away you couldn't see them anymore.  Made me wonder how many wildfires gizmos like that caused. Maybe they don't come down until the fire goes out. I dunno. But they were fun to watch.

Saw birds flying over the river, right in the area where the fireworks would be going off after dark.  Good thing they didn't hang around. And then, finally, dusk arrived and the fire works began.  Always a good variety of fireworks, some super bright, some super loud, all just nice to watch. It was a fun way to end the day.

Hast Thou Not Seen?

Yesterday we took the opportunity to go visit Erdbeere and her family at their new house.  They recently moved and are still in the process of unpacking and settling in and putting their mark on their new place.  Its coming along very well and is a really nice place.  Much roomier than where they moved from and meets their needs and goals in a lot of ways. They chose carefully and it is turning out very well. I thought they did very well.

The nice thing about this visit was that only Brombeere and I went so we had the time to visit all the way there and back.  She sometimes accuses me of not talking very much and I’ll be the first to admit that whenever someone says “Talk to me” the next thing that happens to me is that my mind goes blank. Anyway, we talked and I thought it was very good because we had all this time together, which is sometimes hard to come by in this very busy life we find ourselves living.

Even though it was never a subject we addressed directly between us, I found myself, as we talked over a wide range of things going on in our lives, thinking over and over again, like a prayer, that See? There is another reason why we need additional blessings in this area or that one.  I sometimes get to praying about things where I feel there is need but don’t feel like the blessings are quite covering the need and pleading for more help.  Maybe that’s an ungrateful practices that I need to do better with but nevertheless, that is how it is at times.

So today in church we were singing the closing hymn, which was titled “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”.  As we sang the second verse it suddenly hit me how much the Lord really has blessed, and continues to bless me.

Praise to the Lord! Over all things he gloriously reigneth.

Borne as on eagle wings, safely his Saints he sustaineth.

Hast thou not seen

How all thou needest hath been

Granted in what he ordaineth?

I felt like I had been ambushed by the answer to a prayer. Well, that’s how I felt. But the point is that once again I knew I was getting an answer to my prayers. I knew that the Lord was aware of me and my situation and was sustaining me at the level He wanted me at for the time being.

I used it later, during a lesson I was teaching, as an example of how the Lord uses scriptures and hymns to answer our prayers and communicate with us. So I didn’t hear a voice, but the Lord got his message across.

It Was a Very Good Time

What a wonderful couple of weeks its been!  We’ve seen all our grandkids and kids over the past couple of weeks, since the beginning of the month.  We’ve traveled a lot, got sick of being in the car (all the travel was driving) and, the one sad part of it all was a funeral. But as is so often the case, coming together for funerals leads to some wonderful times with family and friends. So we traveled out west for a funeral and got to see Heidelbeere and her family, along with my brother and sisters. Got to make muffins, do exercises, with the help of the kids and the family dog. Got to do lots of stuff together with kids and grandkids we don't get to see very often.  It was great!

Then we came back and Moosbeere and his family came to visit because he was in the wedding party of his best friend from high school.  This friend of his was over at our house so often as they were growing up that he felt like just another one of the kids. It was good to see him doing so well.

Himebeere had a birthday so we got to have cake and ice cream.And in the midst of all that visiting Erdbeere and Blaubeere and their families came to visit as well.  So its been wonderful, if not crazy and hectic at times.

We went to a couple of the parks here in the area and played around. Stachelbeere showed off his prowess in log walking. Everybody was sure he'd end up in the drink but he made it across dry with no problems. At this playground his niece came down the slide after him without waiting for him to clear out. It was fun.

Then at the end of the day we found some ducks to feed and got to spend some time doing that in the evening. Apparently the ducks get fed often enough that they knew the drill. Our granddaughter had a great time throwing them bits of bread.

It was such a good time. Makes me wish we were able to see them all more often. So we'll be grateful for the ones that live close enough to see more often and reveal in the times when we can see the others. Families are so fun, kids and grandkids are such a blessing. I love them.

A Happy Thing

Life is generally day after day, filled with the same old stuff, life goes on. Then, every now and then, a special time comes along that is either a high point or a low point. Fortunately there are more high points than lows. It has been my experience that the high points in life are generally some how associated with family. We recently had a high point. Maulbeere came to visit. That was so nice.

 

 A little over a year ago, Maulbeere decided to seek her fortune else where, get away from home and get a change of scenery.  That was okay and so she arranged to go live with her sister, Heidelbeere, who lives far enough away that we haven't seen much of her since then. In fact, this was only the second time she's been home since leaving. 

 

So Schwartzbeere and his brand new fiance, who decided they wanted to come pick her up from the airport, piled in the car and we went after her. All the way down the two of them were busy working on wedding plans. All the way back they were busy talking and playing with Maulbeere - not much serious planning got done.

 

 While here, Maulbeere spent some time with Himbeere, helping change the brakes on Mom's car. Maulbeere performed the valuable service of holding the tire down while it was off the car. Couldn't have it floating away - that would never do.

 

Erdbeere and her little boy made it to our house for a few days to visit. He's a cutie. When coloring he had to make sure that every crayon had an opportunity to be used. 

 

 Stachelbeere is staying with us right now so he and Maulbeere got to spend some quality time together.

 

 While she was here we made it out to a covered bridge not too far away and Maulbeere got to dip her toes in "the old millstream." It was Memorial Day, the official beginning of summer, and the weather was nice and warm as well.  A very nice day trip.

 

 Blaubeere and her kids came over a couple of times. They played in the backyard. You can't see it in this photo, but Dragon, the younger boy, has his right arm in a bright, red cast. He was playing in their living room a few days ago and broke his arm. Didn't slow him down much at all.

 

 Blaubeere's youngest is learning to walk. Actually, she could walk by herself if she wanted to but I guess its a confidence thing. She thinks she still needs to be holding onto something or someone to be walking. But one day we distracted her with some toys and she forgot she couldn't walk on her own enough to take a few steps all by herself. She's a cutie.

 

Then, all too soon, it was time to go back.  The time just zipped by. So it was back to the airport and off in a big silver bird. It was so nice to have her here. She is such a breath of fresh air. She brings smiles to faces everywhere she goes. We'll miss her.