Aaaaaaannd A Wedding!

Preparation begins in advance.  Sewing, among other things.  Maulbeere was engaged and getting married and we wanted to help pull it off and celebrate with her!  She found a dress she liked but, as often is the case, it needed just a little help to be just right. So her Mom sewed a bolero jacket to wear with it.

 There was also a cake to be made.  Much as she finds it challenging to do the cake, Heidlebeere is good at wedding cakes.  It starts small, with the ingredients coming together.  This time there were pearls and, as usual, lots of frosting. Bring it all together and you have the makings of a pretty nice wedding cake.

 Then you introduce the master.

This was all prepared ahead of time, and at a more convenient location than where the wedding was to take place.  So the cake was frosted up but left unassembled.  Then it was boxed up and hauled 140 miles to the church, along with all the other stuff to make a proper wedding celebration. To do it up right it takes a few things.  But it was all there.

Then you begin putting it all together.  In this case, that involved getting some helpers to blow up balloons for decorations.

Lots of balloons.

 LOTS of balloons.  Some helpers were of more help than others. 

 Once all the balloons were filled then they had to be put in place.

When they were all up the table was readied for the food to be brought out after the ceremony.

 The happy couple had made another "non-traditional" choice for cake toppers.  Hey, they liked them and that was what was important.

 The aisle was prepared for the traditional wedding march. 

 A little last minute preparation, advise and counsel, and confidence building, and things were ready to get moving! 

And then, suddenly, it was done! 

And then the celebrating.  This was one happy wedding couple!

And dancing.  There was dancing.  The groom pushed the bride to learn some new dance steps and she had fun!  All in all, it was a very nice wedding.  A very nice time.  These are the high points of life, when family comes together to celebrate happy things with one another.  And this was one of those.  One of the things that would have made it even better would have been if more of the family could have been there.  But the distance and the timing made that hard. But as it was, there was plenty of people there to celebrate the creation of a new family and wish the happy couple all the best as they start out on their own. Good times!

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.