Thursday, November 25, 2010

Wintery/Christmassy Thoughts

As I type The Wiggles are playing in the background, making it difficult for me to focus.  I should wait until tonight when the kids are in bed but I am saving that time for making Christmas cards, so I will push through this.  Just be warned that I am sorry if I break out into song sometime during this post.  It isn't my fault, it's those singing/dancing men's fault.

It is snowing again today.  I feel sad about the snow coming.  I think because I can't pretend that winter isn't here anymore.  I wore my flip-flops up until last week.  But -15C is a little chilly on the toes.  (Oh no, Old Dan Tucker is playing, that's like my favourite song...Git Out the way old Dan Tucker, you're too late to get your supper.)

Winter has it's good points.  I am looking forward to building snowmen with the girls, taking them out in the sled, maybe even going boarding with my hubby, though that last one is not for sure.  I used to love to snowboard, and I think I still would, only I haven't been out in, um, almost five years.  Five years!  I have new snowboard boots that I bought just after my last time boarding, but I got pregnant before the next winter and haven't been since.  Mostly due to babysitting issues. 

But the cold, I dislike the cold.  It makes it so much more unfun to go outside.  We have to bundle up, make sure all our limbs are covered.  I can't just open the door and let the kidlets run.  And walking places isn't going to be nearly as much fun.  I don't even know if I can fit the toddler backpack on me with my winter jacket on.

I should stop complaining.  After all, we're not half as cold as up north where we lived before.  They just had a bunch of days at -30C ish.  And I am definitely grateful for that.

Another fact that I have to admit is coming is Christmas.  It is a month away.  One month!  Since we are staying down south and not going up to our parents' houses, I technically don't have a ton of preparations to do.  I can do as much or little as I want.  I have no parties or anything planned, oh well actually we are getting together one night with our friends down here, but just the one family.  So nothing HUGE or anything.   And, I will openly admit it now, we are not even doing a tree!  It almost feels sacrilege to me, but it just doesn't fit into our lifestyle right now.  I don't have the patience to keep the girls (namely Leigh) away from it.  I don't know if we will ever have a tree. 

But I do love the idea of making ornaments and doing decorating with the girls, so my plan is to hang garlands around windows and bookshelves and the china cabinet, and to decorate those with ornaments.  So this year is really my first year  of decorating our house for Christmas.  I'm kind of nervous.  I hope it will look nice.  And I can already hear all my friends and family telling me that it will and does.  Don't you love the voices in your head of all your friends?  I don't need to talk to them in real life ever because I already know what they will say.

I had planned on having my Christmas cards and shopping and decorating done by mid-end November, but so far I haven't done any shopping or decorating.  But my cards are very close to being done so that is something!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

God Truly Does Answer our Prayers

I've been drafting this post for like a week.  I just seem to get too busy to finish, and I didn't want to slap up some half-finished piece of work.

Awhile ago I wrote about my stress over the decision to go to church or not.  It was a huge deal with me.  But God saw and heard my stress and totally reached down and helped me.  Two Sundays ago we were at the Pentecostal church here in town, and I was busy trying to occupy the girls.  Abby was really good, but Leigh just wanted to run around and around.  I was glad to finally drop her off at the nursery.

After I dropped her off there was a few more songs in the praise and worship.  I sang the songs, but I could sense that I was holding myself back.  I find it hard to explain exactly how I felt.  I tried to pray, to focus myself on God, but I found that I was very distracted by the music, and my own critical thoughts of the whole service.  So I went out to our car. 

I sat in the front seat and started to pray and this time it was easy.  Through my mind had been going the memory of a time 6 years prior, before I had left the church I had then been attending, when I asked God if I was supposed to leave the 'organized church'.  I heard a No.  Well obviously I left anyways.  The reason being that I thought that the no I heard was just my mind, I didn't think it was God.  So as this is running through my mind, I prayed and asked Him if I had been supposed to leave the church back then.  And God told me, No, I wasn't suppposed to have left.

Wow, now that was a big, big revelation.  I made a mistake, and one that seems like a big one.  But I am glad that I had the courage to ask.  So I then repented of leaving and not heeding His voice and asked for His forgiveness, which He gave to me!  God is so good.  I asked afterwards if I was supposed to attend this church here, but He didn't say.  He just told me that He was going to change my heart.

I went back into the service, though I spent the majority of  the time in the nursery with Leigh since she was crying.  But last week we went again, and I felt a HUGE difference.  I wasn't critical of the praise and worship, and I was able to feel my heart enter in, I didn't hold myself apart.  And perhaps the biggest change of all is that I actually have a desire to get invovled in church programs. 

I am glad to have a peace about this.  I know that getting back into the swing of things will be a process, and I don't even think that we will go all the time either.  We didn't go today because our kids kept waking us up last night.  But I do feel that this is where God wants us so that is the best place to be.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Surviving Meringue

Actually, the meringue was the easy part.  Surviving my children, on the other hand, was the not so easy part.  It was my hubby's birthday yesterday.  In my mind's eye I had a perfect day all planned out.  The gist: when he got home, the living room and kitchen would be completely tidy, supper (chicken pot pie) would either be in the oven or just out, the computer would be off the table and the table would have a table cloth and be set with our nice dishes, the girls would be dressed in some nice clothes with their hair brushed and possibly even curled, I myself would have showered and blowdryed my hair.  We would eat a nice meal together and then the girls would give him the cards they had made earlier in the day, along with the present, I would give him my card (he got his present from me in the summer) and then I would unveil the cake I had made.

I have been planning for a couple weeks now to try a new recipe for a Coconut Cream Meringue cake.  It was a three layer cake, with a browned meringue icing.  I made the cake around lunchtime yesterday, and had the layers on my wire rack cooling.  I then went into my bedroom to fold some laundry.  After awhile I realized that it had been fairly quiet in the house, so I went to check on my girls.  Leigh was playing fine in the room, but I found Abby on a chair pulled up to the freezer above the fridge, eating a chocolate bar I had frozen in there.  I gave her a scolding, and took her down.  But when I closed the freezer door, I saw my cake layers on the counter.  All three with big gouges taken out of them. 

I lost it.  Poor Abby had no chance.  She was exiled to her room until Mama was calm and rational enough to be nice again.  And that wasn't anytime soon.  Even when I finally let her out, I don't think I was over it.  The thing was, this cake was a little bit of work, so I might have had time to make another, but it would have pushed some other things off the list.  Also, it takes a lot of eggs, and I didn't have enough left. 

Mark ended up coming home early since him and his co-workers had a funeral to attend.  The house wasn't ready or decorated or anything at all when he got home, but I could get over that.  I was happy he came because it meant I could run to the grocery store for sugar because I ran out. 

Supper ended up being later, 6, though I guess it was actually at regular time, it just felt late because he was home at 5.  The table was not set with our nice dishes, there was no table cloth.  The girls were still in their random-clothes-thrown-on-in-the-morning-that-don't-match-at-all clothes.  I was at least in semi-clean jeans (ususally during the day I can be found in some kind of leisure pant) and a nice t-shirt.  I hadn't showered, and the girls didn't have their hair brushed.

I had prepared the meringue before we ate, but waited until after to ice the cake.  The meringue had actually turned out fairly well.  I waws glad because they can be finicky and I was worried it would flop.  Well I iced the cake, and the cake actually looked much better iced.  It hid all the holes and crumbling.  But I went to try my torch, and the lighter was empty.  And do  you think that any of the other lighters we had in the house would fit in the torch?  Of course not!  So I run out to 7-11 and pick up two more to try.  No such luck.  Mark even went out to find some and his didn't fit either.  So my browned meringue was not browned. 

I was soooooo disappointed.  I had worked hard all day and nothing seemed to work.  I think the only plan that materialized was that the living room was tidied.  The kitchen I tried to keep up on but I had run the dishwasher three times and still had dishes to wash.  Chicken Pot Pie takes a lot of pots.  I had washed my stand mixer bowl at least a couple times during the making of the cake as well.  All this work and things still didn't turn out how I wanted them to.  But I guess that is how life goes, right?  We can't count on anything, especially when we have little kids? 

I had wanted to make Mark's birthday special so he would know how special he was to us.  And he told me that night that his favourite part was when Abby gave him his cards and gift.  She gave him a kiss and a hug, and then another kiss.  Without either of us coaxing her.  It definitly was a special time, and I will have to make sure that that is what I remember.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Carnival of Homeschooling


Carnival of Homeschooling

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Dewey's Treehouse.  Go and take a browse through the submitted posts.  It's a nice read.