Easter Sunday

The fam

My girl

My guys

One last birthday photo

Ballerina birthday

My ballet-mad daughter got a complete ballet outfit including homemade tutu, some Angelina Ballerina dvd's and a ballerina puzzle for her birthday today. She wore her tutu all morning and when we got home this afternoon, immediately changed back into it.

Now she is showing Grandma how to do specific moves. I, for one, have never seen such lovely pirouettes...

She's 3 years old!

He sure is GOOD

Valentine tulips from my sweet love.

Last minute pressies

So, let's suppose you are the kind of person who had Valentine's Day covered back in January. If you are that sort of person, this post is not for you.
(And if you are family from central Illinois, why don't you come back sometime this afternoon and read this? No reason...)

If, on the other hand, you are scrambling about trying to figure out what you or your children can make in the next two hours for someone, here are some ideas...

Annalivia and I made these very simple bookmarks tonight. I cut the pieces out with pinking shears and applied the glue. She applied the ribbons and heart.

These are some hair decorations for my niece. She loves rainbows and hearts and pink and anything sparkly and girly. The idea came from Family Fun magazine. It was SUPER easy!

This is another hair thingy for my niece. It is an elastic band that I covered in a small grosgrain ribbon that we got at Hobby Lobby for 14 cents the other day. To make, you just cut a length of ribbon and fold it in half to make a loop. Place the loop against the elastic, then pull both ends of the ribbon through the loop. Tighten the loop against the elastic. Repeat until elastic is covered (and try not to stretch the elastic too much).

Here is final product.

These can be made in lots of different colors. I find that the sheer skinny ribbons work best. The grosgrain will tend to undo its loop and the thicker sheer ribbons need to be cut longer to work well and look nice in the hair.

And if you have just a bit more time to play around -- back to the pinking shear hearts -- if you have a lot of costume jewelry lying about, a couple of hearts can be fixed together with a pin. You may need to add a self-adhesive pin on the back. Annalivia was glad to help with that part, too.

If you have any ideas for last minute (or well-planned) celebrations, feel free to share them here!

The Birthday Boy

Daniel Robert Stewart

1 whole year old

What a big boy!

Random thoughts on the week ahead

Tonight Dennis is off to church to drop off the gumbo I made for an impromptu Mardi Gras celebration tomorrow. I invited the congregation and local clergy and families to stop by for gumbo, french bread and king cake during lunch. I intended to make gumbo for about 30, but somehow made gumbo for 100. I'd consider myself extremely blessed to have 30 people show up. My guests may not consider themselves blessed, though; they're all going to be required to take home gumbo.

I'm excited about Super Tuesday. Most of you know that I am wholeheartedly supporting John McCain. Some of you think I'm crazy. You're right about me being crazy. But not about this. Regardless of where one falls on the political spectrum, it is very, very good to be able to actually have our votes matter this year! I don't think I've ever been so excited to vote!

Anyway... moving on... the next day is Ash Wednesday and we will start our midweek Lenten service, Soup for the Soul. We are hosting it this week and I am in charge of making soup. It may be leftover gumbo.

This is one of my favorite times at church, partly because of the shear business of it, but also because it is a time to really hone in on how we are living out our faith in everday life. I just adore the whole vibe of Lent.

Dennis and I have been thinking a lot about what to do for Lent and came to a decision a few weeks ago after I got several books by Michael Pollan from Amazon. Our family is going to try a Lenten experiment of giving up as much industrial and processed food as we can without going broke. For us, this is going to mean eating as much organic produce and grains as possible and using organic and free-range meat very seldomly. Both he and I are kind of excited about it. We have been increasingly aware of the questionable way our country manufactures food with corn and its subsidized products being used in EVERYTHING. So we are going to see what it would be like to get off that merry-go-round.

We are, however, making an exception on Thursday, the second day of Lent, because our big boy is TURNING ONE!!! :( :( Everyday we are so grateful for this wonderful little being who has been entrusted to us. That he has been here a whole year is just amazing. Last year at this time, I was in hour 8 of the 39-hour labor marathon that brought him into the world. Crazy.

And on Friday, my incredibly generous and wondrous husband is going to take a half-day so I can go visit all my shut-ins in one fell swoop for the month. We'll see how that goes.

I have a feeling I'll be ready for Saturday.

Friday Five: February Celebrations

The RevGals have a new Friday five with an option -- Superbowl or Holy Days. My guess is most of us church nerds are choosing #2.

Candlemas/ Imbloc/ Groundhog day/ St Brigid's day- all of these fall on either the 1st or 2nd February.
1. Do you celebrate one or more of these?
I've never really known about any of them other than Groundhog Day until this year.

2. How do you celebrate?
Dennis and I usually try to watch Groundhog Day which is one of our favorite movies. That's been about it.

3. Is this a bit of fun or deeply significant?
It's been just fun. But this year, I learned about WHY we celebrate Groundhog's Day when we do. (Do you know this? It's 1/2 way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox!) And Candlemas suddenly made MUCH more sense and had more significance. In fact, I wrote my newsletter article this month on Candlemas. Sort of. So, we may have to find something to observe in the future. My inner Episcopalian really wants to jump on board these things.

4. Are festivals/ Saints days important to you?
Formal festivals -- not so much other than the big'ns. But, my mother was always GREAT at making any celebration special. I never knew any other kids who observed MayDay, but we sure did.

5.Name your favourite Saints day/ celebration.
St. Patrick's Day. We really only observe it and Valentine's Day. But my mom has the BEST St. Patrick's Day celebration I've ever heard of. And it involves no beer.
But it does have a Leprechaun Basket.
You?

The day ahead

It snowed a lot last night. It is one of those days that I would like to stay inside and read blogs, listen to podcasts and play with kiddos. But we need to go to church because, though I prefer not to recognize it most days, I am gainfully employed elsewhere. So I suppose I should get on with it.
More important than this being a snow day, it is my sistah Lil's birthday! Happy birthday, Lillia! I love you!

Recipe: Super easy King Cake. Sorta.

I wanted to make King Cake for Epiphany this year, but with a funeral yesterday and a secretary in the hospital all week, when we came down to it all last evening, it was almost a no-go. Then I remembered these rolls and came up with this variation. It worked great! And we had a very easy, tasty King Cake-ish for breakfast this morning!

King Cake. Sorta
1 package frozen dinner rolls
1 small package vanilla pudding mix
1 cup white sugar
1 stick butter, cut into thirds
orange extract
food coloring

The night before, grease a bundt pan or tube pan of some sort.Throw rolls into it.
Sprinkle vanilla pudding on top.
Then sprinkle sugar on the rolls.
Melt butter in batches, mixing the butter with food coloring (yellow, green and purple are traditional representing both the kings and power, faith and justice, respectively). Also add 1/4 -1/2 teaspoon orange extract (more if you love it).
Pour the butter over 1/3 of the rolls so that when finished you have a pan of rolls with three different sections of three different colorings.
Cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit at room temp overnight.
The next morning, insert a nut such as a pecan (or a coin or a baby Jesus charm if you want to be more authentic) before cooking.
Cook at 325 for 25-30 minutes.
Cool slightly and invert.
The person who gets the nut gets a crown. And maybe in the future, they'll get the rest of the family to wait on them for meals.

The singing nativity

As Christmas draws to a close...

"We are the song of the universe. We sing with the angelic host. We are the musicians...the stars are the singers. Our song orders the rhythm of creation."
- Madeleine L'Engle

Sing on, friends! Sing on!

Fast away the old year passes

Well, it's 2008.

Lord, I'm old.

We had a very nice New Year's celebration. It was Dennis and the kids and I on New Year's Eve. And on New Year's Day friends came over for dinner and to watch Illinois lose. :(

This morning, Annalivia woke up and announced that she needed to go pee-pee in the potty. Which she did all morning and afternoon until naptime. She must have run into the bathroom and hopped on the toilet about 50 times this morning. At least. But she kept those undies dry. I'm so proud of her.

I'm thinking about making some gentle resolutions this year. Is Jan. 2 or Jan. 3 too late to make resolutions? How 'bout Jan. 4 or 5?

And in other news, for the first time since Oct. 14, we have a tv plugged in at our house and in our main living area, no less. Right now I have it on while the kiddos are napping and I realized that, had I asked Dennis to move it in tomorrow evening instead of this weekend, I might have missed every single political ad for the Iowa primaries. Oh well.

In honor of Hogmanay

Bliadhna mhath ùr!

(Happy New Year!)

A sign of the apocalypse?

I kind of can't believe it, but for the first time in the ten years I've owned my little Christmas tree, it has been taken down before Epiphany.

And if I'm honest -- 10 days after Epiphany.

What does this mean?

A merry day

Hope y'all had a merry Christmas!

We had a great celebration. On Christmas eve, we had friends over for dinner and then we went to our respective churches for a 7 p.m. service. Our Christmas eve service went well and since we wanted to make it to the 11 p.m. service at the Disciples church across the river, we had the kids open up their presents from us. I had gotten a playhouse for Annalivia and a crawling tube for Daniel when they went on sale after the summer season at Target. I think I spent about $5 on them. They were both a big hit and entertained them pretty well!
We went to church though we were the only morons with children there. We've decided that we will definitely need to go to mass next year. Or the Lutheran version of it. Lessons and Carols is definitely not for kids. Annalivia stayed awake for the ENTIRE thing and was pretty antsy by the singing of Silent Night at the end. Daniel had fallen asleep on the way into the service and woke up as we were getting his coat back on as we were leaving. Annalivia fell asleep before we left the driveway of the church. Daniel took about a block longer.

After the kids were in bed, Dennis and I finished up the presents and exchanged gifts with each other. My sweet husband got me TWO Michael Buble cd's after I mentioned that I liked him a lot. I was really impressed. I also got the Bourne Ultimatum, thereby completing our collection, and some socks and another DVD, and a promise for a big present that is really, really generous. I did not expect that. He got a Carhart and a pair of jeans from me. And a picture collage of me and the kiddos for his office that I forgot to give him 'til this evening.

We were all pretty wiped out on Christmas morning. I was awake at 7 and was the first one up. I finally had to wake everyone else up a little before 8 because we needed to go to Eureka. The kids opened presents. Annalivia got a new baby doll and a wooden musical instrument set. Daniel got a wooden building block train and a wooden tool set. Annalivia immediately commandeered them.

We headed down to Eureka and got to spend some time with Grammy, Gramps and my great aunt, Audrey. I gave Grammy a lap quilt I had made on her sewing machine and Gramps got his customary Baby Swiss cheese from me -- a gift I've been giving him since I was in second grade. Aunt Audrey got homemade shortbread and tea.

Then Dennis and I took the kiddos out in the car to get them to take naps. They fell asleep pretty quickly, so we drove around the area and visited the open Walgreens and coveted farms near Eureka and saw a pretty lovely sunset.

When we returned to Mom and Dad's we had a great meal then opened more presents. We got some really great and useful stuff -- a dustbuster, towels and sheets, electric scissors, and an auto scanner that has Dennis over the moon. It was also just a lot of fun to give presents this year. My dad has learned how to roast meat, so I wrote out some recipes for him and gave him his very own roasting pan. The brothers in law got microbrews and homemade pretzels and nuts. My sister Roo makes great pancakes, so she got multigrain pancake mix and fixings. Kalin got sorority letters that I had my mother-in-law resurrect after I murdered them. And Dennis made my sister Lil a bunch of luminaries from mason jars that we put out at her big, gorgeous house after she left and then lit before she and Jake came home. Mom's present from me is not finished, but Dennis and Jake gave the gift of coordinating a sidewalk-replacement project at the farm next summer. It was just a lot of fun to give presents that mean something. I need to remember this for next year.

We got to sing some carols, which was great, although we didn't get to sing very long. My favorite part of carol-singing was the contribution of my niece, Cleya. She doesn't know the songs or the tunes but still sings VERY loudly in an "ah" with a very sweet and serious expression on her face. It is hilarious. She can sing louder than an entire room of adults. My sister says she does this in church all the time. I would love to be there.

We left really late from Eureka and got home two hours later. I think I fell asleep before the kids. I was SO tired and dear, sweet Dennis drove us home safely, though he had to be as tired as I. We got the kids in bed and dumped the presents on the couch and fell into bed.

And today, Dennis went to work at 5:30 and the kids and I just kind of decompressed, although I will admit, ashamedly, that I was very grumpy mommy today. But Dennis is off for a whole week now and tomorrow is Sistah Hang-Out time and Friday is the McClure family gathering and Saturday is the Stewart gathering and Sunday is church and Monday is New Years' Eve. And somewhere in here a goddaughter to both of us may be born.

So. I may take the week off. I hope everyone out there enjoys these days of Christmas! Blessings to you and yours!

Crrrrrrruuuuunnnncccchhhhh!

Only five days left.
One meeting.
One funeral.
One pageant rehearsal.
One Christmas pageant.
One extra service.
One concert.
One dinner out with my love.
One dinner to host.
Far too few presents wrapped.
Even fewer bought.

But no sermon.
God is so good.

A sign of personal maturity

The Advent calendar with Dove dark chocolate behind each door is actually a day behind. This never happened when I was younger.

Happy Birthday to my sweetheart!

Today, my sweet love is 38 years old. Because Dennis' company has a very generous "birthday-holiday" policy, Dennis has today off. He's finishing a take-home exam and being climbed on by his children.
He has gotten some good presents -- the hat and shirt in the photo above and an iPod. When he took out the earbuds from the iPod, he went to put them in his ears, then paused and said, "When I put these in my ears, I will immediately become a black silhouette." He may be old, but he sure is clever.
He thinks the best present is to spend time with his little ones and me. And we agree. We are so blessed to have this man in our lives. Happy Birthday, love.

Note: I just want y'all to know that I fully realize that I post terrible photos here. Just don't click on them. Then chalk it up to photographic ignorance and inordinate hubris. And, please, accept my apologies.

Lucia Nights

Tonight we went to Bishop Hill to do our traditional eating-of-da-Swedish-meatballs at Lucia Nights. We met my sistah, Lil, and her family and my dad there. We had a great meal at The Red Oak and then headed out into the snow-covered village to enjoy the little shops.

At each one, we were greeted by a Lucia with a crown and homemade cookies.

We saw many a Swedish Christmas tree.

And more of... well, whatever these are...than could possibly ever be sold.

The only odd thing was that the Nova Singers weren't performing for some reason. And their frigid performance in the Colony Church has been a part of Christmas for so long for our family, that I was kind of saddened by that. But the night was lovely and, other than the lack of a concert, perfect for a candlelit evening at Bishop Hill.