This blog and I are another year older today. I thought I would share a few pictures from birthdays past.
When I think back to some of my childhood birthdays, I think of cakes. My grandma would often make our birthday cakes. We'd ask her to make the cake a specific theme and she'd try her best to do so. The cakes probably weren't anything special to a cake decorator, but to us, they were awesome.
C loves to help cook. I'm not sure if she loves it because there's always the possibility of getting messy, or because she loves food and realizes that helping usually means sampling. For C's class Valentine's party, we made marshmallow truffles. I came across this really simple recipe on the Kraft website and knew it would be the perfect thing for us to make. Nuts are not allowed in the school, so we improvised and tested out some other options. Sprinkles, coloured sugar, Oreo cookie crumbs and drizzled pink chocolate (which ended up looking more like candle wax than chocolate). We also experimented and used mint chocolate chips instead of bitter-sweet to coat some of the marshmallows. These ones were really yummy, but the chocolate didn't coat the marshmallow as nicely as the bitter sweet chocolate. Next time we make them, (and we don't have to be concerned about nut allergies) we'll probably try some coconut and chopped nuts. Any other suggestions?
Here's a story from my pre-blogging days (Spring 2006) that I thought I would share here.
C has become quite fascinated with rainbows.
On Saturday night we drove to the lake. Saturday had been a cloudy and rainy day, but as we got closer to the lake...we got closer to being out from under the cloud cover and we could see the sun shining. Perfect conditions for seeing a rainbow. So I said to C...
"It's raining and the sun is shining...we might be able to see a rainbow."
So we watched out the car windows, searching for a rainbow. It was during this time that I over heard C praying quietly as she looked out her window.
"Dear Jesus....please put a rainbow in the sky...amen."
Then she announced quite loudly and confidently...
"Jesus is going to put a rainbow in the sky!"
I searched the skies harder. After hearing her prayer, I really wanted her to see a rainbow. Within a few minutes I spotted a rainbow out C's window and yelled at hubby to stop. We pulled into a parking lot so that we could point the rainbow out to C. She was so excited to see her first rainbow. As we left the parking lot, I heard C say...
"Thank-you Jesus for putting a rainbow in the sky".
It is so neat to see that God cares about the prayers of a 4 year old who wants to see a rainbow. And to see Him answer her prayers with an awesome rainbow. A rainbow that was vibrant and arched high in the sky, unobstructed by clouds or buildings. You could see the entire rainbow from one end to the other. It was beautiful.
"I'm going to move in with H and S (two friends from school) when I'm 20. We're going to live on a farm with a cow, 3 dogs, 13 pigs and 100 cats. H wants to have 90,000 babies. I don't want to have any babies or get married...just have a boyfriend."
"Why don't you want to get married?"
"I don't want to have my stomach stapled. Will you live with me?"
"...Sure."
For some reason she associates babies (stomach stapled) with getting married...to the point where she's seen a bride in a park getting pictures done and asked if that's the girl having a baby.
To start the new year off, I thought I would post a few pictures and stories from 2008 that I never got around to blogging about during the year.
In February, hubby was invited to speak at a Father and Daughter Banquet at a local church. I thought I was going to have a nice quiet evening at home, but about 15 minutes after they left, hubby called home. He had forgotten his shoes and asked if I would bring them to him. Not such a hard task except...it was snowing quite hard out and I was driving a vehicle I wasn't accustomed to (my in-law's truck which was on loan to us while they were on vacation). I had to drive though the country...following the car tracks in front of me because the road was covered in snow. I slid a few times and was quite frazzled by the time I arrived at the church with hubby's shoes. I told him he owed me.
I found a really neat book at Winners about how to make different types of puppets as well as a puppet theatre. I taped a couple of cardboard boxes together and covered them with tissue paper. C and her friend had a blast painting the theatre and sticking stickers to it. The book showed curtains made out of tissue paper but I figured I could string a cord across the top of the box and hang some real material curtains. I found some scrap material and set about sewing the curtains on C's toy sewing machine. I became a little too zealous on the sewing machine and ran over a pin which broke the machine. The curtain project was put on hold...and the theatre boxes ended up being used for everything besides a puppet theatre...eventually ending up in the garbage.
A highlight for C during our regular hospital visits where the nights that the Therapy Dogs visited my mom's floor. The owners would ask for C when they arrived and she would follow them around...wanting to pet the dog, hold them, or feed them treats. I think the requests for a pet became much more persistent after getting exposed to these dogs.
For C's birthday, we made a pinata. I know I could have purchased a pinata, but I figured that C would enjoy making one since she loves getting her hands messy. What I didn't factor in was that she also likes getting her legs, feet, arms and face messy too. After the first layer of mache was applied, I was starting to regret the idea. There was glue everywhere...including all over C, who for reasons unknown to me, rubbed it all over her arms and legs.
Our church has started a kids club program that runs on Wednesday nights and I've been coordinating activities, as well as running some of the craft nights. In addition to making garden stones, painting T-shirts, puppet making, and cooking, the kids also practiced for a number of weeks and performed their first drama. I was very impressed. I've enjoyed running the craft nights with the kids and I learn things every night. I've learned which kids are the tactile kids and must be monitored during painting activities. I've learned that it's not obvious to everyone that glass should not be put into a garden stone sticking straight up. But most of all, I've learned that kids love the freedom to be able to express themselves artistically the way they want to...even if it means drawing a knight inside a Christmas card, or painting around dots.
C lost her first tooth in July, and has lost 2 others since then. She was so excited to lose her first tooth...an event she had been talking about for months leading up to the day it finally came out. She asked me straight out if the tooth fairy was real and I told her "No"...but she didn't believe me and wouldn't put her teeth under the pillow in case the tooth fairy took them.
I loved Little House on the Prairie when I was young. I've seen every episode of the TV show multiple times and have read and own all the books. This fall, C has fallen in love with Little House on the Prairie too and after watching a couple of shows, brought the book home from the library (she didn't know I had them already) for us to read to her. It's a nice change of pace from reading her picture books all the time.
In November, we went to baby Faith's 1st Birthday Party. A party to celebrate a miracle as a year ago, Faith was on life support, her body organs shutting down and the doctors giving her no chance of survival. Read these links (here, here and here) for an amazing miracle story. C insisted that she had to make Faith a blanket for her birthday...which ended up turning into a pillow after she stitched the sides together and filled it with fiberfil. She was so proud of it and couldn't wait to give to Faith. This is the second home-made present she's made recently...the first being a 2x3 foot "picture frame" she made out of twigs taped together for a 16th birthday party.
I finished C's stocking about a month before Christmas. She loved it and was so excited to have a fancy stocking with her name on it. I found the kit last year after Christmas and started working on it during my hospital visits but it got shelved half done when C and I started making cards.
For Christmas this year, C gave hubby a race track (so they can race cars together) and a "#1 DAD" key chain with a basketball and net engraved on the back (Basketball is hubby's favourite sport). Chloe was so excited that she said she didn't think she could keep it a surprise until Christmas. She loved the key chain and I thought I might be getting a key chain too after she asked me...Can you take Daddy and I back to that store and then leave for an hour?
Last week, C and I made a gingerbread village. I’m not sure what I was thinking when we chose the village kit over the single house kit. I certainly wasn’t thinking that 5 tiny houses would be a lot harder than one large house. The packaging was deceiving. The picture on the outside of the box made the house look larger than the tiny pieces of gingerbread that were included in the box.
Assembling the ginger bread house didn’t start out on the right foot…I broke part of the church roof. I didn't realize the gingerbread pieces would snap apart easily and I had tried to use a knife to split them apart.
After assembling the houses it was time for C to go to bed...we would have to wait a few days before we would have time to decorate them. I followed the instructions and covered the unused icing with a damp cloth. Over the next few days I would dampen the cloth whenever I noticed it was bone dry not realizing that all the moisture in the damp cloth was seeping into the icing. By the time we were ready to decorate, the icing was quite runny. I had to add lots of icing sugar to try to get it back to the proper consistency. Now we were ready to decorate.
We had only been decorating for a few minutes when...the icing bag blew the tip out...I must have cut the hole too big. The kit did not come with extra icing bags...just a bag for each of the 3 colours. So...I tried to improvise with a dollar store zip lock bag by cutting a hole in the corner, inserting tip and then filling the bag with icing. All that work for nothing, the bag blew a hole on the first squeeze. With no other options left, I had to use the icing bag reserved for another colour. This time, I made sure to cut the hole smaller.
This is the third year that C and I have made a gingerbread house, and we have never had issues with the icing bags. So, I was quite shocked when after only a few minutes of decorating...the 2nd icing bag blew a hole in it. GRRRR. Now what? I didn't want to use my last bag for the white icing. So...I resorted to duct tape. Hubby was skeptical but humoured me anyway and retrieved the duct tape for me. I taped around the bag where the hole was....and away I went. The tape held for the entire time I needed to use the white icing. It also held the green icing bag together when it too blew a hole. I now have a whole new appreciate for duct tape.
A couple of weeks after my mom's funeral, I came across the song Homesick by Mercy Me on one of my CDs. The words really spoke to me as they summed up really well how I felt about losing my mom. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
In case you wonder, here's a link to the story behind the song.
