Somehow it came. It came just the same!

Well Christmas is gone again. It comes so agonizingly slowly and rushes by so quickly. It comes and goes whether you're "ready" or not. This year was interesting.

I haven't been feeling by best and it's all been too hard, yet I've enjoyed this Christmas so very much. We didn't have any lights up outside this year. Probably for the first time ever, no lights. I'd made some ice lanterns to put out Christmas eve, but it was too warm and rainy so, nothing. The tree went up and stayed undecorated for many days. It was lovely and smelled amazing. Then one day I came home from work and Dan was putting lights on the tree. He got to the bottom and still had a handful of lights left so he tied them in a ball and hung them from the bottom. Then he took the garland that is so careful arranged each year into lovely swoops and just tossed it randomly all over the place. It was beautiful. Then I hung one ornament on the tree and "vi-ola" it was done. Best tree ever!

It's funny cause I worried about this and stressed about that but time just keeps ticking, you know? Like on Christmas eve. We had about 20 songs to play, but I watched the list sitting next to my music, checking the songs off one by one. Here I am to worship, check, joy comes with the dawn, check, silent night, check, o come all ye faithful, check.... and so on. Song after song, check after check, tick, tock , tick , tock. the evening passed.

So it's gone again and what do I remember. Well best tree ever! I love my boys. I love it when they are around, all of us together. I love seeing Charles so happy and the boys so goofy and mouthy. "Who's wearing the beard now? huh? huh? huh?" hahaha Maybe the trick is to just enjoy those I love and let time take care of the rest.

Random thoughts

I don't like to eat crusts on sandwiches cause they are dried out and crusty and yucky, but i don't like to eat the middles of pancakes cause the edges are where the crispy, yummy goodness goes.

you can't make yummy french toast with only one egg. You can't make pancakes with out milk. Cupboard mix needs extra butter and syrup to make it not taste cupboardy.

When you open a bag of white powdery stuff, like flour or pancake mix, it always goes poof, all over your counter, no matter how hard you try not to poof it. There should be a warning on the bag.

When you only have enough stuff to make a few yummy cupboard pancakes you gotta make em fast and eat em fast, least you have to share.

It you make em fast and eat em fast you also gotta clean up fast lest someone yell "What! There were pancakes?"

Christmas (no) time?

Ok.... The pies are done and the whipped cream bought. The chocolate cherries are in the can the Bailey's mocha truffles are ready to be rolled. The cookie dough truffles won't set so I'll have to add more white chocolate. The tree now has lights on it and garland, and one angel ornament. My music is in a binder and i still have to check that it's in the right order, and in the right key. I have to roast a chicken, peel potatoes, carrots, but first I have to clean the kitchen cause once again I'm knee deep in dishes. We have to either get Bob or drop him a car so he can come home. I should probably shower and make myself pretty for church, and remember to pick up Ann who wants a ride.

Lord, are we doing all of this stuff to celebrate your birthday? Well here's the thing. I'm too busy right now, so when this "Christmess" is all over, I'm gonna find time to show you how much I love you. Help me through this crazy time and for now I'll show your love in the quiet things I do that no one but you will notice. Happy birthday dear friend.

It's time, I guess

It's getting close to Christmas. I'm really not in the mood for it tho. I decided to haul out the under the bed Christmas stuff to dress the place up a bit thinking it's time, I guess. Charles and I put up the silver tinsel to hang the Christmas cards.......

My mom always mailed hundreds of Christmas cards. She just loved mailing them and getting them. I remember every year dad counting how many cards came and just smiling and shaking his head, feeling so lucky to have so many friends. So every year I send out about 30 cards or so. It gets more expensive every year, but I just can't help myself.

Then I put up the plastic canvas wreath my Reka neni made.....

She loved to do crafts and she'd make just about anything you can think of from plastic canvas. It amuses me to put up the cracked old things up. I picture her stitching and laughing. She had the best sense of humor, and always had chocolate in her purse for any kid that might be around.

I pulled out the advent wreath....

I made it years ago and it's falling apart, but still I just can't see parting with it.

I pulled out the place mats that mom Gale gave me and the calendar thingy and the ginger bread hanging thing that I made when the kids were little...

It's all up now. I still don't feel overly Christmasy, but it's kind of nice being surrounded by all of this old, cracked, and dusty stuff made by all of the people I love. I guess part of the Christmasy feeling is in the memories of loves gone.

Today I had a revelation!!! A couple of weeks ago we ran out of frozen peas. I didn't buy a new bag, and I have been missing having peas. Today I was in Almonte and I was wishing I had some peas cause I miss them so much and I'd love to have peas with supper. Then I had a brilliant idea. I could buy a new bag of peas!!! I don't have to be pea-less any more! Huzzah!

Tonight there will be some serious pea-ness going on at my house! There will be peas on my table! Oh yes, there will be peas!!!

Pientology....can I hear an Amen?

OK so my pientologist buddy Pam got all excited when she heard I was pie-ing today. (I made 2 tourtiere, 20 pasties, 3 pumpkin pies) She insisted I make something weird with my pie dough. We all know when Pam gets her hands on a hunk of pie dough she goes crazy, filling it with anything she gets her hands on, right? Pffftt well, I don't do weird.... however.....I had a hunk of dough left over. I was just about to toss it out when I heard in my heart the call of the pientologist.

So now I sit here smelling my three tiny appley pies who are happily baking in the oven. I rolled out my bit of dough, tossed in bits of apples and flour and sugar and butter, bits of this and hunks of that cause i don't really have a recipe for tiny pies. It amused me cause I took the left over bits of crusts and just draped it over the pies.

There is something to be said for pientology!

Surprise!!!

Ok so a couple of weeks ago Laurie calls me over at the post office and whispers "Are you doing anything on the 22nd?" I say "No why?" "We'll talk later" "ok" says I and off I go.

I get into the car with Brian and I ask him so what's up with Laurie and what's up on the 22nd? He says ""I dunno why? altho it is my birthday. Why is Laurie doing something?"

Oh man! I wrecked the surprise! I felt terrible! Well after many minutes of making me feel awful Brian laughs and says "Naw we just wanted to have you and the Pattersons, and the Beadman's over for a few drinks. hahahahahahaha"

He really had me going. Jerky McJerkerson! We Laurie felt kinda bad for me and decided it would serve him right if we surprised him. So she gave Kathleen, Holly and I instructions and we showed up at their place and decorated and I had made a banner, but half way thru the week Kathleen thought well you know Laurie's birthday is next week, we should just have a double surprise party! Brilliant!!! So that's what we did. We called all of the people back and told them it was a double surprise. It was too funny!

I found out last night, however, that most people seemed worried about me spoiling the surprise cause I ride with Brian every day and apparently when it comes to such things I'm the weakest link" ppfffttt!

But all this was just the intro for what i wanted to say. We played the best game of eat poop you cat last night ever!!!!! At some point the phrase "We're not out of the woods yet" turned into "heavenly tits" to which someone drew the nicest pair of tits floating in the sky you ever saw. And then someone decided that it must be "Lucy in the sky with diamonds"

Someone else, inspired by a story about Bob writing a paragraph that went something like...."the year was 1883 when suddenly...." Wrote a lovely piece about Pete Rose and his subsequent fall from fame. To which someone else drew an excellent picture of a base ball player behind bars surrounded by money, and so "to be or not to be" ended up being "Pete Rose"

And "humpty dumpty sat on a wall", after someone drawing a picture of a cracked egg and some sort of tube became "crack pipe" Hahahahahaha

Brilliant!

20 questions

So doing the mail is really boring. Brian and I talk about how our families are doing and what happened over the weekend, but after a while we run out of things to talk about. When you see someone everyday it's easy to get caught up really fast, so when we get bored we play car games. Yesterday we played 20 questions. It's actually really fun and the time passes very quickly. It messes up our concentration and we spend lots of time backing up to look into boxes to see if we put the right mail into the right box, but still the time goes by so much faster.

Ok so here was the start of one of our games....

Brian: Is it alive?
Me: No.
Brian: Is it dead?
Me No:
Brian: Is it a bird?
Me: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

P.S.

oh by the way....While we were camping we saw a sign put on the road by a bunch of yuppie parents. It said "Slow kids playing". This drove us nuts. Why do people do these dumb things like their kids are the most important in the world. It drove us nuts! We wanted to say a few things to them like.....

Teach your kids to look both ways before they cross the street and you wouldn't need a stupid sign!

And it they are too dumb to understand this concept better they get run over now before you get too attached to them!

Charles stated very loudly when we passed by "Oh look honey they have slow children there. No wonder they want people to drive slowly"

So when we were leaving, we drove by there so Charles could drive over the sign, but they had moved the sign. Oh well I guess they didn't like his slow children remark. hahahaha

Best camping ever!!!

OK OK OK so this weekend we went camping at Mew Lake Campground. Last time we went here I asked Charles what was the name of the lake at Mew Lake Camp ground. He laughed till he peed. Men!

This is the first time we've ever been here when it wasn't covered in snow as this is our winter camping place. The temp, was around 1, and raining off and on. We managed to get in a bunch of walks and fires and were camped next to the lake. It was lovely. But I think I might have a bit of a problem..... as I sat next to the fire and beside the lovely lake, eating my Dixie Lee chicken, thinking if only I had some kind of hand held device to play super mario galaxy this day would be perfect!!!!! Hhmmmm If only someone would invent a camping wii game I would never have to go outside!!!!

There was tons of wild life too. We saw eleven ruffed grouse, a whiskey jack, red breasted nut hatches, chick a dees, otters, ducks.... it was so nice. Also this place has the best showers ever! The floors are heated, so no matter how cold you get you can get warmed up and oh so toasty in no time.

We also went to a bunch of museums on our way out. There are great displays of animals, stuffed and in natural poses. That always cracks me up cause it is really beautiful and well done, but I bet it's not allowed any more. Still you could see them in their natural habitat and they hide critters all over. It was kinda fun.

I'll add pictures after when I down load them.....

Another wonderful Thanksgiving...burp...

Oh man!!! I really have to do this more than once in a while just to remember how to get on my blog. Really! They should have a "click here if you're a mom or an old person and can't remember what you had for breakfast" button!

Ok so I noticed that Bob is posting every day so we can keep caught up, well everyday except for the days he's missed. Ha! Even Pam our famous pientologist has posted so I really am gonna try to keep up.

We had a great Thanksgiving. Pam and Bob came home and Chuck was here. Marilyn, Eugene and Kyle were here too. I may have slightly miscalculated the size of turkey needed to feed 8 when I purchased that 28 pounder. We ate for 2 days, sent food home with 3 different people, made 3 large and 4 small turkey pies, soup tonight and the rest went into the freezer for a meal in a few weeks when I can face turkey again.

I just love it when all of the kids are here. They are so bright and silly. It was wonderful.

So.... up coming events.... Fran is coming tomorrow and we're gonna play for a few days. We'll be working on Mike and Joss's wedding quilt. Then Thursday the guys are coming to put in new windows. Saturday Charles sister is taking me to Westport for a spa day to celebrate my birthday coming up in a couple of weeks. That's right! Turning 50 folks! I'll need presents, lots of presents! And never mind those crappy cards that say this is your present, I want really presents! Go! Shop! Off you go! OH OH OH Guess what Pammy gave me for my birthday? She let me keep her Wii while she goes to Moose Factory for 6 weeks!!! (only in Canada would we have a factory for making mooses) Best present ever! And Charles got me that lovely vacuume. It's red!

Well that's it for this week. I'm not as ambitious as you Bob so I'l just try to keep up once a week. Unlike our Franny who's lost in cyberspace.

Bye for now. Love y'all
The swamp's the thing!

I'm baaaaacccckkk!!

OK! I just remembered I have a blog of my very own! Ha! Take that Charles!!! Ok so I'm supposed to be cleaning cause well the place is knee deep in yuck! And I was honestly cleaning my little heart out, but then I had to move my lappy, and thought I'd check my email, and then I remembered that I hadn't ordered that on sale fabric I wanted and then I checked my favorite blogs, (nothing new from Pam, Fran, or Bob, c'mon you lazy bums!!!) and then I remembered I have my very own blog!!! Wooo Hooo. So now I'm not actually cleaning but blogging, which is like cleaning but cleaning out my thoughts.....ooo that's deep!

I do get to use my new vacuum though, and that's exciting. There is so much dog hair in here that if the dog stands still I can't find him. It's too bad that it swirls around when you walk or it would be like having a really deep, plush carpet. Hey I should vacuum a message into it. Dear Charles, sorry about the mess.

Love Dianne.

My cake exploded!!!

Ok so I invited people over for tonight because I had a rum cake baked but not iced and I thought it would be fun to share with company. So I started making this icing that combines custard and sweet butter. I switched the sugar for brown sugar and turned it into a butter rum icing. OOooooo So I got out the cake which is a large roll that I baked yesterday. I unrolled it and that's when the first crack showed up. Hhmmm no problem, I can fix it. I started to slop icing on the cake and then another crack. hhmmm that's OK. so I keep spreading my icing and stick, crack, break, slop, big pile of icing cake bits, bad things, bad things. Cake gone, company still coming. OK OK OK think, what to do?? Time to invent a new dessert since I have all of the baked, raw ingredients.



So a broke up all of the cake that I hadn't yet smashed. (that didn't take long) I dusted a spring form pan with graham crumbs and then I just started smushing all of the bits and icing and stuff into the pan. Then I put a piece of plastic wrap on top and squished it flat. It's in the fridge getting firm. Then I will dump it onto a fancy plate and drizzle with chocolate (cause presentation is everything), and viola, dessert! I call it "Stuff a-la Dianne" hmmm or maybe "Blonde Bomb"