Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all! Here it is nearly 8 o'clock on Christmas Eve. I have a half hour before we go to church for Christmas Eve Service. It is one of my favorites, always a bit different, but always full of Christmas Carols, songs thanking God for sending a way for an imperfect mankind to live with Him forever. None of us is perfect, and the Babe we see at Christmas grew to take our sins away....if we only ask Him to.

We didn't do much shopping this year. Just a few things for the Grandchildren and kids. As usual, Mr. Scottie Dog and I will exchange a small token. Our real joy comes from seeing the joy in the Grandkid's eyes. Today Beka Skyped me from Ottawa, Canada where they are spending Christmas with Jason's family. At one point Jakob (nearly 4 now) ran up shouting over and over again, "Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas," as if tomorrow morning would come faster if he said it a certain number of times. He did throw me a kiss and his eyes lit up when he saw my face on the computer screen.

Today I did a tiny bit of grocery shopping, went to the Scottie Dog Store and helped Liz out for just a bit. She's cooking most of tomorrow's feast...breakfast included. I came home and made a Banana Cream Pie.....a pretty awesome one too. My secret....use half & half instead of my usual skim milk! Tomorrow's a Feast Day...splurge a bit! Funny how for years I've used skim milk for everything and they always turned out OK. Not fabulous, just OK. Now they turn out fabulous. But only for Feast Days.

I cheated and bought an apple pie and a Christmas Stollen. Stollen is a family tradition in Bill's family. I've made it many times and it always turns out great. But the recipe starts out with 12 cups of flour. Do you have any idea how much stollen 12 cups of flour makes? I have tried to half the recipe twice with poor results. Joan, one of our quilting budies owns Cherry Blossom Bakery in Henderson Center, Eureka and she told me last month they were making Stollen this Christmas. AHA! This year we'll have our Stollen sliced thin and toasted with coffee or tea while we open the gifts tomorrow morning. Liz is making berry cobbler so we'll have a feast. Sydney most likely won't eat, she'll just open gifts.

After making tomorrow's pie I fixed a special little dinner for Mr. Scottie Dog and I to eat in front of the Christmas Tree. I got a crab, picked the meat and made Crab Melts on Sourdough Bread and home made clam chowder. Umm, Ummm, Good!

Off to Church in just a few minutes so let me wish all of you a very Blessed Christmas. May the Christ child find you this season! God Bless you all.


Love,

Cousins at Play

When I was a little girl (about a hundred years ago!) my dad would read me the Sunday Comics. We lived in LA and the LA Times had a very large Sunday comics section. Dick Tracy had this fantastic watch.....I think it was his 2-way wrist radio. In 1971 the college I attended had a computer (just one). They had to remodel TWO classrooms in order just to HOUSE the computer. It was that big. Flash forward to 1973 when Mr. Scottie Dog was then working for Radio Shack. I remember he called several people he knew because technology had finally reached the future.........Radio Shack had come up with a 4-function, hand-held calculator that could add, subtract, multiply and divide for ONLY $129.99!!! And people ran down in droves to scoop up those calculators. A few years later one of our friends had a watch with a calculator under the face....Technology on the march into the future. Now they give away calculators that do more than that early Radio Shack one! And it's the size of a credit card!
In 2008 my 3 1/2 year old granddaughter Sydney "plays" regularly with my 2 1/2 year old grandson Jakob. Not unusual you say? Well, it is, because they live 1578 miles apart! Sydney lives in Eureka,CA and Jakob lives in Savage, MN. Here they are on Tuesday. They show each other their puzzles, sing together and chatter. What is funny is that the kids were busy chatting here on Skype and their moms (MY kids, Beka & Liz) were chatting away on the telephone.
Grandparents---if I haven't convinced you yet: RUN, DO NOT WALK TO YOUR COMPUTER AND SIGN UP AT http://www.skype.com/.

BTW....skype doesn't pay me.

Grandbabies Far Away

What's a Grandma to do? This grandma misses her g'babies so far away in the land of Minnesota. Of course I miss my daughter and son-in-law too, but I can talk to them.
The grandbabies, Mercedes & Jakob I want to SEE, I want to CUDDLE, I want to KISS them! I want to hear their laughter. I want to BE THERE IN PERSON. I want them to KNOW me.
Beka does a great job of taking pictures. She always has her camera nearby and documents most every day for me. How big is little Sadie getting? According to the picture, she fits nicely in a box of Baby Wipes. Well, carton of wipes! Isn't she darling? Such a little pixie at almost 7 months old. Her smile could melt the hardest of hearts!

Then there is Jakob--2 1/2 and all boy, all joy, all never-ending energy! He's enjoying everything that summer in Minn. has to offer......hot, hot, hot and playing in the pool, running, jumping. He is all boy. Jakob moves at top speed. Most of his pictures involve movement. It's fun to be able to see him in the pool wearing the swim suit we got at Target when he was visiting in May. Grandpa and I are eagerly anticipating our long visit to Minnesota late September.

Do you know about Skype? (http://www.skype.com/) It's the greatest FREE thing there is for Grandparents. You need a microphone for your computer and a web cam (camera). Both can be found very inexpensively at Staples or Radio Shack. Even THIS grandma can do it. SKYPE? It is a FREE program you download and it allows you to talk to others a world away WITH VIDEO! This means I can read Jakob a book or sing him a song or just chat. Sometimes I watch him play with his trains. Once I "sat" in Beka's kitchen and chatted with her while she made banana bread. This is the 21st Century way to keep in touch with family and friends who are far away.
When Beka and Jason and Jakob were in Kiev, Ukraine for nearly a year, I could touch base with them nearly every evening...of course they were eating breakfast because they were half-way around the globe. Jakob knew who I was when I arrived for his 1st birthday since he'd seen me and heard me every day. It's the next best thing to being there. I can coo to Sadie and she giggles back. Makes having grandbabies far away not so hard on Grandma's heart.