Almost 2010...........

I can't believe it is almost New Years Eve, and then we will be in 2010! It seems like just yesterday we were all freaking out about Y2K and thinking the whole world would crash at midnight. This year my DH is working, so it will just be my daughter and me to celebrate. We are planning a real high class affair....some pigs  in the blanket and a bottle of sparkling grape juice while we watch the ball drop at midnight on TV. On New Years Day, DH will be home so we are planning a small get together with some friends.

For the past 39 years I have had black eyed peas, ham, rice and collard greens on New Years Day. (Typical Southern tradition supposed to bring good luck, money and fertility) This year I want to do something different! To celebrate 2010, we are having chili and cornbread. A little unusual and I am sure rather strange in my Mother's eyes, but it will be fun.

So what about you? What are your plans for this New Year's Eve? What are your traditions? Are you doing anything different this year?

artwork courtesy of hubimages.com

A Yummy Breakfast Treat

A few months ago my bloggy friend Kate over at Cooking During Stolen Moments posted a recipe for yeast pull apart rolls. I have a family who LOVES bread in all shapes, sizes and forms, so I thought this recipe was perfect for us since it makes several batches of rolls at one time. I printed out the instructions and tried the recipe right away, with delicious results. The instructions state that this recipe makes 3 batches, but I usually get 4. I also looked at Kate's variations on the rolls and made a batch of the garlic rolls to go with spaghetti one night.

For Christmas Eve dinner, I made a batch of the rolls and made one big pan for dinner, one small pan for the freezer, and tried her variation of cinnamon breakfast bread. The bread was delicious, as expected, and we munched a slice for breakfast but it was quickly overshadowed by all of the other desserts that I made for dinner. (Red velvet cake, lemon cheese cake, pound cake, chocolate cake, ambrosia, and 2 kinds of cookies)

I found the bread two mornings later, in it's Ziploc bag, shoved behind the recipe box on my kitchen shelf. Being rather unorganized and scatter-brained (hey, it's a gift......) I was out of milk, eggs, bread, and poptarts. The aforementioned shortage made for one very UNHAPPY 12 year old girl. Luckily hubby is at work for the week on the river so he knew nothing of the food shortage. I rummaged around and decided I would try to do something with the leftover bread to tide us over until I dragged myself out of my pajamas and schleped to the store.

I came up with the following results, which I have to say were melt in your mouth GOOD!  With Kate's permission, I am sharing her recipe with my take on the leftovers. (View the original recipe here)

I mixed together 4 egg whites (left over from the lemon cheese cake which calles for only yolks)
                        3/4 cup evaporated milk (pantry item that I bought for pumpkin pie)
                        1 teaspoon vanilla
                        1 teaspoon cinnamon

I whipped these ingredients together, then dipped  the slices of the by-then rather stale breakfast bread in the mixture and fried them in butter spread substitute until golden. I served them with maple syrup and they were DEEEEELICIOUS! My daughter said she was glad we were out of everything and that I got creative!  Of course, on a good day I would have used 2 whole eggs and regular2% milk, but being a slacker this worked out pretty well anyway.

Try it and see what you think! I am sure this recipe will be a keeper for me!

Christmas Eve Communion

Since our church had Communion last Sunday instead of Christmas Eve, we had our family communion last evening. Jamie researched and found a great communion meditation on Christmas-past, present and future and how Christ is involved in all of those, from the stable to the table. He did such a great job! He is really a MIGHTY MAN OF GOD and I am so proud to have him as my husband.

We had my Mom and PaPa, Jamie's Dad and Kathy, Joe and Brenda and me, Marissa and Jamie present at our Communion Table. It was a very meaningful time. I hope that you and your family can and will take the time to do your own communion at home if your church does not host one during this time. It is a wonderful time to sit back and pause and reflect on what the season is really about.

For more of my thoughts on communion at Christmas, please read my guest blog post on Wanting What You Have.

Merry Christmas! I am so grateful to be able to celebrate Christ's birth and praise Him for what He has done, from the Stable to the Table.

What An Honor!

I have followed the blog Wanting What You Have for quite some time. Over the passage of time I have grown to love the author (Heather) and her family and feel as though I know them personally! Heather is in the last few weeks of her pregnancy with miracle child number 3, conceived through IVF, and is needing some time off from blogging so she can rest.  Imagine my delight when she asked me to guest blog for her today! I was so thrilled, and nervous too! I wondered how I could possibly live up to her standards, since she is one of the best bloggers I follow. I wondered what her readers would think. I prayed over it, and the Lord gave me specific direction for the post. Heather emailed to say she really liked it, and I hope you will too. Please leave your comments here and also on her blog here.

Friends?

HP was not my friend last night. Nor is HP my friend today. I am trying to simply print some pictures on my HP Photosmart 8150 printer to put in my Christmas cards. Easy, right?

Nope.

Pages print at a elderly disabled snail's pace.....and then only print halfway before jutting out of the printer as if they are done.

I have done all of the suggestion on the HP page, and finally broke down and called Tech Support. The kind gentleman who answered politely informed me that my warranty expired 1,437 days ago and the only way he could help me is if I pay $64.99 for  a year's worth of technical support. HUH?????

So I decide to see if my HP ink carts will fit in my daughters HP printer, and voila, they do.  But guess what? I get an error message that something is wrong with the black cart no matter what I do. It pops up an online message suggesting I call Tech Support.

I want to boot both printers out into the street and mow over them repeatedly in my car.

Wow how time flies. It seems only yesterday I had a newborn baby girl, all wrapped up in a white receiving blanket with blue and pink stripes stamped with "Balboa Naval Medical Center". It hardly seems like nearly 13 years have passed in the blink of an eye. My newborn baby girl has grown into a young lady, excited about the things life has in store while dealing with preteen drama and the heartache that friendships can cause. Just this past weekend we had an issue with a girl who called herself my daughter's friend.....and then coldly told her they were no longer friends because my daughter isn't "cool enough" to hang out with the "pops". (Lest this girl forget that just last week she was deemed "uncool" by the "pops")

I lie awake at night wondering what the future holds. Many of my readers do not know my daughter personally, so you have no idea of her accomplishments, dreams, goals, gifting and abilities. Let me say that my daughter is the greatest gift I ever received from God, a true delight, special in so many ways. A good friend once described her as a beautiful butterfly with large wings, that never quite fit in 100% with any group on this earth because of her special gifts and talents. We have to remember that Christ was never accepted, even by his own people, and that we are  set apart and destined for greatness by Him. We are warned not to be conformed to this world (and trust me, 7th grade "pops" girls are truly WORLDLY) so this should come as no surprise. But when you are 12, it hurts deeply.

All I can say is that those we reject my daughter and abuse her trust and friendship will be sorry one day. She is destined for greatness. Her day to shine is coming......

ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

While we were in Gulf Shores, my sister and I had the unusual opportunity to act like nuts  fools  idiots kids! Since we live 12 hours apart, it is unusual that we have much time together at all, especially time to goof off and act like complete crazy women! But something strange happens when two sisters meet up in Gulf Shores Alabama for a family vacation!

You won't believe what we did......

Yup. You got it. Not only did we ride this crazy wooden go cart track named Woody, but we rode it TWICE! The first time we rode was on Wednesday, and then we rode again when my brother in law got there on Saturday because it was so much fun.

Now please note that I am in the lead. I would like to say that I stayed in the lead, but actually, my sister's cart was faster than mine and she is probably about to pass me, about a lap ahead. She kept whizing by me at the speed of light it seemed.  (Yeah, that's it...her cart was faster. It has nothing to do with the fact that I am a big CHICKEN and kept slowing down before we came down the big spiral hill. Her cart was faster...that's my story and I'm stickin' to it!)

Band Christmas Concert

Tonight was Marissa's band concert. She plays clarinet. They played a song called "Twenty Carols in Two Minutes and her band leader (a real character!!!!) made the comment that anyone in the audience who could name all 20 carols after the song was played would win a prize. He went on to say that they had no prize planned, so the winner would get......um....the flute section! Yeah that's it!

Well, they did a great job, and after the concert I told Marissa that we were hoping to name all 20 because then we would get to bring home one of her best pals ( who plays the flute). I told her that seriously, they did a great job and I was very proud of her.

So without skipping a beat, Baby Girl says......

"Yeah, we should rent ourselves out for Bar Mitzvahs and stuff."

You gotta love it!

The Cost of Christmas????

The Savannah Morning News had an interesting article in the Exchange section today. It seems that someone with more time than the average person calculates the cost of buying the items named off in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" every year. The cost for this year is up less than one percent from last year, once you balance in the rapid rise of the cost of 5 gold rings and the falling prices of partridges, pear trees, geese-a-laying and swans-a -swimming. The costs are, as follows for 2009:

• one partridge $10.00
• one pear tree $149.00 (don't these people know you can get them for about $20 at WalMart or Home Depot???)
  
• Two turtle doves $55.98
• Three French Hens $45.00
• Four Calling Birds $599.96 (must be loud!)
• Five Gold Rings $499.95
• Six Geese-a-laying $150.00 (that is $25 each, cheaper than turkey this time of year. Christmas goose anyone?)
• Seven swans-a-swimming  $5, 250.00 (I SHOULDA JACKED SOME FROM THAT PARK IN SOUTH CAROLINA ON MEMORIAL DAY! I COULDA BEEN RICH!!!!!!!!!! WHO KNEW??????????)
• Eight maids-a-milking $58.00 (hmmmm.....cheap labor.....)
• Nine ladies dancing $5,473.07 ( WOW the milk maids should take dance lessons for more career opportunities!) *this price rose 15% from last year
  
• Ten lords-a-leaping $4,413.61 ( ok, so you get an extra guy jumping around for over a thousand bucks less than the girls dancing, and this price did not increase or fall from last year. Must not be much use for dudes leaping)
• Eleven pipers piping $2,284.80  *see below
  
• Twelve drummers drumming $2,475.20  (the cost per piper/drummer is just over $200 each, a value that may have many parents rethinking band instrument lessons next year)

The total cost of these items is $87,403.00
Seems a lot for some birds and people jumping around singing and dancing to me.

So what is the real cost of Christmas?
Is there a way to put a value on the real Christmas?
How much would it cost for a baby to be born that would one day save the entire world from it's sin and shame?
According to www.costhelper.com, in 2009 the birth of a child costs anywhere from $9,000-$25,000. This figure would vary depending on insurance,  whether it is a vaginal or cesarean birth, complications, and geographic location.

Over 2,000 years ago God paid for Christmas with the birth of His only Son Jesus, knowing full well that His Son would die for us on the cross at Calvary.

That is the ultimate cost of Christmas.
How will you thank Him this year?
Kind of makes 5 gold rings, Wii systems , and Plasma TVs look kinda silly huh?