Being the Crazy Country Cousin at the Family Christmas

I hope my Christian friends have had a Merry Christmas, my Jewish friends are having a wonderful Hannukah, my African-American friends are having a good Kwanzaa...and, lest I forget, Happy Boxing Day!

My family (husband, 2 sons, daughter, dog) and I travelled from Kentucky to Texas to be with his Mother and her husband for the holidays. I needed to rest up a couple of days after our journey because I had to drive the entire 900-odd miles of the trip.

Once Friday hit, preparations began in the kitchen and the rest of the house for the Christmas-day feast. Twenty-three family members were expected. We knew they could all fit comfortably in Grammy's house because she had just thrown a Christmas party for 60-plus people the weekend before. Most of our apartment in Kentucky would fit in her garage.

My in-laws (on my husband's mother's side) are some pretty amazing folks. She is active in several historic societies (think DAR); her husband did two tours in Viet Nam, and lost both legs and an arm there, and came back to earn two PhD degrees, retiring only recently from the DAV. One of her sisters recently purchased a house for herself so she can be separate from her husband when he drinks too much. The other sister will not medicate for her schizophrenia, because she believes the doctors are trying to poison her. Despite this, she has managed to maintain working for the same company her entire adult life. Their children and grand-children have achieved similar worldly success.

And then there is me and my family. We chose to move from Texas (where I was working for the City of Fort Worth) to Kentucky. We chose to homeschool our children. I chose to work outside the scope of my degree (B.S. in finance, magna cum laude) because I realized it was not where my heart was. None of this makes sense to most of my in-laws.

The most fulfilling job I ever had was working with adults who have mental retardation and developmental disabilities. Success there is measured in the smallest of increments, and are things that most of us do without a thought, but these simple lessons can open worlds for people. Unfortunately, I was injured twice in 2010, while intervening when a client was attempting to hurt herself or others. I can no longer lift people the way I used to, and after surgery on my knee, have difficulty negotiating stairs. Most of the time, I don't dwell on what I've lost; but in the last few days, in the face of so much commercial success...it's been a little harder than usual.

How do I move forward? I recommit myself to my core beliefs and philosophies. I review and reconfigure my goals as necessary. Then I give myself a little shove to get myself moving.

My core beliefs and philosophies: faith in God, commitment to family, using my talents and abilities to help people help themselves, nourishing my body and soul in a healthy manner. Your beliefs may look similar or not...and that's ok.

My goals revolve around: increased spiritual study, continuing to homeschool my children through the high school years, using my writer's voice to highlight causes near and dear to me, eating and exercising in a way to lessen my hereditary health risks, and feeding my soul with artistic endeavors. Your goals may look similar or not ... and that's ok.

Getting going? Uh, sorry, this one is pretty much universal...in the end, we all make a choice to get moving or stay still.

So what gets you going? Or keeps you going? And why? I'd love to hear your story!

Blog Dare - A Favorite Holiday Recipe

The prompt for today is "a favorite holiday recipe". Every year growing up, we made a variety of cookie recipes, usually the same ones every year, although the decorated sugar cookies made when we were young children were eventually phased out. We made Russian tea cookies, "vanilla" and chocolate sour cream cookies, and the recipe I'm going to share here today, "Lebkuchen".

Lebkuchen have to be made several days to weeks ahead and mellowed, because about 5 minutes out of the oven and those little suckers will break teeth! This is not the recipe my mother used, which was in a Betty Crocker cookbook she received for her wedding to my father in 1957, but it comes close. It is from AllRecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/3 cup diced candied citron
• 1/3 cup chopped hazelnuts
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar

Directions

1. In a medium saucepan, stir together the honey and molasses. Bring the mixture to a boil, remove from heat and stir in the brown sugar, egg, lemon juice and lemon zest. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, allspice and nutmeg. Add the molasses mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well. Stir in the citron and hazelnuts. Cover dough and chill overnight.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets. Using a small amount of dough at a time, roll out on a lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into small rectangles and place them 1 inch apart onto the prepared cookie sheet.
3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until no imprint remains when touched lightly. Brush the icing over the cookies while they are still hot and quickly remove them to wire cooling racks. Store in airtight container with a cup of orange or apple for a few days to mellow.
4. To make the icing: Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan. Heat to between 234 and 240 degrees F (112 to 116 degrees C), or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms a soft ball that flattens when removed from the water and placed on a flat surface. Remove from heat and stir in the confectioners' sugar. If icing becomes sugary while brushing cookies, re-heat slightly- adding a little water until crystals dissolve.

While you are waiting for the cookies to mellow, you can use the link at the top of the page to find more great recipes from other members of the Blog Dare group at Bloggy Moms!

Liebster Blog Award

A great big Thank you!!! to Smarty Pants Fun Printables for awarding me the Liebster Blog. I feel priveleged. Smarty Pants has all kinds of great paper crafts for kids on her site. As a crafty, type mom who homeschools, I really appreciate resources such has her site. My favorite is the Fall Harvest Pumpkin craft. Check it out!

An award like this is meant to be passed on. Here's how it works.

In case you are not aware, this award spotlights the up and coming blogs that have less than 200 followers.
By accepting this award, I get to:

1. Copy and paste the award on my blog. Copy and paste this post as your new post to announce you have won, but edit to fit you.

2. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to me. (the link is at the top)

3. Reveal my top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

4. Hope that followers will spread the love to other bloggers.

Here are some notable mom blogs that you really should check out::

Insomniasms

The language on this blog is not for the easily offended. There is even a gateway into the blog giving you the opportunity to opt out, should you choose to do so. But I appreciate her candor and her forthrightness.

Logistically Large

This blogger is mother of a blended family with ten children. Wow. I have trouble with my three, so I have to find out how Crystal does it!

4Eighteen

For the terminally domestically challenged like me, this blog is a godsend. I might actually be able to have people over someday!

Lala musings

I found this blog through a hop and at first did not know if the post was serious or not. It took me a while, but I finally got it. :O)

Making Our Life Matter

The title says it all. It doesn't matter what your family situation is, you can make it matter.

Let's keep the blog love going, ok? Take care of yourselves out there.

Back to It

NaNoWriMo is down (11:15 am eastern US) but I have 2,210 words today for a total of 12,903 words. Even though I took the day off yesterday, and did no NaNo writing at all, I'm still at 1843 words per day each of the 7 days so far, so above the average needed to complete 50K words during the month.

NaBloPoMo prompt:

Monday, November 7, 2011
Making family time is important to me. How do you balance your children, relationship, and work life?

My boys were actually one of the bigger problems presented when I started this month of concentrated writing. They love to come up and tell me things about what they are learning (we homeschool) or want me to "come look Mom" at something they found on the computer or in a book. I've had to put my foot down a little that when I'm "doing my writing" that I get time to concentrate, but that I will be happy to "check it out" later. And I do make time each day to spend time with each of my 3 kids. DD (age 8) still comes out in the morning and wants to cuddle for a few minutes in Mommie's lap...and I let her, because, really...how much longer is THAT going to last?

DH and I have been together for about 15.5 years now, married for almost as long. We met online in an RPG back in the mid-90's. We can probably count the number of "dates" we've had on the the fingers of two hands. This is a little sad and something that I would like to change. But it has worked for us so far. Why? We communicate and accept each other as we are. Sometimes it's the flip side of that coin and probably no one else would put up with some of our foibles for as long as the other one has. We're not the perfect couple, but we're not bad either. I think maybe a difference is that we are committed to each other and to our 3 children, and believe marriage is not a magic happy pill.

I want to say at this point that I have read some heart-breaking blogs from single moms of late where I believe it was a good thing that the marriage did not survive, whether the biological fathers of their children slinked off to avoid paying child support or whatever the problem was. And I know there are some women who can be just as bad. Argh, I'm beginning to stumble over my words, trying not to piss anyone off. So I'm just going to stop.

Hurrah! Something positive on which to focus!

I am grateful for our pets today. We have a dog named Sneakers and a kitten named Whiskers. Sneakers came to us as a puppy from someone giving her and her siblings away in the WalMart parking lot. Our daughter had the job of naming the dog and came up with "Sneakers", after the dog I had growing up (who actually looked more like she had sneakers on...four little white feet on a black and brown body). This Sneakers is a lab, chow etc mix and looks like that little puppy that does the toilet paper commercials.

When we come home from a trip or errands, we always make a joke about who is going to open the door, because Sneakers can just about known down an adult with the exuberance of her greetings. She is obedient and does not leave the yard unless one of us do on foot. She always lets us know when someone is at the door.

The most endearing quality, though, is that when one of us is sick or otherwise "down", she will come and lay on the couch, bed, or floor and put her head on some part of the body and just about not move...like moral support.

Whiskers is our newest addition. She and the dog get along amazing well, considering.... She has turned into a good mouser, which, on the outskirts of small-town Kentucky is a good thing. I just wish she would not leave her prizes in the middle of my bed. Ugh. I usually have to get DH or DS1 to take the thing outside, because touching one gives me the willies.

Whiskers purrs at the slightest touch and brings out the tender side of my sons, who are normally teenage boys in thought, word and deed. And that is golden.

I love blog hops. What can I say? :O) Here is one I found after a google search on "monday blog hops" a little while ago. It is my first visit to Meet Me Monday and there are 28 entries so far. For those who don't know me (which is probably pretty much everyone on that hop, I'd imagine)...

I am an invisible woman, wife, homeschooling mother of 3, erstwhile assistant to adults with mental retardation/developmental disabilities, writer, 2011 NaNoWriMo/NaBloPoMo/Gratitude Challenge participant, and proud Kentuckian.

Oh, and my coffee cup is empty. I'm gonna go fill it up and I'll "cy'all tomorrow". Take care.

Day Off

NaNoWriMo - day off

NaBloPoMo - well, call it cheap, but this is my post for today.

2011 Gratitude Challenge -

I am grateful for my brother today. Since I moved away from Salt Lake City in June of 1997 with my husband and (then only one) child, he has had the lion's share of care for our aging mother. He had put his life on hold, postponing finishing his master's degree in music at the University of Utah in order to at first care for her at home, and later, manage her affairs when she required more intensive medical intervention. Our mother passed away in March of this year, and he handled everything connected with her death and will sell the house within the next year, 95 percent of this on his own. I know it has been a wear on him. I wish we could have been closer so I could have taken some of the weight from him.

But my in-laws have medical issues of their own where we live now. My husband's Mamaw is a year older now than my mother was when she passed. Mamaw still lives at home, but needs a lot of in-home care. FIL (my father-in-law) now in his 60's has a host of medical issues related to a life of hard work.

I am a most fortunate woman.

Slow Saturday

UPDATES:

NaNoWriMo:
I wrote 2,269 words today, about being transferred to Home 6 and some of the ladies who lived there. My NaNoWriMo total stands at 10,693 words.
NaBloPoMo:
Today's prompt:
Oopahdoo, I forgot they don't give prompts on NaBloPoMo on the weekends.
2011 Gratitude Project:
I am grateful that God built us in day of rest. I planned out my NaNoWriMo so I could take Sundays off and still be done on time. Now I just hope I can do it...take a day off. Not my best thing.

Friday Fun

Updates:
NaNoWriMo: added 2,162 words today for a total of 8,424. Today the writing seemed to go with the differences between management's talk and walk. Kind of an Orwellian, "some people are more equal than others". Ugh. Had to remind my well-meaning 14 yr old son that while I am writing, I would prefer not to have interruptions talking about cross-over fan fiction (between a tv show and one of his computer games). I told him he could, however, interrupt me for emergencies and hugs.
NaBloPoMo:
Today's prompt:

Friday, November 4, 2011 When you are writing, do you prefer to use a pen or a computer?

OMG, I have to use a computer. My mind races two or three ideas ahead of the pen sending out words onto the paper, so much so that oftentimes a word from one idea will somehow be mashed into the word from another idea, making up a whole new, utterly unrecognizable word. (I wonder if that's how Shakespeare introduced like 10,000 new words to the English language.)
I guess some of it has to do with the purpose of the writing. If I am writing a letter, I much prefer pen and paper, especially if that paper is self-decorated and possibly even self-made.
2011 Gratitude Challenge:
I had thought of something really good earlier this morning when I was outside with our dog, Sneakers. But when it came time to write about it, it had flown the coop. So I went outside to try and remember it by retracing my steps. That idea is still in hiding, but another one came out. I am grateful that we have food to eat, and rarely if ever (unless by choice) go hungry. I know not everyone, not even in our own community is that lucky. If there is a food bank in your area, please consider making a donation of food or money, or boxes or plastic bags...or your time. Especially in this upcoming season when we celebrate and give thanks for bountiful harvests We have all received help from someone at some time. Maybe we were able to "pay them back". Maybe we can show our gratitude by "paying it forward". Feeding America has a great food bank locator. If you are one of my US sisters or brothers, please take a look and find one near you.