Scrapbooking is a perfect opportunity to engage in one of our
favourite family activities, storytelling.
Step #1 in planning for this afternoon’s activity was having
our granddaughters prepare their vacations journals, visit this post by
clicking here.
Step #2 was making time each day of the vacation for the girls
to write or paste something from that day’s activity to remind them of the
day. Emily took to pasting the small packages
shampoo and soap in her journal.
Step #3 was to spend a rainy afternoon following the vacation
to review the pictures and have the children pick the pictures they would like
to include in their journals.
And that brings us to today
Step #4 is a clean table, scrapbooking supplies, the printed
photographs, the children favourite music playing softly in the background, and
storytelling was we talk about the memories the picture evoke.
Our oldest grandson is 20 and he still has the vacation
journals that he made when vacationing with Grandpa and Grandma.
Elephants and grandchildren never forget. ~ Andy Rooney
Our granddaughters love looking through the old scrapbook cuttings and handwritten recipes that have been handed down to us over the years. We have become the repository for these well used scrapbooks, boxes and notebooks from both sides of the family and today's recipe comes from this treasure trove of recipes. What is unique about this recipe is that you use shredded beets and the taste is wonderful, much like a Morning Glory Muffin with just a hint of beet flavour.
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
5 eggs
1 cup oil
3 cups shredded beets
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts
1 cup raisins
1 cup shredded coconut
2 tsp baking soda
Directions:
Mix all of your dry ingredients together (flour, wheat germ, sugar,cinnamon, salt, soda, raisin, walnuts, coconut)
Mix all of the wet ingredients together (eggs, oil, beets)
Slowing pour the wet into the dry mixing as you pour
Spoon into muffin tins
Bake at 350 F for approx 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean
The end of August beginning of September marks for many
children the first days and weeks of a new school year. Grandparents who have been involved in their
grandchildren's lives over the summer now find themselves taking a back seat to
school, extracurricular activities, social clubs, homework and play dates.
School rather than being the activity that takes grandchildren
away can actually draw you closer to them as it is an activity we all engaged
in and have some familiarity with. Yes, we know new math and computer skills were never part of your education but
learning was as was being involved in school life and that is the foundation of
every education.
The first step is knowing the grade your grandchildren are
going into and the name of their teacher.
Having the teachers name adds to questions you will have for them.
“What did you learn at school today?” In our experience gets
the typical nothing or I don't know answer where “What did Mrs. Smith teach you
today?” provides your grandchild with a concrete memory trigger point. They instantly see Mrs. Smith as she was that
day and they will recall something she said, did or taught them. This question in our experience is more
likely to get an answer of some kind.
The second step is to go online and search out the school
board or better still the school where you grandchild attends website. Here you will learn interesting things about
the day to day activities of the school.
The name of the sport teams, what fund raisers are happening etc. Now you have the information necessary to ask
specific question and to get involved.
Rather than having your grandchildren approach you to buy
magazines how exciting for your grandchildren to have you call them and say,
Saw that your school is funding well I would like ... magazine and I spoke to
your Aunt Carla and she would like... or Calling your grandson to congratulate
him on winning the soccer game. No
matter how far away you live the school website keeps you in the know so you
can ask interesting questions.
Want to send the message to your grandchildren that school is
important and school life exciting for their birthday or Christmas buy them a
school t-shirt or hoodie.
By being involved in their school life you send a powerful
message that will support their becoming involved as well and the more involved in school they are research says the better their education will be.
“Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.”
Isaiah 35:4-6
The lame will leap, the mute will sing, the blind will see and
the dry places will be give water and bloom.
In all of these pictures the outcome is a restored state. Restored to what society then and now would
call is a more productive, valued a more perfect state.
There is another similarity in the before states of being as
each exists on the fringes of society. When
this scripture was written to be blind, mute or deaf meant that you would live
in poverty as an outcast, always indebted to others for your existence. And the desert was a place that you wandered
in, a place of hardship, struggle and death.
I believe the message we are being given in this scripture is one of restorative
justice. That we are not to seek punishment,
and compensation rather we are to seek restorative justice. That it is our responsibility as Christians
to ensure that when injustice happens that we seek to restore both the victim
and offender to a position of health and well being within the community.
This is easier said than done and yet this is the path of love
that Christ has set us on.
What to do when Grandma has a headache and it is pouring
rain?
This is exactly the situation we found ourselves this
afternoon. Ruth and Emily arrived at
Grandma’s house expecting an afternoon of crafts, baking, or playing games to
find a Grumpy Grandma, tired, short tempered and definitely not in a good space
to start a craft project or supervisor cooking.
What to do?
Grandma could pretend to be her normal outgoing self and risk
an emotional blowout directed at these two beautiful girls and no that would
never do so honesty was the best course of action.
"Girls Grandma is not feeling well, she has a headache so
no crafts or cooking today's".
The expected disappointment and begging did not happen instead
the girls talked among themselves and decided to play in the rain with the
numerous umbrellas in Grandpa's umbrella stand and they made Grandma laugh despite
her headache.
Next they suggested the McDonalds play area and Grandma had a
nice cup of coffee and the air conditioning helped with the headache – Grandma was
definitely feeling better.
Their final suggestion was movies in bed and so everyone is
having a bath and into Grandma and Grandpa’s big bed we will crawl and watched
Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief.
Grandma is having fun on a day that her granddaughters planned!
Never underestimate a child's ability to be empathic I believe
it comes naturally to them if we give them the chance.
Grandparents do not have to up and ready to play all the time
and it is important that we let our grandchildren know when we are not.
Our eggplant is now ready to pick so we went in search of a new recipe to try. There were numerous
recipes for curried eggplant, and each one either had ingredients we did not like or that we did not have on hand so we created our own. We
enjoy the earthy favour of our unique recipe please note there is no
heat in our recipe by design.
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons oil (we used coconut oil)
2 onions diced
2 garlic cloves minced
2 cups vegetable broth
6 cups of tomatoes diced
6 cups of eggplant diced (we used three small eggplants)
2 teaspoons freshly ground ginger
1 teaspoon cumin
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon chopped basil
156 ml can of tomato paste
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
In a large frying pan saute the onions and garlic in the oil until the onions are translucent.
Add to this the vegetable broth, tomatoes, eggplant all the spices and the tomato paste
Simmer until the liquid has reduced.
Serve on rice.
Note: We were interrupted and had to leave the house before the liquid had reduced so we moved the curry to a slow cooker where it finished beautifully. The slow cooker was on medium heat with the lid on a slight angle to let some of the moisture escape.
You wake
up in the middle of the night and your mind is in overdrive!
And you run the same terrible thoughts through your mind over and over again.
Morning
comes and the thoughts that kept you up most of the night seem absurd.
Thoughts
are just thoughts!
Be
mindful that we have control over our thoughts and take charge when thoughts
are unhelpful, or produce worry.
Now when
waking in the middle of the night with a worrying thought I literally tell my
mind to go to sleep and stop worrying over nothing because all will be well in the morning.
Christ
provided us with many teachings on how to live and the one that consumed most
of his time was Love!
Love
complex, mystical and easy in its application.
Who are
we to love?
God, Christ,
ourselves, each other, stranger, enemies, mother, father, and children – there
appears to be no one who is outside God, and Christ’s instruction to love.
Deuteronomy
4:2, tells us
“do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it,
but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.”
So we are
to be doers of love in all areas of our lives.
It is
easy to love our life partners, our children and grandchildren yet too often with
no forethought we throw love to the wind in favour of angry words.
James
1:19 offers these words of wisdom
“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to
speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the
righteousness that God desires”.
Anger is not a doer of love.
Gossip is
a form of anger, as it is spoken at the expense of someone else.
A child was recently repeated a piece of
gossip he heard in his home at church and was punished for this. As the child was hustled off to the car he
kept say but Daddy you said this.
Gossip is
not a doer of love.
James
1:26 cautions all Christians with these words
“Those who consider themselves
religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves,
and their religion is worthless.”
A Christian
woman setting up at a church bake sale was approached by a stranger. The woman smiles in greeting and says “Hello”. The stranger smiles back and replies “Your church
sign isn't up yet what kind of Christian are you? “Well” the woman says putting down a package
of butter tarts “the best person to answer that question would be my
neighbours.”
What
would your neighbours, the people living to the left and right of your home say
to the question “What kind of Christian is (your name)”
Do they
know you and your household are Christian?
Do you
know what their needs, worries and joys are?
Do you
know their names?
Ephesians
6:18 commissions those who follow the Christian path to
“Pray in
the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this
in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.”
Our neighbours
are the Lord’s people as are the people we work with, the clerk at the variety
store, you get the idea.
As
parents and grandparents ask yourself this question:
What kind
of Christian do my (grand) children know me to be?
Your memories and stories just such seeds for your children.
Ice cream holds a place of prominence on the August calendar
with day's dedicated to soft ice cream, ice cream pie and many more ice cream
treats.
In August have fun and tell stories about ice cream.
1. Talk about your
earliest memory of ice cream. Where were
you, who were you with and what flavour was it?
At our church picnics after the pies, tarts, and cookies were
devoured the minister and church elders put on oven mitts and passed out
vanilla ice cream in cones. The ice cream
came pre-cut and roll in cardboard they looked very much like the centre cardboard
of toilet tissue. I now know the oven
mitts were because of the dry ice the ice cream was packed in. At the time though we would make up the most
ridiculous stories about how the ice cream would be too hot to touch.
2. If you have ever made homemade ice cream describe this
event to your (grand)children. A fun and
easy activity that you can do with children is make ice cream in a bag. Beware that younger children will tire
quickly and you will end up agitating their bag at some point in the process.
3. Do you have a favourite ice cream parlour? If you do take your (grand)children there to
have this month’s discussions. Thereafter
when they drive past the parlor or visit it they will be reminded of you and
they may tell your story to their children.
If you do not have a favourite parlour find one together with your
children and start new memories.
August for many is the last month of the school break and
vacation.
4. Learning to ride a bike is often a summer break
activity. Remember back to that very
first time you stayed up right on a two wheel bike and tell this story. What type of a bike was it, what was the
colour, was it your bike or someone elses?
5. If you still ride a bike tell your children why and the
enjoyment you derive from riding a bike.
6. Did you ever take a biking trip somewhere?
7. Swimming is also a summer activity take the time to
remember back to a very early memory that included swimming and recount
this.
8. How did you learn to swim? Lessons at a pool or in a lake
or a pond?
9. If you do not swim
or have a fear of swimming, using age appropriate language explain why. In your story talk about what you would do
differently now to overcome your fear. By placing our fears in the light of day our
children will have a new understanding of our behaviour and be less likely to
develop the same fears.
10. If you engage in any other water sports tell your
childhood stories and share pictures if you have them.
Fresh berry pie sweetened with sugar and thickened with
cornstarch is one of easiest and to our way of thinking best tasting pies. While we were in Saskatchewan this summer
Carla treated us to just one of these gems.
Saskatoon Berry Pie
Ingredient:
Double pie crust recipe
3 cups Saskatoon berries cleaned (this pie works with all
berries)
½ cup of sugar (note the original recipe called for 1 cup)
2 Tablespoons of cornstarch
Directions:
Prepare your pie crust and roll out one bottom which you place
in your pie plate and one top
In a large bowl mix the berries, sugar and cornstarch
Place the berry mixture in the pie plate and cover with second
pie crust
Cut steam vents in pie crust
Bake at 375 degrees F for 30 minutes
Your pie crust should be a golden brown colour
Note: Key to the success of plating this pie is cooling in completely
allowing the cornstarch to gel and hold the fruit together.
A smile changes you from inside and influences the people around you.
The Brain science surrounding the
simple act of smiling is overwhelmingly positive on our moods and health in general.
When you smile you feel better because you have stimulated the brains reward mechanism and it reduces stress hormones in the body.
The act of smiling makes you feel better.
Smiling is a basic form of communication know worldwide,
infants and children know this and have been known to smile 100’s of times a
day to endear themselves to the adults around them.
Smiling is contagious, when you smile
other are more likely to smile and so their internal chain response begins leading to them feeling happier.
It is as Mother Teresa says
“Peace begins with a smile.”
Be mindful this week how often you smile.
Notice how smiling affects those around you and
most importantly how it makes you feel.
Follow the example of our children and remember to smile
100’s of times each day.
Peace means to be at ease with your family, your neighbours
and your world.
Peace means to have the ability to walk down any street in
your community at any hour in the knowledge that you are safe from personal
threat and more than that that behind every door is a neighbour ready to help you.
Peace requires that each of us has:
safe sustainable housing
food that maintains health
meaningful work and leisure activity.
Peace means we live in a state of love and respect towards
ourselves, all humanity and God's creation.
Peace means that we live with less so that other can live with
more.
Living in peace means we do good because it is the right thing
to do not for a reward.
Peace means we live sustainable lifestyles.
Living in peace means tolerance for difference and living a
Christ filled life leading by example not by threats and fear.
And seeking peace always means that we
"[give] thank always for all
the things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Ephesian 5:20
Step #1 in planning for this afternoon’s activity was having
our granddaughters prepare their vacations journals, visit this post by
clicking here.
