Kathleen Kenyon

Dame of the British Empire 

January 5, 1906 to August 24, 1978

Kathleen was born in England where she grew up the oldest child in a home of where biblical authority and history held equal sway.  Her family home was physically attached British Museum, where her father was the director.

She is referred to as being strong headed, stubborn, and a tomboy.  She won awards for Somerville College Oxford where she was studying archaeology for her skills as a hockey player.  She also became the first female president of the Oxford University Archaeological Society ad graduated from Somerville College in 1929.  

Her first job on archaeology sites was as a photographer, she learned her skills in stratigraphic excavation, the process of  swiping the surface of a site and moving back through history during the summers of 1930-1935 where she worked alongside  Mortimer Wheeler in Zimbabwe.

While actively working dig sites from 1948 to 1962 Kathleen also lectured on archaeology all over the world inspiring men and women in this field.

It was Kathleen's work on the Jericho wall that earned her the title as one of the most influential archaeologist of the 20^th century.  

Kathleen meticulous sifted through inch after inch of soil and artifacts painstaking 

moving from modern times all the way to a stone age foundation.  Kathleen came to two conclusion the first was that Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited community and the second was that the wall of Jericho fell long before the Bible places Joshua at the site.

In 1973 five years before her death Queen Elizabeth II named Kathleen Dame of the British Empire for her work.

Kathleen died from a stroke at age 72, and she was one of the influential archaeologist of the 20^th century.

Kathleen Kenyon is a woman of history.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2017 twosnydergirls

Read more about Kathleen in this articles:

1. Kathleen Kenyon  Wikipedia 
2. Kathleen Kenyon and Jericho Bible Odyssey
3. Kathleen Kenyon: Larger Than Life   Vision

Winter at Hoggs Falls

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2017 twosnydergirls

Hoggs Water Falls, Lower Valley Rd.

Flesherton, Ontario 

N0C 1E0

Canada

Grief

There is little personal control over grief. 

It overwhelms without warning, at the most inconvenient times.

It feels like fear and we respond accordingly.

At times we run from grief avoiding it at all costs.

At other times we fight back becoming angry, frustrated, just plain not nice to be around.

While at other time we are frozen in the face of grief, unable to do anything at all.

How grief manifests is unique to both the individual and the situation, it is unpredictable.

People want to offer comfort, food, cards,... to give voice to their response to your grief. 

In turn they expect you to respond with gratitude that they have taken the time to acknowledge your loss.  

How do you do this if fighting or fleeing is your response?

Be mindful of how grief is affecting you, how you are responding to it.

Most importantly when offering comfort be open to the response you receive.  

You have become one of those expected moments when grief has overwhelmed.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2017 twosnydergirls

Praise the name of the Lord

So loved are we by God that he took on human flesh and walked a human life for 33 years to die a violent a human death.  

He came not as an earthly king, no he walked the path of a servant, seeking nothing for himself desiring only to serve and give relief to suffering.

We serve a God that knows intimately what it means to be human.

I praise the name of my Lord and expectantly seek his face in the world around me.  

I am known to my Lord, he understands my weaknesses, the sins of my heart and loves me all the more for this. 

Love and joy are the gifts that God presents to us moment by moment  if only we see with spirits open to receiving love.

Are you looking for the face of God in the world around you?

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2017 twosnydergirls

Reflections on 2016

2016 started ominously with Great Grandma finding a lump on her breast and ended with us turning in the keys to her on vacant home.  

Was everything about 2016 bad of course not. 

There were many happy moments throughout the year, times that we laughed until we cried.  Great Sunday dinners shared with Great Grandma and Great John, road trips to take in the beauty of the Ontario country side, family gatherings, and vacations.

The rest our family experienced good health in 2016 and we gathered together for Christmas Eve and shared memories of Great Grandma, face-timing with Great John sharing as much of our experience with him as we could.

What have we learned from our experiences in 2016?

1.      Never pass on an opportunity to visit with family too soon the opportunity will no longer exist.  Thus it is that in 2017 we want to continue the tradition of inviting family and friends to Sunday dinner and with each meal we will keep alive the joy that breaking bread with family after church brought to Mother.

2.     We have no control over the future.  We can make all of the plans we want too and believe with all our hearts that positive outcomes will result only to experience the unexpected and tragedy.  We watched helplessly while too many moments in 2016 were wasted in worry, planning, anxiety, and anger.  These were moments that robbed life of joy and happiness unnecessarily.  In 2017 we desire to live in the moments life gives us, to seek joy in the face of tragedy and let tomorrow worry about it’s self.  We will make plans and once they are made relax back into the moment we find ourselves in.

3.     Our stuff is not necessarily important to the next generation.  You only have to dispose of the beloved objects of a family member to realize that what they held as precious, important, worthy of handing-down does not necessarily have the same value to next generation.  What held value were small things that evoked memories of Grandma/Mother, a picture on the wall, a piece of costume jewelry she worn all the time, hand written recipes that she would make when you visited.  In 2017 we will declutter our home asking our children if pieces of furniture, picture … hold value for them these we will keep.  Before we send family heirlooms to a second hand shop we will reach out to extended family to see if value can be found there.

4.     We all have too much clutter in our lives.  We are not referring to items spoken of above, no this is just stuff.  Papers we filed away 10 years ago and never looked at again, cleaning supplies with an inches left in them, old glasses, clothing … just the general accumulation of daily stuff.  In 2017 we are going to declutter our home systematically going through every closet, drawer, cedar chest, book shelf and cupboard.  We started on our pantry and to our horror we found things that were best before dated in 2012!  They had been pushed to the back forgotten for four years Yuck!

5.     The importance of looking after yourself.  Never forgo taking time out of each day for yourself because other need you.  If you are needed then you must keep yourself healthy, well hydrated and rested. We took three weeks in the fall and travelled to Utah those memories held us together during the hardest times of 2016.  We both have daily routines that renew us and in 2017 we plan on moving these forward.  Never underestimate the importance of kiss every morning before you part or holding hands when walking beside someone you love.

6.      We are not indispensable that being part of a family means that others will step up and fill the breaches your absence creates.  The strength of a family can be measured by the flexibility of the members to step up and change roles.  In 2017 we will continue to travel knowing that our children will support each other and as their parents we will start to step back letting them shine as competent adults making new tradition for this family of ours.

So as 2016 slips away quietly in our home, was 2016 a bad year… no it was a normal year made up of moments, new experiences, joy, sadness, family, laughter, fear, work, play, sickness, health, anger, forgiveness, friendship, love, birth and death.  

What will 2017 bring, well more of the same and for this we are grateful.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2017 twosnydergirls.

Clementine Cornmeal Muffins

Today’s recipe finds it’s origins in our household having too many clementines on hand after the Christmas holidays.

We had no idea what to do with the two dozen clementines gracing our kitchen cupboard and so we went to Pinterest.  Here we found numerous recipes for Clementine Cake and they all started with boiling the clementines whole and pureeing the fruit whole.

We pick a recipe and found the cake very moist, full of flavour and both of us through that clementine puree would work well in a cornmeal muffin, thus today recipe.

Making Clementine Puree.

Cut the stems off the clementines and boil in water for 30 to 40 minutes.  Drain the water and allow the clementines to cool until they are just warm to the touch.  Cut the clementines into pieces that work well in your food processor.  Process the clementines until you have a fine Puree.  Note: we like a bit of peel in our food so we left a few larger pieces of peel.  Divide the Puree into 1 cup contains and freeze or use immediately.

We have frozen our clementine puree in one cup amounts and find that it works just as well as fresh boiled clementine puree.

We are also going to try the puree instead of apple sauce in other recipes as well.

Clementine Corn Meal Muffins

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 heaping cup clementine puree
• 2 tablespoons milk

Directions:

1. Mix all dry ingredients together
2. Mix all wet ingredients together
3. Blend the wet ingredients into the dry
4. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until a knife comes out clean and the muffins have started to brown.

From Our Table to Yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Hope Comes In Small Things

Grief is not a linear process, it sneaks up on you triggered by a word, a song, or a smell.  

The sadness is overwhelming and takes all of the colour and light out of world.

It is easy to give into the grief to darken the memory that life has placed in front of you.

Hope enters our lives in the small things, colour and light start to work their way back into the memory when we share it, use it to add depth to our lives.

Today our granddaughter’s were over and wanted to make dresses for their dolls and I was transported back to sewing lessons at the hands of my mother.

As we sorted through the doll fabric box we came upon a pair of dress pants that were mother’s many years ago which she gave to me for the purpose of reusing the fabric. 

Ruth fell in love with the fabric and is using it to make a Princess dress for her Maplelea doll.

And as we ripped out stitches, traced patterns and practiced sewing lined paper all in preparation for sewing the dresses tomorrow we laughed, remembered and hope entered our lives where sadness had just walked.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Joy In A Spring Garden

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Restore Us

“There is more to Jesus than the human mind can comprehend” Juanita Laverty

Think back to a moment you experienced God’s love and how when you tried to describe your experience words failed to describe spiritual power of the event.

The human spirit can and does recognize God’s love.  

It takes our breath away and stands out unchanged by time in our memories: they are pure moments of belonging.

However, we want to place these experiences within the context of human knowledge, to understand the experience within the boundaries of human love and in doing so we diminish the experience and limit God within our lives.

God’s love defies human boundaries and challenges all of our precepts around love.

God’s love for his creation is embodied in the life of Jesus Christ.

Love that seeks no prestige.

 Love that expects nothing in return.

 Love that will sacrifice all willingly.

Love that seeks out those who live on the fringes, the outcasts, the lost.

Love given freely to all humanity through out all of time.

 Love that has chosen to be present in our experience of being human.

Love that restores us in each moment of our lives.

Thus it is that Jesus is more than we can comprehend for he is God’s divine gift of love to us.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Lectionary reading for this week: Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25.

Christmas Peanut Butter Crisps

One of the many memory treasures we have come across in the distribution of Great Grandma’s earthly belongs has been a plastic bag stuffed full of handwritten recipes.  The recipes are not written on new sheets of paper, they were written on scraps of paper recycled into recipe cards and these windows into Great Grandma’s life are a treasure equal to the recipes themselves.

Christmas is almost here so we decided to start with an easy none bake recipe, one with ingredients we had on hand.  This recipe did not have a title and taking some literary licence Emily has titled them Peanut Butter Crisp.

This recipe has been written on a Dear Reader advertisement for Maclean’s magazine.  As a child I can remember this magazine sitting on the side table beside my mother’s chair in the living.  The large photographs on the covers capturing my imagination.  As I hold this yellowed piece of paper a memory floods over me and I share it with our granddaughters.  I am sitting on the hardwood floor captivated by the Maclean’s cover picture a skydiver which resulted in an afternoon of imaginative play.  I am that skydiver and for the rest of that afternoon I jumped from airplanes, tumbling in the air until I am caught by the wind and soar high above the earth in search of wonderful things.  With a smile I can remember my father calling upstairs “what is all the jumping about?  Nothing Dad I reply” and continue my play.  I was jumping from my bed onto a soft landing of blankets and pillows.

I have googled Maclean’s magazines and found the issue that resulted in that wonderful day it is the December 2, 1964 cover and was 8 years old.

 Christmas Peanut Butter Crisps

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Rice Krispies
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 2 tablespoons margarine or butter
• Candy sprinkles

Directions:

1. Mix everything together except for the sprinkles in a large bowl. 
2. If you are working with children butter their hands and let them have some fun mixing.
3. Form into small balls (again children love doing this)
4. Roll the balls in the candy sprinkles
5. Refrigerate for one hour and eat. 
6. Store in a container in the refrigerator or a cool area of your home.

From Our Table to Yours 

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Thank You

Pray For Great Grandma

 

The past seven days have been a whirlwind of activity and inactivity. 

A roller coaster of emotions, hope giving way to despair only to begin hoping again.

Activities where you find that prayer and meditation are the only things open to you.

Then there is the  pain that comes when you were jarred from one reality into next.  

Believing things were getting better I relaxed into the chair beside her bed and prepared myself to sleep. 

Then the alarms went off  and the room filled with nurses and doctors.

Reality had  jarred me awake and it felt like a gut punch robbing me of air and doubling over in pain.

Great Grandma now has to want to do the work to live.

The doctors have done what they could and our family has come together.

It is now up to Great Grandma and God. 

Please keep praying

Grandma Snyder

Thank You

Thank You

Once she has recovered we will be back to blogging as usual.

Thank you for all the kind words and prayers

Grandma Snyder

Always Thankful

What does being thankful mean? 

To answer this question, dictionaries tell us that being thankful is being pleased with something that you have received.

What are we to be always thankful for?

Colossians 1:16-20 set on the path of spiritual thankfulness by naming each of us as created by God and reconcile to God through our Father, the Creator’s love.

Colossians1:16-20 For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him… 20 and having made peace through the blood of his cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself – by Him, I say, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven.

We are the children of God, and like children we are learning to become spiritual beings.  Learning to transcend our self centre natures and live through selfless love in service to others, following Christ's example.

For the most part we fail, 

we define the world through human knowledge, 

placing limits on God’s love for us.

Yet over and over again we are told we are forgiven.

 Luke 23:34 “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Even in our failures, we can be always thankful that we are forgiven.

As God’s creations we are never alone.  

Though people and/or happenstance may take from us all our human wealth, health and friendship, we cannot be separated from God’s love for us if we but quiet our minds.

Nothing and no one can separate us from God for this we can be always thankful.

Psalm 46: 1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble

Always thankful that we are God’s children, beloved and cherished never to be separated from his love.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Lectionary readings Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 46, Colossians 1:11-20, Luke 23:33-43.

Fast Beef Vegetable Soup

Late fall is upon us, the rain today was thick with the promise of snow, the weather wet and cold

 and coming home to a cold house what we needed was a hearty vegetable soup.

However, time was in short supply and short cuts would required. 

Here is our answer Fast Beef Vegetable Soup.

Ingredients:

• 2 bay leaves
• 2 cloves garlic
• 6 cups beef broth (packaged)
• 10 new small potatoes cubed
• 3 cups of carrots cut into ¼ circles
• 3 cups chopped mushrooms

Directions:

1. Place the bay leaves and garlic in cheese cloth and tie off
2. Add all ingredients including the cheese cloth bag into the soup pot and simmer for 30 minutes.
3. Remove the cheese cloth and serve.

From Our Table to Yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

City Cafe A cup of coffee in the middle of history

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

The Coffee Shop Salt Lake City UT

Closing Doors

We are proud people who spent our working lives garnering respect, trust, and building our personalities ~ building the facades that we project into the world.

Then we retire, our children move away and we hold even tighter to the facades until our bodies that betray us.

It’s not the wrinkles, the grey hair or even our stumbling gaits.

It is our bladders, our bowel, and the total ruin of our facade.  

We lock ourselves in our homes, our apartment, in our aging care rooms.

We don’t come out and we don't let them in we are embarrassed, we're ashamed 

we have come to believe that the facade is all that we are.

We have not prepared our egos to age.

Be mindful of the facades you are building and what they will mean to your ego as you age.

Keep all of the doors in your life open so that love, family and opportunity can come in.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Steadfast Love and Faithfulness

Is human love steadfast and faithful?

Sadly no. 

Even Saint Peter out of fear and self preservation denied Christ, three times.

Our steadfastness and faithfulness on any given day is filtered through our disappointments, hopes, sense of wellness, love, desire, anger, self control, weariness, and so on.

Our steadfastness and faithfulness is all about us, it is not about other people or God.

God is steadfast and faithful to humanity to the point of sacrificing his son offering all out of love for us.

He will judge the world with righteousness, And the people with equity. Psalms 98:9

As with steadfastness and faithfulness only the divine is righteous and he judges all people with equity, with same love, care, and a desire to forgive us.

All of humanity treated equally by our creator, no one more worthy than the other.

God is steadfast in his love for us

and 

faithful to us all.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Lectionary readings: Malachi 4:1-2a, Psalm 98, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13,

Luke 21:5-10