Will there or won't there be a blizzard

The weather man says we're in for a possible blizzard and if so it will mess up a lot of plans. As you all know, the weather man could be wrong. But--- just in case we will be recording the children's practice tomorrow morning which means I have to really pay attention so I don't make any really stupid mistakes with the piano part :) So the reason for the recording: If we have to move the children's program to the 21st. that means I will accompanying three different music programs on that Sunday. First I play for first service as usual, then at the 2nd service I accompany the church choir cantata (10:45) then I accompany the Park Rapids Classic Chorale for that concert at 3:00 (which is when the children will be doing a final rehearsal thus the recording) and then the children's Christmas program at 6:00. Someone asked me if I could do all that .. . . sure I can . . . the adrenalin will be flowing but I'll be really tired when I get to go to bed

Christmas past

Brownies blog reminded me of Christmas's past. Aunt Gertrude and her family lived in Minot, ND and was the only sibling of my mom's that didn't live in Redwood Falls when I was a young girl. There was Aunt Beth and Uncle Guy, Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Harvey, Uncle Gillette and Elaine. And their families and, of course, my mom and dad and brother. I know the adults exchanged names for Christmas but I don't remember what us kids did. I do know that one of my most memorable gifts were books from my Aunt Beth. Like Brownie said she had a knack for getting just the right thing for each of her nephews and nieces and I always looked forward to my gift from her. She didn't have any children of her own but when she married Uncle Guy he had two daughters. If I remember right we all would get together at whose ever turn it was to have Christmas on Christmas Eve after the Children's Christmas program. And it always seemed to be snowing when we would get out of church.

Back to the books . . . . when I was given this gift my great Aunt Amanda said "You don't need to open it because it's just books" I'm sure she thought it would be easier for mom and dad to get the gifts home but I said " I know - I can feel that they are books but I want to see what they are" And so I found Little Women, Little Men, Eight Cousins and 2 others that I can't remember the titles. I was so delighted and spent many hours reading. I think this was probably one of the few times that Great Aunt Amanda and Great Uncle Ewalt were with us at Christmas.

More to come .....

Pies

I spent Thanksgiving day with my daughter -in-law's family which is quite large and not all of them were there. There was a constant undercurrent of noise but nothing really loud. My DIL's mom lives on a small lake which had frozen over much to the delight of almost everyone there. And most everyone went ice skating. Not me - I haven't been skating since I was in high school and and not about to start up again now. They tell me the ice was like glass - very smooth and they saw a turtle and a fish swimming underneath the ice which all thought was very cool. The small children who have not learned the art of skating were pushed around on chairs.

We had the usual Thanksgiving dinner and then the desserts were put out on the table . 16 pies of every discription: Apple, pumpkin, ki lime, cherry, chocolate, dutch apple, Lemon.

Lowell was not a game player so there a lots of card games I'm now beginning to learn (and enjoy). Whist was the game of the day - great fun.

All those pies made me think of the first time I made a coconut cream pie. It was the second summer we were married. I made the pie crust and mixed up the coconut cream from a pudding mix. Poured it into the crust - hmmm something wasn't right. Oh ya, the crust needs to be baked first. So I scraped the pudding mix out, baked the crust and poured the mix back into the baked crust. The crust was a bit tough but it tasted good anyway.