Lefse!

Lefse: (sometimes spelled lefsa) is a traditional soft Norwegian flatbread made out of potato, milk or cream and flour, and cooked on a griddle. Special tools are available for lefse baking, including long wooden turning sticks and special rolling pins with deep grooves. There are significant regional variations in the way lefse is made and eaten, but it generally resembles a flatbread, although in many parts of Norway, especially Valdres, it is far thinner.

This Norwegian delicacy was a Christmas tradition in both mine and Mark's households when we were growing up, as we both come from strong Scandinavian backgrounds. Well, Mark has been in a near panic for the past several years, because he's afraid the tradition is going to pass away with our grandmothers. My 100% Norwegian grandma is already gone, so sadly I can no longer learn from her - but thankfully the Roisum lefse tradition has been passed to Mark's aunt and uncle, so after several years of discussing it, we finally had a lefse-making lesson from them early on Thanksgiving morning. It was so much fun!! We now feel prepared to take on this massive project ourselves in future years. Funny how when you get older, these little traditions you used to take for granted become really important.

Here's Mark, learning how to roll it out . . .

And Uncle Marty, flipping it on the iron . . . .
My extremely focused and driven husband even developed a rolling "stance" . . .
Mark with his aunt and uncle (the experts) -

Nancy, are you proud?? :)

We had a great time and a really nice Thanksgiving. Lots of time relaxing, reading and doing a little Christmas shopping. Tomorrow we head home. And get this - the boys start PIANO lessons on Monday! They are really excited. The ultimate goal is eventually guitar lessons, but we have to start with piano first. Should be interesting.

Here's a rare picture we got of Mark's family. I think we've all been in the same picture maybe once?

Woman on a Mission

That was me the past few days - a woman on a mission. I did something controversial. Hang on to your hats here, folks. I've always been the type of person who does NOT do ANYthing Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I always felt like it was a betrayal or something to Thanksgiving. That said, every December I find myself in the same struggle - running around like crazy the whole month of December trying to "get it all done," and seemingly always falling short of my expectations - ultimately disappointed by something that didn't get done. After a while, you gotta quit banging your head against the wall, you know? So -collective deep breath - I decided to get all my Christmas decorating done before leaving for MN for Thanksgiving. Except the tree. 'Cause we get a BIG live one, and need to be here continually to water it, so that's the one thing we'll do when we get home next week.

Determined to make my plan work, Thursday and Friday I holed up in the house and got it ALL done. And it looks awesome around here. It's the best feeling to know I can come home from MN to a fully decorated house, just enjoy doing our tree, and spending the rest of December actually relaxing and enjoying the Christmas season. And I've accepted it isn't a betrayal to Thanksgiving. We will still fully honor that holiday - and my thankfulness will continue all the way to the end of the year because I won't spend the next month scrambling. Who-hoo!!

Since most of you won't make it to our house during the Christmas season, I thought I would share some of my favorite Christmas things with you . . .

Starting out with our Dept. 56 Snow Village. I got many of these before the kids were even born and these pieces have been out of their boxes once in the past 7 years. I've always been too pressed for time to mess with these - and they just sit in the storage room every Christmas. Not this year!! I had the best time setting these up - and the kids totally love them (see Halloween post).

Most of them have special meanings - these I just love because I have the outdoorsy thing going on in our family room . . .

This one is in honor of our weekly Sunday morning tradition of breakfast at the bagel shop before church:The meaning behind this one should be obvious - it was a gift from Wells Fargo one year:

This one . . . well, Mark just likes soup.

Mark found this one and wanted it because his Dad used to work for Red Owl when Mark was little:

Okay, moving on . . . I LOVE this placemat - I've discovered there's all sorts of cute things you can do with placemats, not just eat on them - this one was like a buck at Target last year on clearance:

These are tin and covered in glitter - found them at the local museum store of all crazy places:

Some cute candlesticks from my mom:

A platter I found this year at my favorite local gift shop:

I call these my "Whoville" trees - they're all sparkly and glittery, hard to tell in the picture:

Here's my beaded penguin family - 4 of them, of course!

And yet another cute placemat that isn't being used as a placemat. Oh, and the trees are RED, not pink like the picture makes them look.

Now we have a really short 2-day week before heading to MN. I plan on spending a lot of time this trip relaxing and NOT dreading the rush of December. I love it when a plan comes together . . . .

Operation Christmas Child

If you haven't heard of this, Operation Christmas Child is a ministry of Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse organization. A quick summary is that people around the U.S. pack shoe boxes with gifts for children of different age groups and then those shoe boxes are then shipped all over the world to kids (mainly in 3rd world countries) who wouldn't normally get any Christmas presents. The gospel is presented to these kids at the time they receive the boxes. It's a very cool service project.

We've enjoyed packing 2 or 3 boxes every year with the kids, but this year, my mom and dad REALLY got into the spirit of it and collected just a ton of stuff to fill boxes with (socks, underwear, toothbrushes, toothpaste, crayons, paper, stuffed animals, balls, jump ropes, cars, jewelry, etc.). So we all gathered at their house Sunday afternoon and filled boxes for a couple hours - we filled 52 boxes!!! It was so much fun, and felt so good. Here's our afternoon:








Now I only wish I could see where each and every box ends up - see each of the 52 kids that will get one of these boxes that we packed not only with fun stuff, but with love and prayer. How cool would that be?

The 2 a.m. Visitor

Okay - really funny story about the other night - but first I have to give some history. When we moved into our house (newly built) 3.5 years ago, a family of mice had already moved in. Builders aren't real big on closing doors, and our little friends had let themselves in. Long story short, we ended up catching 9 (yes NINE) mice in all, but not before one ran across our bed, while I was in it AND awake, reading a book. (We believe this particular mouse had gotten into some poison and was acting erratically). NOT a fun experience. My skin still crawls thinking about it.

So then the other night, at 2:00 a.m. I wake up to hear a distinct scratching sound just 3-4 feet from my head. In 1/2 a second I jumped onto Mark. My poor husband woke up to his wife sitting on him, face in his, whispering "There's something in here!!!" He flips on the light and we force ourselves to look over at the floor by my side of the bed. What I saw was just hilarious. On top of a pillow on the floor, there was Chewy, Noah's hamster, standing on his hind legs, ears perked up, looking at me with big bright eyes. It was so cute - and the fact that it wasn't a mouse again, made him even cuter. I scooped him up and took him back to his cage, from which he had escaped through a loose vent in the roof.

We thought the funniest part about this is that instead of anywhere else in the house he could have gone, he came into our bedroom, around to my side of the bed and climbed up on a pillow, seemingly in search of me. I imagine once he got out, he didn't know where to go or what to do, so searched out the person who takes care of him. Wish I could have gotten a picture . . . .

Oh yeah, by the way, this is my 100th post!!!!! Wow!

Where does a week go?

Well actually I do have the answer to that . . .for a week when a child gets struck down with the stomach flu, anyway. That chewed up my week almost completely, with the exception of today when I was going crazy trying to get caught up after being "nurse mom" for several days. Noah got sick Saturday night, and BOY DID HE GET SICK. Good grief, what a nightmare - mainly for him, obviously, but also for mom and dad, who didn't get more than 2 or 3 hours of sleep that night and I spent several hours that night CLEANING (many rooms, by the way) because he still hasn't figured out how to make it to the bathroom. I don't know if you recall, but I've asked this question in the past - why is it when kids get the stomach flu, it's always AT NIGHT?!?!? No one's given me an answer yet. Still waiting. Anyway, he was through the worst of it by Sunday morning, but the poor kid was just knocked FLAT until Wednesday. Just a sleepy blob on the couch Sun., Mon. and Tues. I think he'd decided he was never going to eat again, but I got stubborn on Tuesday and made him finally eat, at which point he returned to the land of the living pretty quickly. Like in minutes. Thank heavens. So, 4 days and a $90 carpet cleaning bill later, we're back to normal around here. For the time being, anyway . . . .

(By the way, can you BELIEVE Thanksgiving is two weeks from today?!? Whuh?)

Snow Days

I think by this point everyone in the country knows we had a major blizzard here in the Black Hills, starting on Wednesday and finally ending during the night Thursday night. Everyone from Minnesota has been calling saying "we saw the Black Hills on the news!" Thursday was so bad that Mark's bank even closed - which NEVER happens. So we all lounged around in our PJs all day, familiarizing ourselves with the new Wii - whew, is THAT addicting. It was a nice, relaxing day, but by this morning (Friday), we were ready to GET OUT. Here's a little tidbit about our lovely hometown, however: they don't use plows here. Or any other kind of snow removal device for that matter. The city evidently just expects us all to sit around in our houses until the snow MELTS. Cost-effective, don't you think? Luckily we have a very large vehicle with 4-wheel drive, so Mark was able to go to work today and we were able to get out and run some errands (school was cancelled both yesterday and today). I couldn't stay in the house another minute! However, our street was never plowed. In fact, some main thoroughfares in town were never even plowed. It's just a mess. I think I'm going to start withholding our property taxes until we get some service around here!!!! :)

Jack and Noah were WAY excited to get outside in the snow - it about drove them nuts that I made them wait until the 70-mph winds ceased (no joke).

Here's the massive snowman they built with Dad . . . .

While we were out for lunch today, Jack lost yet another tooth (the bottom left hole - he's now missing a total of five) . . . .

. . . . which reminded us of all the crazy times this child has lost his teeth! The first one he ever lost he swallowed while eating a pretzel at the pool; another he lost on the night before Easter, so the Tooth Fairy AND the Easter Bunny came that night; he lost another at the Grand Canyon; and another just minutes before my brother's wedding. Too funny. I don't know how the poor kid manages to eat. His top ones are finally coming through, thank heavens.

A nice side effect of this storm was that one of Mark's best buddies from CO was traveling through town on Wednesday night on his way to MN and ended up getting stuck at a local hotel on the interstate. He literally couldn't even make it through town to our house until today, and is now staying the night with us - his third night in town, which is 3 more than he planned on spending here! The interstate finally opened again a couple hours ago, so he'll be on his merry way in the a.m. We really enjoyed seeing him for a while -

Here they are this evening enjoying the balmy weather (ha) -

God Save Us

Seriously. That's all I can think/pray today. God, please save us. What occurred during the election last night (and I'm referring to the whole thing, not just the Presidential part) was absolutely bone-chilling to me. I sat on the couch next to my husband, watching the events of the evening with my blood running cold, a nauseated stomach, thinking "what am I witnessing here?" (By the way, if you are a liberal democrat/Obama supporter/pro-choice person, you may not want to read this post, and you've probably read too far already!) What I saw and felt last night was completely different than when Clinton was re-elected - that guy is just annoying, and almost comical. THIS guy, the person we're supposed to call President, strikes me as completely different. I believe he is evil incarnate. He's dangerous. He's arrogance just seeps through his pores. I have a hard time even looking at him (truly). He gives me the chills. Last night (on TV) I witnessed people practically worshiping him. People are totally enraptured by him. So, so frightening.

And beyond that, I saw stories today about groups of people celebrating - CELEBRATING - the fact that our abortion ban didn't pass. They are celebrating the fact that another 750+ babies will be killed next year in South Dakota simply as a form of birth control. Over 750 babies!! Sick. Twisted. Disgusting. Evil. These actions will not go unpunished, my friends.

As discouraged as I've been today, I can't imagine where I'd be if I didn't have a God who I know is soveriegn, who I know is on the only throne that matters, who I know has a plan in all of this wickedness, who is in fact vengeful and who ultimately will not be mocked. I allowed myself a day today to "process" but I won't allow myself to wallow or be depressed, because GOD is in control. Thank heavens!

Romans 12: 19: Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord.

Mark's Perfect Weekend

And boy did he deserve it. The birthday boy had several treats this weekend, the biggest one of which was a complete surprise to him, and it was good to see him not so stressed out again. We started out with Halloween festivities at the boys' school on Friday evening - here's the costume picks for this year:

After leaving the school, we made a pit stop at home before heading out for trick-or-treating in our neighborhood -- and it was at this point that Mark got his big birthday surprise. I had been scheming with his parents for the past month, planning a surprise visit from them this weekend. This was no small feat for them, getting out of work on Friday and driving 8 hours from MN after having car trouble that morning * my in-laws ROCK, people * but they arrived right on time and were hidden in our family room when we arrived home from the school. I sent Mark downstairs to "get the video camera" and when he walked into the family room, his parents jumped out from behind the couch - you should have heard the dude yell! Oh my. So, so funny. For a tiny second I was worried his high cholesterol might catch up with him and he'd have a heart attack for his birthday, but after the initial shock, he was laughing. The boys and I were listening at the top of the stairs (they didn't know about this either), and their reactions to their dad yelling downstairs were interesting to say the least. Jack immediately starts LAUGHING (keep in mind he had no idea if his Dad was surprised by someone who WASN'T supposed to be in the house), while Noah had the more appropriate response - ran behind me and wrapped his arms around me faster than I could blink. Anyway, it was WAY fun to do this to Mark, and he was SO happy.

A bonus was that Grandpa and Grandma got to go trick-or-treating with us!
On Saturday, Mark got a birthday breakfast at the Colonial House, then relaxed and watched some college football with his dad. We had his little "party" in the afternoon, since the kids had a birthday party to go to in the evening.

And here was his next surprise:

He got a Wii from the kids and I. Actually, WHO will really enjoy this present the most is debatable - but I thought it would at least make a good stress reliever for Mark. And I also find it interesting that Jack and Noah get a work out playing this, and end up sweaty after playing - we have to remove the furniture from the middle of the living room, because they are ALL OVER THE PLACE. At least they are getting some exercise . . . .

Saturday night while the kids were at their birthday party, us grown-ups got to enjoy a VERY nice dinner at the Gaslight in Rockerville - totally peaceful and relaxing. Then today, Paul and LaRayne stuck around for church and the Vikings game afterwards, which was a huge treat for Mark to be able to watch the game with his dad. And get this, folks, they WON. (For the Vikings, this is a little unusual). They must have known it was Mark's birthday. :) So, he's a pretty happy guy this evening, although I'm concerned that will change once Tuesday rolls around and this election is finalized. Yikes. That's all I can say. Yikes.