My lovely friend Michele is my guest today over at “What are you giving away”. She’s got a great post about whether in sharing our gifts we are actually receiving more than we’re giving. Check it out!
1. I just made chicken noodle soup. I make a lot of soup, but I think that’s the first time for chicken noodle. Frankly, it was a little intimidating and felt like I was walking on sacred ground. My grandmother made THE. BEST. CHICKEN. NOODLE. SOUP. BAR. NONE. Oh you may THINK you’ve tasted good chicken noodle soup, but until you’ve sampled the soup made with farm-grown chickens and fresh homemade noodles made by the loving hands of a Mennonite grandmother, you don’t know chicken noodle soup. Mine tasted quite good and the family was pleased with it, but it’s a pale shadow of what remains sacred in my memory.
2. Nicole’s been getting a little bored, sitting around letting her leg heal, so last night she had a bit of a party, inviting 4 of her closest friends over. We went out for awhile and when we walked in, the house was filled with laughter. I love that. I think if I were to write a mission statement for how I want my home to be, “filled with laughter” would be up at the top of the list.
3. Some of the keys on this computer are sticking. If a word happens to be missing an “n”, blame the keyboard.
4. Later this week, I’m going on an adventure and I am so excited! It involves a 24 hour train ride (lots of time for reading, writing, and daydreaming) a couple of days in Cleveland with some very cool people, a day spent at this amazing workshop, a couple of business-related days in Toronto where I’ll stay at my favourite B&B, dinner with one friend in Toronto, and then lunch with another. Is that fun or what?
5. Is this not the most spectacular September you have ever seen? It almost makes up for the crappy weather we suffered through all summer.
6. N&J signed up for a flyer route, and wouldn’t you know it, they got the call the week Nikki had knee surgery. So of course, Mom got recruited to walk and walk and walk for two hours – on the hottest day we’ve had all year. Two hours of walking and we didn’t think to bring a water bottle. Ugh. But the fun part? You get to check out a lot of houses – I didn’t know we had such a cool neighbourhood!
7. Last weekend, Marcel and I took Maddy and Abby (our niece) fishing. What a delightful day we had! Within minutes of our arrival, both girls had caught their first fish. Maddy’s a fishing veteran by now, but it was the first experience for Abby and let me tell you, that girl knows how to show delight!
She’s thirteen. She’s beautiful. (Aren’t ya diggin’ the blonde highlights, compliments of her mom?) And she’s going for knee surgery today.
My athletic daughter tore her ACL (ligament) in her knee playing soccer and now she has to have it repaired. Considering she was quite a worrier as a child, she is amazingly relaxed this morning. And…wow – I wish I had her determination and drive! Our physiotherapist friend taught her an exercise routine to do for pre-hab (so she’d heal faster) and she has been faithfully going to the YMCA to work out, often running up to 4 miles on a damaged knee. She is SO determined that soon she’ll be back to playing soccer, and volleyball, and basketball, and… well, you get the picture. I marvel at her dedication/focus and look forward to watching where it takes her in the future.
Feel free to send up prayers on her behalf. I expect there will be some impatience in the weeks to come when she’s unable to do the things she loves most.
Update: She is home and in good spirits. The nurses were rather impressed with how athletic/strong/resilient she is and so they sent her home early (tonight instead of tomorrow morning). The pain is manageable and we hope and pray for a speedy recovery so that she can return to the sports that she so loves.
I’ll admit it – I’m seriously in the dark when it comes to understanding the recession and I’m even MORE in the dark about the debate around public health care in the U.S. Being a Canadian who has enjoyed easy access to public health care all my life, and never having had to worry about whether we could pay the medical bills (even when finances are tight), I am completely puzzled with how much fear and objection there is to what’s being proposed in the U.S. Sure our system’s not PERFECT, but at least I didn’t have to re-mortgage the house when I ended up in the hospital for three weeks before finally giving birth to our stillborn son Matthew.
For the most part, I can simply ignore the news stories around some of these issues, because it barely touches my life. But when I read stories like this one on a blog I’ve been frequenting lately (written by a Twitter friend), suddenly the stories begin to feel a little closer to home. It just doesn’t make any sense how a wealthy country could deny its own people access to equitable health care.
There’s nothing I can do about fixing the system, but there is one small thing I CAN do for a family that’s struggling to survive in the face of huge obstacles. I can buy cookies!
I grew up with some of those similar challenges (with incredible parents who struggled to stay afloat financially), so I know what kind of toll poverty can take on a family. When I saw that this family was selling cookies to try to pay the bills, I did the only thing I could – I ORDERED COOKIES! And it turns out that Priority Post delivers cookies across international borders!
You can do it too… order cookies! I barely got a chance to sample the ones that showed up in my house, because my three daughters devoured them like ravenous dogs (you’d think we didn’t feed them! yeesh!), but the crumbs they left at the bottom of the box sure tasted yummy.
Just to tempt you further, here’s a bonus picture of a Tootsie Roll eating a cookie! (Tootsie Roll costume not included with your order. You’d have to pay me BIG bucks to make another one of THOSE.)
