MAKING MEMORIES FOR YOUR FAMILY

Think back over the years and try to remember some of the best memories you can recall?  Are these memories about things you got or about experiences you had?  For most of us our memories consist of things we did and experiences we had. 

When my children were growing up I wanted to make memories for them; Memories different from the regular memories of growing up.  We all have those, but I wanted something extra special to stick out in their minds when they got older.  Something they would remember with fondness.  I found that in making memories for my family, I created wonderful memories for myself and I had so much fun coming up with ideas and implementing them.

The types of memories I am talking about are the totally out of the ordinary kind – not the kind that become traditions – although that is o.k. as well.  These should be things that normal families don’t always do; things that stick out above all the rest.

Here are a few examples of some memories I created with my family.  

After taking a course on being a “Total Woman” our challenge for the week was to make sure that the last thing our husbands saw in the morning before he left for work was a bright smiling face, after all if anything bad had happened to me or him that day, his last memory would be one of me smiling. 

I was never a morning person and rarely got up when my husband left for work in the wee hours of the morning but I was determined to meet the challenge.  I would drag myself out of bed, get ready, give him a big hug and kiss, and would walk him to the car. I would stand there smiling and waving as he drove away – even if it was raining.  It put a smile on his face and he really appreciated the effort I made.  It was something totally out of the ordinary but it was a gift from my heart to his. 

When my oldest daughter was about seven I decided to put on a ‘restaurant night’ for her and her grandparents.  I typed up a menu.  She got to chose which foods would be served and she got to invite her grandparents over for the special event.  We decorated the table and used the fancy dishes.  My husband and I were the maid and butler and we did not eat with them.  This was her special night with her grandparents and we were making a lasting memory for her. 

One year I decided celebrate Christmas in the summer to make memories for other members of my family.  I invited them over for dinner on a certain day and didn’t tell them what I had planned.  I served a full turkey dinner on my best dishes and then invited everyone down to our rec room.  There I had set out a fully decorated Christmas tree and I had presents waiting for them. (I bought a few dollar store items for each person and wrapped them in Christmas wrap.)  I had Christmas music playing softly in the background. As I handed out presents I would wish them a Merry Christmas and explain that Christmas should not only come once a year.  I still hear comments from certain relatives saying “Remember the time you had Christmas in the summer?”  We all had a lot of fun and some great memories.

Memories are made of experiences and not so much of things.  They come from our hearts and minds.  It’s o.k. to put little notes into your husband or child’s lunch box every now and then but if you do it all the time, before long they take this for granted and it doesn’t really stick out in their memories. It becomes more of a tradition.  

Try to think of ways to surprise your family with the totally unexpected. Make sure to include teenagers and get them involved in ideas and planning as well. At first they may scoff at the idea but eventually they may come around and enjoy themselves.  Make sure to take plenty of pictures and video so you can enjoy these special times together in the future.

Here are a few ideas to get you started. 

Pick one member in a family and make that person King or Queen for the day.  For one special day, that person doesn’t have to do chores, gets to choose their favorite foods to eat, picks their favorite movie to watch, etc.  Everyone in the family has to do something extra special to honor that person for the day.   Make sure every member of the family gets their chance at being king or queen for a day but spread this out over the year so it does not become a regular event but sticks out in the person’s memory.  A twist on this could be a day to celebrate an Un-Birthday half way through the year.

Throw a picnic in the middle of your living room or in a park in the middle of winter.

Have a family pajama party and everyone sleeps together on the living/rec room floor, or make a tent with blankets and sleep there for the evening.  

Have each child invite one friend over for a family night of charades, board games, pizza making, cookie baking, or crazy menu night (see below).  Make the evening different and special so the friends will remember it as well. 

Make a coupon book or coupon jar and hand it to family members for a job well done.  The coupons could include things like a free back rub, free hugs, a favorite meal, an extra hour before bedtime, or any number of things.  Use your imagination and make it fun.

Plan a “Help our neighbors” night.  Get the family together to do something good for your neighbors.  You could shovel their walk, mow their lawn, rake leaves, pick weeds, etc. Another spin on this is to do something for someone else ‘anonymously’.  Leave a bouquet of hand picked flowers tied with ribbons, some groceries, a plate of cookies, a card, or a special note saying something nice about them.  Don’t let them know who did it.  Leave it on their doorstep and run.   This will create memories and encourage family members to be more thoughtful of others. 

Invite one of your children out on a date.  You could go out to a movie, out for a meal, to the zoo, museum, etc.  Make it a special evening just for that child.  This works great with teens. 

Make a Scripture/Bible Cake and make a game of it.  Get the family to look up the verses and find the ingredients.  The recipe can be found here: http://www.abetterhope.com/funpage.html

Plan a “No Electricity” night.  No T.V., radio, electronic games, etc.  Turn out everything you can that runs on electricity. Make sure to unplug or turn off telephones.   Light candles, serve a cold dinner and have everyone pitch in with clean up.  Hand wash dishes as a family then sit together and tell stories. 

Have a crazy menu night.  Menu items are disguised so no one knows what they are getting.  Here are a few examples:

           

1.  Themed after a favorite T.V. character or show.

Mickey’s Marvelous Munchies

Minnie’s magnificent magic marinade

Daisy’s delectable dairy

Donald’s dingy dragon soup   

Pluto’s pompous poison

Goofy’s grand and gross grunge Etc.

2.  List food items in a foreign language so they don’t know what they are ordering.  The following are a few examples in Italian.

la mela – apple

il burro – butter

la cena – dinner

Here’s one site that has some food names in French, Spanish, Italian, German and Swedish. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/themes/food.shtml

3.  Numbers and letters menu.  Pre-choose a food item and assign a letter to it, the same with utensils.  If your child picked the letters c, p, a, and f for their meal and the number 3 and 6 for their utensils, this is what they might get:

C = soy sauce

P = wiener

A = glass of water

F = raw vegetable

3 = large serving spoon

6 = napkin

Now they have to eat whatever they have chosen with only the spoon and napkin.  This will cause giggles all the way round when they see what they have ordered.  Of course you can serve a regular meal afterward.

4.  Create a menu with the craziest, grossest or funniest names you can think of. Kids seem to enjoy eating their food so much more if the food has the craziest names.  Get them to help name foods for other meals and you will see them gobble their food up on no time and they will have fun doing it.

Scrambled wiggly worm spaghetti

Dead fish eyeball soup

Lazy lying lousy leftovers

Greasy grimy garden greens

Ewieey gooey  chopped and mangled potatoes

5.  Here’s a site with a crazy menu.  http://www.theidearoom.net/2010/03/blog-sway-with-idea-room.html

I hope you enjoy these ideas and have fun making memories with your family. Please feel free to share your ideas as well.

THE LOST ART OF LISTENING - WHEN YOU READ

I am a blogger (and I make videos) and the following are MY observations and MY opinions.

In the blogging community (and in videos) there are hundreds of individuals that want to communicate with others. They daily put their lives ‘on the line’ and are open to ridicule, antagonism, disrespect, mockery, and discrimination.

So why do these people do it?

They long to be heard, to be seen, and to be understood. They long to be acknowledged as individuals. They hope that in some way they can reach out, encourage, uplift, inform or help others. Words may be just words to some people but these people will use words from their heart and mind to try to communicate to others.

These people are inviting us to look into the secret places of their hearts and lives. They invite us into their private world and we should be respectful of their words and space. And yes, I am a person inviting you into the secret place of my life, and I hope that readers will respect my thoughts and my space.

But sadly this isn't the case. Go onto You Tube and you'll see thousands of scoffers, especially if the word Jesus is mentioned. Look at the Christian community and you'll see "comment deleted by moderator", that's if the blogger even has comments open.

As we read what they have written, we tend to create images and thoughts from the words we read and bring them into our own reality. We should be trying to see the words written through the eyes of the writer and not through our own preconceived ideas and biases. What is the writer really trying to convey in this article? Have I read every word accurately? What can I learn through this and how does this apply to my life? Etc.

I believe reading and listening are becoming lost ‘arts’. Reading should be an act of contemplation, deep thought, consideration, purpose, and reflection. It should be an act in which we allow ourselves to join with the mind and heart of another human being and see things through their eyes.

It is so easy to stand on the outside and criticize what another has written. We only see words on a page and we don’t bother to look beyond. We don’t care to see the person behind the words and yet words sometimes are the only form of expression an individual may have to reach out to others.

It is much the same in the real world. We tend to see only what we want to see, an outer shell. We don’t care to see the real person inside that shell.

These writers are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and friends. They are real people with real desires and needs. They have chosen to invite you into their private lives and hope that in someway they can encourage you or make your day a little brighter.

When I write an article, I presume that my readers will pour over each word and understand the underlying message of what I am trying to convey. I presume they are reading with an open mind and that they have put away their own biases and that they are really seeing ‘me’ and what I am all about.

I am very careful about every word I put down. Questions go through my head as I write. Are my words glorifying my Heavenly Father? How will others perceive my words? Will my words be offensive to some? Will my words bless and encourage others? Will I have lots of readers or only a few? Is my spelling correct? Have I used proper sentence structure, language and punctuation? Will my family be reading? On and on it goes.

I try to be open and honest and yet I find I hold back so much of what I would really like to say. I fear my audience would not understand or be able to accept what I have to say and yet I have this inner need to share, to reach out, and to try to help by using words from my heart.

I write, rewrite and end up discarding article after article believing that maybe one article isn’t really that important or another article is not worthy of my audience. It can take me hours to create what some might see as simply a few lines.

I write from my mind and my heart and it is only natural to presume that other writers are doing the same.

If you enjoy reading my writing then I welcome you into my world. I encourage you to take what you can and leave the rest. I hope I can share some bit of wisdom, advice, encouragement, or just plain entertainment to willing eyes.

Pro 12:25 Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word maketh it glad.

1Ch 28:9b …for the LORD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever.

To those who would find fault or criticize; I’ve seen countless ‘trolls’ who seem to get some sort of perverted warped sense of satisfaction in putting down others and making negative comments. This seems especially prominent on Christian blogs and videos.

What purpose does this serve?

If you don't like what someone has to say, then don't read and move on.

We live in a free country, but it will never truly be free until people like you and I live out that freedom by respecting the words of another.

JOYFULLY COOKING AND EXPERIMENTING WITH MOM'S HOMEMADE VEGETABLE SOUP

This is my mom's homemade vegetable soup - with a few alterations.

Darlene (my sister) and I grew up with a mother who made nearly everything from scratch. She came from a family of 18 so everything was just thrown together without any measuring. If more people popped in for dinner, more ingredients were added. The sad part was that mom would never measure anything.

Whenever one of us would ask her for a recipe she would invite us over to watch her make it. With 5 sisters as well as myself, I can bet we each have a different recipe. That is how versatile this recipe is. Mom changed it whenever it suit her mood and we learned to do likewise.

My daughters wanted the recipe so I decided to make it as mom taught me, but after I prepared each ingredient, I measured the amounts and put them down on paper so I could give it to them.

I heard about this 'miracle diet' soup that worked like magic. Being a soup lover (and needing to lose weight) I did a search on the internet and found it. They claim you can eat as much of this soup as you want and you will not gain a pound, in fact you would probably lose weight. (like magic)  (I wouldn’t guarantee this but it is worth a try.) It is all made of vegetables so it is very healthy.
I started to read the ingredients. I was so surprised to read a very similar version of my Mother's Homemade Vegetable soup. (No wonder I was so skinny as a kid.)

Mom's Basic Home Made Vegetable Soup
(serves 8 or more people depending on your prefrences.)

2 large diced carrots
3 C. Diced cabbage
1 diced medium onion
2 diced celery sticks
1 large can of tomatoe juice (or) 1 large can of tomatoes,
1 large bay leaf
Aprx. 3 heaping tblsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper

Mix all ingredients together in a large pot. Cover vegetables with tomatoe juice and add about another can full of water. Bring to boil on high heat. When it begins to boil, lower the heat to about medium and let it simmer for at least an hour.

The can sizes I use are about equal to a litre (or a little over a quart). You can vary the amount of liquid depending on how thick or thin you want the soup. (The same with the vegetables. Add more veg. or other ingredients for thicker soup, cut large or small.)

Variations:
My mother made this soup by simmering a soup bone for hours and then adding the vegetables. I never use the soup bone.
I have also made this soup by adding about 1/4 cup of any/or all of the following: barley, lentils, peas, corn, green or yellow beans.

• I like to add leftover cooked rice, noodles, macaroni, or spaghetti, and eat it as soup.
• If you aren't that fond of soups, try a thicker version of the soup, using less liquid, and serve it over your favorite food like a stir fry.
• Add chunks of leftover beef or chopped beef for a vegetable beef type variation.
• Leave out the tomato juice and add barley for a vegetable barley type soup.
• Add beets for a type of red borscht.

Experiment! Have fun with it! Make it your own!

See what kind of MAGIC you can make, and who knows, depending on how you make it, you might just lose a few pounds to boot.

MEMORIES OF MY DAD

My dad has been heavy on my heart since we learned that he is suffering with cancer.  He may be leaving this earth soon but he is leaving behind a treasure trove of beautiful long lasting memories.  I want to take this time to share some of these with you.

Being the oldest of six girls I have known him the longest and I am truly grateful for all that time I got to know him.  To me he’s been the greatest dad that anyone could ever have asked for or wanted.

As far as I know, dad has always been ‘real’ with no pretenses about him.  He never seemed to care if someone was rich or poor or whatever their station in life was.  He seemed to treat everyone the same and I know of no one who ever met him that didn’t like him.

Material things never seemed important to dad.  He always made the most of what he had around him and ended up turning many of those things into memories of some kind.  Like the time he took an old Genie Ware jug and made a lamp out of it. He used a Genie Ware bowl turned upside down for the lamp shade.  (I won a prize for having the most unusual item.)

Dad was a kid at heart and played with us often.  He loved to chase us around the house and tickle us till we would beg him to stop.  He tickled me so much when I was little that today I am no longer ticklish. 

‘Touch you last’ was one of my favourite games and I never could get that last touch in no matter how hard I tried. 

We looked forward to going to bed each night because dad would give us the ‘jiggles’.  While we lay on our back he would pump our bended legs back and forth as fast as he could while we giggled with glee. 

Dad was a practical joker and loved playing tricks on me. He would come home from work each day and hang his coat in our bathroom.  A little later he would go in and when he came out he would hand me a bubble gum and say “I pooped some bubble gum for you.”  I was very naive and believed him.  I would beg him over and over again,” Dad, can you poop some more bubble gum for me?” 

My dad played the violin and he would use it to baffle me.  When I would go to the bathroom, he would rush and get his violin and play music by the bathroom door.  When I came out he had the violin hidden and he would say “I heard you peeing music again” and I would wonder how I did that. 

Some of his crazy antics are the best of memories that I will always cherish. 

Dad wasn’t a great carpenter but the things he made were from the loving heart of a father to his daughters.  I’ll never forget the Christmas I woke to find a brand new doll lying in a freshly made wooden crib with my name on it.  He made us each one and also made one for our neighbour’s girls. 

A neighbour of ours had a lawn swing and I would go to their house regularly to swing on it.  Dad ended up making a child size version of it and I spent many a day swinging to my hearts content.  Here is a picture of it.

One time dad made a large wooden platform and attached it by ropes in our garage.  I think he had begun to make a large lawn swing and ended up turning it into a garage swing.  Rain or shine, kids from all over the neighbourhood would pile up on that thing and swing back and forth for hours at a time.  We had so much fun swinging, singing and knocking each other off.

Another thing about dad was that he always seemed to have a song in his heart.  No matter what he would be doing he would either be singing or whistling a tune.  On long trips, it was only natural that we would all sing some of his favourite songs.  When I had children of my own, I carried on that tradition, trying to teach my daughters some of their grandfather’s songs.

From as far back as I can remember dad was a storyteller.  I loved sitting at his feet and I could sit for hours while he told stories.

My favourite stories were those he would tell of poor little girls that were so ugly that no one wanted or loved them.  I would empathise and cry my heart out as I begged for more.  Eventually mom would have to tell him to quit telling us stories and making us cry.  We loved them and couldn’t get enough. 

Many of his stories were of his childhood, some were of his exploits with one special friend he had, and many were made up just to entertain us. Each of his stories was rich with anticipation, adventure, mystery and comedy. 

One such story was about the time he and his brother went hunting late one night.  There had been wolves spotted nearby and they were determined to kill them.  They set themselves up behind some bushes and waited.  Before long they saw a pair of yellow eyes glaring at them through the darkness.  Slowly and quietly, he set up his rifle, carefully aimed and shot the wolf square between the eyes.  To his surprise nothing happened.  As he watched the eyes separated and went in opposite directions.  He then went on to explain that it was actually two wolves standing side by side, each with one eye opened and one eye closed. The shot had gone right between them.  He loved building us up and then delivering the punch line.

Soon he will be going to live with the Jesus that he loves so much.  He will once again be reunited with his parents, brothers and some of his sisters not to mention some of his children, grandchildren and friends who have gone on before. 

I can just see them now as they walk together on streets of gold or they gather around him under the tree of life.  He will entertain them with stories of his wife and girls and tell them stories of what has been going on down here since they left.   

I will miss him exceedingly but I know he will be happy and healthy and living in the arms of Jesus.

I love you dad.