SANTA LILY

Can you find Lily in all this mess of teddy bears?

Frank put her to bed, and let her take every stuffed animal known to mankind into her crib!!
Mommy isn't so nice! LOL
She awoke to only 5 small (very small) animals with her!

Ohhh....my... You have to check out this book, it is read by Amy Tan and it brought tears to my eyes.
I sent an e-mail to Frank (with the link) asking for the book for Christmas!! He had to laugh, I told him that I cried when I read it, and he asked "are you sure you want things to make you cry right now??"
Mothers Bridge of Love
Ok, so I've been a little teary..LOL

Actually, I find that every time I sit down to blog, I start to get teary eyed!! I'm not even sure why. Yesterday was the 1 month anniversary of Mom's death. Man this SUCKS!!
......ahhhh....inhale deeply.......
That is why I haven't been updating much.


So I've decided that the next few post will be happy, posts, videos, etc...
HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DAMN IT!!!

The New York Times is running an article all about personal experiences with international adoption, either written by an adult adoptee or by adoptive parents. There are some very touching and beautiful stories.

http://relativechoices.blogs.nytimes.com/

I've been trying to get things back to normal, caught up and running smoothly again.
Last week I devoted a ton of time to the kids, catching up on homework, nice meals, gymnastic training.. I'm glad I did that. The girls seem to be doing alright, Lily is less whiny and clingy, but still sticks close to me and the older girls had some sad / hard moments during the week, but much less and they are both able to openly talk about Mom with happy thoughts and memories, and not tears.
Like I keep saying.... One foot in front of the other...
This weekend I baked a pile of pies... I think 9 or 10 apple pies. I had left over apples from apple picking and they weren't going to last another week. As I mixed the fat into the flour I suddenly took to crying, as I instantly had a memory of mom holding my hands, teaching me how to cut the fat and flour together, then again as I rolled out my crust, always from the inside out, I felt her hands pressing on top of mine, holding the rolling pin. Sigh... I think those pies might have a little extra salt from my tears.
Has anyone read "Like Water for Chocolate'?
When she bakes as she is crying all her feelings go into the food, and as people eat at the feast, they experience her feelings? Well, hopefully people won't cry when they eat my pies! LOL I will admit however, that the crust was the best I've ever made, nice and light, tender, and flaky!
Thanks Mom.

Mmmm...blueberry cake...

Thank you to everyone who sent their condolences in the comments, e-mails, phone calls and cards! Every one of them meant so much to me.
About 5 hours after mom passed, a nice lady came by the house and dropped off super, and the food didn't stop arriving for days!!! Incredible stews, Chicken Fricot, sandwiches and pasta, and cakes... At the time, you would never cook yourself up a meal, let alone for 13 grandchildren, 4 children and their spouses and our dad... Your just too... well... "mindless" for lack of a better word, your in robot mode. But having the food all prepared, available whenever you got around to eating was an absolute godsend! Thank you to everyone!!!

My sister went home today to Arizona, and I spent the day wandering around my house, washing floors and baking. I am looking forward to the weekend to relax, drink wine and get ready for Monday, and to get things back to a regular routine.

One of the cakes that was dropped off at the house was a fabulous Blueberry Coffee Cake.
Whenever we saw her, my siblings and I would rush over to her, and say "ohh, YOU made the cake??? It was sooo good, it made us feel so much better"!! She ended up making 3 cakes for us!! LOL
I just have to share the recipe:

Awesome Blueberry Coffee Cake

1 Cup Sugar

1/2 Cup Veg Oil

1/4 Cup Orange Juice

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
Cinnamon
brown sugar
Preheat oven to 350.
Mix sugar, oil, orange juice and eggs together in a bowl and beat well.

Mix the flour and baking powder, and add to the wet mixture.
Gently stir in the blueberries.

Pour into a greased tube pan.
Mix cinnamon with the brown sugar, and sprinkle generously over top of the cake. (I use about 1 tbsp of cinnamon to 4 tbsp of brown sugar, but its up to your own tastes).
Bake for 50 mins.

First some pictures of my little helper..

Awesome Blueberry Cake!!!

oh, and by the way.. anyone who is coming over tomorrow for playgroup...
can you guess what your having with your coffee?
:)

Check this out.....

The paper did an article on Mom!!!

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/search/article/118084

Here are the girls on their way out for some "Trick or Treating"!
They thought of the costumes themselves....
A washer, a dryer, a box of Tide and the load of laundry, (or static cling). LOL
"The laundry" sat in a laundry basket that was pulled by my DH! Very Cute!

For more great photos check out... loving lydia