Ordinary Life

 While it's always wonderful and exciting to celebrate the holidays and special events of my life, it also feels good to get back to ordinary life.  My home is slowly getting back to normal.  All the holiday decor is packed away for another year. I have been dusting and polishing and setting up the bits and pieces that bring me pleasure as they are settled back into their appointed places.

I have a new favorite piece..this lovely picture which was a gift from our daughter. It makes an attractive grouping in our entry hall, as well as an expressive symbol of our faith.

I enjoyed the last pumpkin muffin from the freezer with a cup of coffee this week.  No more pumpkin baking until next fall.

I have also been taking it easy with a couple of old favorite books.  

Things are already beginning to heat up again and will get even busier in the weeks ahead, but for now I am enjoying these moments of ordinary life.  I hope you are too.

Adieu!

Catching Up

 What a difference a year can make!  This time last year my mother was in the hospital and I was just recovering after we both had  suffered from a terrible bout of Influenza.  We hadn't even celebrated Christmas yet. It was a long winter where I cared for my mother in our home as she slowly recovered and when she was finally able to go home in late March there was the anxiety of making sure she was strong and safe enough to be on her own.  Now here we are, and she has recovered much of her strength and was able to have my niece take her back to North Carolina to spend Christmas with her family.

I however, seem to be in a bit of slump.  It seems since our trip to Europe that I have been peddling as fast as I can and still not keeping up.  It seems like it has been a merry-go-round of  watching over my mom, taking care of grandchildren, hosting a church life group, spending time on an intense Bible study for my precepts group and still trying to make the perfect Thanksgiving and Christmas for everyone.  Things are quiet now for the moment, and it is time to reflect on how to bring back some balance.  I love the Lord. I love my family and I have missed my blogging,  So, I will figure it out and I will be back with joy in my heart and a spring in my step. On that note may I wish you all a wonderful new year filled with many happy adventures.

Now that I have gotten that off my chest here are a few (well maybe more than as few) photos from our holiday season which, in spite of some exhaustion, was really quite lovely.

We started out with two feasts on Thanksgiving Day.  My youngest son and his wife cooked their first Turkey which turned out perfectly.

After an early dinner with them we went over to our older son's home where I cooked a second meal for his family as our daughter-in-law had just had a baby a couple of weeks before and still needed to rest.  I had made most of the side dishes the day before, so it was just a matter of putting a turkey breast into the oven. My mother, bless her, baked the pies.

A few days after Thanksgiving we had a 92nd birthday and early Christmas celebration with my mother.  She left for North Carolina a week later.

We went to our granddaughter's Christmas program at her school.  She had the part of Mother Mary.

Our younger son and DIL took us out for an evening to look at the Christmas lights.  We started out at the arboretum in Everett and ended up at the light festival outside the Tulalip Casino.  It was wet and cold but still quite beautiful.

The girls came over to bake Christmas cookies.  They did a wonderful job rolling out and cutting the cookies all by themselves.

There was also lots of good cooking and hours spent decorating the house for Christmas Day which we celebrated with family and friends. 

Then on the Sunday after Christmas, our grandson was baptized, and we returned to our son's house to celebrate after church.

There are no pictures for New Years because we stayed home alone with our feet up. We stayed up long enough to see the New Year Space Needle Fireworks celebration at midnight.  Then we slept in until 10;00 the next morning! Whew! It was a whirlwind season.

Now that we are all caught up, and as this new year begins, it is my hope that I will be able to stay in touch a little more. Until next time, "May God bless us each and every one!"

Adieu!

Cuckoo Clocks and War Memorials

Our first port was at Breisach, Germany where we took a morning tour up into the mountains to The House of Black Forest Cuckoo Clocks.  As a child I was fascinated with cuckoo clocks, although we never owned one ourselves.  As an adult, I am still impressed by the craftsmanship that goes into each individual clock.

Even the building itself is a giant cuckoo clock!

While I didn't purchase a clock for myself, I did bring home one each of these lovely carved Christmas ornaments for  my daughter and two daughter-in- laws.  After, I got home I wished I had brought home one for myself as well, but I will enjoy seeing them hanging on their Christmas trees each year.

 We took a walk up to the rustic little local St. Oswald's chapel which was first consecrated in 1148.

The Second World War still seems so close and real here as people continue to bring to our attention things like this railroad bridge which was destroyed by the Germans to slow down The Allies in 1945 and since rebuilt.

Thinking of the war, we took a second excursion after returning to the boat for lunch.  We were docked on the German side of the river, but our tour took us across the river to the French side to visit the Colmar WWII Museum and Memorial dedicated to the liberation of the Colmar Pocket. 

Upon leaving the museum grounds we were able to look around the neighboring area of Colmar before heading out to the U.S. Military memorial.

It was sobering as we looked out over this place where battles waged in the bitter cold winter of 1945.  All seems so peaceful now.

While there was no U.S, cemetery close by, there was a French National one across from the site of the memorial.  It was a great disappointment to us that we were not allowed to go and visit it.  We would have liked to pay tribute those fallen allies with whom our fathers had fought alongside

As I mentioned before, evidence of a land scarred by war are all around.  This wall is all that remained of a church that was bombed and left as another memorial to the fallen.

On a lighter note, we kept noticing these large nests perched on top of tall poles or chimneys and learned that they are home to what is known at the Strasbourg Storks.  The storks are considered a symbol for this Alsace area of France. They represent peace, happiness, fertility, birth and rebirth to an area that has been conquered over and over throughout its history. In fact, the region changed hands four times between  pre WW1 and post WW2 as it bounced back and forth between France and  Germany and we could see the influence of both cultures in the names of the streets and towns.

We didn't see any birds, as the nesting season was long over.  However, I did bring home a Strasbourg Stork for my youngest granddaughter, stuffed of course!

 Our final stop on our memorial tour was to see the place where the French remember and honor Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in American history. He was just 19 years old when he received the Medal of Honor for holding off a company of German soldiers single-handedly while he covered the retreat of his men at this very spot in January of 1945.

I am not usually interested in World War history all that much.  However, after spending the afternoon in the Colmar region I found this past Veteran's Day to be more moving than it had been in a long time.  Our men and women in uniform all over the world are truly remarkable heroes.  Until next time.

Adieu!