Holiday Weekend in a Few Words and Snapshots

Wednesday night: Went shopping with Daniel for stuff to make poor boys and for kettle chips without sunflower oil. Rebekah made a couple of pumpkin pies. Yes, this is our traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, and we love it. Don't laugh.

Thursday: Holiday editor. After email and social media, we attended Divine Liturgy in Homewood to give thanks. Besides our 82-year-old pastor and us, two other people showed up. Breakfast in Mokena (boys' idea) at a place I don't remember. Back home to work. Timothy put up the tree and decorated. A lovely couple of hours with Timothy that night at St. Joe's to visit my ex-brother-in-law. The room was filled with family. After liturgy, this was truly the best part of the day. Dinner and a movie.

Friday: Two of my grandsons Ronnie and Caleb spent the day. While I finished social media for The Herald-News and the Morris Herald News, Rebekah and Daniel read to the boys. Then we made pirohi filling, did science experiments, colored, and had lunch. Caleb, Rebekah, and I took a nap (Caleb in theory, Rebekah and I in actuality), while Ronnie and Daniel hung out. Then we made pirohi and settled down to an episode of The Flying House. Caleb fell asleep.

Because of the custody situation, not sure how their mom feels about posting pictures, but here is one of the pirohi:

Saturday: Spent most of the day working on Before the Blood, but while on the quest for authentic candy canes for St. Nicholas Day, which we found, Rebekah and I saw this on a bench outside of Walgreens. Totally made our day.

Sunday: Most of the day was spent working on Tuesday's health pages and working with Sarah to finally complete the templates for a project begun two years ago for Joliet Area Community Hospice.

But during lunch in the small hall after liturgy, my good friend Eli, who's in his 80s, looked over the spread another member had hosted in memory of her son's birthday and asked, "What? No poppyseed?" We are hosting the St. Nicholas banquet next week, so I asked if he was bringing it then?

It's a standing conversation between us. My grandmother used to make the most delectable poppyseed coffeecake, but she died shortly after my seventh birthday and took the recipe with her. Once Eli learned this, he occasionally brings the most amazing iced poppyseed potica to share at church.

Eli then put his arm around me and whispered, "No, but I have some in the car for you." Here's what was left as of last night. Love this man! :)

 

 

 

Recap of Rebekah's Christmas Challenge

In an earlier post, I had written how my twenty-year-old daughter Rebekah was lacking in Christmas spirit due to our family situation being vastly different than in Christmases past.

So I challenged her to "make" Christmas for us, without spending money and with using only the resources in these four rooms that comprise our latest home.

Since Rebekah decided to recreate our traditional Eastern European Christmas Eve feast (a modified version), I softened the "no money" edict to allow her to purchase a few key ingredients we did not have. While items were baking and simmering, Rebekah gave Ellis Island a nice cleaning, too.

She ended up making bread (no dairy, flavored with olive oil), bobalki (bread balls i a poppyseed brown sugar syrup, yes I know honey is traditional, she forgot to buy it), pirohi (dumplings stuffed with potatoes and cheese), mushroom soup (button mushrooms, sauerkraut, barley...and hers was better than mine!), spiced apricots, as well as banana bread and chocolate chip cookies for our church's annual in-house caroling party following liturgy the next morning.

She bought two types of olives, sparkling grape juice, split pea soup, baked beans, smoked sausage.

The result was a nice surprise when Timothy came home that night. Stupid us, we forgot to remove the lids before we snapped the picture!