http://www.weihnachtsseite.de/christstollen.html
I think I must start with Sunday, where I ended last week before anything had happened in the afternoon. I joined my music group and 9 of us played for the Rosewood Retirement Community’s Christmas Dinner. That is all it was, and was it ever good! They served us a full turkey dinner, buffet style. It bothered me that I could not partake of the ham and the cranberry sauce (salt and meds won’t allow), but on the menu I could eat was turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, candied yams, corn, green beans, salad, and a fabulous choice of desserts. I had cheese cake with berry sauce on top (I think it was boysenberry, raspberry, and blueberry mixed). After an hour of eating and visiting, we set up to play for the folks that stayed. We played a mixture of old time music and Christmas songs and carols. This group of musicians is called the Kittitas Valley Fiddlers and Friends. Thank goodness, the Taize’ music was canceled till next year, so I didn’t have to stay in town till 6:00 for that.
I came home to find that my neighbor had plowed my driveway. Thank you, Ken. What a great gift that was. The drive into town was awful because the roads had not be plowed, and the drive home was only slightly better on a road west of us, but I had to come back over to our road and it was in horrible shape for the last 2.5 miles. Getting to the driveway and finding it open made me very happy.
Monday was an early morning departure in pea soup fog for Yakima for a morning appointment with my cardiologist. That turned out to be a long day, but it was good news from the standpoint of my health. The doctor was a little late getting to us, but spent a lot of time with us, as he always does. In addition to reviewing my two recent procedures (lungs and heart), he also gave me an EKG and an examination. He reviewed all my lab reports from a fasting blood draw a week previous, and he reported to us on all items. He dictates his findings and recommendations and we will get a transcript of that, as will our family physician. He also changed some of my medications, consistent with the lab report findings. I always feel complete confidence after a visit with this doctor, because of his thoroughness and willingness to explain everything he is seeing and recommending. We ate lunch in Yakima, and made it back in time for my exercise class at 1:30. John shopped while I exercised.
Tuesday was spent almost all day working on the Christmas newsletter to put on the web for electronically reaching those with email access to the Internet. Evening found Nancy going again to town, this time to Hearthstone to play Christmas carols with a group called The Connections. There are only two violins, and a keyboard, everyone else sings. Occasionally, one person plays the guitar but not for Christmas carols.
Wednesday. Exercise class was followed by a musical trio of which I was part, with another violin, and a guitar, at the Rehab center where I spent 6 weeks earlier this year. It was especially nice to be near the front entrance where lots of people walked by (my previous caregivers) and recognized me and stopped for a hug or just said hello in passing. We played Christmas carols for about a half hour. Several patients came down the halls (we were at the conjunction of three), to join us. After we finished there, we packed up and walked back to the nursing home next door. We were greeted happily by everyone on the staff and they went off to tell residents we were there. We had a really good audience for just appearing without much warning. Our larger group only visits this place on the 5th Thursdays when months have them (only happens about 4 times a year). December is one such month, so when they were asking us to come back again soon, we could tell them we’d see them in 2 weeks, the Thursday after Christmas.
Tonight I finished the web page with our Seasons Greetings on it. I am in the process of sending the link to everyone in my email address book, who I think will be interested. But, I have several accounts, so I hope I don’t hit people more than once. Meanwhile, there are several of you reading this blog for whom we do not have email addresses. There is part of our family back in PA we have heard read this regularly, but again, we do not have their email address. If you are one of those folks and want to access our newsletter (with pictures), then please feel free to click on this link below, and also, please get back to us with your comments. We would love to hear from you.
http://www.elixant.com/~nancyh/2010Greetings.html
Thursday was a neat afternoon. Went to play music at Dry Creek Retirement center and our group was well received and appreciated. They gave us a Christmas card with tons of signatures on it from residents there with thanks for coming to share with them. Several came up for hugs at the end of our playing. One of our members thought to take a whole bunch of bells and shakers, so they could join us on Jingle Bells, Jambalaya, and Silver Bells. They and we had a great time. We stopped by friends on the way home, and had a nice visit with tea, cookies and bread. The bread had been given to us by a former student as we were leaving the music venue. It is made locally in town and is a German Holiday Bread, they call Stollen: (English, this time.)
http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Cakes/Stollen.htm
It has raisins and citron dried fruit (orange) that has been soaked in rum. In the middle is an almond paste filling. The entire loaf is rolled or sprinkled with powdered sugar. It is eaten sliced and dry. We shared some with our friends, and we have had slices with two meals thus far. The best was lunch on Saturday, with leftovers from the pork loin roast, cooked with orange slices, the day before.
Friday was a one in-town event day, my exercise class, but I went and was glad I did. Our teacher brought us all a present (candy) and a thank you note (very personalized) for the baby shower we put on for her last week. Our “new” teacher (leader) was there today. He will take over for her for the next quarter while she has her baby. He is a senior in Exercise Science and Physiology at CWU. He went through the class with us today and will take over January 3rd.
I came home to spend time on email a little and then to wrap gifts for our gift exchange tonight at the potluck with the musical group. John cooked pork loin roast all day. The gifts were difficult to wrap, but I managed. One is a stick with a horse head on it, for children over 4. It is really cute. When you pinch his ear, he whinnies, plays a tune and lifts his head up and down, nodding. The other gift is a stuffed 18” Santa Claus with sleigh bells on his hand. It’s really cute. They probably each are worth more than $5, but we got them at yard sales and probably didn’t pay more than $3 each for them. One of the people there will be able to give the pony to a grandchild, probably, and several of the people may want the Santa for their house decorations. I thought we were going to play the gift exchange game that goes by many different names around the country. Everyone picks a gift and then names or numbers are drawn and you can exchange your gift or keep what you have. If you want to exchange, you simply go to the person and take their gift, saying, “Merry Christmas! May I please have your gift?” They have to give it up. As it turned out, there were few enough of us there that we could sit in a circle and listen to a story as described below that is full of rights and lefts.
Each time the word is said the gift is passed that direction. e.g., “Mr. and Mrs. Right left for the country right as it began to snow. They left in a hurry and forgot the right directions, etc.” At the end of the story, you keep the gift in your possession. Some examples of the way it starts out follow:
Christmas was almost here, and Mother RIGHT was finishing the Christmas baking. Father RIGHT, Sue RIGHT, and Billy RIGHT returned from their last-minute Christmas errands. “There’s not much LEFT to be done,” said Father RIGHT as he came into the kitchen. “Did you leave the basket of food at church?” asked Mother RIGHT, and the story proceeds.You can follow the link below to find the whole discussion: http://www.santalady.com/xmasgame/leftright.html I didn’t get home till very late–after 10:00 p.m. because I stayed after dinner, and we had fun playing music. John and I drive separate cars so he can come home and be with the animals and feed them. Three of us played an hour longer than the rest last night. We were enjoying ourselves, so why not?Our gifts were a big hit. The horse head on a stick ended up as my gift at the end, but I was sitting next to the man of the house who sponsored the party, and they have horses, and grandkids and great grandchildren, so I just traded him my gift for what he had ended with (two boxes of candy—chocolate covered cherries and chocolate mints). He and his wife were thrilled with the gift. I was happy I had some control over the person to whom it went. Of course, I had to demo pinching the ear to make the horse do his thing.
Today is Saturday, and it is has been a light day, and the next several will be likewise. That’s good, we need a rest from all the activities, and the kitty needs attention. It was snowing this morning but we only got a little over an inch accumulation before it stopped.
There is snow predicted for us (1-2 inches) each day this week, including Christmas.
Hope your week before Christmas goes well. The next one of these will be on Dec. 26th, because we will be sharing Christmas dinner with our neighbor’s family, where we have spent most holidays, since we arrived at this house, across the street from their hay field, in 1989. They adopted us into their family and it has been a wonderful experience.
We remain grateful for the blessings of the year and Christmas.
Till next week,
Nancy & John