{"id":703,"date":"2010-12-19T00:00:45","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T07:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/hultquist\/?p=703"},"modified":"2010-12-19T00:00:45","modified_gmt":"2010-12-19T07:00:45","slug":"saturday-holy-christstollen-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/?p=703","title":{"rendered":"SATURDAY — Holy Christstollen!"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.weihnachtsseite.de\/christstollen.html<\/a><\/p>\n

I think I must start with Sunday, where I ended last week before anything had happened in the afternoon.\u00a0 I joined my music group and 9 of us played for the Rosewood Retirement Community\u2019s Christmas Dinner.\u00a0 That is all it was, and was it ever good!\u00a0\u00a0 They served us a full turkey dinner, buffet style.\u00a0 It bothered me that I could not partake of the ham and the cranberry sauce (salt and meds won\u2019t 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.\u00a0 I had cheese cake with berry sauce on top (I think it was boysenberry, raspberry, and blueberry mixed).\u00a0 After an hour of eating and visiting, we set up to play for the folks that stayed.\u00a0 We played a mixture of old time music and Christmas songs and carols.\u00a0 This group of musicians is called the Kittitas Valley Fiddlers and Friends.\u00a0 Thank goodness, the Taize\u2019 music was canceled till next year, so I didn\u2019t have to stay in town till 6:00 for that.<\/p>\n

I came home to find that my neighbor had plowed my driveway.\u00a0 Thank you, Ken. What a great gift that was.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Getting to the driveway and finding it open made me very happy.<\/p>\n

Monday was an early morning departure in pea soup fog for Yakima for a morning appointment with my cardiologist.\u00a0\u00a0 That turned out to be a long day, but it was good news from the standpoint of my health.\u00a0 The doctor was a little late getting to us, but spent a lot of time with us, as he always does.\u00a0 In addition to reviewing my two recent procedures (lungs and heart), he also gave me an EKG and an examination.\u00a0 He reviewed all my lab reports from a fasting blood draw a week previous, and he reported to us on all items.\u00a0 He dictates his findings and recommendations and we will get a transcript of that, as will our family physician.\u00a0\u00a0 He also changed some of my medications, consistent with the lab report findings.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We ate lunch in Yakima, and made it back in time for my exercise class at 1:30.\u00a0 John shopped while I exercised.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0\u00a0 Evening found Nancy going again to town, this time to Hearthstone to play Christmas carols with a group called The Connections.\u00a0 There are only two violins, and a keyboard, everyone else sings.\u00a0 Occasionally, one person plays the guitar but not for Christmas carols.<\/p>\n

Wednesday.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We played Christmas carols for about a half hour.\u00a0 Several patients came down the halls (we were at the conjunction of three), to join us.\u00a0 After we finished there, we packed up and walked back to the nursing home next door.\u00a0 We were greeted happily by everyone on the staff and they went off to tell residents we were there.\u00a0 We had a really good audience for just appearing without much warning.\u00a0 Our larger group only visits this place on the 5th<\/sup> Thursdays when months have them (only happens about 4 times a year).\u00a0 December is one such month, so when they were asking us to come back again soon, we could tell them we\u2019d see them in 2 weeks, the Thursday after Christmas.<\/p>\n

Tonight I finished the web page with our Seasons Greetings on it.\u00a0 I am in the process of sending the link to everyone in my email address book, who I think will be interested.\u00a0 But, I have several accounts, so I hope I don\u2019t hit people more than once.\u00a0 Meanwhile, there are several of you reading this blog for whom we do not<\/strong> have email addresses.\u00a0 There is part of our family back in PA we have heard read this regularly, but again, we do not have their email address.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We would love to hear from you.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.elixant.com\/~nancyh\/2010Greetings.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Thursday was a neat afternoon.\u00a0 Went to play music at Dry Creek Retirement center and our group was well received and appreciated.\u00a0 They gave us a Christmas card with tons of signatures on it from residents there with thanks for coming to share with them.\u00a0 Several came up for hugs at the end of our playing.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 They and we had a great time.\u00a0 We stopped by friends on the way home, and had a nice visit with tea, cookies and bread.\u00a0 The bread had been given to us by a former student as we were leaving the music venue.\u00a0 It is made locally in town and is a German Holiday Bread, they call Stollen<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0 (English, this time.)<\/p>\n

http:\/\/whatscookingamerica.net\/History\/Cakes\/Stollen.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

It has raisins and citron dried fruit (orange) that has been soaked in rum.\u00a0 In the middle is an almond paste filling.\u00a0 The entire loaf is rolled or sprinkled with powdered sugar.\u00a0 It is eaten sliced and dry.\u00a0 We shared some with our friends, and we have had slices with two meals thus far.\u00a0 The best was lunch on Saturday, with leftovers from the pork loin roast, cooked with orange slices, the day before.<\/p>\n

Friday was a one in-town event day, my exercise class, but I went and was glad I did.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Our \u201cnew\u201d teacher (leader) was there today.\u00a0 He will take over for her for the next quarter while she has her baby.\u00a0 He is a senior in Exercise Science and Physiology at CWU.\u00a0 He went through the class with us today and will take over January 3rd<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 John cooked pork loin roast all day.\u00a0 The gifts were difficult to wrap, but I managed.\u00a0 One is a stick with a horse head on it, for children over 4.\u00a0 It is really cute.\u00a0 When you pinch his ear, he whinnies,\u00a0 plays a tune and lifts his head up and down, nodding.\u00a0\u00a0 The other gift is a stuffed 18\u201d Santa Claus with sleigh bells on his hand.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s really cute.\u00a0 They probably each are worth more than $5, but we got them at yard sales and probably didn\u2019t pay more than $3 each for them.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I thought we were going to play the gift exchange game that goes by many different names around the country.\u00a0 Everyone picks a gift and then names or numbers are drawn and you can exchange your gift or keep what you have.\u00a0 If you want to exchange, you simply go to the person and take their gift, saying, \u201cMerry Christmas! May I please have your gift?\u201d\u00a0 They have to give it up.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0They left in a hurry and forgot the right directions, etc.”\u00a0\u00a0 At the end of the story, you keep the gift in your possession.\u00a0\u00a0 Some examples of the way it starts out follow:<\/p>\n

Christmas was almost here, and Mother RIGHT<\/strong> was finishing the Christmas baking.\u00a0 Father RIGHT<\/strong>, Sue RIGHT<\/strong>, and Billy RIGHT<\/strong> returned from their last-minute Christmas errands.\u00a0 “There’s not much LEFT<\/strong> to be done,” said Father RIGHT<\/strong> as he came into the kitchen.\u00a0 “Did you leave the basket of food at church?” asked Mother RIGHT<\/strong>, and the story proceeds.You can follow the link below to find the whole discussion:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/www.santalady.com\/xmasgame\/leftright.html<\/a> I didn’t get home till very late–after 10:00 p.m. because I stayed after dinner, and we had fun playing music.\u00a0 John and I drive separate cars so he can come home and be with the animals and feed them.\u00a0 Three of us played an hour longer than the rest last night.\u00a0 We were enjoying ourselves, so why not?Our gifts were a big hit.\u00a0 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\u2014chocolate covered cherries and chocolate mints).\u00a0\u00a0 He and his wife were thrilled with the gift.\u00a0 I was happy I had some control over the person to whom it went.\u00a0 Of course, I had to demo pinching the ear to make the horse do his thing.<\/p>\n

Today is Saturday, and it is has been a light day, and the next several will be likewise.\u00a0 That\u2019s good, we need a rest from all the activities, and the kitty needs attention.\u00a0\u00a0 It was snowing this morning but we only got a little over an inch accumulation before it stopped.<\/p>\n

There is snow predicted for us (1-2 inches) each day this week, including Christmas.<\/p>\n

Hope your week before Christmas goes well.\u00a0 The next one of these will be on Dec. 26th<\/sup>, because we will be sharing Christmas dinner with our neighbor\u2019s family, where we have spent most holidays, since we arrived at this house, across the street from their hay field, in 1989.\u00a0 They adopted us into their family and it has been a wonderful experience.<\/p>\n

We remain grateful for the blessings of the year and Christmas.<\/p>\n

Till next week,<\/p>\n

Nancy & John<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 I joined my music group and 9 of us played for the Rosewood Retirement Community\u2019s Christmas Dinner.\u00a0 That is all it was, and was it ever good!\u00a0\u00a0 They served us a full turkey dinner, buffet … Continue reading “SATURDAY — Holy Christstollen!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-issues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p72iNf-bl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}