A Spaetzle Noodle In Our Streudel

Today is Oma's birthday.  She would have been 116. 

We always celebrate this day by having one of our favorite family dishes, a German dish Oma frequently made.

 Oma, age 57

Makayla and Hailey joined me in kitchen to mix the dough

and stir the lentils.

April 18, 1993 was the date Megan was suppose to be born.  She ended up running several days late.

Now that I know Megan, I'm not surprised.
We thought it appropriate to recruit her to squish the dough.

Megan was concerned about getting spaetzle elbow.
That would be bad.  She has some important tennis games coming up.

She got a little steamed about it.

We decided it was time to pass the noodle squisher and Stan stepped in.

Ta-da! Oma's Spaetzle und Linsen (Spaetzle and Lentils).

Makayla dug right it.

Even Hailey liked it.

 Makayla loved the lentils, something I couldn't eat without gagging until I was 31 2/3 years old. 

Now I love them. Old age will do that to you.

We always freeze the extra in individual serving size-one cup noodle, one half cup lentils. It is by far our most popular leftover.  I send frozen baggies of spaetzle and lentils off to college with my kids to give them a taste of home when they get homesick.

Now that dinner is over, I'm going to stay out of the kitchen and hope the clean up elves stop by before I go down to breakfast tomorrow.



Jones Christmas Traditions

Over the years, Stan has insisted on putting up outside lights.  Three or four years ago Stan was seriously injured when he fell out of the tree while putting up lights and I insisted that particular tradition had run its course.  I even had the tree cut down to remove temptation.  However, "Get in Spirit of Christmas Megan" insisted that we owed her outdoor decorations this year since she will be moving on to bigger and better things next year.  She even got Stan to agree.

The two of them spent an evening stringing lights.

Now we can arrive home in the evenings and feel the ungrinchy glow.

Another of our Christmas traditions involves ridiculous amounts of holiday baking.

I remember Oma and Mom baking massive amounts of Christmas cookies.  My favorites of Oma's were a hard anise-flavored cookie which were rolled and cut into stars, and a meringue cookie .

I also remember "helping" Grandma Kenison make pies--I remember she made apple, cherry, and pumpkin or sweet potato pie for the holidays.

It's fun to have a new generation of offspring to help me in the kitchen.

We invited Megan to join us, but she's too worn out from her life skills class.  When she signed up for life skills, I thought she'd be learning to balance a check book, cook a quick and cheap supper, and sew on buttons.  Silly me.  Life skills explores every legal recreational activity know to man. Megan has been rock climbing, learning to play ping pong, hiking, playing basketball, volleyball, raquet ball, and a zillion other activities. Today Megan had to get on a bus at 6:30 am and go to Red Lodge to snowboard all day.  Poor thing.  She even had to miss a whole day at school. You can tell by her face what a hard day she's had.  I understand she has to go a second time, too.

An important part of our traditions involves Christmas Eve and Christmas stockings. 

But not these stockings hang by our chimney with care. 

These are the totally impractical stockings made of felt and sequins I made after the birth of each child.  They are so old, Shelly's stocking says "Michelle".  I think we called her that for the first 37 1/2 days after she was born.

These stockings aren't good for holding anything but air.  I made different stockings for the good stuff. 
I'll write that post later.

Mom gave me this magnetic Santa years and years ago. It's been one of my little children's favorite Christmas things over the years. 

This year it's holding Megan's temple recommend to the fridge.

We've been using an artificial tree for years.  Seven or eight years ago, these skinny trees were really popular.  I was the first person in line at the after Christmas sales to buy one.  Unlike our old tree, it fits into a corner of our living room without having to move furniture out.  I love that.


When Stan and I were first married, we started a tradition of buying an ornament each year to symbolize the past year.  This house is from our first Christmas in 1977 to represent our establishing a household together.

This Santa is this year's ornament, purchased in Nassau, Bahamas.

In between we've had ornaments like this mouse holding a thermometer from 1985 which was the year we had flu, strep, croup, flu, pneumonia, numerous ear infections, flu, pink eye, and Scott had chicken pox, followed 2 weeks later by Shelly, and two weeks after that by baby Amy. 
Then we all got the flu.

We've collected ornaments from our various vacations like this slightly tacky-looking 1995 Mount Rushmore creation.

Lately we've been forced to buy two or more to mark major events like Jessica and Jorden's 2006 wedding and Caden's birth.

When Scott and Shelly were little, I bought this nativity set because it was cheap inexpensive and unbreakable, and I wanted one my children could handle.  Now it's thirty years later and this set has been handled by many children and still survives.

The Baby Jesus for this set is tiny--about 1 inch long, 3/8 inch around-just right to fit into Mary's arms.  We've managed to keep him safe for all these years.  I decided to put him away one night when a certain someone kept carrying him off.

Guess who forgot where she put Baby Jesus? 

Old, forgetful people shouldn't be allowed to touch the family heirlooms.

One of the traditions I personally had growing up was to carefully unwrap presents before Christmas to see what I got, then carefully re-wrap them.  Sometimes it was a real strain to pretend surprised delight on Christmas morning over a present I'd opened three times weeks before.

photo by Hailey

In an effort to spare my own children this hardship, over the years I never put Christmas presents under the tree pre-Christmas.  Besides that, presents for a family of eight pretty much filled the living room, even during our lean years when everyone just got socks and underwear.  These days I just wrap things as I buy them and put them under the tree.  Even with Makayla and Hailey's gifts, it's pretty sparse compared to bygone years.

Now I'm having to keep a close eye on a certain sneak.

Don't you hate it when your bad habits appear in younger generations?

Continuing important traditions.

Why are we so excited?

We found a box of Lucky Charms in the cereal cabinet!

You may have been told Lucky Charms are junk food.  You obviously haven't been reading the box!  Lucky Charms makes you GROW UP STRONG

AND it has whole grain and calcium GUARANTEED!

It's probably full of  all kinds of healthy stuff. 
If I could find my glasses, I'd tell you how exactly what you're getting.

Of course, no self-respecting parent would ever give their children Lucky Charms.  We all know it's Grandma-only food.  In fact, certain parents had their children convinced Lucky Charms is ONLY available in Montana where Grandma resides.  Certainly it's not stocked in Ohio! 

I obliged by sending care packages that had Lucky Charms in them.

Some people have been known to eat them until they crash.

When we lived in Salt Lake City in 1980-81, Oma would give Scott and Shelly Apple Jacks when we visited.  For years they referred to Apple Jacks as "Oma's Cereal".  So you see, I'm just doing my part to continue the important tradition of feeding junk food to the next generation of grandchildren as a token of my love.

To all my grandkids:  You are welcome!

In The Garden

When I was a teenager and started playing the organ at church, I began to practice more regularly.  In particular, I frequently practiced hymns during the week.  I remember how often Oma would sit in a chair and knit or crochet and hum or sing along in German as I practiced.  She had a beautiful alto voice, and it was the alto part she would sing or hum.  I used to love it when she did that.

One day Oma handed me the music to "In The Garden" and asked me to learn it.  It was one of her favorite songs.  I played that song a lot over my high school years for Oma.

Today I played piano for a soloist at a Lutheran funeral.  "In The Garden" was the deceased person's favorite song. It's a beautiful song and I've always liked it too, maybe in part because Oma loved it. 

I did a little research and discovered it was written by C. Austin Miles, a Methodist. The song was published in 1912--much older than I would have thought.  Mr. Miles said that he had a vision of the Garden tomb, of Mother Mary looking for Jesus, and as a result wrote this song in a very short amount of time. Oma knew all the words in German, and I wish I could ask her how she knew the song and what about the song she loved so much. She often cried when I played it (and I don't think that was because I played it so awfully).  I think one of the reasons I liked to have Oma sing along as I practiced was because of the connection it gave us. Playing that song today brought back a lot of sweet memories.