The House Is Alive....

To say this old house is "alive"over the past couple of days would be a bit of an understatement in some respects. Right now, it is "alive" with the sounds from small children -two who live here and two who are visiting for the weekend. Three of the four can communicate with fairly good English. The fourth one though is only two years old and her language skills are still very limited but she usually can get it across to adults as to what she wants or needs. Kurtis -as usually happens with more than two children together -is pretty much odd man out as the only boy, for openers, and the two older girls are very (and I do mean VERY) adept at the bossing others around routine. So, as a result, there's also a boat load of finger pointing and tattling too going on much of the time. I've been really busy this week though in the kitchen as tomorrow evening is our annual event at our church -with a covered dish dinner and then, the St. Lucia Pageant! Knowing we would have company this weekend, I baked 4 dozen sweet rolls on Wednesday and froze about 2 dozen of them. I gave Carrie a round of them (about a dozen) when she was here Friday for a brief visit so that leaves me with about a dozen rolls in the freezer and a coffee bread semi-wreath shaped loaf too. Friday, I baked Swedish Limpa Rye bread -got five loaves of that done up and we've already decimated one whole loaf of that. Friday I also cooked a big pot of chile for supper -that the kids and I had along with the rye bread, still warm and fresh from the oven. Nothing better, in my book, than munching on freshly baked and spread with REAL butter, home made bread! Friday, I also cooked up 5 dozen meatballs that I have to now fix the gravy/sauce for them to become Swedish Meatballs and these, along with the meatballs two other women from our church are making will serve as the meat entree for the dinner tomorrow night. In addition to that, today I cooked up a half of a smoked ham in a pot of water with chopped onions, celery, yellow peppers and sliced baby carrots then, cut the meat off the bone and into small bite sized pieces which went into a big 5-quart casserole dish of white navy beans. Using the water the ham had cooked in, I then cooked up a good bit of pot pie noodles and added that to the ham/bean mixture then poured the broth over that so it is now all ready to bske to take out to the dinner tomorrow night too! And while I was working away, sometimes Mandy had some music playing for entertainment -some of her favorite cds but thus far, she hasn't dipped into the Christmas CDs for my listening pleasure. Guess I'll have to get busy and dig them out for whenever I go on my annual binge of baking cookies. I've also been giving a whole lot of thought to something else that involves music too. Remember, I mentioned a long time ago that when my dear aunt passed away five years ago, she bequeathed me her organ -a beautiful Hammond organ, no less. I'm no great talent on either the piano or the organ but I do love to sit down from time to time and see if there are any old hymns I can still play, at least half way decently. (That qualifier -"half way decently" really narrows the playing field greatly.) Now though, I can't even play the organ because the last time I plugged it in, either something had chewed on the cord by the plug or it may have already been a bit frayed and I hadn't realized it, but at any rate, it sparked, hissed and crackled a bit, blew a fuse and I quickly got the poor organ unplugged! Now, I need either just a new plug for it or maybe a whole new cord -not exactly sure what it will need. I mentioned this briefly a while back to my son, asking if he thought maybe he could repair it and put a new plug on the cord. He had said at that time that he thought he might be able to handle that. Now though, I'm wondering if maybe he needs maybe some best protools 10 to search for whatever would be necessary for him to accomplish this major job! I really was hoping he would have found a way to fix this for me by now -or at least before Christmas -cause then, on Christmas Eve, maybe I could manage to play a couple of the easy carols and teach the kids the words and melodies to some of them. That, to me, would make Christmas complete -almost the way it was when I was a kid and my cousins and I would beg my Mom (or, her younger sister, if she happened to be here) to play some Christmas carols for us and we kids would gather around the piano and sing our little hearts out then. My Grandfather would even join in the singing too -adding his beautiful bass voice to the group and frequently, he would sing some of his favorite old Swedish Christmas Carols too. Without the beautiful music, the special traditional foods, our St. Lucia pageant at church and then too, the midnight Christmas Eve candlelit service where our choir sings the prettiest Swedish Christmas Carol I know -"Lyssna, Lyssna" these things are all part of what makes the celebration of Christ's birthday the very special time it is for me!