Thoughts From a Frazzled Mind

We had a terrific Christmas this year! Our holiday started with the annual Duerden family dinner party on Christmas Eve. It was a great blessing that mom was able to prepare almost all of the dinner. It wasn’t very long ago that we weren’t sure that mom would even be around this Christmas, let alone make dinner! Tradition has it that we always listen to the Osmond Family Christmas album during dinner – things must have been crazy, because somehow we neglected to turn it on, oh the horror of it all! Regardless, dinner was quite enjoyable. After dinner we sang a few Christmas carols, and then we had the annual reading of the Christmas Story from the bible by mom. Along with the story we usually have the youngest children hold up stick puppets representing the key characters. Unfortunately we were reminded of the severity of mom’s memory loss when she didn’t even remember that we had ever used the puppets. Since the babies were so little anyway, we opted not to use them. Mom started r...

Just a quick note to say that dispite several hurdles to jump, TA DAH! The Christmas Jammies were completed just in the nick of time! It was touch and go because as I was sewing the last couple of waistbands my sewing machine decided to quit working . It was very strange, one minute I was sewing along fine, and the next, everything seemed to be working, but no matter what I did, the needle would not go up and down. I took it to the local sewing center, but they said that they couldn't fix it, and recommended that I take it to another shop in Logan. This was devastating news, not only for the fact that I was on a Jammie deadline, but also because, I love my sewing machine. I haven't used it much in the last several years, but previously it was used on a daily basis as I made all of my childrens clothing. I am so spoiled by my machine that it was very hard for me to borrow another to finish up the last few seams. However, I did. It was actually quite comical to see me try to ma...

Monday night we had a great time when Cyn's family and Marilyn's family joined us for an evening of fun times. We decided to have breakfast for supper and made yummy waffles and eggs. After dinner we headed to our house for, what else, GAMES! We just love playing games! This night the ladies chose to play Simply Catan while the kids ran around wildly and the guys watched Monday Night Football. Cyn is such a Kook! She promised that she would help Tasha make a gingerbread house during the holidays this year, and they never seemed to have time when Tasha was at their house (she stays there between classes at school). So, Cyn brought all of the makings, icing, and decorations here and while we were playing, Tasha decorated her very first gingerbread house. I think she did a fantastic job! We soon had all of the kids join us and want to play so we broke out "Walk the Dogs". It was fun to see McKay open the box and say, "what, we play with toy dogs?????" I...