40 Below...or close enough to it

This is how cold is was yesterday morning: I turned on my car 20 minutes before I had to go to work and I still had to scrape the windshield. While scraping the windshield I could feel my tongue freezing. All I can say is thank goodness we heat with wood because if the power goes out at least we'd all be warm.

A Mom Moment

These are a couple of Elijah's recent drawings. I'm pretty proud of them. I've been watching his drawings move from scribbles to recognizable pictures this past year.
There is a story that he told me that goes along with these pictures.
Once upon a time a boy named Elijah was playing hockey with Wayne Gretzky. They were playing against Patrick Roy in goal. Wayne Gretzky passed the puck to Elijah and he shoots and scores! He got a goal against Patrick Roy. He was very happy. The End.
Elijah's imagination about playing hockey really has no limit. This Sunday he showed me a picture he drew in Sunday School. It was very clearly 2 people playing hockey. When I asked him who was playing hockey he said, "That's me and Jesus, playing hockey when Jesus was a little boy."

Top 100 Reads

Well, I've decided that it's time once again to read classic books. I get on this kick every few years. So I googled the top 100 books and found a few lists. Quite a few lists. Some of them overlapping. Some limited by category (TIME's list was the top 100 since 1923) but I think I've found one I'd like to follow: http://creativevisionbooks.com/blog/2007/11/04/best-books-of-all-time/ I like the list and the formula used to create the list. Here's the list with an * for the ones I have already read (20). Any suggestions to add? 1984 was listed twice so I need one more to make an even 100. I am starting with Vanity Fair (that's the plan anyway)

*THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald (6)
ULYSSES by James Joyce (6)
*1984 by George Orwell (6)
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger (6)
ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac (6)
*THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck (5)
CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller (5)
LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov (5)
BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley (5)
BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh (5)
THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner (4)
*TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee (4)
THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien (4)
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce (4)
ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell (4)
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf (4)
INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison (4)
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess (4)
*GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell (4)
AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner (4)
*A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway (4)
*A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster (4)
*LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding (4)
THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London (4)
DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens (3)
EMMA by Jane Austen (3)
TESS Of The D’URBERVILLES, Thomas Hardy (3)
*THE SCARLET LETTER by Nathaniel Hawthorne (3)
*WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte (3)
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers (3)
SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut (3)
*JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte (3)
*BELOVED by Toni Morrison (3)
ANNA KAREINA by Leo Tolstoy (3)
THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway (3)
NATIVE SON by Richard Wright (3)
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (3)
NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad (3)
*HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad (3)
UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry (3)
THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford (3)
HERZOG by Saul Bellow (3)
*THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame (3)
U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos (3)
FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce (3)
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser (3)
*WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence (3)
*THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton (3
THE WOMAN IN WHITE by Wilkie Collins (3)
THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe (3)
TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller (3)
MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather (3)
LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner (3)
THE MAGUS by John Fowles (3)
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving (2)
DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes (2)
TOM JONES by Henry Fielding (2)
WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy (2)
MOBY-DICK by Herman Melville (2)
MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert (2)
WINNIE THE POOH by A(lan) A(lexander) Milne (2)
GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens (2)
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Feodor Dostoevsky (2)
TRISTAM SHANDY by Laurence Sterne (2)
*LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa M. Alcott (2)
VANITY FAIR by William Makepeace Thackeray (2)
*PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen (2)
IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME by Marcel Proust (2)
THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James (2)
THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand (2)
GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon (2)
THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin (1851-1904) (2)
DUNE by Frank Herbert (2)
A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute (2)
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carroll (2)
CLARISSA by Samuel Richardson (2)
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams (2)
A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving (2)
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas (2)
*THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY by Henry James (2)
OF MICE AND MEN by John Steinbeck (2)
ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren (2)
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin (2)
*CHARLOTE’S WEB by E. B. White (2)
ROBINSON CRUSOE by Daniel Defoe (2)
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Feodor Dostoevsky (2)
THE STAND by Stephen King (2)
REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier (2)
I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves (2)
HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster (2)
TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald (2)
THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence (2)
BLEAK HOUSE by Charles Dickens (2)
ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand (2)
ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner (2)
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James (2)
AUSTERLITZ by W. G. Sebald (2)
THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka (2)
WISE BLOOD by Flannery O’Connor (2)
FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley(2)

They're finished!

...and pictures can now be posted of my creations. I made 3 stuffed animals for Christmas presents this year. One for each of my boys and for my niece, Sadie. I'm pretty proud of them and the boys seem to like theirs. I talked to Andrea before they opened presents on Christmas Day so I don't know Sadie's reaction yet. Thank you Jill for posting instructions on your blog. I had fun and hope to sew something else sometime soon.

Elijah's Christmas Dog and Jeremy's Creature (he calls it bear)

Sadie's Bear

O Christmas Tree

This is the story of the Springthorpe Christmas Tree 2008 edition.

I pretty much always put up the tree the weekend after my brother's birthday. (Doan family tradition). This year that happened last weekend. Now, we didn't put up the tree last year. We knew we'd be away for Christmas and with Jeremy scooting around, what was the point? So I went to put up this year's tree. (We use a fake one, remember that otherwise this story doesn't really make any sense). I carried it up from the storage room only to realise that I only had the bottom half of the tree (about 4 feet of tree). I looked back down in the storage area where I was kept, all I could find was some tree like garland, but no tree top. I kept looking around the storage room (I found the winter boots I'd been missing for Jeremy, but still no treetop). I asked Jonathan (the organiser of the storage room. He told me it must be there somewhere and suggested that perhaps I wasn't really looking hard enough. I looked again. I checked every box and nook and cranny in every inch of that storage room and nothing. Now it was Jonathan's turn. Of course he'd find it, I'm just blind and not really looking right? - wrong! He couldn't find it either. Well, can't we just put it up the way it is and fix it somehow? (that was his suggestion) No. I was really irritated now. Somehow my treetop had been probably thrown away during the past 2 years and now I have no tree. I decided to out. Hopefully to bring back a new tree.
If you know me well, you will know the absolute level of my irritation and despiration when you know where I went...Canadian Tire. I am not and have never been a fan of Canadian Tire. I don't like it. Any one of them, anywhere. It's a terrible, irritating store. It's over-crowded, not well laid out, and has silly Canadian Tire money that just piles up taking up valuable room in your wallet. It also has the irritating ability to carry just about anything that you can only find there and no where else. Of course being the Christmas season and a Saturday the parking lot it is full. Great. I put Jeremy into a shopping cart and headed inside. My first irritation at the store happens almost immediately. The wheelchair/stroller/shopping cart access has a locked lock on it and the seeming only other way you can get in is through the turnstyles...aha, wait, I can sneak through the returns area. As I head down I encounter irritation #2, pushing the shopping cart to the seasonal area is near impossible as the main aisle is narrow and is also taken up by people lined up at the cash registers (they were not thinking clearly when they designed this store). I finally make it to the Seasonal Aisle where the load of Christmas crap is unbelievable. They have this life-size singing Santa that is seriously the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Who would invent and be able to sell this stuff? The price of Christmas trees shock me. There is no way I'm paying hundreds of dollars for something that will be up in my house for 3 weeks of the year every other year. Then I spot it. In the sale bin is a stack of 3 ft trees marked down from $24 to $8.99. I take a closer look. Yes, the pole seems to be the size I need. I take it and go...back down the small main aisle to the narrow cash register lines where everything is at easy access for my one year old (a new Canadian Tire irritation). When my mini-tree is rung in and my Canadian Tire money is taken off the total, I owe $8.60. Perfect and irritating all at the same time. Why is it only at Canadian Tire I can find these things?
I take my mini-tree home, pull it out of the box, tug the bottom stand off and fit my mini-tree into the spot where my tree top was supposed to have gone. It fit. And you can't tell the difference. I used a little bit of moving tape for reinforcement and the job was done. Jonathan helped me get the tree standing in the tree stand (another crappy Christmas product that was a neccessary purchase that I could only find at Canadian Tire a few years ago). Elijah and I decorated the next day...(and you can't see the tape unless you are looking for it.) Really I'd had enough Christmas tree by the end of all of this. I'm enjoying the tree now, a week later, if only I could keep the one year old away from the ornaments, but I think that's a losing battle :o)

A Poem I Found

The sleigh was all packed, the reindeer were fed,
But Santa still knelt by the side of the bed.
"Dear Father," he prayed "Be with me tonight.
There's much work to do and my schedule is tight.
I must jump in my sleigh and streak through the sky,
Knowing full well that a reindeer can't fly.
I will visit each household before the first light,
I'll cover the world and all in one night.
With sleigh bells a-ringing, I'll land on each roof,
Amid the soft clatter of each little hoof.
To get in the house is the difficult part,
So I'll slide down the chimney of each child's heart.
My sack will hold toys to grant all their wishes.
The supply will be endless like the loaves and the fishes.
I will fill all the stockings and not leave a track.
I'll eat every cookie that is left for my snack.
I can do all these things Lord, only through You,
I just need your blessing, then it's easy to do.
All this is to honor the birth of the One,
That was sent to redeem us, Your most Holy Son.
So to all of my friends, least Your glory I rob,
Please Lord, remind them who gave me this job."

Love of Tea

It's no secret that I love tea. I have fond memories of having tea at my Auntie Sue's house as a young girl (and many times as an adult too). I didn't expect my son at the ripe old age of 21 months to love tea too. He's fast. He will find my tea mug and sip at it, saying 'mmmmm' while he's at it. Take a look.