Pie!

I got my raspberries last weekend! One of my closest friends has access to her family's 21 acres of raspberries, and I get a couple of flats of raspberries from her every year. Most of the raspberries go to make jam, some get frozen for future use, but half a flat always has to be saved for pie. Some people associate pie with Thanksgiving or fall, but for me, summer is all about pie.

I grew up in Junction City, Oregon, and every year in August, the tiny town holds a festival celebrating it's Scandinavian heritage. This is the big fundraiser for every club, church, and organization in town. The Girl Scouts always serve ice cream, and krumkake. GoodWill, the thrift store, sells clothespin dolls. When I was there, our church had two booths- one selling roast beef sandwiches, and one selling pies. All of the members were called on to help out preparing the food- particularly the pies. Every year, my mother would sign up to make fifty pies for the booth!

We didn't have any refrigeration in the pie booth, so all the pies had to be fruit pies. This meant that the growing seasons were devoted to collecting enough fruit. We'd work picking fruit on farms, buying at the best prices we could find, and storing everything cut up in ziploc bags in the freezer- sometimes to be saved until the next summer. We'd save everything. We made apple, pear, apricot, blueberry, blackberry, marionberry, boysenberry, gooseberry, cherry, rhubarb, peach, raspberry, loganberry, and anything else we could think of that might be good in a pie.

When it was time to start making the pies, we had a pretty nice assembly line going. My mother would handle the pie crust, I would make up the filling, and my little sister would add the butter on top. We'd take turns cutting a design for the top crust, and crimping the edges to be as pretty as possible. We would freeze the pies, and pull them out to thaw the day we needed to bake them and run them out to the booth, so they were hot and fresh upon delivery.

I didn't just help make pies for my mother. The young women of the church would also sign up to make fifty pies! There would be a special activity on a Saturday where all of the girls and the youth leaders would get together to assemble them. That meant I was involved in making a hundred pies every summer!

I don't make a hundred pies anymore. As the summer starts winding to August, and the summer fruit starts showing up at the farmer's markets, however, I always get the urge to make pie. Now, I just make one, and it's my favorite of all of those many flavors- raspberry.

It's just not summer without it.

Running

A few weeks ago, I ran a 5k.

This was a big deal for me because it was something I never ever thought I would be able to do. I've posted before about my lack of athletic ability. P.E. class was pretty much a soul crushing experience all through school. In fact, I remember running in P.E. Twice a year, we would do a twelve minute run. We were expected to run for twelve minutes and keep track of the number of times around the playground we were able to go in that time. My record number of times around the playground was less than one. I got three quarters of the way around the track, and couldn't catch my breath, and I was done. I honestly felt that running wasn't something that I was able to do. That was for athletic people. I walked, danced, did pilates and aerobics, but never went running. Later hip problems only confirmed my beliefs that running was something other people did. Not me.

Things changed when my youngest came home from school and told me she was having trouble in P.E. They were running every other day, and training to run a 5k by the end of the year. Running was difficult for her, and she was struggling. I was encouraging, and told her to keep going, and she'd be fine. I felt like a hypocrite. I knew I couldn't do it, and yet I was expecting her to be able to? On my daily walks I started to break into a jog, just to see how it would go. It didn't go well. I lost my breath pretty quickly, and had to stop. Maybe some people were just born to run naturally, and my family was missing that gene somewhere.

In March, a friend of mine mentioned something about a couch25k program. It's designed to get someone who had never run to gradually train to run a 5k. I looked it up. It started out pretty easy- walk for 30 seconds, jog for 30 seconds. Maybe I could do that. Even better, I found out that there was music you could download for free on itunes that went with the program! The music would speed up or slow down when you needed to walk or jog so you didn't have to watch the clock to time your workout. I decided to try it. I downloaded the Podrunner Intervals First Day to 5K podcasts, and I started jogging.

I still didn't believe that this would actually work. I made a deal with myself that I would try, but if it got too hard- like, if I threw up, or passed out, or threw out my hip or something, then that would be it. The first week, I had no problems. I was able to do the workout without difficulty at all. The second week, the bursitis in my hip and knee started to act up. I thought that would be it, but I looked up knee and hip pain and read some good suggestions on how to work through it. I waited an extra day to make sure the pain went away and tried again, using some of the advice. No problem. I kept going. I kept succeeding. Week after week, I would finish my run astonished that I had done it without any serious pain or difficulty. I started to like it.

The last week of the program happened to coincide with my daughter's final 5k run in P.E. Parents were invited. I stood with all of the sixth graders, and several other parents, and for the first time in my life I ran a race. I ran with my daughter. Unfortunately, we got separated pretty quickly, and had to run on our own. I was able to keep going the entire way, and it was so amazing crossing the finish line to the cheering of a whole bunch of students, teachers, and parents. A few minutes later, I was able to cheer as my daughter finished the race too.

I'm still running, and I'm still surprised. I start off in the morning, thinking of how far I have to go, and a part of me still hesitates. Then I go ahead and run it anyway. It's not necessarily my favorite way to exercise. Nothing really compares to the joy of dancing, or a long walk on a perfect day. The sense of accomplishment, however, is pretty amazing.

I expect that I will continue to be surprised. About a lot of things.

A recipe!

I don't remember where the recipe came from. Probably somebody gave it to my mother, and she tried it, but Swedish Pancakes were an instant hit at my house from the very first batch. It became THE breakfast anytime we had a sleepover or slumber party. It was our traditional Labor Day breakfast for a few years. They were a staple in my family.

Similar to crepes, but easier to make, these were a thin, rectangular pancake. You added any toppings that you liked, then rolled them up to eat them. They fed a ton of people, they allowed for endless creativity in toppings and they were a lot of fun.

The tradition changed when I went to college. Our church has a general conference two weekends a year. In Utah, this means we get to watch conference on television. One year, one of my friends invited everyone she knew over for a conference breakfast. We all had pancakes, bacon and eggs, and sat and watched the Sunday morning session of the conference together. It was great! Six months later, another friend decided to carry on the tradition and hosted it. It turned out well, but we hadn't anticipated the appetites of some of the college boys, and there wasn't enough food. I ended up running home to grab some muffin mix I had in the kitchen to add to the breakfast so people wouldn't still be hungry. That's when I remembered Swedish Pancakes. They were the perfect breakfast. As long as you had eggs, milk, and flour, you could just keep on making them and it was easy to feed a crowd.

When the next conference rolled around, I was the one who hosted the breakfast, and the first Swedish Pancake Conference Breakfast was born. I provided the pancakes, and guests were invited to bring toppings or drinks to share. This has continued for twenty years now. People have come and gone, children have been added to the mix, houses have changed, but it's always Swedish Pancakes for conference. I imagine that the day will come (in the FAR FAR future) when we'll add grandchildren to the guest list. The recipe is as follows:

Swedish Pancakes

3 eggs
1 1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup flour
1 Tbl. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt

Mix the eggs and milk, gradually add flour, sugar and salt, stirring constantly to avoid lumps. The batter will be thin. Heat a griddle. Spray with no-stick cooking spray. Pour the batter across the hot griddle in a long row. When the batter has set, use your spatula to cut the batter vertically into roughly rectangular shapes. Flip to cook on the other side. Top with a tablespoon or so of your favorite topping, roll up, and eat. We typically make 6-8 batches for every conference breakfast, and we'll get 30+ people attending.

Favorite toppings include:
any fruit
whipped cream
jams and jellies
syrups
applesauce
sugar and cinnamon
peanut butter
chocolate syrup
ice cream toppings
powdered sugar
brown sugar
butter
coconut
nuts
pretty much anything else in your pantry you are brave enough to try

My favorite topping combinations are:
chocolate syrup and powdered sugar
sugar and cinnamon and maple syrup
white sugar, butter, and lemon juice
Strawberries and whipped cream
butter and brown sugar

The nastiest topping combination ever attempted was powdered orange drink and peanut butter. The powdered orange drink was meant for drinks. The guys insist it was really good. They're wrong.

Miracles

My little sister always wanted to be a Mommy when she grew up. Except for a brief time when she wanted to be an apple picker, when you asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, it was always a Mommy. Life didn't turn out that way for her. Mr. Right didn't come along until she was in her thirties, even after everyone else had gotten married and started a family. She used to point out that our grandmother had beautiful wedding pictures of all of the cousins on one wall. Then on another wall was the single picture of just her. She called it the wall of shame.

Even after she found her Prince Charming, starting a family and having children didn't happen either. Health problems, doctors, fertility specialists and years of waiting replaced being parents. They signed on for one adoption agency, and waited for three years for something to happen. Nothing. Finally, my sister started talking about giving up on the idea, and maybe they should travel instead, because just working and coming home each day, it just seemed like they needed something else in their lives.

Over Christmas they heard about another adoption agency that seemed to have more birth parents listed than their previous agency. It was a relatively painless matter to fill out new papers, and transfer home study information to add the new agency to their list of things they needed to wait for. Before the final papers were even sent, the call came. There was an infant up for adoption, and were they interested. Their profile was one of four that was sent to the birth mother, and to their astonishment, the birth mother chose them! That was seven weeks ago.

Things didn't stop there! Three weeks ago, they got another call from the agency. The same birth mother also decided to place her one year old baby up for adoption- a little girl. Were they interested in having two? They said yes, but had no information on either of the children, other than the gender of the one-year-old. It was almost like they were getting twins, because they needed two of everything! High chairs, cribs, and let's not forget clothes! We bought every gender neutral newborn size outfit in the store to help get ready.

Last week they found out the infant was a boy. They also found out that the birth mother was flying out here early to be induced. Two weeks early. Monday morning they learned that the birth mother was arriving that night. Without any chance to finish their preparation, my sister brought home a one year old little girl two days ago, and yesterday her little boy was born. The doctors say they will be able to bring him home tomorrow. In the course of seven weeks things have gone from nothing to much much more than they could have ever hoped for.

Yesterday, I was holding my new little niece, and she suddenly stretched out her arms, reaching for my sister. Surprised, my sister asked, "Do you want to come see your mama?" She took her in her arms, and the little girl patted her on the arm, and said, "Mamamamamamama."

And they say there aren't any miracles anymore....

Adoption

Adoption has been a subject I’ve heard over and over all this month. My sister is looking to adopt, a few friends have just gotten their paperwork finished to adopt, and the local papers are talking about Haitian orphans and the possibilities of finding families for them. Adoption.

It reminds me that when I was in eighth or ninth grade, I very nearly had not just one sister, but three sisters and a brother. It all started with my father selling his old TRS-80 computer to a small business in Portland, Oregon. For our family, it meant a short vacation a few hours away from home so that my father could deliver the computer. He spent the day with the owner and secretary of a small office machinery business, setting up their computer with business applications, and teaching them everything they needed to know to get their business computerized. My mother took my sister and I shopping in the big city. We had a great time, and that was the end of it.

When the secretary called us a few months later, I’m certain that my parents thought that something had gone wrong with the computer, and she needed some help fixing it. She called for an entirely different reason, however. She had been diagnosed with cancer, and she was a single mother, with four children, a fourteen year old, a ten year old, a three year old and an eighteen month old. She had no family, the fathers of the children were not in the picture, and she had no one to turn to who could take the children while she dealt with her illness. She needed someone not just willing to watch the children while she went through cancer treatments, but if the worst should happen, someone who would raise the children. She had been praying that she would be able to find someone, and one name kept coming to her over and over again: My dad’s.

Out of the blue, she called up a man she had only known for the one day, and the family she had met only briefly at the end of a shopping trip to ask us to take the children. She didn’t know why my dad’s name kept coming to her, but she felt very strongly that he was the answer to her prayers. It was a time of some serious soul searching for us. Was this something we could do? Was it something we wanted to do? I remember a few family councils where we discussed the possibility. We prayed about it a lot, and came to the decision that yes, we wanted to help this woman. We worked with state Family Services to arrange to foster, and possibly adopt the three youngest children, the fourteen year old choosing instead to stay with friends up in Portland. Just like that, we opened our home to Christy, Antoine and Angie Ide. Our family grew overnight.

This wasn’t an easy prospect. We had a three bedroom house, and there simply wasn’t room for five children. Not to mention room for a baby! We didn’t have beds, much less a crib! We scrambled to convert our family room into a makeshift bedroom for the two youngest. We put bunk beds in my sister’s room. My sister was the same age as Christy, and they could share. We had also signed up to host a Finnish exchange student that summer, and my sister’s old bed went into my room for her. We were packed full.

There was a lot of adjusting to do, and it didn’t always go well. Antoine was the cutest little boy you ever saw, but he would steal things from my room. I was a teenager. My room was SACRED, and no one was allowed in it! I lived in my room, playing music, and reading books, and my door was always CLOSED. I would be so angry every time I found something missing. My mother never understood my pain. She simply reminded me that he was three, and he would learn. I probably slammed my door in a huff more than once over the situation.

Dealing with diapers and bottles and high chairs was another issue. I did a lot of babysitting, but it was different when the baby was with you all the time! Angie was a beautiful girl, and her favorite word was “NO!” It was almost a game. We’d ask her silly questions like, “Are you a pretty girl?” just to hear her answer, “NO!” When it wasn’t cute, it was very annoying.

The first few weeks were really hard. Everyone was adjusting to this new situation, and all of us were wondering how permanent this was going to be. After that first month, we fell into a routine, and by the third month everything seemed normal. Antoine was lively, but no longer made me angry. Angie still said “NO!” when I asked her for a hug, but then she’d wrap her little arms around me and give me one anyway. Christy and my sister were soul mates, and couldn’t be happier. This was starting to work.

That’s when we got the most wonderful, and the most heartbreaking news ever. The kids’ mother was going to be just fine. The treatments had worked, and the cancer was going into remission. Just like that, it seemed, they were gone, and our house seemed very empty with their absence.

I’m not really sure how we fell out of touch with the family. We moved a few years later to California, and when my parents tried to get in touch with them again, they were unable to locate them. I have tried to Google them, and found out that Antoine was playing baseball in the minor leagues. I’d imagine that the two girls are married and using different names now. I wonder about them a lot. I wonder what it would have been like if they’d really become ours-one big family. I wonder how my life would have been different. I wonder what their lives have been like. I wonder if they even remember us.

I do know that we loved them, my almost brother and sisters.

Chicken Pox

When I was in kindergarten, I couldn't wait for Christmas to come! I had gone to bed the night of Christmas Eve tense with the excitement of Santa's visit. I was sure that I wouldn't fall asleep, but of course I did.

I woke up very early before the sun was up, excited that it was Christmas morning, but not feeling very excited about getting out of bed. I forced myself up and woke up my little sister, then woke up my parents who grumbled about it being too early, but got up anyway. All of the relatives that had come to visit were awakened soon after. We went out to the living room, and there, just as I had hoped was a pile of presents under our tree! I should have been more excited, but somehow I just didn't feel as thrilled as I thought I would be.

I sat down on the couch, and my Father passed around presents. There were a lot for me, and I was happy, but not terribly enthusiastic. I was tired. My head hurt. Still, it was Christmas morning, and those presents were for me! I wasn't going to ruin things. I opened a few presents. I got great toys. Wonderful. The headache was getting worse. Finally, a stack of presents still waiting for me, I opened a book-shaped present. It was the story of Heidi complete with a read along record. The cover had a girl wearing a dirndle dress, and braid loops on either side of her head. I looked at the book, and burst into tears. I felt awful, and presents weren't fun.

Everyone rushed to my side wondering what was wrong. I had an awful fever, and a headache. Then my Mother saw the spot on my arm. A small red spot, right there above my wrist. By the time the sun had come up one spot had become eight. I don't remember the rest of the presents. I remember cool baths to get the fever down, and spending a lot of time in bed with orders not to scratch no matter what I did.

I got Chicken Pox on Christmas morning.

Balancing the Holidays

Earlier this year I was pleased to be a contributing writer at TodaysMama.com, sharing a story about the best gift I ever received. I was recently approached again and asked to write something about how I balanced holidays with my husband's side of the family and my side of the family. I have been lucky that we have been able to merge our families together without too much strife. The story in question was one of the Christmases that worked the best. I was grateful for it too, because it was the last Christmas with my grandfather. You can read the article here. As you read, keep scrolling down. I'm one of several contributing writers, and they saved my story for last!