Amsterdam

We arrived! New Years Eve. Interesting people watching!

Zeghers Christmas

Another turkey was sacrificed in honour of the season.  Some of the Zeghers clan gathered at Joann's house.  Leah says it isn't a Christmas gathering unless there are kids.  Here she is holding Sofia, who is wearing her new Jack Frost hat.

Everyone loves a baby!!

Sofia is wondering who snuck in behind her.  Who is this guy??

Joann and her baby, Molly.

Today we head off on our long trip.  We catch our flight to Chicago this afternoon, and then to Amsterdam through the night. 

Cheers everyone.  Keep in touch with us on this blog, email or Facebook.  Gotta love technology!!

Hellos and good-byes

Last night Leah had her school friends over for a visit.  It was great to catch up with all the kids and what they are doing now.

Leah's high school friends.

The boys remembered this jar from old school days when I taught them.  

Can you read what the jar says?

Today I got together with the "girls" for lunch at Dayner's Den.  Excellent hamburger soup!!  We all exchanged our various schedules of holidays.  We will all be together again in late February.

Left to right:  Me, Joan, Shirley, and Beth

I was able to get away without cooking any meals today, tonight we were invited to the Rex's for supper.  Amazingly delicious, green curry soup.  Wow!!

Left to right:  Leah, Don, Sandra and Wil.

Christmas Events

Christmas Eve:
During the day we had a get together with Crealock-Leslies and Drummonds.  The guys were all high school friends and we try to have a get together each Christmas.  Tradition is to have a photo of all the kids on the staircase.  Here they are all grown up.

From oldest to youngest:

Aaron, Leah, Alex, Lonna, Brenwyn, Brooke and Rhiannon

Camera wars.  Parents taking photos of kids on stairs:

Erin, Janice and me.

The adults (not necessarily oldest to youngest!):

Mike and Erin, Krista and Don, Janice and Dave

That evening we went to the Holland United Church Christmas Eve Candlelight Service.  Dave and Janice organize the choir, and a group of us sing.  It is always a beautiful way to get into the Christmas spirit.  Beautiful Christmas carols in a candlelight setting.  

After the Candlelight service it is tradition for the Rexs to stop here for appetizers and our gift exchange. Sandra, Wil and Catheryn stopped by.  Aaron went to Wrays later to visit Tim.  We all miss Katlyn at times like these.


Christmas Day:
Opened gifts once the kids finally got up.  Strange how we have to wake them up rather than the other way around!!  When they were little I always told them that it wasn't really Christmas Day until the sun was up. Luckily, they fell for it!

Christmas morning.

Notice the Yule fireplace on the TV and my gift, the Tassimo by Aaron.

Stopped by the Treherne Care Home to visit Alma and wish her a Merry Christmas.  She was very talkative, and enjoyed one of the dainties we brought.

Drove to Portage la Prairie for Christmas Supper at the Krawec's with the MacDonald side of the family.  We always have a family jam session when we get together.

Aaron and Marvin

Wanda, Vyra and Connie

Lunch with Alma

Don and I helped Alma decorate her door. Then we had a wonderful turkey dinner.

Bali review and update

Today I spent a lot of time updating my Bali blog with pictures.  During the second week of my trip while in Bali the blog site wouldn't let me upload photos.  This blog site now seems to be working fine, so I added the photos today.  Anyone wanting to reread the blog, just go to the side bar and click on the October date to see the past Bali blogs.

Remembering Bali and our wonderful tour leader Barb.

Barb will be offering tours next summer and fall.  Check out her site.  It is a wonderful tour, well worth going on!!

www.balifibertours.com

Christmas Tree Topped

Hey, can you top this Christmas tree?  This tree is the top of one of the trees in our shelter belt that are close to the electrical wires and Hydro will top them soon.  We thought we would use one for our Christmas tree this year.

Christmas is less than a week away!!

Cycle of Giving

This is the weekend that Patrick Krawec (my cousin) and the board of volunteers at The Wrench is having the 24 hour bike making marathon to build 150 bikes for kids.  They will be working at the Atomic Centre on 167 Logan from 6pm tonight until 6pm tomorrow (Dec 17-18)  If you can go over to help out or drop off any parts or bikes that would be great.  I donated online at The Wrench, see below.

thewrench.ca

Way to go Patrick!  What a great Bike Santa you are!!

Quilts this week

I quilted 5 quilts this week. Tonight I go to the chiropractor, tomorrow to the massage therapist! Yikes!

Crafting while Don is in Houston

Seems like the week has flown by!!  Don is having fun golfing in Houston although it has been cool and wet.  While he is away I have been doing a lot of crafting; from knitting and card making to quilting.

Thanks to Arlene the 'crafty girls' enjoyed a day of card making.  Last minuted Christmas cards were on the priority list.  Arlene laid out examples, supplies and tools for us at her house.  She even provided delicious treats!  A great afternoon!

Jack Frost Hat

Spring Flowers Hat

In some of my spare moments and quieter times I did some knitting.  I had forgotten how much I enjoyed knitting, I hadn't done it in so long.  One evening I sat in front of the fireplace station on TV and listened to Christmas carols and knit two more interesting baby hats.

Madeline's Lone Star Quilt

Details of quilting

Yesterday, Madeline came over with a quilt that she wanted to quilt for her son for Christmas.  We loaded it on the long arm machine.  I quilted and she watched.  Madeline even tried some stitching.  I finished the quilt this morning.  Now Madeline will have to bind it in time for Christmas giving.  Don't you think her son will love it??

Book Club - Cutting for Stone

2,000 Splendid Books Club met at my house last night.  We have been meeting about once every 6 weeks since 2000!  We plan on reading 2,000 books together.  (No we really haven't figured out how many years that will take!!  But we do read at least a dozen books a year.  You do the math!)

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese was this month's read.  Six of us got together to discuss the book.  We all agreed it was very well written and reminded us of a John Irving book in that the characters are all very well developed.  It also reminded me of The Kite Runner in that it spanned a large period of time for two boys and is set in a country very different from Canada.  Many of the traditions and life styles that Canadians are familiar with just do not exist in this book's setting - Ethiopia during the 1950s to 2000.

This month's read is a book of poetry Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver.  That will be very interesting.  We have never read and discussed a book of poetry before.  I suspect there could be lots of discussion, as each poem could be a whole evening's discussion.  The book after that will be Jann Arden's new book called Falling Backwards  Some of us will be attending her concert at Pantages in Winnipeg before we meet to discuss that book so I suspect the discussion will be very animated!!

2,000 Splendid Books is a great group of people.  I am blessed to belong to this group of wonderful women who all have so much in common and are comfortable in sharing opinions, thoughts and beliefs. A wonderful support group!!

Funky Newborn Hats

Hey, check out my knitted/crocheted baby hats.  What do you think?  Would anyone want one?

Whoville Santa Hat

Tasseled Tam

Spicy Toque

Leaf Top Hat

Burgundy Bubble Hat

Friendship Quilt

This weekend a bunch of us got together to put together a friendship quilt.  Yvonne was the 'instigator' of this project.  She gave many of her sewing addicted friends a template for the half-square triangle exchange.  Each of us was to choose one dark and one light fabric to make into the 2" squares.  Each template produced 28 squares.  Then each of the unique batches of squares were brought together to sew into a friendship quilt.  We ended up with thirteen batch of friendship squares.  Here is a sample of the squares that were donated to the project.

Then we had to begin the design process with these varied fabric squares.  The picture below shows the beginning of the design we finally choose to make for the quilt.  We added some dark brown squares to bring the entire design together.

Once the pattern was created, the bindings were attached.  Here is a picture of the final quilt top.  What do you think?  Isn't amazing how all the random fabrics that were used by all the friends come together to make one unique Friendship Quilt.

Thanks Yvonne for getting us together!  Lots of fun and laughter was shared throughout the weekend.  And now we have this wonderful quilt to donate to a good cause!!