Winter Solstice

Look at that new picture up top! It was taken in Rome, Italy by a man who posted it to spaceweather.com - I think it's one of the prettiest pictures I've ever seen. Check out that website for some other very cool pictures.

Here is another - it is an iridescent cloud. Just lovely.

How does life get so busy???

It's beyond me. All I want to do is curl up on the couch with my book - Seven Days to the Sea by Rebecca Kohn. Historical fiction about Moses which is just so GOOD. ANYway, that's not going to happen until probably Christmas Day. It seems that when I just recover from planning and cooking and all, (you all know what I mean) that it's time to take everything down!

I do look forward to January and February though, because it's a good time to do all the cool indoor things, like scrapbooking and reading and organizing. I feel so guilty in the summer staying in the house.

Here is another friendly reminder from your Red Cross volunteer - be extra careful with space heaters. They overheat and cause way too many fires.

Just please have a happy and safe Christmas and holiday season! I love this blog thing, it makes me feel like we are all connected even though in many cases we are far apart.

Merry Christmas and lotsa love!

Early morning photo op

Don't laugh. These were taken at 4:30 IN THE MORNING. This is Trish and me as I was waiting for the shuttle to pick me up at BYU for the Salt Lake airport. It was very cold and we were surrounded by lots of snow. So Trish took this self portrait of us. Not a bad aim for extending her arm out and taking a blind shot! Doesn't she look adorable? For those of you who don't know, Trish kind of "adopted" us as her church parents. She just won the REGIONAL RA of the Year award!!! She's a great kid.

Soon we will look alike. I am getting BRACES next month. Such a deal at my age. It's the weirdest thing. My upper and bottom teeth don't "mesh" or something, so they bang against each other and as I age, they tend to break. I have one cracked tooth and one broken one already, so the braces will hopefully prevent anymore of THAT.

Larry comes home today from yet another business trip to Madison Wisconsin. You all probably know that travel is probably his least favorite thing to do in all the world. Thankfully he will be getting home before this monster storm hits tomorrow. They are predicting up to 25 inches of snow before Monday AM. And wind. And frigid temperatures. I must get us some snow pants so at least we can enjoy this ridiculous weather.

Christmas is coming!!

Glad to be HOME

The storm hit Provo with lots of pretty snow. These are from Trisha's dorm room window.





We went to the women's basketball game at the Marriott Center, ate some meals at the Cannon Center which were really quite good, then when she had a test Friday, she unloaded me at the BYU bookstore. I loved wandering around there, especially the art department. I found so many paintings I would LOVE to put in the dining room, but alas, they were like $400 and how would I get them home anyway?!

The shuttle picked me up at 4:45 Sunday morning and this is a tree near the parking lot that was just so pretty -

With all the crazy weather over the weekend I decided to leave Salt Lake on an earlier flight and try to get home so I would have a better chance of not getting stuck in Chicago. And it all worked out, but I still feel so weird on a plane lately. Even after flying over the ocean to Italy last year, I still get a little scared. Ah well, it is very good to land!! Today, Larry left for Madison yet again and got delayed in Cleveland for 7 hours, poor guy.

Lavatories in the air

Thursday I boarded a plane for Utah to go see Trish at BYU. Easy enough. But as I am up there at 30,000 feet, I am thinking WAY too much, such as:

"Here I am, flying around the country, my life in the hands of people I have never even MET. They could be very bad people!!! How do I know what their GPA was in school?? Huh? And what if they are sleeping??"

The worst is when I have to use the itty bitty lavatory. The little voice in my head goes, "What the HECK am I doing up here??"

And the plane goes, "Bounce, bounce, BOUNCE, bounce, dip, dip, DIP, BOUNCE!"

But I made it. Now when I go home, I have to go through it all over again. AND there is a winter storm warning for the Wasatch. Good grief.

Fire and Ice

Today has been WINDY and cold, with some lake effect snow. I had a bunch of errands to run this morning so I wanted to get them all done before it got too bad out. So I did! Went to Target, got real pretty new sheers at Country Curtains, went to Wegmans and made it home before the minor blizzard hit. BUT, I was on call for the Red Cross from 4PM to 10PM and sure enough, there was a fire I had to respond to. 390South was just awful!!! I could barely see to drive. The roads weren't salted OR plowed and it took me way too long to get to the chapter. When the rest of team arrived, it took us 45 minutes to drive 4 miles in the truck to get to the fire. Thankfully it wasn't a bad one, mostly smoke damage.

Here is a public service message from your friendly Red Cross volunteer (Me!!)- PLEASE be careful when you burn candles in your home. Most house fires (in the winter) are from candles. Every time I come home from responding, I think about what the most important things in the house are that I would hate to lose and then try to think of ways to protect and save them. Photos, pictures, genealogy, scrapbooks; all that stuff could be lost so quickly. Even little fires cause a lot of smoke damage and the firefighters, while they really try to save your stuff, do make a mess. So be aware and be careful!

Losers Anonymous

Okay, so Larry and I take the wishbone from the turkey and make a wish. He holds one side, I hold the other and we pull. Didn't the darn wishbone break on BOTH ends, letting the middle go flying. There we were holding one bare bone each so neither one of us won. He says, "put this on the blog and call it Losers Anonymous." Done.

The baby came on Friday. Great birth. Beautiful, healthy baby and happy parents. What more could a doula ask for?!

If any one of you out there can tell me how to add a photo to the top of this page where it says LockesNest, without the photo being gigantic, I would truly appreciate it. Every time I try to jazz up the header, the picture is huge and would scare everyone away. Thank you in advance!

Thanksgiving was good. I ate too much. I hope you all had a wonderful day and are enjoying the holiday season.

One of my favorite days

I love Thanksgiving. It brings back lots of memories of good times with family, not to mention that dinner includes my all time favorite foods. If I had to choose a last meal it would be Thanksgiving dinner. So the turkey and dressing are in the oven, the pie is cooling, the cranberry sauces are made, the squash just needs to be warmed up and now I have to peel potatoes. Oh yes and Larry wants peas and mushrooms. It's another good family dish. You saute some sliced onion with a garlic clove in a little olive oil, then add a can of peas with the juice and a can of mushrooms drained. Season with salt and pepper and there you have it.

The baby I've been waiting for has not yet arrived. Mother and baby are fine, baby just needs to grow a little more.

The sad part of the day is that I just found out that my cousin who is just 6 weeks older than me has ovarian cancer. When I went to see her she held my hand and said, "Mare, am I going to be okay?" I told her yes she would, that I had a good feeling about it. She smiled and said, "I do too." Now all we can do is pray.

Some things about today -
The cat is sleeping in the chair next to me snoring away.
It is pouring rain out.
The Thanksgiving flag outside on the porch is whipping in the wind.
The rain is supposed to turn to snow this afternoon.
I'm going to visit my cousin and aunt a little later on.
Larry has a cough and cold.
The turkey smells delicious!!
I'll take the carcass later and make turkey soup.

One of the craziest things I ever did -------
Last year I went to strain the turkey soup to get rid of the bones and stuff. I pulled out my colander, set it in the sink, took the big pot full of soup and began to pour it into the colander. And there went all my beautiful soup RIGHT DOWN THE DRAIN!!!!! I had forgotten to put a BOWL underneath the colander!!!! I started yelling and Larry came running and there I was with a strainer full of bones and no soup. Goodbye soup.

This year I will remember the bowl.

Clumsy me

Today I was running down the stairs with my hand on the railing. When I got to the bottom, I jammed my ring finger into the post, bent the finger all sideways and heard something go "cruuuunch." Boy did it hurt and still hurts. I quick put ice on it and took a few Advil. We'll see what happens. It doesn't hurt to touch and I can bend it, but this awful pain shoots up the finger and into my palm.

Today I made our traditional orange cranberry relish. It's very yummy with grated orange peel and freshly squeezed juice. I was going to make cranberry chutney too, but maybe will do that tomorrow. Here is the recipe for the homemade cranberry relish:

3 oz. freshly squeezed orange juice

3 oz. water

grated orange peel from two oranges, just the peel, not the white stuff

between 1/2 and 3/4 cup sugar

Bring all that to a boil, then add a 12 oz. bag of cranberries. Cook until the cranberries stop popping and then another few 5 minutes or so. Chill. The sauce will thicken. Very delicious with turkey or chicken.


In honor of Thanksgiving, I'm including a picture of both my grandmothers. The one on top is my paternal grandma Carmela (Melina) Blandina Cardella and the next one is my maternal grandma Cecilia Metildi Iannidinardo. When I cook, I think of them. They both taught me so much, not only about cooking, but about patience and love. Grandma Cardella died in 1980 at the age of 90, a few months before I met Larry. Grandma Ceal died in 2003 at age 94.

Friends!

How nice to hear from so many of you. This is such a good way to keep in touch.....

Larry showed up with 30 beautiful roses, the ultimate carrot cake from Wegmans and a bagel for my birthday, what a guy. Then we went out to dinner. He is the best. We've been married 26 years and since we haven't killed each other yet, I guess it will last. He's a good man. My father was right.

Today in the nursery, the little ones learned about being grateful for their homes. I taught them about other kinds of homes, like a covered wagon or a ship or a tent. Then we talked about where the fish live, "in the WATer!!" and where the birds live, "in the TREES!!" and who lives in the dirt? "SNAILS!!" and "WOOOORMS!!!" The nursery is just too fun. I love it when I tell one of the little boys to do something please and he looks all exasperated and says, "OhKAAAY." Cracks me up.

Here is the picture of the day, actually from a couple of years ago but I think it's a nice picture - our cat Elbie looking adorable

Life goes on...

I started my Disaster and Emergency Services caseworker job at the Red Cross Wednesday. It's volunteer and only one day a week right now. There is lots of paperwork and phone calls to make but it's something I like to do and the people there are great to work with. It's VERRRRY interesting having a "job" with babies due but the folks at the Red Cross are happy to work around it. I'll have to post a picture of me in my hard hat and glow in the dark vest!

The mom who is due Monday is doing well. I wonder if she will go into labor when I am making pies or dressing or cranberry relish this week! Larry and his mother and I will be together Thursday for dinner, then I will bring some food to my cousin and her 91 year old mother. Then we'll have friends hopefully stop over for dessert later in the evening.

We had a hard frost here last week. The ground and rooftops were so pretty! It is amazing to me that here it is the middle of November, we had the frost and some of the trees are still so colorful.

This is one of our hydrangeas from our yard. I was sad to see them go. One of my favorite flowers!

oops

.......meant to say I became a Red Cross volunteer in March. Better watch the spelling!

Well this is fun!

Learning how to blog is fun but challenging. Hopefully I will be able to add more interesting elements as I go along. ANYway, I figured this was a good time to get started since my "speed limit" birthday is coming up and I CANNOT start feeling old.

These are the things we are up to lately -

*Larry is still branch president in the Rochester 4th Branch. He's getting balder by the minute.

*I'm the Nursery leader with just a few little people in my class. They like to learn about Jesus, sing, color, play with trucks, play with Play Dough, make noise and eat snacks.

*Larry is working from home but travels back and forth to Madison, Wisconsin and elsewhere WAY more than he likes!

*I'm still a certified birth doula and still loving it. My first little doula baby will be eight years old this month! Last month was birth number 50 for me. I feel like a grandma. . . .

*In March, I become a Red Cross volunteer, working on the Disaster Action Team. If there is an incident (like a fire) when I am on call, I go off to the local chapter, board the truck with the other team members and off we go to provide assistance to the vicitms and the firemen, police etc. . .

More later!

Finally - a Locke blog!

Here it is, the first post of "LockesNest" - Larry and Mary Ann. As I get used to this, please feel free to let me know what you think