Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…. starting the day with a ‘full Irish’ breakfast

When my husband and I were on our road trip last Thursday we found a great little market that sold foods from the UK. K was over the moon when he found rashers of Irish bacon and black pudding. Here’s how we started St. Patrick’s Day:

Fried eggs, rashers of bacon, fried black pudding and grilled tomato (done in the bacon fat) and to top it off a cup of Barry’s tea. As my husband likes to call it “a heart attack on a plate”. You definitely don’t want to make this a daily addition to your diet.

As I write this the Irish stew is simmering on the stove and the potatoes are peeled and ready to be cooked and made into a mash. When I get off the computer I’m going start the Irish Soda bread. It has to be traditional, so no raisins or currents, eggs, whiskey or sugary icing … just flour, salt, baking soda and buttermilk. I’ll share the recipe later.

The family is coming over today to celebrate the day. Guinness, Irish beer and cider are cooling on the deck outside. Getting ready gives me peace of mind knowing that all this hard work is going to be appreciated and devoured by people I love. Happiness moment number one!

Found this great quote on Jay Mug

http://www.jaymug.com/post/32340854083/doing-what-you-like-is-freedom-liking-what-you-do

“There are only two kinds of people in the world, The Irish and those who wish they were.”

“May the roof above us never fall in, and may we friends beneath it never fall out.”

Have a great day! Cheers!

Happy Family Day!

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…. to all my fellow bloggers who live in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, Canada

This got me to thinking about how other people in the world might be celebrating today. Is it a normal work day or do you have the day off today as well. For years, we Canadians envied our U.S. neighbours who had an official day off at least once a month. In the last decade or more our Ontario government officials toyed with the idea of creating an official holiday in February.

Here’s a little history of when Family Day came to be in Canada that I copied directly from: http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/canada/family-day

Family Day was first held in Canada in the province of Alberta in 1990. It is supposed to reflect the values of family and home that were important to the pioneers who founded Alberta, and give workers the opportunity to spend more time with their families. Family Day was introduced in Saskatchewan in 2007 and in Ontario in 2008. British Columbia observes Family Day as a statutory holiday for the first time in 2013. One of the reasons for introducing Family Day was that there was a long period when there were no holidays from New Year’s Day until Good Friday.

Here are a few photos of my family taken in the last year or so.

My three ‘girls’.

My son, home for a short visit before heading back to the Netherlands.

So how is everyone celebrating today? We had our official Family Day celebration yesterday. All the immediate family that live close by came to the house and we had a

My daughter and her husband.

family dinner. My husband made a great pasta and sausage bake, my oldest daughter and her partner brought a yummy Iranian quinoa rice and sweet potato salad and my youngest daughter and her husband made a decadent flour less chocolate cake…..not exactly diet food. To top it off I got into one of my Martha Stewart moments and just had to bake chocolate spice cupcakes with pink buttercream icing in honour of Valentine’s Day.

The cupcakes and the leftover food were all packed up and divided amongst the girls and the freezer (except the cupcakes….all but two were given away).

My middle sister and her fiancé.

My baby sister and her husband.

A rare photo with all three sisters together, our father and his partner and my husband and my sister’s son.

This morning I slept in till 8:30 and then caught up on some reading. I finally emerged from the bedroom at about 10:30, had a cup of coffee and then got ready to go for our morning walk. It snowed again here on Saturday night so the ice is covered with a pretty substantial layer of fresh snow. I brought along my camera as I always do but the sun was so bright that I had a hard time focusing on anything.

When we got back from our 3k walk, K made us a delicious omelet with lots of vegetables. I’m trying to convince him to go with me on a bit of a photo journaling expedition this afternoon. In the meantime I’ll finish writing this blog, read a bit more and probably work on some samples for my next art project at school.

I’d love to hear from you and how you’re spending the day. Drop me a line. Have a great day!

Cheers!

“They’ll be small!”

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Mama Cormier

….. famous last words from my obstetrician

Story #6 for Daily Post Writing Challenge

December 30, 1981

When I started this blog I wanted to share memories of my childhood and life in general with my family and friends. Over the last nine months (how ironic) my family has grown to include the blogging community. Today I celebrate the 31st birthday of my twins.

The memories of that day are vividly clear. It’s not because I was going through hours of agonizing labour. In fact with this pregnancy there was no labour unless you count the five separate occasions when I experienced false contractions. Actually the contractions were real but they always stopped just before I was ready to make that trip to the hospital.

Back in late August of that year I was informed over the phone that the results of my ultrasound showed that there was definitely more than one baby in my womb. I must have been in shock because I didn’t ask how many babies they actually saw. The doctor on call did inform me though that I probably would have these babies earlier than my due date of January 7th. On average twins are born 22 days early.

A week later I saw my obstetrician and he assured me that there were only two babies on the ultrasound pictures, although a few weeks later he did question me as to why I was so big. Apparently he was so busy that he completely forgot I was having twins when he made that comment. Once again I wondered how many babies I was actually carrying.

As my due date drew closer I continued to drive the car and I routinely had to readjust the seat so that my swollen belly didn’t hit the steering wheel. I gained a total of 56 pounds but luckily I had lost a lot of weight before I became pregnant and I actually weighed less at the end of this pregnancy than I had with my first.

I loved being pregnant. I experienced very little in the way of morning sickness and all the complications that I was warned about never happened. I looked forward to each new stage. Being pregnant with twins certainly draws a lot of stares from strangers. My first memory occurred early in the pregnancy when a complete stranger asked me my when my baby was due. At the time I was only 3 months into my pregnancy but I was already wearing maternity clothes. I just assumed that because this was my second pregnancy it wasn’t unusual to show earlier. I remember how shocked the woman looked when I told her my due date.

The other thing that my husband and I discovered was that older people who found out that I was having twins all had stories how one or both of their twins or someone else’s twins DIED. My husband was furious but I didn’t let it bother me.

I was secretly hoping that my babies would be born on Christmas Day. That wish didn’t come true. As the days wore on and Christmas came and went I knew that these babies didn’t care about arriving early. So much for averages. I was so large that my 2 year old daughter could hide herself under my belly and I could use it as a shelve to rest my cup of tea on.

As we got closer to the end of the month, my doctor and I decided to prebook the surgery for my C-section. We always knew that it would probably end up this way unless the babies came early and were small enough for me to deliver naturally. The date was set; December 30th, 1981.

The morning of my surgery I started to feel that things were different. I often wonder if the twins would have come on their own that day or on New Years Eve but I was happy to finally have it over with. I didn’t know if I was having two boys or two girls or one of each. For some reason I really didn’t want two boys. I grew up in a family of all girls and I think I was a little leary of raising boys. I also hoped that If I had two girls that they would be identical. I can’t imagine the conflict that could ensue if one sister was prettier than the other.

As I was being prepped for surgery my doctor informed me that these babies would be small. Famous last words. I was awake for the procedure so as soon as each baby was pulled from my womb they were held up over the drape so that I could see them. The first baby was a girl and I felt a sense of relief. She was beautiful and weighed 6 pounds 8 ounces. The second baby was a boy. I remembered that he was long and not as round as his sister but he weighed in at a respectable 7 pounds and 4 ounces. So much for small babies. I had carried almost 14 pounds of baby in the last month of my pregnancy.

So the day is memorable on many counts. I had two healthy babies, one boy and one girl. My son was the first male born on my side of the family in over 50 years and my husband’s father was happy because he finally had a grandson to carry on the family name. It would be another 7 1/2 years before another child would be born into our family but once the first cousin arrived the other 3 followed soon after.

The miracle of birth is just that; a miracle. It doesn’t matter how they’re born, where or when. Each child is special and brings new life and hope to this sometimes bleak world. Wishing you all a very happy, healthy and productive New Year in 2013.

Just When I Thought I’d Heard it All Before

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Mama Cormier

……my father throws another gem into the story that he’s retold at least a dozen times

Story #2 for The Daily Post’s Weekly Writing Challenge, which is to post a new story each day for one week.

“It was Love at First Sight!”

Everytime the family gets together with my 86 year old dad we are entertained with tales of my father’s childhood, war stories or how he met my mother. This Christmas was no different. In January my father will have been widowed from my mother for 20 years but as with many men, my father needed a woman in his life and he found love a second time.

Dad’s partner, G, is always present when he rallies us around for his stories but when he talks lovingly of our mother I always feel somewhat uncomfortable and can’t help but wonder what goes through her mind when Mom comes up in conversation.

This year, on Boxing Day, my middle sister, her family and I drove to the Schwa to celebrate the holiday with my father and G. Somewhere between dinner and dessert Dad started to reminisce about his life shortly after the war. The first new piece of information that I had never heard before was how my grandfather died. I knew that he had an accident on the job but I didn’t know the gruesome details.

After the war ended in Germany my father’s parents were allowed to stay in their family home which was now part of Poland. Most Germans were sent packing with whatever they could carry on their backs but Opa Winkler was asked to stay because he had a skill that was needed to rebuild the town. His job was working on the hydro lines and unfortunately the pole that he ascended one day was unstable and fell over while he was still on it. He spent three days in the hospital in a coma and eventually succumbed to his injuries.

The other part of this story that I didn’t know was that my grandmother and her two children were then forced to leave their home and were relocated in Bielefeld in West Germany. My father at the time was working on a farm and had no idea that his father had died or that his family had moved. When he did learn of their fate almost two years had passed. This new piece of the puzzle filled a void in the bigger picture. I now understand why my father left the farm, a job that he loved, and moved to Bielefeld. It was, of course to help his mother and his siblings get back on their feet. Little did he know at the time that Oma Winkler had already found a man who was more than willing to assist her.

My father continued talking about how he moved on and found a great job with an English general as a house boy or personal assistant and eventually made his way to Frankfurt where he worked in an American hotel. It was here that my mother accidentally bumped into my father, looking for her sister who worked in the same place. My father claims he felt sorry for this young girl and initially just wanted to help her out but according to him “it was love at first sight” for my mother. Here was the man who would father her children.

I wish my mother were here to tell her version of this story. I’m sure that it’s mostly true but I have a feeling that there’s another side to this tale of romance.

Weekly Writing Challenge: Just Do It

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Mama Cormier

……I just discovered The Daily Post at WordPress.com

I’ve been trying to hone my writing skills since I started blogging in April. One day before the writing challenge, Just Do It, came out I wrote one of my best pieces ever, so I’ve decided to reprint it for those of you who follow the writing challenges. I’ll try to write another two stories later today seeing that I’m already two days into the challenge and haven’t written anything since the challenge began.

The Best Christmas Present

It was December 24th, 1958. I was six years old. I remember that it was a frosty cold day and my mother was fretting because we still didn’t have our tree. In Germany it was traditional to put the tree up Christmas Eve but Mom had been in Canada long enough to know that trees were sold well in advance of the big day and that finding one at this late date would be challenging. My father, however, the complete optimist, reassured us that bringing home a tree today would not be a problem.

Early in the afternoon, Dad got into his big black Ford and left Mom, my sister and I to prepare the house for the arrival of Santa Claus. Hours passed and I remember my mother started to worry. There were no cell phones and stores were already closed. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity my father arrived with not one, but two trees.

My mother was aghast. What were we to do with two trees and two spindly trees at that? My father, again, reassured us that he had it all under control and disappeared into the basement with both trees in tow. For the next hour or so we heard the hand saw cut away at one of the trees and a hand drill bore holes into the other.

Weary and smiling from ear to ear, Dad emerged from the basement with a beautiful, full, and perfectly formed ‘Tannenbaum’. Christmas was looking up and we quickly adorned our new tree with glass ornaments that had been carefully brought over from Germany. The electric candles were meticulously arranged and then we were allowed to place the icicles on the lower branches while the adults worked on the upper ones.

Darkness came early as it always has on Christmas Eve and I remember the excitement I felt and the anticipation of hearing and maybe seeing Santa Claus come through the front door in an hour or so. When it was time my mother hurried us into our bedroom and sat with us while we waited for Santa’s arrival.

The knock was loud and resounding and my father opened the door to welcome our special guest. It was always the same greeting. “Ho, ho, ho!” while Santa noisily stamped the snow from his boots. The two men exchanged a few words, loud enough so that we could hear through the door and then as quickly as he arrived, Santa left.

My father called for us to come out and see what Santa had left us. It was always magical walking into the living room at that particular moment in time. The candles were lit for the first time, the rest of the lights in the house were dimmed and lo and behold the base of the tree was miraculously laden with beautifully wrapped gifts that hadn’t been there 20 minutes earlier.

Our tradition was always to sing a few Carols before opening our gifts. I wrung my hands as I dutifully sang and my little sister stood next to me with her cheeks flushed, partially due to the excitement and the late hour. The one present I remember both of receiving that night were matching life-size baby dolls. I named mine Barbara. Unbeknownst to us, the best present was yet to arrive.

Our next door neighbours dutifully arrived soon after all our gifts had been opened and we were hustled off to bed with our new ‘babies’. Little did we know that my parents’ friends were there to babysit us while my mom and dad drove to the hospital. It’s funny how I have no recollection of my mother even being pregnant and I certainly had no clue that she had been in labour that entire day.

The rest of the story is how I remember it being retold by my mother and father.

After putting us to bed, with her little suitcase in hand, my mother got into the car with my father at the wheel and sped off to the hospital. At the time we lived in Oakville and my mother’s doctor worked out of a hospital in Toronto. The fastest way to get there was via the expressway.

Before I continue with my story I need preface it with a little more information about my father. My father has always been a very carefree and spontaneous sort of fellow. He was a hard worker and provided for his family but his judgement about certain things was not always prudent. One of those things was how far he could travel on a tank of gas. That said let me continue with my story.

It must have been close to 11:00 at night when the unspeakable happened. In the middle of the QEW the car ran out of gas. I guess after driving around all afternoon looking for a tree my father forgot how much gas he used. Remember this was a time when everything was closed on Christmas Eve and 24 hour gas stations did not exist. I can’t imagine what my mother was thinking as her contractions were getting closer and closer. This baby was coming quickly.

Over the years as I remember this story I can’t believe that my father got out of the car and left my mom by the side of the highway while he looked for a gas station. As luck would have it my father managed to find an open service station and bought enough gas to get them to the hospital. My parents arrived minutes before midnight and about 10 minutes later my sister was born.

The next morning, on Christmas Day, I remember my sister and I climbing into bed with my father where he gave us the news of our new sister. Each year on this day I fondly remember the events that led up to this special day and the birth of my sister….my best childhood Christmas present, ever. Love you Cathy!

Wishing all my loyal readers and followers and my family and friends a very special holiday season, whether it be Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza or Diwali. May you all have special memories to cherish and share.

Carol

My Fondest Memory of Christmas as a Child

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Mama Cormier

…. I love telling this story and couldn’t wait till Christmas to share it with you

When I started blogging I wanted to share stories and memories of my family as I grew up. This story is one of my earlier memories. The details ring clear as a bell for me. It’s like it happened yesterday. I hope you enjoy it.

The Best Christmas Present

The rest of the story is how I remember it being retold by my mother and father.

Carol

Spreading a Little Joy

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Mama Cormier

….I decided to save my rant for another day

One of my new followers inspired me to write about events that bring me joy or in her words ‘what delights’ me. Earlier today I started writing about political issues that I feel passionate about but after my delightful afternoon with my husband I decided to put that piece on hold and share with you some of the happier events that I’ve attended in the last two weeks.

My youngest daughter has been working with a friend to promote their blogs and businesses. Earlier in the year I wrote about the stamp making workshop that they hosted. This time around they created a workshop around creative Christmas wrapping and featured numerous ideas for creating your own ties, tags, embellishments and paper. As always they were highly organized and personable and offered their eager clients all the materials they would need to experiment with. My daughter also made some delicious shortbread to serve with a variety of teas.

The group enjoyed the evening so much that the owners of the art store where the event was held allowed us to stay an extra half hour to finish our projects. Some of the things people made were package toppers, tags, bows, tree ornaments and stamped paper. Unfortunately the battery in my camera gave out and I didn’t get any pictures of the finished projects.

The next day my book club had their annual Christmas dinner. Since the book we were discussing was Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts and was set in Berlin, we decided on a German theme. I was in charge of dessert so I brought a tray of German stollen and other festive cookies and chocolates. I posted a review of the book earlier in the year. In the Garden of Beasts: A Book Review On average the group gave the book a rating of 4 out of 5, much higher than what we gave his last book, Devil in the White City.

A week later another group of friends got together for another annual Christmas dinner. We lovingly call ourselves the “Over the Hilltop’ gang because we worked together at Hilltop Middle School over 15 years ago and continue to meet three or four times a year. My friend L hosted the party and cooked the entire dinner. What a lovely gift. Again the food was amazing, the company warm and joyous and presents were exchanged.

The Sunday before this last dinner my husband and I treated our daughter, A, and her partner to a day of wine touring and dinner. We managed to visit 6 wineries, each unique in its own way. The winery that intrigued me most was the one called Organized Crime. The owner explained to us that years ago in the area there were two orders of Mennonites, a traditional ‘old’ order and a more modern order. The traditional order didn’t like that the other order played music during their services so in the dark of night they got in their buggies and stole the organ from the modern church. Hence the name ‘Organ’ized Crime.

The day before the wine tour I found myself at a fantastic craft show in the city. The crafters were all local and predominately young, although there were a few people there closer to my age. The crafts were original and beautifully made and displayed. The show was held in the Great Hall and in two other stores, all in the same block on Queen St. W.. I spent hours browsing and buying.

Today K and I attended the Toronto Christmas Market but I think I will save this experience for tomorrow’s post. Till then, cheers!

Things to Celebrate

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Mama Cormier

…. a birthday, a reunion and weight loss

Last weekend my oldest daughter, A, celebrated her 33rd birthday. She invited us over for lunch. It was a small gathering; her father and I, her sister, G and her partner, J were in attendance. It was very intimate and the food was great. Unfortunately a few days later both A and J suffered from food poisoning and we’ve narrowed it down to the buttercream frosting on the birthday cake.

This morning when I weighed myself I lost the weight I had gained after my surgery. So I can now officially announce that I am down 34 pounds. Yahoo!

Today a group of my friends from high school had a mini reunion. One friend, LWC I hadn’t seen since 1978. We spent three hours over lunch reconnecting and catching up. What a great time. Old year books were passed around, photos of our families were shared and funny stories were retold. We’ve already set a date in February to get together again.