Drowning in soup

So last night I had a weird dream, I was in China with my mother, and we were in a school,there was a massive earthquake and I was trying to get my mother, who wasn't able to walk very well in the dream, to stable ground. As we walked outside onto a bridge with a pool below it. My mom lost her balance and fell over the railing two stories down into the pool, the pool was full of Wonton soup ( yeah I have no idea where that came from, except for the fact that Wonton soup was my moms absolute favorite lol)I Immediately dove head first into the pool of soup, but when she hit the water, she turned into Hudson.I could see him under the water (er soup) with his arms in the air,I got under water and pulled him to safety.

I told my dad about the dream last night, he believes that it means that mom is watching out for Hudson, because of the fact that she sort of "took the fall" into the pool FOR Hudson, and the last thing my dad went out and got my mother before she passed was....wonton soup....:)

A Blessed Christmas

Christmas at my house went surprisingly well, we had a huge dinner on Christmas Eve, i cooked my rear end off! I made Babalky "bread rolls with sour kraut and onions, ham,chantilly potatoes,and french onion soup. My grandmother made her famous sticky buns,my dad made lemon cheesecake and my aunt brought the veggie tray, washed down with lots of baileys and wine :)

I was so nervous about cooking, but I swear I could feel my mother guiding me on how to cook, and it all came out pretty good,(if I do say so myself) I didn't even get tremendously stressed out at all. Hudson was dressed in his little suit, and just made everyone so happy, walking around laughing, playing Hide and seek with his great grandmother,hugging my aunt and uncle, playing with my father, and he just LOVED my younger niece Kiera,(who is five and cute as a button) he kept trying chase her down so that he could hug her all night lol. After everyone left, I did finally go into the kitchen, rested my hands on the sink and broke down in tears,I knew it was going to happen, and honestly it needed to come out.

Saturday we spent the evening with my husbands parents and brother, had a great dinner, opened gifts, then curled up with the hubby on the couch and watched football with the family.

Hudson has just been SO amazing latley, I mean don't get me wrong, he is a great child to begin with, but he has been so super cute and smiley lately, and loves, his new toys,(so does mommy :) ) I think I annoy him at times because I sit down and play with him and of course "interrupt" the way that he had things lol, to which he will often times grab the toy and go "no no no no" and then sit with an exasperated sigh, while he tries to put it back to the way he had it. lol

I tell you what I may not be rich financially , but I am rich in family and friends,and that, this year, was my greatest gift.


I definitely also ate WAY more junk than I should have, I don't diet on Holidays, or really diet at all, I try to eat right, but i have eaten WAY more chocolate, cookies, salty ham and cream sauces than my waistline and heart can handle lol. UGH. So here i sit with a bowl full of steamed veggies.......exxxciting...... hope you had a great holiday :)

Hudson and The Hubby at my in laws house, with his NEW chair!

" This is MYYYY Present"

Totally loving on his pillow pet

Me and the Hubs

Dad me and my sisters >

My brother in law, niece Mattie, Kiera and Hudson fascinated with Kieras skirt

Hudson with his great aunt Kathy and Uncle Dave

Dressed in his holiday best

My set dinner table, mom would have been proud :)

Angel recieves her wings

Sorry for the lack of posts, my mother passed away at 4:20 am on December 8th from complications of Pneumonia. With the holidays, and the wake and funeral,and the all the stuff that goes with the loss of a loved one, I just haven't had time to blog.

I take great comfort in the fact that I got to speak with her twice on the day that she died via phone, she sounded bad , but I didn't think it would come to this.

ALOT of amazing things happened that night and the next day

Mom had alot of health problems,but was a true fighter! All she did in her time of need was give to others. I will miss her very very terribly.

She had beat pancreatic cancer, but when she went in for her first chemo treatment a week before she died, they did a scan and found a tumor in her liver, they said Tye were sure the chemo would take care of it though.Because her immune system was already down and chemo of course made it worse, she was venerable and caught Pneumonia, she would have beat that too but she also has Pulmonary Fibrosis, so her lungs were already in bad shape.

The day that she died I talked to her in the morning while getting ready for work, she said she hadn't slept well at the hospital, she was laughing at the sound of Hudson babbling "no no no" as I changed his diaper.

Something told me to call on my lunch break,she sounded worse, but said she felt better because they gave her a different type of oxygen. i asked if i should come up to see her, she said not too, that I could call as much as I wanted but she was fine....I knew better though, you can just tell sometimes you know?

I went about my day, my dad called at 6pm to tell me that mom still couldn't breathe well and she she actually requested to be put on a breathing tube,in order to do this they had to sedate her, they also moved her to the PICU. Then dad called again at 9pm, he said the nurse told him things weren't looking good, moms breathing was getting worse even WITH the breathing tube, and her blood pressure was 70/50. They were giving her something to raise it.

I got the baby to sleep and took a hot bath to calm myself, about 10:15 or so, Hudson woke up screaming the most shrillest scream I had ever heard, my husband ran to comfort him, I on the other hand was lying in the tub with a real strange feeling.

At 10:45 my father called and said the Bill and I needed to come get him and go to the hospital.We waited for my in laws to come over and watch the baby, then we headed out.

Once at the hospital,we all just had a feeling that this was it.The nurse had told us that they were giving my mom 100 percent oxygen, but she wasn't taking in alot of it.They also had given her the highest amount of blood pressure meds, and she just kept dropping lower, it was clear her body was done and she wanted to leave. In her 63 years she had
fibromayalgia
2 major car accidents
nerve damage
pulmonary fibrosis
Breast cancer
Pancreatic cancer
start of liver cancer
Psoriasis
diabetes

so....you could understand why she may have been tired.

They asked my dad what he wanted to do, he stated that she wouldn't have wanted to be on life support and we both agreed she wanted to go. The nurse hooked her up to a morphine drip, and took off the blood pressure meds.She slowed down her breathing and slowly her heart rate kept dropping.

Here is where something crazy happened. As we were sitting there we kept seeing something in the window, all three of us, but we never mentioned it to each other, the only way all three of us could explain it was, a sheer white flowy fabric moving very slowly and what appeared to be a wing tip. Now granted I was pretty upset, if I was the only one who saw it, then I would have thought I was a bit crazy. But all three of us saw it, here is how I found that out, I saw the thing in the window and temporarily disregarded it, I walked around to the other side of the bed to kiss my moms head "she had her head turned towards the wall" I sort of wished I hadn't went to that side of the bed because she was pale, eyes slightly open, lips dry. It pained me greatly, I walked over to the window to compose my self and to see what the hell I thought I saw in the window, figuring it HAD to be a flag.I looked out the window and there was a wall, no flag, no drifting snow, it hadn't snowed at all that day, no birds, no nothing.As I'm standing there my husband asks" is there a flag out there?" that's when I knew he saw something too, my dad goes, yeah is there a flag I saw something. I said "what did you guys see?" they both explained it to me the same hting at the same time, a white flowly piece of fabric and a wing.I think all three of us turned white, and what was even more crazy was that my husband is a HUGE skeptic and HE also saw it, and ADMITTED it!

I left dad with mom for a bit and pulled Bill out into the waiting room, he grabbed me and hugged me and said " You know I don't believe in that stuff but I know what I saw, and I know it was an angel and you dad saw it too" we went back into the room. And told my dad what we thought, and all three of us agreed that night that was what we saw, soon after seeing that, mom heart stopped. She was gone.....and believed we had witnessed her leaving us, we cried but we had an incredible sense of peace come over us, that she wasn't suffering and seeing that angel proved that to us.

We waited on the Chaplin to come in,and give her her final blessing,my husband mentioned the angel to her and she smiled and said "ahh that's common, it was your mothers angel coming to take her, cherish that, it is a wonderful thing what you saw"

The next day we planned moms funeral with the family, and then dad and I went back to his house because I wanted to look through mom jewelry box for her pearls to wear to the funeral,he told me I had inherited all of my mothers jewelry( which is an extensive collection) and any of her stuff was mine. I said I would just take the pearl for now and the rest of the stuff the next week.

As I was looking in the one box, my dad pointed to a smaller cherry wood box that held her expensive stuff "here there is more stuff in here" he said and began pulling open the drawers. in the very bottom drawer of the box, were two small letters, one for me and one for dad, my dad grabbed them and goes" omg Heather look she left us notes! She must have known!" we read them , then swapped them and read each others, dad said something told him to look in there. Mine said "Punky" (that was her nickname for me)"punky, I am so sorry that you have to read this now, please be strong and help your father through this, I just had to tell you how proud I am of you,you have turned into a wonderful young lady, wife and mother. You have given dad and I anything that we could ever want in a daughter.Please tell Hudson that his grandma loved him and how much joy he brought to my life.Be healthy and happy. Love Mom"

My dad and I cried for about an hour after that, but we felt HUGE relief, this was just yet another sign that pointed to the fact that she must have known.

The funeral was beautiful, all my family came in,tons of people, even a Senator my parents knew came in from D.C. for the night just to make it to say goodbye to my mom, it was a grand send off. At the funeral we told people of what we saw that night in the hospital room, my momther best freind said she saw the samething when her sister passed away, my friend John saw it when his daughter passed away. Knowing that confirmed to us that we really did see an angel. My dads sister Teresa also said something that gave me chills, she is dying of uterine cancer,the week before mom died, she went to temple (she is jewish) she is part of a club for terminally ill cancer patients, they did an exercise where they pulled a name out of a bowl and the name of that person was the person who was going to greet them in heaven, she pulled the name Judy, my moms name! She didnt put it togethor until she found out that mom had passed.

The burial the next day , followed by drinks and food at my aunts house was the hardest to handle for me,I was more concerned for my poor father, I am horribly worried for him.They were married for 36 years.

A few days later I took on the tough task of going through moms stuff, keeping what I wanted and donating what I didn't,I spent six hours, crying , going through stuff, remembering,it was healing for me.

Last Saturday Bill and I took Hudson over to my fathers for dinner, thought it would cheer him up, and it did, him and my mother had bought Hudson a rocking horse recently and my dad wanted him to have it before Christmas.I will have to post pics next time.

In celebration of moms life, I volunteered to have our big christmas eve dinner this year,Im cooking all the food mom used to make, and having everybody over, its what we all need, to be surrounded by family, especially my 90 year old grandmother.I don't plan on it being a sad occasion but a joyous one.Filled with lots of good food, watching Hudson open gifts, and quality time, the way mom would have wanted....Oh and of COURSE big glasses of Baileys Irish Cream LOL

Out of the ashes rises a Phoinex, in the dirt a dove.

I haven’t said too much about my mother recently, because for the most part there was nothing new (good) to report, but unfortunately she has taken a bit of a turn for the worse, she was rushed to the hospital yesterday because she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t walk. She has Pneumonia and it just doesn’t look good. (there I go again with my optimist attitude).
We are going to deal with it, the best that we can, every day, expect the worst, hope for the best and leave the rest in Gods hands.
In the midst of all this sorrow, I feel like a new part of me is being born, a stronger willed, more responsible me, a person more able to adapt on her own, and forge her own path in life. A couple of things that I have evolved in as a person:

Acceptance/Confidence
My mother has always been my best friend, my cheerleader and my muse. When I was younger she was the one who would get head over heels excited about the things that I did, so in life I always used her excitement to judge how I did on something, I always wanted to impress her and make her proud (I found out recently from her that I have exceeded in doing that) But my mom won’t be around forever, I wont always have her around to make me feel good when I accomplish something. I have to be my own cheerleader now and honestly that took some getting used to, but I can now say that when my mom is too sick to be excited about something that I’ve done, I can take no offense to it, and I can still feel good about it.
Compassion
I was never really a compassionate child, but the older that I got and the less selfish I became, the more giving I became and I believe that is a big part of me today. It seems I become more compassionate every year, I want to give everyone everything, I want to be everyone’s savior. I want to fix everyone’s problems. But that obviously can have it’s downfalls as well. Because of that, I often times forgo my own sanity and health in order to help others. That I will agree is something I need to really work on, taking better care of myself and letting myself be a little selfish and say no from time to time. But back to the point, in general my mothers Illness has made me even MORE giving, loving and understanding of people’s problems and issues. I have always loved the quote “you never know what battles people are fighting privately, so try not to judge them based on what you see” and this is SO true. If Half of the people I work with KNEW the whole story with what I am dealing with mentally and emotionally lately, they would probably see why I’m so quiet half the time. Regardless, the spirit of the season has picked me up and danced me around, I feel it in my heart and my soul, something is different this year.

Carpe Diem
My mothers’ illness has most importantly made me a better mother, wife and general liver of life. Life is SO short and can be taken away from us so quickly and at any time. Realizing this has given me the ability to say “screw you” to small daily annoyances, dishes that don’t get done, a chore I ran out of time to get done, because I was enjoying quality time with my kid, work politics family drama ect. I am more apt now than was before to say “forgetaboutit” I move on, …..done. Onto the next obstacle. I sign up for as much fun stuff at work and elsewhere as I can socially handle, I make sure to really express how much I love my family and friends. I hold back no secrets or feelings, life is too damn short to do that!

Finding Peace and Solace
Each night after dinner, Hudson and I have a play date, then take a bath where we play some more,read a book have our night time snack, then I hold him in my arms while I watch T.V. with my nose in his hair taking in all his delicious babyness, kissing his juicy little cheeks and enjoying every minute of our snuggle before I put him to sleep. Then coming down stairs to my husbands arms, and falling into them. I find solace in these things at the end of a rough day, I know I still have my husband, my baby and my big stinky dog waiting at home for me to erase the day away. In the morning I do yoga or try to sneak out of bed early enough to get in some cardio. Those are things that I can do for myself,and those things are important to keeping my sanity in this difficult time.

It’s both amazing and sad how things such as this shape our lives and make us change most of the time for the better. Incidentally In writing this post, I got word that my mother was transferred to the ICU because they found a blood clot in her lung, this is actually a good thing, they believe it may have led to her pneumonia and swollen feet, wich would have led to her falling a lot in the past month, they think it may all be connected. We are just lucky that they found it.
If I can try and find the beauty in all of this muck, the good things, then I may be just fine…..Eventually.

Grandmas kolacky (kolachi)

I spent Saturday afternoon doing some favorite baking of mine, making my grandmothers Kolachi. I have always had fond memories her kolachis as a kids, it was the one thing that I really looked forward to at family get together, especially at Christmas time.

A few years ago i spent an afternoon with grandma learing how to make what I feel is a family tradition, the funny thing is, as much as I adhere to the recipe, it just doesn't tase like hers, and probably never will. Thankfully we still have her here to make them for us. :)

If you would like to make some yourself, here is the recipe.

You will need:

Time, at least three hours or so, making these tasty little things is labor intensive, but SO well worth it!

4 Cups of gold medal all purpose flour

8oz of sour cream (room temperature)

1lb of Imperial margarine or is your a purist, butter (also room temperature) (grandma used Imperial, but I think butter would be good too)

Either jam or preserves in varying flavors that you like, I chose cherry and apricot. grandma used to make poppy seed, but with my luck, I would eat them all and then have a drug test the next day at work.:

Mix together butter and sour cream well.

Add flour two cups at a time until well mixed

Knead dough and separate into two balls then wrap in saran wrap and stick in the fridge until firm ( i would give it about an hour)

Take out dough and roll out onto flat floured surface.

Feed toddler some triscuits to keep him busy :)

Make sure to cut off all jagged edges of the dough so that you have a nice clean edge on all four sides.

Cut into diamond shapes.

Fill each diamond shape with a very little bit of filling, (BTW baby spoons work PERFECT for this!)

Fold in the corners and WALA! You have just made a kolachi!

Put them on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about 15 minutes, but you will have to check the routinely because depending on the size they may need to bake longer.

MMMMMMMM Kolachi

Dust with powdered sugar and serve! You can freeze these for up to a month, and if you warm them in the microwave before you eat them, they are DIVINE!

Enjoy!

Craft Lovin

All I have wanted to do that past few weeks is craft my arse off, probably due to the fact that it is freezing outside and I need something to keep me from going nuts while stuck in doors.

I am currently working on a Knitted cowl which I have been at for three months (I'm a first timer give me a break)

Jewelry that I want to start on cross stitching, ohhh my goodness! Craft ADD for sure!

Before i finish with any of that though I need to work on Christmas stuff, and since my mother is still very ill this year; I am in charge of christmas. Fine by me, I love to bake and cook and all of that jazz.

This weekend, I will be making my grandmothers Kolachi recipe (I hope) I could stand next to her and do everything that she does and her Kolachi will STILL turn out better than mine! lol No flipping joke.

I am planning on doing a photo blog about it later this week. So you can try it yourself if you dare :) I am so paranoid about making it correctly than I refuse to be on my period or be sick or in a bad mood when I make it, everything has to be right lol,it's stupid I know, but it works for me.

So many fellow bloggers have really been doing some super cute things for the holiday season, here are some random crafts of awesomeness that I have found appealing.

Kristy at Kootoyoo

Shows how to make these super cute crochet soaps, Seriously, I NEED to make these, too cute!

Iammommahearmeroar posted this Nativity Block Set for Kids, that her sister whipped up.

And while I'm not really the GREENEST person on earth, I actually did this last year and they came out awesome, it's a bow made out of recycled packaging,you can also make them out of magazine pages, they are super easy to make and look real cute. Find out how to make them here