Making pies with Gram

Last March I went home for three weeks while waiting for US Immigration to send me back my passport after my immigration interview. During that time I took a multitude of pictures. Unfortunately, while I really enjoy snapping candid pictures, I rather dislike taking them off my camera and actually doing anything with them. Alas, it is my photo downfall. I have pictures that I want to blog from last year, this summer, this past Christmas, any many more occasions, but I might never get around to them all simply because I like taking pictures a lot better than I like culling and editing them.

Tonight, though, it is time to put up one series of photos, pictures from last spring that I am so glad I took. My Grandma is a wonderful cook (as is my mother). I, on the other hand, can cook reasonably okay meals, but seldom am actually inspired to do so - I claim that the joy-of-cooking gene skipped me over. In our family, though many are great cooks, nobody makes pies like my Grandma! Because her pies are so delicious, I have been wary to attempt making any myself and stick to baking sweets that I feel confident about - mostly cookies and brownies. But when I was home in March I requested a pie-making lesson, and my sister and I spent a delightful afternoon at Gram's house learning how to make her pies. Here is the afternoon in picture-story form.

Mixing up the pie crusts

Rolling out the dough for my pie

Bryn's crust ready to be put in the pan

Gram's skilled hands molding the crust into the pan

Blueberry filling

Gram showing me how to make pretty designs on the top crust

The finished design

Putting on the top crust

Gramps camping out in the dining room to read the paper while the ladies make pies in the kitchen

Using the leftover dough to make another yummy little treat

Bryn rolling up the sweet roll

All ready to snack on :)

Our pies fresh out of the oven

Bryn showcasing her pie

Hey look, Gram taught me how to make pies!

These pictures are so special to me, and I'm so, so glad I brought my camera over to Grandma's house that day so I could snatch it up with floury-sticky fingers and capture these pictures of the process and the experience of making pies with Gram. Although I have no special passion for cooking or baking, I do enjoy making food with other people, especially people I dearly love. For me, making food is more about the experience and the memories made with others than it is about the actual results. And I will remember and cherish this wonderful afternoon with my Grandma for the rest of my life.

Thank you so much for teaching me just one of your baking skills, Gram! I hope my future pies taste even half as good as yours always do!

Five Minute Friday: Brave

The oldest is supposed to be the brave one. But I never was. It was my little sister, Bryna, three years younger than me, who was the brave one in our family.

Holding newborn baby Bryna in the hospital

As soon as she could sit up, then crawl, then toddle, Bryn was always getting into something. I first realized Bryn was brave when she was probably around 10-months-old. Bryn was taking her afternoon nap while Mum and I snuggled on her bed as she read to me. A thump interrupted us. I hopped up to check on my little sister. Easing her bedroom door open and peeking in, I was stunned to find a happy Bryn sitting on the floor beside her crib, back to the door, playing with some of the toys she'd thrown from the crib. No bumps or bruises, no crying, just a happy baby playing quietly on her own. These capers continued. Bryn went from climbing out of her crib in the day to sneaking out at night. My parents once found her standing beside their waterbed with a fistful of kitchen knives in her hand. The next day new child-locks went on every drawer and cupboard in the kitchen and around the rest of the house. New because my parents had never had to use child-locks with me. "Ali, no. Don't touch!" was all they ever had to say. The one time I didn't listen, after dousing my hand in water as they wallpapered my bedroom, I flung my hand toward the electrical outlet in the wall and received a nice shock for my efforts. It was a quick and efficient cure to disobeying my parents.

Bryn soon learned that the opposite of climbing down is climbing up. One afternoon I went into the bedroom we both now shared, in preparation for a new little baby to join the household, and found Bryn contentedly sitting in the top drawer of our five-drawer-high dresser. My drawer. As I watched in horror, she calmly reached deep into the drawer, pulled out a pair of my underwear, and sent it floating to the floor below, which was already littered with undershirts, socks, and other pairs of underwear. "Mum," I turned and yelled, "Bryna's ruining my drawer! If she wants to play in a drawer she could just climb in her own messy bottom one."

But sometimes Bryn's fearless ways made me laugh. She was half-clown. One evening my parents had just plucked Bryn from her bath. As my dad got her ready for bed, my mum helped me into the still-warm bathwater. She left me playing with the bath toys. Suddenly a shadow fell across the door. Before I had time to figure out who was entering the bathroom, my little sister, dressed in a clean, fresh, fuzzy sleeper, dove over the side of the tub. "Mummy, Bryn's in my bath!" I cried as she splashed, happy as a dolphin, from one side of the tub to the other. When Mum arrived, she couldn't hide the smile on her face. I soon gave in and laughed with her as a dripping, wriggling Bryn was fished out of the bathtub for a second try at bedtime.

As she grew up, she was more than happy to drive around our Fisher Price scooter or car while I hitched a free ride in the wagon I'd tied on behind. Her eagerness to learn to ride a bike spurred me on to learn so that my little sister wouldn't beat me to it. When we took our birthday money to the store to buy a toy, I'd convince Bryn to go to the counter to pay for me. She wasn't scared to talk to people she didn't know, and I was terrified to, so this arrangement seemed to work pretty well.

But little by little, Bryn taught me that I didn't need to be scared of every little thing. I could try new things without getting hurt. I could talk to people I didn't know because people weren't necessarily out to get me. I'm still mostly a fraidy-cat inside, but by watching Bryn for the past 25 years, I'm slowly, slowly learning to creep out of my protective shell, to try new things, and not to spend my whole life being scared. Bryna is definitely the brave one, but there's room for more than one brave one in any family. Who knows, someday I might make it there, too.

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My musings on the prompt 'brave' for Five Minute Friday. Join in next week if you feel inspired!

Five Minute Friday: Friend

I was walking with Grandpa past the big meeting tent at our church's campmeeting when he bumped into someone he knew and stopped to talk. "Ali," he said, "this is Pastor Bruce, the pastor at our church now, and this is his daughter, Jodi." I shyly grinned hello to both of them. "What grade is Jodi going into?" Grandpa asked. "Grade six," was Pastor Bruce's reply. "Hmm, same as you, Ali, right? Ali's going to be starting grade six at OKAA in the fall. Her family just moved back to Kelowna from Alberta a few weeks ago," Grandpa commented to Jodi and her dad. While Grandpa and Pastor Bruce talked, Jodi and I stood awkwardly beside them until their short conversation wrapped up. I waved goodbye. "See you at school, I guess," I said as I turned to walk away. Little did we know that warm July night in 1996, that by the end of the first few weeks of school that fall we would be headlong into a friendship that would still be going strong seventeen years later.

Saturday night with Jodi and other friends when I was home this March

I sat with Julie on the bus down to Wenatchee, WA, the first destination on our high school choir tour in the spring of 2000. I'd always known Julie. Her family had moved to Kelowna when she was just a toddler, and they had started coming to the church I'd been born into as soon as they'd settled in to their new house. Julie was a grade below me and we'd never been very close in elementary school. But now we were both in high school, where which grade you were in seemed to matter less as you passed by all ages of teenagers in the hallways between classes and during lunch. After the first day or so of the choir tour, I was spending a lot of time with Julie and her friends in grade eight. And when we returned from the trip, Julie and I just continued to hang out - at school, at church, at each other's houses on Saturday evenings, and occasionally after school during the week, too, if we had time. That week together in the bus on choir tour had broken us out of mold of being friends only with others in the same class. And we never even thought of going back to the way things were before.

A visit to the ski hill with Julie when I was home this March

"How was Academy Days? That was today, right?" Mum asked when I came home from school one afternoon in the spring of 2001. "Oh, it was fine. I think it's going on tomorrow, too," I replied. "Jonathon came." "Hmm, I guess he'll probably be in your class then next year, eh?" Mum responded. "Did his brothers come, too?" "I think so," I said, moping. "This is horrible. I know he's really smart. I thought valedictorian was between either me or Jodi. Now we're going to have to compete with him, too. I wish he'd just stay in Oliver and keep doing homeschool or going to the Adventist school in Penticton or whatever he was doing." Mum turned from the kitchen island where she was chopping vegetables for a soup. "Oh, Ali, you know the Penticton school only goes up to grade 10. If he wants to be in Adventist school for his last two years of high school, why shouldn't he come to OKAA? Besides, maybe you need a little academic challenge." Stewing I went to my room. For the next week or two I worried about what my last two years of high school would be like, but soon enough I forgot all about Jonathon, a boy whose father had gone to school at OKAA with my own mother years ago, and whose grandfather had worked alongside my own grandfather to build our church in the late 1970s. When school started again in the fall, I couldn't help keeping my distance from Jonathon for the first few weeks, but soon his parents began inviting their sons' friends and classmates over to their house on Saturday nights. I went when I was invited, and soon I nearly forgot about the things I'd heard about Jonathon's brains before he moved to Kelowna. Although he did eventually beat out Jodi and me for the title of graduating class valedictorian, I gained much more by his friendship than I ever would have had I won the distinction myself, but lost out on the chance to get to know him and his younger brothers. They've become almost like brothers to myself and my younger siblings and we've often gone dirt biking and quadding together, played board and card games late into the evening, and visited each other's homes whenever we're in the same city at the same time.

Jonathon, Stephen, Chris & me ~ Summer 2010

"Hey, suitemates! I'm Danielle." My sister Bryn and I looked up from our dorm room desks to see the head peeking around the bathroom door that we shared with the room next door. "But we've already met the two girls living next door," Bryn said tentatively. "Neither one is named Danielle." "Oh yeah, the other girl moved to a different room and now I'm living with Anna," Danielle explained. Later that evening the orchestra played for the university's Friday night vespers program. Afterward, Bryn and I packed up our violins, and left the church just behind Danielle. "Hey, I didn't know you played in orchestra!" I exclaimed. "Yeah," Danielle answered. "I play the cello. Neat, we'll all be in orchestra together!" The three of us talked the whole short walk back to the girls' dorm and up the three floors to our rooms. "Why don't you come into our room and talk for a bit, if you want," Bryn invited. "Tell Anna she's welcome, too, if she's back already." It was my first week attending Southern Adventist University in Tennessee after transferring from Walla Walla College in Washington state. I was rooming with Bryn, who had already been at Southern for a year, and I was hoping that I would make some friends soon. And now, after only a week, I'd made a friend who was not only my suitemate, but also would be in orchestra practices with me for three nights a week and would be traveling with me on all our orchestra trips for the year, and during the next two years that we attended Southern together as well.

Bryn, Danielle, Jonathan & me after graduation ~ May 2010

"Hi, I'm Danielle (a different one than in the story above). I just got here today and I just wanted to come say hi. It's sad that you're all the way over here in this hut, while the rest of us volunteers are in that apartment above the baby home together." I stood at the door and listened to Danielle introduce herself. It had only been two days since I'd arrived in Tanzania and already I felt alone, isolated from the five - now six - other girls living on the ADRA Tanzania compound. They were all here to volunteer with the Cradle of Love Baby Home, which was located on the far end of the compound. I, alone of the current volunteers, was here to work with ADRA, and therefore I lived in a hut all alone, made my solitary meals in the little kitchen hut next door to my room, and worked in an office by myself on the opposite side of the compound from the busy, noisy baby home. The next afternoon another Cradle volunteer, Ashley, knocked on my door. "Alison, we're making a meal together for supper tonight. You should join us! We can all get to know each other a little bit." My heart leapt. "Sure," I replied through my smile, "is there anything I can bring for the meal?" Ashley let me know what they could use and I dashed to my shelf in the kitchen cupboard to grab a few items before rushing to the volunteer apartment. Within a few days, I had become a part of the group. I wasn't alone in this new country anymore. I had new friends - from all over Europe and North America - to spend my evenings and weekends with. The next eight months didn't look quite so lonely anymore.

Our ranks grew to 12 by US Thanksgiving ~ the volunteers, November 2010

With each friend or set of friends (and this list is by no means exhaustive), I've had an awkward, bumpy beginning, but with each, as we've grown to know each other, we've made bonds that last. Bonds that stick even when we haven't seen each other for months, or sometimes even years. We can be apart, but when we're back together (or chatting on Skype when we can't be together), it's almost like we've never been separated. And that is the beauty of good friends. People who you miss when you're apart, but who fit back into your life again perfectly when you're together again.

*Note: All scenarios are written completely from my own memories. Others might have slightly different memories, but hopefully I'm not too far off the mark.

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My musings on the prompt 'friend' for Five Minute Friday. Join in next week if you feel inspired!

Five Minute Friday: Jump

Source: Norman Rockwell

I'd done it a million times before. It was easy. Just climb the ladder, wait in the line, get the go-ahead, walk to the end of the board, and jump. Before my swimming lesson I'd told my mum and Aaron, a boy she was looking after (a year older than me and a bit of a nemesis), that I'd jump off the diving board during the free time at the end of the lesson. Now it was here and I fast-walked-not-ran from the edge of the deep pool to the tall ladder. Climbing up the rungs this time was the same as every other. Wet, slippery. I didn't want to fall, so I clutched the rails as I climbed. Reaching the top, I got in the line for the stationary diving board and waited for the few children ahead of me to jump. Then it was my turn. I walked carefully to the edge of the board. Then I looked over to the observation area on my left, just a little bit higher up than I was, where my mum and Aaron sat waiting for me to finish my lesson. There they were. I smiled, then looked out over the edge of the board. The water below me churned as the child, who had just left the bouncing diving board next to me, splashed into the waves that had just been starting to smooth out from the child before. Suddenly I was scared. I'd never been scared to jump from the diving board before, but now I was over-thinking. What if I slipped just as I was about to jump and fell off the board? What if I jumped wrong and landed painfully? Realizing the line behind me was growing longer, I turned and hurried to the back of the platform. "I'll go in a minute," I said to the kid in front of me. When the line was empty I tried again. And again I stood at the end of the board, wanting to jump to prove to Aaron that I could jump from that height, that I was brave. But try as I might, I just could not get up the courage to jump. Defeated, I turned around again, and quickly scrambled back down the ladder. Then I jumped from the small diving board instead. And I never again climbed up the high dive.

In my teens I went cliff jumping once, after much convincing, in Belize and immediately realized that I do not enjoy the feeling of free-fall. Could that have been the reason for my fear of jumping that day years before? I don't know, but since then I've stuck to taking the pictures when people jump off tall objects into the water far below. My stomach is much happier that way!

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My musings on the prompt 'jump' for Five Minute Friday. Join in next week if you feel inspired!

Christmas is started!

When I was a kid one of our family traditions was to start getting ready for Christmas on December 1. Sometimes we would sneak in a little listen to Christmas music in late November, but for the most part, we started our Christmas celebrations on the 1st. On the evening of December 1, we all gathered together in the living room. Some of us helped Dad drag our fake Christmas tree up the basement stairs and into the living room, while others pulled out a pile of our favourite Christmas CDs and popped the first one into the CD player. Christmas music set the mood while Dad worked on putting the tree in the stand, and the rest of us went downstairs to bring up our boxes of Christmas ornaments and decorations out of storage. We went through the hundreds - it seemed - of strings of Christmas lights, searching for the newer ones that still worked and had the least amount of burned out bulbs. Then Dad wound them around the tree as Mum organized where to put the different special holiday decorations. Once the lights were on on the tree, we each opened our own box of ornaments, the ones my mum and grandma had given to each of us every year since we were born. Stories and memories flowed between us as we carefully took ornaments out of their boxes and found the perfect places to hang them on the tree. Once all the ornaments were hung, one person was selected to put the gold tinsel star on the top. Dad put the lucky person on his shoulders and leaned close to the tree and he or she set the star on the top sprig. Then, with ceiling lights off and just the twinkling of the coloured Christmas lights to illuminate the darkened room, we would perch on couches or beside the blazing fire and sip hot chocolate all stirred around with candy canes and listen as Mum read us Christmas stories. It was magical. The whole family stopping to take a breath from the busyness of everyday life and all working together to transform the house into a place of wonder and excitement.

Q kids in 1992 or 1993 (Haha, look at me thinking I'm so hilarious wearing my stockings & Bryn trying to copy me!)

The first year I went to college, we had to change our longstanding tradition of starting Christmas on December 1. I begged my family to wait to set up the tree until I got home after exams. They agreed and for the most part, we went through the same wonderful process of changing our house from a fall haven to a winter wonderland. By that time, my younger siblings had grown out of their asthma, and we could again go up in the mountains surrounding our city to pick out a live Christmas tree to cut down. Even though we had an abbreviated holiday time, we still packed in all the same traditions.

Getting our Christmas tree in 2009 (Mum's taking the picture)

The past two years, I haven't had even that abbreviated time to celebrate with my family. I've been overseas, doing interesting work and quite enjoying myself. But always, when December 1 rolls around, I feel like something is missing. That joyous occasion of stopping whatever we're doing individually and all coming together to make Christmas come to life.

Christmas Day 2010 - Bryn and me Skyping the rest of the family from Cairo, Egypt

Christmas 2011 in Cheonan, South Korea - Our first Christmas as a married couple!

This year, I again won't have that, at least not on December 1, but I have been able to take part in Jonathan's family's traditions. We hung the outside lights, we helped take boxes out of the attic, his mom told us stories about the different ornaments they have as she took them out of the boxes. And now the living room downstairs is a little bit of Christmas away-from-home! I love it! And, the best part about this year is that I get to experience it all again in a few more weeks when I go home and help my family put up our Q-Christmas tree. Two starts to Christmas this year! Could I be any luckier?! I really don't think I could be!

Kitchen ready for Christmas

Window ornaments

Hanging stockings

Lighted present (made by Jonathan's grandma)

Pretty colourful tree