December 31, 1974. What a day! That was the day that my beautiful daughter, Larisa, was born. It is impossible for any baby to be wanted and loved more. And it’s hard for me to believe that my precocious, smart, curly-haired angel is 31 years old today.

I’ve included the four photos above because of what they represent. The picture of Larisa as a baby, asleep with her arms flung out is precious to me because that’s how she slept as a baby - relaxed and secure. In each part of her life she gives her all - her children, her marriage, her family, her friends, her job — even her sleep — although as the mother of two preschoolers she doesn’t get nearly enough nowadays.

When she was almost four, her brother was born. She didn’t show a bit of jealousy but enjoyed her new role as big sister. The two of them were close growing up, and they continue to be good friends today.

My father, known as Grandshaw, gave her the nickname Stinkeroo when she was little, and I still call her that occasionally. She was Stinkeroo - her brother was Scalawag.

I love the photo of her in the striped sweater. That mischievous grin shows her funny side. She has a terrific sense of humor, but balances that with kindness and compassion. She was a tomboy at times, and very feminine at others. She’d play soccer and basketball, but she wanted bows in her hair. And that’s funny because she has to practically bribe her own two daughters to put a bow in their hair for a special occasion.

The school photo also reminds me of her first day of kindergarten when she asked her father, “Which looks more like a school girl?” Then she proceeded to model carrying her bookbag over her shoulder and then carrying it by her side. She wanted to be sure to do things properly.

The wedding photo shows her with her husband, Steven, and their dog, Caesar - who is a story unto himself. A few years after the wedding, they became parents to the angel I call Sweet Stuff here, and then a couple years later, Sunshine came along. I always knew Larisa would be a good mother, but watching her with Sweet Stuff and Sunshine, I am just amazed at what a wonderful job she is doing with the most important job anyone can have.

Today Larisa is a successful business woman, and she daily juggles a zilliion demands. She calls her mother (me!) every single day, and now I talk with her whenever I have an important decision to make. She’s my friend, my little girl, my tee-not, my Stinkeroo, my precious, precious daughter.

Happy birthday, Larisa. I love you!

The day before Christmas my daughter was baking an apple cake as she chatted with 4 1/2-year old Sweet Stuff. She was telling Sweet Stuff about the real meaning of Christmas and how it isn’t just about Santa Claus and giving and receiving gifts. It is Jesus’ birthday. Sweet Stuff immediately made a connection - the cake my daughter was making was obviously Jesus’ birthday cake. Realizing how well that fit in with what she’d been talking about, Larisa agreed - of course the cake was Jesus’ birthday cake. That’s when Sweet Stuff carried the conversation to a new level.

“Jesus was at Megan’s birthday party the other day, and he told me he liked orange sprinkles. So we need to put orange sprinkles on his birthday cake,” she said matter-of-factly.

My daughter looked at Sweet Stuff. “Jesus was at Megan’s birthday party?”

“Yes, and he told me he wanted orange sprinkles on his birthday cake.”

Not one to question a child’s chat with Jesus, my daughter complied. So orange sprinkles were scattered across the cream cheese frosting. The next morning, my daughter decided to have a slice of apple cake for breakfast.

Sweet Stuff came into the kitchen. Shocked, she asked, “ARE YOU EATING GOD’S CAKE?”

“Yes,” my daughter replied, hastening to explain, “It’s all right with God.” That satisfied Sweet Stuff, and the issue was resolved.

Now our family recipe for apple cake with cream cheese frosting has a new name. It is simply “God’s Cake.”

GOD’S CAKE
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups oil
3 eggs
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup nuts, chopped finely
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp. baking soda
3 cups apples, peeled and chopped finely

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour three 9-inch round cake pans. Combine sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla. Beat well. Add mixture of flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix in the apples and nuts. Pour in cake pans and bake for 30 minutes. You can also make the cake in a bundt pan and bake for an hour. However, the icing is what makes it so good, and the icing covers less cake if you use a bundt pan.

CREAM CHEESE ICING FOR GOD’S CAKE
8 oz. cream cheese
1 stick butter
1 cup finely chopped nuts
2 tsp. vanilla
1 pound box powdered sugar
orange sprinkles

Let cream cheese and butter soften. Add vanilla. Add powdered sugar a little at a time and mix well. Add nuts. When cake is cool, ice each layer and stack. Scatter orange sprinkles over the top. Yummy!

If you happen to use the recipe, let me know how it turns out - and I hope you enjoy God’s Cake!

After we finished walking all over the 90 acres with a metal detector (found one cap pistol, two knives, two complete horseshoes, two pieces of a horseshoe, and several pieces of wire and chain), I told PawPaw I’d run by the grocery store to get some steaks to grill for dinner. I walked into Kroger and didn’t see any shopping carts.

I looked around and saw an elderly man coming in from the parking lot to return his shopping cart. I met him at the door and told him I’d take the cart. People have done that for me before, and I always appreciated the few seconds they saved me. However, instead of turning around and going back to the parking lot, he continued inside the store. That’s when it hit me — he had gone to the parking lot to get a shopping cart, and was on his way inside to do his shopping, and I had commandeered his cart!

“Here!” I called to him as he walked away from me into the store, “I thought you were returning the cart. You can have it back.” He didn’t turn around - he just waved his hand and kept going - probably thinking I was a rude and pushy lady who stole shopping carts from defenseless little old men for kicks.

So now I’m an official Kroger cart-napper.

I received the following in an email. Go ahead and thank me now because I took the “email this to all your friends . . .” portion out of it. You’re welcome.

The story and thought are good ones, however, and I think there’s an important message here:

Now for my “keeper” story: I was in the grocery store this afternoon buying some last minute items for the dinner I fixed for some in-town and out-of-town family. I heard someone call my name, turned around and saw a woman I had known in the church singles group a few years ago. She had been married for 29 years, divorced, was active in the singles group for a few years and then met Charles, and she married him. They’ve been happily married for almost six years now. As we caught up with what has been happening to each other in the two years since we last saw each other, I told her that I was single…again - that the second marriage had been a mistake from the beginning and only lasted a year. As she was offering sympathy, I assured her that it was okay. Then I told her that my first husband and I were getting back together. He and I were married for 28 years when we divorced 8 years ago. Her next remark was one I’ll always remember. With a wistful look in her eye, she said,

I found this cartoon over at Dr. Sanity - and loved it! Figured I’d pass it along to you here. (Dr. Sanity has some recipes - yes RECIPES!! - to share along with the cartoon. I copied those, too.)

I was watching TV, and they’ve started all the year-in-review shows. I decided to write my personal year-in-review. However, I can’t remember much from early in the year…maybe nothing spectacular happened during the winter and early spring. So here are the highlights of 2005 for me:

(1) January: I started riding mountain bikes with PawPaw - great exercise and fun, but decided I could only handle it in cool weather - the helmet does horrible things to one’s hair after sweating in it. So when June got here, I had to stop until the fall.

(2) May: I finished my first year as a reading specialist - great job - and and now I’m happily in my second year out of a regular classroom.

(3) June: I babysat Sunshine and Sweet Stuff for a full week while their parents went to the beach with friends. Wonderful and exhausting at the same time. There is absolutely not a time as tender as being with children first thing in the morning when they’re sleepy-eyed and sweet and cuddly.

(4) July: PawPaw and I went to Alaska. I LOVED Alaska. We saw moose, grizzlies, caribou and Dall sheep in the wild. Enjoyed it so much, we’ve already scheduled another trip next September.

(5) July (continued): On the trip to Alaska I went fishing and caught a salmon. We wore waders and fished in the middle of a river. Catching a salmon is something I’ve always wanted to do. I caught my salmon the evening before we went home. That meant that I released it after I caught it. PawPaw had caught one earlier in the week, and we got the cook at the lodge where we stayed to cook it. It was delicious, and it fed about 16 people!

(6) July (still continued): We biked for 24 miles along some of the most incredible scenery in Denali park in Alaska. We had seen a grizzly bear with two cubs earlier along the route, and to say I was a LITTLE apprehensive would be an understatement.

(7) September: I started The Median Sib. Blogging has been both fun and therapeutic. PawPaw and Stinkeroo both can’t figure out WHAT I get out of blogging. It makes no sense to them.

(8) October: I went camping by myself. It was great - except for the “by myself” part. However, I proved a point by going alone - I am woman, hear me roar and all that . Afterwards I went camping several times with PawPaw, and that was definitely a better way to enjoy the world of camping.

(9) November: After numerous stops and starts throughout the year, PawPaw and I got back together - for good.

(10) December: I did NO Christmas decorating for the first time ever. PawPaw put up my Christmas tree, and then he, Sweet Stuff and Sunshine decorated it. That was it. Nothing else. Zilch. I won’t do that again. I enjoy having a Christmas-y house too much.

I’ll almost definitely come up with other outstanding events for the year as I think about it more. For now, though, that’s it.

Home again! It’s Monday night, and I’m back home and blogging again. I had a wonderful Christmas weekend with lots of visiting and fun. Highlights include:

Friday dinner with the children and grandkids - watching the little ones open their gifts and seeing their excitement.

Eating dinner today at my mother’s with 48 family members! All seven of us siblings were there! Then doing the gift exchange - one person at time. It took forever, but it was so much fun! Two regrets: I didn’t get a picture of the 7 of us together with our mother, and I wasn’t able to stay very long.

Taking a hike yesterday on PawPaw’s country property in the cold afternoon with occasional drizzly rain - very refreshing!

Holding my niece who is ten months old and having her smile at me.

Driving around town with PawPaw’s mother, brother, sister-in-law last night to look at the Christmas decorations.

Flying home tonight with PawPaw in his small plane — flying above the clouds and seeing a spectacular sunset that everyone below couldn’t see because of the cloud cover. Then going from 6,000 ft to 4,000 ft as we neared Nashville which put us right in the clouds - rather spooky flying 150 mph and not able to see anything…just trusting the instruments.

Now I am looking forward to tomorrow when I’ll get to visit Sweet Stuff and Sunshine and have them show me all the goodies that Santa Claus brought them.

You are invited to join the MONTHLY MARATHON blogroll. It is a group of people who promise to walk or run a marathon each month - not all at once but one or two miles at a time - to equal 26.2 miles each month. A 30-minute moderately-paced walk five days a week will MORE than do it.

We already have six people on our blogroll for the 2006 Monthly Marathon. I’ll add you to the blogroll when you join, and I’ll provide you with information for adding the blogroll to your site. Membership has requirements, though. Click on the icon below to go to the Monthly Marathon website. You’ll find more information there.

I hope you’ll join us! It will be a good way to get in some good exercise for 2006, and it will also provide motivation and comraderie with fellow Monthly Marathoners.

I will be leaving shortly for a couple of brief holidays trips — to my mother-in-law’s and later to my mother’s home for family get-togethers. Three full days away from a computer. I should be posting again on Tuesday. In the meantime, I will leave you with some good reading. Please click often on the links below and also the links on the sidebar.

Just read a post by Charmaine at Reasoned Audacity that addresses the question “What is a lady?” And it begs a further question: Do I want to be a feminist or a lady? Are the two mutually exclusive? What do you think?

Dr. Sanity has some definite ideas about The Idiot’s Guide To Victimhood. Check it out. Do you think she’s right?

Angie over at Ficken Chingers (sounds a little dirty, doesn’t it?) asked A Question about why people think being a jerk or a bitch is cool. I’ve noticed this in some blogs.

And over at The Reflective Teacher, there’s a wonderful post about a unique writing exercise. I’ve written about this post before, but I can’t help it. I love it!

Utenzi discusses a Washington Post article on the first appearance of white skin. Fascinating when you think of the historical and current implications of skin color.

If you’re in the mood for some light-hearted entertainment or maybe you need to have some riddles to stump your school-age children, you can visit Daddy’s Roses where Joan has a post of Christmas Riddles.

Click over to Alone On a Limb and read Terry’s Top Ten Christmas Memories. I loved it - probably because several of them are also my favorite Christmas memories.

Those are just a few of the posts I’ve enjoyed reading lately.

Hope all of you who visit THE MEDIAN SIB have a wonderful Christmas - and if you don’t celebrate Christmas, have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be back blogging on Tuesday.

The phone rang early this morning. Looking at caller ID, I saw that it was my daughter. However, when I answered, there was no sound from the other side for a few seconds, and then a quiet little voice said, “Grandma Carol, can we come over now?”

“Sweet Stuff, of course you can! Are you sick?” I thought that maybe she wasn’t feeling well, and my daughter wanted to keep her home from daycare. I was wrong. Apparently both Sunshine and Sweet Stuff woke up this morning and wanted to start the Christmas party early. Everyone is coming to my house this evening for our family Christmas dinner and gift exchange. Sweet Stuff and Sunshine wanted to come over and help Grandma Carol NOW!

So they’ve been here all morning. They’ve helped me make an apple pie and some pecan pies. They’ve helped me get the Chicken Cheese Corn Chowder started. All you moms and grandmoms know how “helpful” two-year olds and four-year olds can be. And now they’re using the rhythm instruments to sing Christmas carols! Only a grandmother would enjoy the ringing of bells, shaking of tambourines and mini-cymbals and little voices making up their own Christmas songs… “I will help you with a merry bow…” each word emphasized with ringing bells and cymbals and tambourines.

Sunshine’s latest trick is grabbing her own (or my) boobs and yelling, “BOOBIE! BOOBIE!” We definitely need to channel that energy in another direction!

I am a little sad, though. Sunshine has always refused to call me Grandma Carol. It’s always been simply “Cawol!” She has now started calling me Grandma Carol all the time. Another sign of how fast she is growing.

A full day of Sunshine and Sweet Stuff! Life doesn’t get any better!