Author Archives: Ellen

A Hodgepodge Happy New Year!

A Very Happy New Year to All! Welcome very soon to 2026!

This is my Happy New Year Post for Hodgepodgers. This post card was sent to Greg’s Great Great Aunt Emma. The card was sent from Chicago to Denver in 1906! It is a hundred year old Happy New Year greeting! The stamp was one cent. The written greeting is in Swedish.

Making room for the last Hodgepodge of 2025! Thank you, Joyce From This Side of the Pond.

1. Did you make resolutions or set goals for the year we’re waving goodbye? How did that work out for you? Will you set any goals for this new year, new season, or new month? Share one or two if you’d like to share. 

The only goal I set for 2025 was to read the Bible through alongside Everyday Gospel, A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of Life by Paul David Tripp. I found it to be a good combination and encouraging. One other highlight was using our Church History Study Bible with notes stretching back from the first and second centuries and reaching forward to the twentieth century. As the introduction states about the contributors in the notes, ‘these are theologians, pastors, poets, laity, all offering perspective on God’s Word’ to aid us in escaping the ‘tyranny of the present to see wisdom from the past’.

The Puritan John Owen (1616-1683) offers us this encouragement:

If you have any regard to the constancy of your faith, to the comfort of your life, the honor of God, or the salvation of your own soul, labor immediately to get your belief of the Word better founded. Read the Scripture constantly, study it seriously, search it diligently, hear it explained and applied by others, meditate on it yourself, and beg of God an understanding of it and a right faith in it. 

2. When did you have the most fun this year? 

This was the family Christmas card photo this year taken over Thanksgiving weekend.

Hands down the most fun always happened when we were together with family or dear friends! The joy, the belly laughs, the support, the one liners, and the love flowing made for memorable moments all through the year!

One of the belly laugh moments of 2025!

3. What’s a song or song lyric you’ll associate with 2025? Tell us why. 

Phil Wickham’s Hymn of Heaven because it is the hope that encourages me in my daily life. Songs of life that are filled with truth inspire me and cause me to worship God. This is important to me. Artists like The Getty’s,  Chris Tomlin, Phil Wickham, and others who sing what is true to the Bible are my favorites. I’m not a fan of imposters. It is my prayer that these and others stay true.

4. Best (or a favorite) bite of something delicious you tasted this year? 

I grew up on my dear mom’s blintzes but I’ve not made them for several years. This year I made them twice and they are so good to my taste buds and memories. I choose them for my best bite this year!

Before you ask…you can find the recipe for Nadia’s Blintzes here.

5. What do you want to do more of in the new year? Less of? 

I would like to read more good books this year. I would like to decrease my sugar intake this year.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Happy New Year to all my friends who stop by my blog. I appreciate each and every one of you! Wishing you a new year of peace and joy down in your hearts to stay…

Christmas Day 2025

Christmas day started quietly with just the two of us enjoying a Fancy Egg Scramble. I was able to set the table and make a few of the food preparations before the two sleighs from across the mountains arrived 3 minutes apart. Soon afterwards the Colville kids arrived and quiet was replaced with joyful chatter and anticipation of what Christmas day holds at Baba and Gramps’.

(A fair warning: This is a many many photo full post)

The centerpiece.

No white Christmas for us this year.

The birthday cake for Jesus arrived with the Bayles Mountain crew. Designed and planned by Addy and JJ and brought together by their mom. The stable, the star, Joseph, Mary, Baby Jesus, sheep, shepherd, 3 wise men and a donkey were all included!

Use your imagination and you’ll be able to see all the main participants. It took me a while to figure out that the marshmallows with the little bit of pretzel were the sheep!

This little guy was hungry and excited to see it was time to carve the Prime Rib Roast. He said, “that smells good!”

(A shout out to our local grocery store, Super 1, who offered their prime rib roasts at only $9.99 a pound, cut and tied. )

The menu consisted of Prime Rib, Yorkshire Pudding, Roasted Vegetables, and Creamed Corn (not from a can).

Christmas Day 008

This year the readings were from Luke, Hebrews and Philippians.

Christmas Crackers ready set Pull!

Presents and time for belly-laughs! Even though this was a ‘stocking gift’ year, the gifts seemed endless.

Time for comfy jammies or putting feet up watching a video sent to Addy and JJ from Great auntie Christina.

A Marco polo. Do any of you or your kids participate?

Here are some of our photos for our Christmas card greetings that we took over Thanksgiving weekend.

And that is a wrap of our preparing for and enjoying the day of celebrating the birth of Jesus with Angels watching over us all.

Boxing day and our For-Tea will be separate posts coming in the New Year!

Christmas Eve 2025

On Christmas Eve after our Candlelight service Jamie, Addy and JJ came over for a simple meal of Blintzes. Dan was working.

We all enjoyed our Blintze snack!

We let A & J open one of their gifts. I’m so glad we did because the sizing was way off on both of their boots! Yikes. Size 1 was more like a size 3 and the size 2 was more like size 1. I tucked them away to return to the store where we bought them.

We were all in church yesterday. Andrew and Katie hit the road for home right after church. Josh and Laura will be leaving this morning.

It will take me some time to gather up all the photos and thoughts for all the events we enjoyed together.

Enjoy the last few days of 2025!

O Light That Knew No Dawn ~ Hymn

O Light That Knew No Dawn

O light that knew no dawn,
That shines to end­less day,
All things in earth and Heav’n
Are lus­tered by Thy ray;
No eye can to Thy throne as­cend,
Nor mind Thy bright­ness com­pre­hend.

Thy grace, O Fa­ther, give,
That I might serve in fear;
Above all boons, I pray,
Grant me Thy voice to hear;
From sin Thy child in mer­cy free,
And let me dwell in light with Thee.

That, cleansed from stain of sin,
I may meet hom­age give;
And pure in heart, be­hold
Thy beau­ty while I live;
Clean hands in ho­ly wor­ship raise,
And Thee, O Christ my Sav­ior, praise.

In sup­pli­ca­tion meek
To Thee I bend the knee;
O Christ, when Thou shalt come,
In love re­mem­ber me,
And in Thy king­dom, by Thy grace,
Grant me a hum­ble serv­ant’s place.

Thy grace, O Fa­ther, give,
I hum­bly Thee implore;
And let Thy mer­cy bless
Thy serv­ant more and more.
All grace and glo­ry be to Thee,
From age to age eter­nal­ly.

Words: Gregory of Nazianzus, (325-390).

For-Tea

Ten years ago the four of us enjoyed tea at the Queen Mary Tea Room in Seattle for Katie’s 3oth birthday. Today the four of us along with Addy, Linda and Florence will be celebrating at a Tea Room in Post Falls, Idaho. We are raising our pinkies to Katie and Jamie who are turning a number they are both shy to mention but you can do the math. Today is Katie’s actual birthday and Jamie’s will be in nineteen more days. There will be a full post devoted to our time in the near future. Ten years ago was Jamie’s first experience having tea in a tearoom. Today will be Addy’s first ‘tea experience’ in an actual tearoom. May the memory making moments continue!

Applesauce Spice Cake

 

Applesauce Spice Cake

1 pkg. yellow cake mix
1 pkg. 4 serving size jello instant vanilla pudding
4 eggs
1 cup applesauce
1/2 C. water
1/4 C. oil
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. all-spice (optional)
1/2 raisins finely chopped (optional)

Combine all ingredients in large mixing bowl of electric mixer and blend then beat at medium for 4 minutes. Pour into well greased and floured 10 inch tube or fluted tube pan. (I’ve used a bundt cake pan and angel food cake pan). Bake at 350 degrees for 50-55 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean. DO NOT UNDERBAKE. Cool in pan for 15 min. remove and cool on rack. When the cake has cooled and before I serve it I give it a dusting of powdered sugar.

This goes really well with whipped cream or a good vanilla ice cream, too. This has become a favorite in my house and is requested for birthday cakes very often.

We are going to celebrate four birthdays on Saturday evening, our December girl and our January boys and girl. We will have 4 individual mini cakes for the event. Two of this Spice cake, a lemon cake and a Chocolate cake. I’ll have lots of photos and posts in the coming weeks of all our Christmas time and beyond celebrations!!

I hope Jesus was at the center of all the Christmas festivities with your family and friends!

Merry Christmas 2025

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly host praising God and saying,

4

“Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace among those

with whom he is pleased!”

С Рождеством Христовым

(S Roždestvom Khristovym)

On the birth of Christ a very Merry Christmas to you and yours!

My Talented Helpers

These kitchen helpers took over and whew after a few hours things got done.

Addy has mastered the art of kneading. She says it’s because she helps her mom make tortillas often.

After chopping nuts, JJ decided it was more fun to wash the dishes. He said it is fun to wash dishes the ‘old fashioned way’.

We had to wait for a couple hours for this dough ball to double in size. In the meantime we also managed to get one tray of Russian Tea Cookies done. I did not have a resident photo taker available and sticky hands did not help for me to take photos. My helpers went home for lunch and we went out for Chinese giving the dough time to rise.

When we got home from lunch the dough was ready. The finished product will be delicious but both loaves cracked. I think I rolled the dough too thin before rolling it up and baking it with the nut filling.

 

I need to make these more than once a year so I can master the method.

Today is Christmas Eve Day. The main celebrations start tonight into tomorrow. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas.

Baking Day & Nostalgia

Today is baking day with the Grands.

Baking with Baba when they still needed a chair to stand on to reach the counters.

2022

2023

Baking day last year! They are taller this year and the mixing and rolling will be simpler for these two! Here’s hoping we remember to take a couple photos this morning!

Back to the present…

We woke up to an inch of snow on Monday but that has been washed away by rain. Between the rain and the snow we’ve had beautiful skies as you can see in the collage above from our Colville kids’ driveway.

Our Westside kids attended a early Christmas Eve service at Canyon Hills. Canyon Hills scheduled several Christmas Eve services this year and last night was their first of 8 services stretched out over 3 days!

We will be attending our Candlelight Christmas Eve Service at First Baptist Colville on Christmas Eve at 5pm.

I’m feeling a wee bit nostalgic looking at some photos from Christmas past…

I posted this one on Facebook yesterday.

Me, my sister Kathy and my sister Vera in Montebello, California 1967.

All eight of the Bagdanov siblings.

Our mom and pop.

Christmas Day growing up we had church on Christmas day regardless of the day it landed on. In the photos above taken on Christmas morning we were all dressed and ready to drive to Los Angeles for our Christmas services. We’d come home for lunch and then back to church in the evening. This might have been the last year we split our Christmas day at the Molokan church in the morning and the Russian Baptist Church in the evening.

I’ll save more nostalgia for another day.

Nativities

…the occasion of a person’s birth. A picture carving or model representing Jesus Christ’s birth.

Even though the Wise men from the East did not appear on the scene till months after the birth of Jesus they are depicted in many traditional Nativity scenes. I like to try to put them far off as if they are still traveling.

“My Christ he is the Lord of lords,

He is the King of kings

He is the Sun of righteousness

With healing in his wings.

My Christ, he is the heaven of heaven

My Christ what shall I call?

My Christ is first, my Christ is last,

My Christ is All in All.”

I had to wait till dark to get a good shot of the nativity set we like to put above our front door.

When JJ was here last Monday afternoon, he set this Little People Nativity on the window ledge.

‘Welcome to our wondering sight,

Eternity within a span!

Summer in winter! Day in night!

Heaven in earth! And God in man!

Great little One, whose glorious birth

Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.’

Quotes taken from Christ’s Glorious Achievements, What Jesus Has Done for You. by C. H. Spurgeon

Here are the last few sentences from this book:

“I hope that among those who have read these pages there will be many whom the Lord Jesus has specially redeemed with his most precious blood, and I trust he will appear at once to them, and say, ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.’ By grace omnipotent may you be  made to yield to the Lord with the cheerful consent of your conquered wills, and accept that glorious grace which will bring you to praise the seeking and saving Saviour in heaven.”

May the miracle of Christmas and the redemptive, saving work of Jesus Christ on the Cross lead you to repentance with belief and new life in Him. He alone gives us grace and peace.