After our traditional Swedish Pancake breakfast, the kids gathered at the Rotary trail for a walk. Greg, who is half Swedish, does the honors of cooking the pancakes at every special family gathering.
We all look forward to his Swedish Pancakes with Little smokies. They are enjoyed with sour cream and real or not so real Maple syrup plus fruit syrups, especially boysenberry which has been impossible to find in recent years!
Lots of stray golf balls were found in the brush.
Later that evening it was taco night at our country bungalow.
The dish washer was going full speed ahead for several days!
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.
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!
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 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).
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!
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.
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!
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 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.
…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.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
white
traditional
Christmas cards are a tradition that I enjoy and cherish. Hope it doesn’t completely die out!
pine
Pine bough garland around our front door of our former home.
Currently at our home we are surrounded by evergreens but they are more of the fir variety and not pine.
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Hope all is well in your corner of the world as you anticipate Christmas and all that it means to humanity.
We’ve had this little tin for years and the scenes go well with the Bible verses from Luke.
~
“And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.’
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
(Luke 2:8–14, ESV)
This last scene comes later in the Christmas events before Joseph, Mary and Jesus flee to Egypt to escape King Herod’s evil plans. The Wise men and Joseph are warned by God about Herod.
My little tin also has a scene with a Little Drummer Boy which comes from a popular Christmas song but isn’t in the Bible.
Our Christmas tree was finally adorned with ornaments old and new. We do not do ‘designer’ Christmas here. We do a more traditional look, using old and new touches, vintage and modern. As you can see, the presents under the tree are a mish mosh of bags and boxes and wrapping paper. Not much matching going on.
The angel topper has been with us for many years and I’m sorry to say I’m not sure who made it for us and the first year it became our topper.
The ornaments on the tree have no overall theme. Some are from travels to Great Britain.
Beatrix Potter’s characters are represented.
The first Christmas ornament we were gifted as a wedding gift and some early family ornaments represent these special times in our history.
Josh and Dan’s sport photo ornaments have gone to live at their homes.
I’m not sure which one of our 3 kids created this walnut half ornament in Sunday School years ago.
This one above has been around for many of our 51 years of Christmases. The one below is newer but has still been around for years!
Our ‘Grands’ have a representation on the tree, too.
This was our very first Christmas tree at our apartment in West Los Angeles. That is our niece Jenna. We had only been married for 20 days. The fern next to our tree was from our wedding. We had two ferns at the altar for our wedding flowers. After finding these old photos it dawned on me that in our first month of marriage we had both sides of our family over to our apartment for a meal/gathering, including Greg’s paternal grandmother and my maternal grandmother!
This was our Christmas tree in the first home we purchased in 1975 and our second Christmas as a married couple.
The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b. 