Five Brown Kids

My mom is 60 this week! We are all 23 of us meeting for a big party. My mom was raised by her widowed grandmother who already had ten kids of her own plus my mom's two older brothers. They were in today's PC terms "food insecure" and by any Canadian standard poor and cold.   But her grandmother loved her and did her best and she had a much loved aunt who read stories to her until she was a great reader and that propelled my mom through high school (only one in the family) and into one year of college. She found herself pregnant and alone at 20 and kept me anyway (thanks mom!) and now has four kids with college degrees and temple marriages and 13 wonderful grand kids with two more on the way!  Three cheers for my mother - the nicest person I know and the ultimate game changer! Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray! Debbie's 60 years from jessica brown on Vimeo .

Tyrone's best friend from high school just put this together! Tyrone is number 42.

I scanned in some of my childhood pictures to show my friends and thought I might as well post them.

Top Seven (Eight!) Reasons Why I Love the Winter Olympics! 1. I'm Canadian! I love my country. I saw the ice dancing couple get their gold medal and it made me cry. 2. I grew up in a little town of three thousand people and we had a full sized hockey rink and a full sized curling rink! That's as many frozen indoor ice surfaces as grocery stores! 3. My three best friends in high school (Taryn, Scott and Ginelle) were all curlers. Some weekends they would head off to tournaments and games but I never felt too left out :-) 4. In high school I was absolutely obsessed with figure skating. Ginelle and I taped every event we could and watched every chance we could, much to the dismay of her two older brothers. We loved Kurt Browning best of all! 5. In the sixties my dad was in the US Army and stationed in Alaska. He tried out for the US Biathlon team and made it (he says he was a great bad weather skier, he could slog through anything). In 1967 he went to the pre -Olympics in Grenob...

Just a photo of us in the back yard of Uncle Paul's house in upstate New York (1984). Dad comes from a wonderful, smart and resourceful family. And it showed...

Just becuase it's so delicious here's a repost of the freshest cranberry sauce you can get. HOMEMADE WHOLE BERRY CRANBERRY SAUCE INGREDIENTS: 1 cup sugar 1 cup water 1 12-ounce package (or 3 cups) fresh cranberries, rinsed and drained (pick out all the soft and mushy ones) DIRECTIONS:Combine water and sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring to boil; add cranberries, return to boil. Reduce heat and boil gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cover and cool completely at room temperature. Refrigerate until serving time. Makes 2 1/4 cups. Double or triple recipe as needed. Enjoy! Here I am with a school friend, Scott, out at the Western Head lighthouse picking cranberries for Thanksgiving dinner (the back of the photo says 1990). Scott is a geologist for Exxon now, living in Australia. I'm a mom of three living in the South. Who knew such talent could come out of such a small town :-)

I see that Sesame Street is having a big anniversary this week and that reminded me... In my toddler days I lived in the Musquodobit Valley of Nova Scotia . My parents were raging hippies (don't tell my mom I said that, she'll deny it) and we lived in a sweet little tin covered, passive solar bungalow at the top of a large hill. We lived without electricity and obviously without TV. Our closest neighbours down the hill were a wonderful old couple named John and Emmy Wilson. They were winding down years of hard work, self sufficiency and frugality on their own property/farm at the same time my parents were just getting started. They were my adopted grandparents and we loved them. They also had a daughter Mary who lived with them, who must have been in her 40's and had downs syndrome. Their other children were long since grown and gone. So about Sesame Street - they had electricity and a TV and Mary liked to watch Sesame Street. And that is my memory - that on the few occa...

I'm just guessing those missionaries never imagined this... Just see what can come from a quiet wedding and a baptism at a little place called Dollar Lake Brook in the back woods of Nova Scotia. Sealed DC temple '79 Sealed DC temple '97 Sealed Boston Temple '03 Sealed Logan Temple '05 Sealed Mt Timpangos Temple '08 And 7 grandkids (and counting) all born in the covenant. Happy 33th Anniversary Mom and Dad!

Here I am at my parents' reception just after the wedding and baptism out near the brook. I'm eating a big crunchy apple and if ever there was a food that said Ripple all over it - a crunchy, sour fall apple would be it. This recipe needs no long ingredient list or a paragraph of how to's. Just find the crunchiest, freshest, biggest fall apple you can find - preferably from an orchard or farmers market - and take a big bite. That's fresh. (I do believe that little drop leaf table in the background is the very same table I now use as a desk and type on as we speak)

There's a quote that goes something like, " A happy childhood lasts a lifetime." I had a great childhood. And I'll be saying "Thank You, Mom" for the rest of my life.