Oh Fried Dough!!

I thought I would come back today, it seems like a good day to return to blogging... and since you're here...won't you join me for a fastnacht?  I just got done making them and have no one around in the house at the moment to share them with... so I'm sharing them with you... and saying "hello" again.

How was your Winter?  I've been gone a long while.  At first I was gone because Christmas was wearing me down... I'm still dealing with my feelings regarding this Christmas.  It wasn't the best... But, I got over Christmas, and moved on.
My next reason for not returning to the blog had to do with my work and family schedules getting all jumbled up and re-arranged once again, and it took me a good bit of time to get my day to day life settled back into a groove.... I realize now that it takes me a long while to sink into a schedule, and get "humming" along again.  I'm happy in a nicely worked out schedule where there is time for everything and everything has a time... This has been challenging to create lately...

So in light of that, I started thinking, well - this is dumb.  Why am I wasting time writing in a blog, when I should be doing stuff I want to do in the dwindling time I'm finding lately to actually do the things I love to do, and not writing about doing things.  It seemed there was only time for either doing or writing... but not time for doing and writing.... so I prioritized.

Except then I realized that writing is important to me and it makes me happy, and it helps me to feel grateful for all the good stuff going on around me, and furthermore, that in not writing, I was losing sight of the good stuff and focusing more on the bad stuff  (that's an old habit of mine that I thought I had broken)

So I decided, yes, I'm coming back to write again.  I'm going to make time.


...   but THEN I was gone because I got sick.  We all four of us got sick... (you may remember that we seem to do this as a family on a yearly basis right around this time...  Bleh.)


but I'm back now.

Feeling a bit better now.

Feeling like writing again.

Feeling like I've eaten too many doughnuts...

I don't have a real plan for posting yet, no real schedule worked out... can't say How or When I will sit down and write, but I can figure that out tomorrow...
And maybe tomorrow I'll give up eating doughnuts too, and observe this "Fat Tuesday" the way it was actually intended...  instead of simply another reason to eat fried dough.

Growing up, my great-grandmother Margaret had our entire extended family (a large extended family) over to her beautiful home on the hill for Fastnachts and molasses every year.  We didn't do this to observe a religiously significant holiday, for us it's clearly more about getting together as a family.  We ate ourselves silly, and talked, and ran around in the basement (the youngest set of us), and were sent home with a bag filled with leftovers and hearts filled with togetherness.  I am missing that tradition today, though it is still going strong among my family in Pennsylvania, thanks to my uncle...

but even though I'm far from my family, I'm carrying it on in my own small way, and thinking of them.  And definitely about my great-grandma.

When I grow up, I want to be like her...



p.s. here's one last tradition I'm continuing from great-grandma Margaret...

Raise your hand if you know what game Johann and I are playing...

p.s.  Here's a link to the doughnut recipe we use if you'd like to make some of your own.