Téa Marie Oenema

On December 1st my sister Kristin had her little baby girl, Téa Marie, and I couldn't be more excited! So excited for Téa Marie to be in the world, and I cannot wait to meet her this Christmas! I wish that it were sooner but only 20 days! Isn't she a little cutie??

Congratulations Kristin, Alain and Esme! So happy for you guys!

With Love.

Homemade Peppermint Mocha - YUM

This year for some reason I have been loving peppermint mochas. Usually I prefer peppermint white mochas which are really quite different. But when I am not at work, the way I get my mocha made is just too expensive haha so I thought I would try to make one at home. Soo here's my recipe.

Milk - how much you want (I used around 2 cups of Almond milk)

Cocoa - how much you want (I should have used MORE than the 1 1/2 TBSP's I used)

Peppermint extract - how much you want (I should have used LESS than the 1 TBSP I used - feel like I just brushed my teeth!)

Sugar - how much you want (I should have used MORE than the almost 1/4 cup I used.. I might have only used an 1/8 cup)

Coffee - Brewed to extra extra strength (I doubled what I would normally drink as a cup of coffee)

Put your coffee on to brew. Combine milk, cocoa, peppermint and sugar in a teeny saucepan. Heat on medium and stir or whisk so it doesn't burn and the ingredients combine. Once heated pour half a mug with your hot chocolate mix and fill up with coffee. Delish (once I added two scoops of hot chocolate mix haha!)

Ok so. This post is comical to me because it is not a complete recipe ha! And it wasn't even successful for me ha! But I thought I would share because I am pretty sure with the right proportions it would be just an excellent way to make a homemade peppermint mocha!

Enjoy!

With Love.

Happy Tuesday

Hello everyone.

I am really bad at blogging but am really trying to be better haha. Right now I am just waiting to go to work at 2pm and feeling a little bit lonely and so I thought I would come on here and kill some time feeling connected to something even though in reality I am still just by myself.

I do hope that everyone is having a happy Tuesday. At least it's not Monday right? And lots of you might have a long weekend so that's exciting! I just baked banana muffins and trying to go for the moist muffin like Erin was telling me about, I took them out when I might not have otherwise and now am just hoping that they are not raw :S Also this morning I took my car to Kaltire to have my winters put on since it is seeming wintery here in Calgary. It was a zoo! I must think like everyone else in Calgary :) Thankfully I am not in a hurry to pick up my car as I will be working till 1030pm anyway and they will be closed!

If any one else is feeling a little bit glum on this Tuesday I would like to share a passage I came across in my small group study yesterday (The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie Omartian) that I should really be reciting over and over to myself as well :

1 Peter 1:6-7 = "So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold -- though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world." (NLT)

Also another passage that brings comfort to my soul is:

James 1:2-4 = "Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a change to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing." (NLT)

Here is where I need to clarify that there is nothing particularly difficult that I am going through so I don't want to sound too dramatic in my glum-ness. It is just not a particularly exciting day. You know the kind? I hope anyway that I am not the only one haha. The kind of day when you wonder "what am I doing?" or "what is the point of the things I do?" When I ask myself those questions I need to quickly remind myself that God, the maker of heaven and earth, my heavenly Father, beautifully and masterfully created me so that I might glorify his great name. Although I can't always see what my purpose here is, I know that I have been called by Him to show this world His great love. And thank the good Lord that I do not have to do that by my own strength. Philippians 4:13 = "For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength." (NLT)

And so now, as I go to work, I will turn to Jesus to give me the strength I need to love this world. To love everyone that I come in contact with because I know that they also were beautifully and masterfully created by God, and they deserve to be shown His great love. Even when they are simply picking up a coffee.

I hope you know today that God created you, uniquely and wonderfully, and that he loves you very much.

With love.

Turkey Phases 2 & 3

So after having put my precarious aluminum roasting pan full of turkey in the oven on top of a cookie sheet, we waited 4 hours and then it came time to see if my plan had worked and if we were actually able to remove the turkey from the oven to take the tinfoil off.. teehee.. it worked! yay! So this is our turkey still needing 1 hour of crispifying!

I was a little worried at this point that we would end up with a Christmas Vacation turkey because the thermometer seemed to already be reading the temperature that indicates the turkey is ready.. :S But somehow miraculously 1 hour later it read 170 degrees again haha and the turkey was crispy and done!

And then Ian got to do the honors of carving his very first turkey!

And we had all the usual fixings to go along, Ian said it tasted just like we were at my parents for Thanksgiving aww..

And we were all excited to eat it but my picture taking skills were not up to snuff...

And the finished product was delicious and the turkey was moist yum!

And then after we ate too much food we watched a movie and it was very relaxing :) After all of the trauma of preparing a turkey I think I will most likely do this all over again whenever the occasion arises :)

Hope everyone had a relaxing thanksgiving weekend!

With love.

Turkey Phase 1

Have you ever felt braver when you are alone? I sometimes do.. not obviously in actually dangerous situations but just day to day things that seem more possible if I don't have anyone to fall back on. This morning I had one of those moments. I did not know that preparing a turkey is not for the faint of heart. YIKES! I got up at 7 (and Ian is still sleeping) to put the turkey in the oven.. my first (maybe my last haha depending on how it turns out!). I had set an alarm but didn't even need it I was so excited I woke up 5 minutes before I was supposed to. It feels like Christmas here but it's not but just to know it's a holiday is exciting enough!

So... brave me I put the turkey into the sink and rip off the wrapping... and what is THAT! haha all the giblets and neck and stuff I knew they were in there and I knew I would be getting them out but yuck. If Ian hadn't of been sleeping I would have been out of there so fast haha... So being super brave I grab the tongs and fish them out cause I am not getting my hands all up in there... who knows if I will get them back. And the website told me to rinse and wipe out the cavity. haha. I rinsed it but hopefully nothing bad will come of not wiping it out. It looked clean enough and no water was running out anymore. I am all for meat. I eat meat pretty much everyday but I am spoiled. The meat I eat doesn't actually look like an animal. And although a cooked turkey looks like an animal, a raw turkey looks more like an animal. With a raw gaping hole where all it's insides used to be, and the legs that just kept flapping about. I thought I was going to rip one off:

And what are those? It's ribs? Ok so I know this all sounds ridiculous, I am 26 after all. Have seen my mom at least deal with the turkey after it comes out of the oven haha I realized that I don't think I ever saw her prepare it. So after handling it ever so gently so as not to get my hand up in somewhere I didn't want my hand, (that 15 pound turkey was awkward when it was all wet and limbs flailing about!) I think I did a pretty good job of preparing it!

Now some other problems... We didn't have a roaster so we got one of those disposable aluminum ones and then I realized it said you had to support the bottom when you take it out of the oven and so I put a cookie sheet underneath ha! We will see.. now I just pray none of us gets injured taking it out of the oven. And isn't it always the case that you run out of something just when you need it most... like foil. I had to take the foil off my pie to have enough for this whole thing because I just didn't feel like heading out to Safeway at 7am and it wouldn't of even been open.

Well.. I guess I will keep you posted as to how it turns out. My tummy is growling now so I should probably eat some breakfast.

With love.

Thanksgiving

As I was baking pumpkin pie and making my Mom's famous sweet potato stuff I started thinking about Thanksgiving. And am glad that it is a time not only to eat delicious food but also to ponder all the things that one is thankful for and since I am not always diligent in letting people know how thankful I am for them I figured it was time to break out of my blog slumber and let you all know.

Just thinking about all the people and things I am thankful for makes my heart swell up so big I feel tears coming to my eyes. It is a little strange not being surrounded by large amounts of family this year for this thanksgiving weekend but I am thankful to have my family here (Ian) and also that Caleb can come and celebrate with us!

I am so thankful for my wonderful husband Ian and all that he does for me and with me. I am thankful that I can say I love him even more than I did the day we got married and I loved him quite a lot even then :) I am thankful for my parents who have always been there for me and I am thankful that they showed me what it was to be in a loving relationship and that I can call them my friends. I am thankful for my two beautiful sisters. They are always full of wise advise and laughter and are always willing to listen to me if I need to cry or vent. I am thankful of their friendship and all their love. I am thankful for my parents-in-law who have accepted me wholeheartedly into their family. I am thankful for my brothers-in-law who also have accepted me as their own little sister (and big sister in one instance). I am thankful for my adorable nieces and ruggedly handsome nephew. I am so thankful that they are healthy and thriving and hope I will come to know them well. I am also thankful for my parents parents my Grandparents! They raised up such wonderful people to be my mom and dad. I know we are not all close but I want you all to know that you are always in my thoughts and prayers and I love you so much. I feel so blessed to have you in my life :)

I am thankful also for my beautiful lady friends here in Calgary. You are all wonderful in so many different ways and mean so much to me.

I am thankful for a steady job, health, a roof over my head: (Here are some pictures... I was planning on waiting till our paintings went up but that might not actually ever happen :S):

And because I can NEVER get these pictures right.... I am also thankful for the beautiful purse I got for my birthday which no one has seen yet:

And now our much more functional spare room:

And our "master suite" haha:

The bathroom (essential!):

Our living room/dining room/huge window that brings in tons of light:

Our kitchen (with very small area for doing dishes ...) :

And our laundry room with tons of storage YAY!:

So that's the little tour of the house that I am thankful to be living in!

And last but definitely not least... I am thankful that God is so good. He is so good.

Psalm 118: 24 "This is the day the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it."

Psalm 118: 29 "Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever."

Enough said. I love you all.

With love.

Isabelle Siebring

I am thrilled to announce that I have a new niece as of early this morning! EEEE! No pictures because ... well, I haven't seen her haha but I just wanted to share the happy news and say another Congratulations to Erin, Chris, and Gray! YAY! So excited to meet your baby girl! And if anyone (Mom and Dad) has pictures they should post them! Or email them or something :) Thanks!

With Love.

Bad Day? ... Rejoice!

Romans 5:3-5 says:

"We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love."

How great is that!? I definitely feel like there is hope at the end of this not so great day. I hope you feel it too.

With love.

Spring Wedding? You tell me...

So... It's not our actual anniversary today but you will see what we were doing on that day, March 15th! I was thoroughly convinced that we had gotten married in the Spring.. or at least it seemed like it on our wedding day. See March 15, 2010:

(Cutest ring bearer ever! Wish I could have seen him walk up the isle...)

Everywhere it looks like spring. What a beautiful day to marry my best friend! Buuut... guess again. I now give you March 15, 2011:

I look sad because I thought I had found snow just as deep as Ian's but I hadn't....

This is the ice castle they make on Lake Louise at the Fairmont Chateau... It was a very very windy blustery day. (But still beautiful in a wintery way).

We saw this couple ice climbing on one of our "hikes" (more like a snowy walk haha). Looks impressive hey?

CHECK THIS WATERFALL OUT! I don't know how they did it but THAT'S impressive. They made it to the top safely and we didn't see them come down.

Anyway. It was a wonderful anniversary. And an even more wonderful first year of marriage. I love you Ian :)