Ballet | The Showers of Blessings

Category Archives: Ballet

Happy New Year

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Miriam Hurdle 79 comments

This post is in response to Terri Webster Schrandt’s Sunday Still Challenge, an annual Year-in-Review: Memorable Moments 2024, part 1.

New Year Resolutions

According to Columbia University, nearly half of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, but only 25% of people stay committed to their resolutions after just 30 days. And less than 10% accomplish their goals. Why is that? For me, I know by now what works and what doesn’t work for me. I follow my routine and do what has been working for me? How about you? Do you make new resolutions?

January

We started 2024 with a winter storm from January 13 – 16. This storm, nicknamed Winter Storm Heather, brought freezing rain and damaging ice to the Pacific Northwest. In Portland, Oregon, the coldest temperatures were 15 and 17 degrees, recorded on January 13 and 14. Snow came on Saturday, the 13th. Portland General Electric alone reported nearly 3,200 outages affecting over 127,000 customers. My daughter’s house was one of them. They bundled up to sleep in front of the fireplace. It was a rough night. We invited them to our house on Sunday as our power lines are underground. While at our house, the girls had fun going down the hill on the sled. Fortunately, the power resumed in their area by the afternoon, so they returned home.

February

We attended two wonderful musical and theatrical performances in February. My daughter and I enjoyed a mother-daughter night out at the Oregon Symphony’s Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in downtown Portland on the 12th.

My daughter and her friend subscribed to Oregon Ballet season tickets. They took their girls to Trey McIntyre’s Peter Pan at the Keller Auditorium in Portland. I was delighted to join them.

March

Our backyard renovation started in December 2023 and was finally completed in February 2024. These are my first daffodils. As I walked around the neighborhood, the cherry blossom was in full bloom.

My younger granddaughter, Nora, turned four in March. We had an indoor birthday party for her. Easter came early in 2024. The girls had an Easter egg hunt at church and had another one at our house in the afternoon.

April

My older granddaughter’s school had an art show. Every student chose four pieces of artwork they did during the year to display at the show. One piece of Autumn’s work was a painting of Van Gogh’s Sunflower.

I’ve been actively blogging since 2016, have made many online friends, and met a few in person. I met Terri Webster Schrandt in 2021. She and her husband visited their relatives in Portland in April this year. While in town, they came to see me. We had lunch together and went for a walk in my neighborhood.

Hubby’s sister also visited us this month. We had fun taking her to Multnomah Falls and Cannon Beach.

May

My garden was gradually in good shape with my favorite flowers.

I coached my grandkids to create gifts for their parents on special occasions. After the Mother’s Day brunch, the girls eagerly watched my daughter open her mother’s gift.

Nora was in a dance class at Moonstar Dance Studio, which conducts an annual student performance. Nora’s class was the youngest, but they did a marvelous job making the teachers and parents proud.

June

Portland Public School’s last day was June 14. Even though my daughter signed up for summer camps for Autumn, we helped care for her when she was not at camps. Local parks, school playgrounds, and OMSI were our frequently visited places. Autumn did some acrylic paintings this summer.

More flowers in June. Jay!

Wishing you a

Prosperous and Successful New Year!

Sunday Stills – Cozy

Posted on November 10, 2024 by Miriam Hurdle 90 comments

Cozy is this week’s theme for Terri Webster Schrandt’s Sunday Stills at Second Wind Leisure Perspectives. A few things came to my mind.

First, I want to highlight the kittens my daughter adopted to provide my grandkids with a companion and teach them to take responsibility. Autumn and Nora instantly fell in love with them. They named the orange one Copper and the black one Whisker. Copper and Whisker were in a foster home together. My daughter adopted both so they could stay with each other. We can tell Copper and Whisker have a strong bond, cozy with each other all the time.

The kittens soon develop a strong bond with the girls, and cozy with them. The girls share the bedroom, but Copper always sleeps on Autumn’s pillow at night.

The girls are excited to come to our house for a sleepover or just spend time with us. We have a family membership at the Oregon Museum and Science Institute (OMSI). Hubby and I have taken the girls there more than a dozen times this year. It’s been great, especially on a rainy day when we can’t go to the park. The girls feel comfortable and secure running around at OMSI.

My daughter’s friend has two girls of the same ages as Autumn and Nora. So, Autumn has been friends with Erica practically since birth. When Autumn was a year and a half, my daughter and her husband took a trip to Iceland, and I babysat Autumn by myself for a week. There was a birthday party invitation on the kitchen table. Autumn pointed at the invitation and said, “Erica, Erica.”

My daughter’s friend moved about 80 miles south of Portland two years ago. The two friends team up to take the four girls to the Oregon Ballet in Portland three times a year. When we attended Hansel and Gretel in February, the grownups walked together, Autumn and Erica held hands, and Nora and Cora entertained each other. How wonderful it is to cozy with long-time friends.

The rainy day started three weeks ago. Hubby is good to get the fire going for me to keep me warm.

There’s no school on Monday, November 11. It’s Veterans Day. We’ll take the girls to OMSI again! Yay!

Thank you, Veterans and their families!

Year-in-Review with Photos 2023 – Part 2

Posted on January 7, 2024 by Miriam Hurdle 80 comments

The theme for Terri Webster Schrandt’s Sunday Still for December 31, 2023, and January 7, 2024, is Year-in-Review with photos. This is Part 2.

Summer is a time I enjoy the colorful blooms. I discovered there were several daylilies in the backyard, which surprised me. Even more so, they are my favorite daylilies. I planted several kinds of flowers in May and June, and they looked beautiful in July.

Hubby and I explored the local parks and lakes and found Commonwealth Park and Summerlake Park to be our favorites. We also explored some nearby trails for our walks. Taking the grandkids to places was our routine, and we visited the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). We took a family trip to Enchanted Forest. The last time we went there was when my daughter was four years old.

My daughter and her husband want to fully enjoy the sun and take trips to the beaches, go camping and hiking. They usually do that as soon as the school is out in June, all the way to the first week of September. We joined them on some trips and went to Seaside, Oregon, and the Oregon Zoo together. Another highlight in September was to celebrate Autumn turning six years old.

In October, I enjoyed the amazement of witnessing the Oregon foliage transforming in front of my window and the neighborhood. Whenever I walked in the neighborhood, I spent more time taking photos of the dramatic clouds than walking.

My daughter and I subscribed to the Portland concerts and ballet performances. We went to Swan Lake in October. Both grandkids had a great time watching it. They both take ballet classes. This was also a month of excitement for the children as they tried on different costumes to get ready for Halloween. Hubby and I joined the grandkids to go trick-or-treating. It was fun to take an hour and a half to walk for half a mile because the grandkids stopped at every house.

I missed my writers’ critique group in California. Diana W. Peach mentioned the Willamette Writers. After the interior remodeling was done and relaxed in the summer, I was ready to join the group in October. I had my first book signing at the Portland Book Festival, where Willamette Writers took part in November.

In November Mercy and I went to the Broadway show Les Misérables, and the concert of Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6, Pathétique. I continued to admire the beautiful foliage and was amazed by the dense fog touching the ground. I homeschooled Autumn for one week because the Portland School District teachers were on strike. I videotaped her reading a Dr. Suess book by herself. For Thanksgiving, Hubby and I went to California to have dinner with his family.

The weeks preceding Christmas go by quickly. Many people rush to the stores at the last minute. I ordered most of the presents online in November but got a few from the stores. I had the grandkids over to do projects early in December making Christmas decorations, presents for their parents, and a birthday present for their mommy.

The second ballet in the season was The Nutcracker. This is the third year for Autumn and the first year for Nora to attend. As for Christmas dinner, we had it at my daughter’s house. They’re vegetarians. We had salmon instead of turkey. I made Yorkshire budding and baked sweet potatoes. Hubby’s mom used to make Yorkshire budding as a family tradition for Christmas dinner. She passed away in July 2022. I took it over to make Yorkshire budding last year to carry on the tradition. This was the second recipe I tried, and it turned out successfully. I included the recipe at the end of the post.

If you have read my earlier post, Beautiful Tiny Baby, you may recall my daughter was born the day after Christmas. We had a birthday dinner at a restaurant of her choice. The girls gave her the birthday present and were excited to tell her who did which part of the design.

Yorkshire Pudding (Wikipedia)

Yorkshire pudding is a baked pudding made from a batter of eggs, flour, and milk or water. A common British side dish, it is a versatile food that can be served in numerous ways depending on its ingredients, size, and the accompanying components of the meal.

When wheat flour began to come into common use for making cakes and puddings, cooks in northern England (Yorkshire) devised a means of making use of the fat that dropped into the dripping pan to cook a batter pudding while the meat roasted. In 1737, a recipe for “a dripping pudding” was published in Sir Alexander William George Cassey’s book The Whole Duty of a Woman.

Similar instructions were published in 1747 in the book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse, with the name ‘Yorkshire pudding’.

In a 2012 poll conducted by T-Mobile UK, the Yorkshire pudding was ranked tenth in a list of things people love about Britain.

Recipe

Ingredients

4 large eggs (200g; 7 ounces)
150g all-purpose flour (5.25 ounces; about 1 cup plus 2 teaspoons)
175g whole milk (6 ounces; 3/4 cup) (see notes)
2g kosher salt (about 1/2 teaspoon)
25g water (0.85 ounces; 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons)
100ml shortening or vegetable oil (about 1/2 cup)

Directions

Combine eggs, flour, milk, water, and salt in a medium bowl and whisk until they form a smooth batter. Let batter rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. Alternatively, for best results, transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate the batter overnight or for up to 3 days. Remove from the refrigerator while you preheat the oven.
Preheat oven to 450°F (230°C). Divide oil evenly between two large 6-muffin pans, or one 12-muffin pan, or one 24-mini muffin pan. Preheat in the oven until the oil is smoking hot, about 10 minutes.
Transfer the pans to a heat-proof surface and divide the batter evenly into the pans. Immediately return to the oven. Bake until the Yorkshire puddings have just about quadrupled in volume. The smaller ones will take about 15 minutes, and the large ones will take around 20 minutes.
Serve immediately, or cool completely and transfer to a Ziploc bag and freeze for up to 3 months.

You may want to try this recipe. Let me know how it turns out!

Year-in-Review with Photos 2023 – Part 2

My Favorite Christmas Music/Dance/Movies

Posted on December 7, 2020 by Miriam Hurdle 59 comments

When I was teaching, my Christmas field trip was taking the students to watch the stage performance of The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. After I left the classroom, instead of driving to see the performance, I kept the tradition by watching The Nutcracker movie at home.

All the ballet pieces in The Nutcracker are beautiful. I chose two versions of the following dance.

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker (The Royal Ballet 2017) 2:39 minutes