More Random Pictures

Breezy's puppy, Fred.

I'm not sure which pup this is...they all look alike!

Peanut and me

Chance and Puff.  (Puff is Wendy's cat)

Chance and Puff are best buddies.

My new baby cousin, Hunter Phoenix Nelson.

Slumber party! L to R: Anna, Larissa, Chloe, me, Sadie, Nea.

Bring back the flowers!

I am honestly going to go crazy if this snow doesn't leave and let the flowers return.  I am completely in love with flowers, and I can only have them three months of the year!!!! I love to go out  several times a week and pick and arrange bouquets of daisies, lady ferns, red columbines, buttercups and bluebells!  The other nine months of the year, however, I just drive my family nuts with pouring over gardening magazines and writing 'flower wish lists' and talking constantly about flower beds and where to put them. That was my blurb of the day.
I am Ericka Nelson and I approve this message.

Just a Christmas greeting for ya'll....

                                          Our Christmas mornings stockings....stuffed to the max
                                           with goodies!! Talk about afternoon sugar high!

                                        Nea enjoying the contents of her stocking..... Yes that's
                                        my bed in the corner...that's the messiest my room's been
                                       in a loooong time.

      CHRISTMAS MORNING!!!!!!!!!

 

                                                                      Made in China.

My mother's new favorite sign.

                                                     Well, Merry Christmas one and all! 

Nelson Christmas Traditions

Let me just tell you that it's an understatement to say that I love Christmas.  I just adore the family get-togethers, the cookie baking, and the traditions.  Much to my father's despair, we usually decorate for Xmas the day after Thanksgiving.  Our Christmas music and movies come out in early November. ( :  But the cookie baking, oh, the cookie baking, begins in mid December.  There are now officially 5 womenfolk in this house who can bake.  Desserts of all shapes and sizes and flavors just keep coming!  Needless to say, my father is a happy man!  We don't usually open all the presents on Xmas day.  My parents can't resist letting us open a few before Christmas. For presents for each other, my wonderful grandparents take the whole crew of kids up to Duluth and let us shop for each other, and our parents.  Then we head back to their house and have a wrapping party, followed by a sleepover. And tomorrow night, we will be heading up to their house again to OPEN those presents and have dinner. ( ; So, when Christmas Eve rolls around, we again head up to my grandparents' house.  There we play White Elephant with our entire extended family, have dinner and get to visit with family members we don't see very often.  First though, is the reading of the Christmas story.  The Grand kids take turns every year sitting on Grandpa's lap and reading Luke chapter two.  I think I have done that twice now.  Then we pack up sleepy children (myself included) and head home where we all crawl into bed and try not to stay up all night for excitement. The next morning, we wake up and run directly to the stockings.  Funny how on weekdays we have so much trouble getting out of bed, but on Christmas we're all morning people.  By the time my parents wake up and make breakfast, we're all too full (candy, hehehe). Then we open the contents of the tree skirt, and afterward our living room looks like a wrapping paper tornado went through.  Then we all run to the kitchen for lunch.  My mom sets out a huge spread of crackers, cheese, millions of potato chip flavors (OK, not really), cookies, cake, chocolate, pizza, pop, and all other kinds of junk food imaginable.  We then proceed with stuffing ourselves.  The next morning, we wake up and the Christmas tree, the decor, and any possible inkling of Christmas has disappeared as if by magic. Or by mom.

Breezy's pups

Breezy's puppies are three weeks old now, and growing rapidly! They are already walking on all fours and eating soft food. Their names are, Sophia, Francine(I named her and mom says its a horrible name), Noel, Leroy(I also named him), Diesel, Torque(Torque is sold and his new name is Fred),Peanut, Sumo, and Fluffy(and yes, Fluffy is a boy. My dad has a strange sense of humor). 

BentleyVille!!!!!!!!!!

This week my grandma, mom, siblings and I went to Bentleyville. Bentleyville is a beautiful place. It's really a tour of Christmas lights, including 500 electric moving deer 'grazing' in the ditches made from Christmas lights. They had a Fun Facts sign out which stated that they needed 10,000 outdoor electrical cords to pull all of this together.  There were 70 foot long tunnels made also of Christmas lights, of all different colors. All through it, there were complimentary hot chocolate stands, cookie stands, popcorn stands, and at one place they had big fire pits all over the place, with complimentary marshmallow stands!  It was fantastic!!!  It is in Duluth, and there is a skating rink, too. Younger children also get free cookies, and a knit cap from Santa!! Oh, and Candy Canes from Mrs. Claus.  Oh, I almost forgot the 120 ft Christmas tree which dances in time to the Christmas music playing throughout the park. ( :

Meet Chance

This is me and my 175 pound house dog, Chance.  We are bestest buddies, and he also is a great guard dog. He is 2 1\2 years old and is not finished growing. *gulp*  He is the father of the puppies in the picture that I posted a few weeks ago.  We raise Mastiffs, so he is our stud dog.  Our females are JJ, Breezy (the mother of the puppies in the picture), Echo, and Isha (Chance and JJ's daughter). They are not quite as big as Chance, but still have a lot of growing to do.  By the way, doesn't Chance look smart in that picture?! He is always always always sporting that dumb look with his tongue hanging out. In fact, when he lays in the dirt in the summer, he gets dirt all over his tongue. Ish. We like to call him Einstein.  Ha ha.

A lesson I have learned

This past summer, I worked at Grindstone Lake Bible Camp.  It was a mistake to work there.  Before you make judgments on the camp, hear me out.  GLBC is a great camp and I have enjoyed being a camper there for many years. The reason I did not do well working out there was because when I heard that it was a possibility to work at camp, I didn't listen to what God had to say about this opportunity.  Whenever I prayed about it, I would hear God saying "Don't go."  Well, I really really wanted to go work there this summer, so I just made excuses to myself and pretty much ignored what God was saying to me.  So I worked at camp anyway.  It was a disaster, as is (I have learned) anything that is against God's will.  I got hurt emotionally many times and still deal with the scars.  Sure, a lot of things were fun and I made new friends, but if I look back over my summer, I see that the pain was just not worth it to got against God's will.  I also realize that God was trying to protect me from the pain and the scars I still have today.  I'm not going to go into the details, but I just wanted to share a lesson I have learned in knowing that if I do something against God's will, it's going to fail miserably.

More Growing Up Memories

When I was about eight or nine years old, some of our favorite things to do was play outside for more than twelve hours per long summer day. We only went inside to eat (which we also tried to take outside), get necessary supplies for our games, and go to bed (which we tried so so hard to avoid). Something that we just loved playing with was our tire swing, which my dad tied on the birch tree's branch.  We would spin it around and around (with no rider of course) so fast that my mom couldn't watch for nausea. When it got so spun up that the rope twisted to about 6 inches long. ( : Then Eliza and I would hold the tire swing so it wouldn't unwind and at the same time hoist five year old Nonnie onto the tire.  Then, we let go.  Big mistake.  After that, all we saw was a blur of Nonnie's clothes and her long blond hair swirling around in big circles. She was screaming really loud, and I do mean really.  So the tire swing stopped, and Nonnie teetered off the tire swing, almost falling down, and when we asked how she liked it, she promptly replied that she would love to do it again!  Another thing we did was tease the cattle.  Summer 2009, we had steers and bulls over at our place all fall, winter, and spring.  There was an 800lb steer who was mean. We named him Gordy. (My mother heard this and said "Gordy?! That's no name for a mean steer. It's like 'ooh, fear Gordy.'") He had a gang of sorts, which was a ragamuffin band of mismatched harmless steers.  They would 'kidnap' other steers and literally take them over to the back pen.  So we declared war.  We would dance around the pen and sing, "Gordy is a punkin eater! Gordy is a punkin eater!" Then 'Gordy's Gang', as we called it, would run at us as if they were going to bust through the fence and charge at us.  So, we would scream like girls and run for the other side of the pen and do it again. So the vicious cycle continued.  Another fun thing to do was to sit in our treehouse (it hangs out over the bull pasture) and dump buckets of  water on the unsuspecting bulls. ( :  We also would (this was just a year ago actually) throw snowballs at the 1800lb bulls and watch them get mad and stomp their feet and snort.  We would then, like usual, run and scream like girls.  Man, that was fun.

Breezy is a mama!

Breezy, my wonderful fawn mastiff, is a mama!! She has nine puppies, 6 boys, 3 girls. She is an excellent mama and keeps her pups clean, clean, clean. ( :  All pups are healthy and nursing.

Snow Snow Snow!

I was woken up at 7:13 on a SATURDAY morning yesterday with the cry of  "ERICKA! Wake UP there's SNOW!" I opened my eyes and saw a bevy of ragamuffins with morning breath, bedheads, and very excited grins. I bounced (quite literally) out of bed and saw half an inch of snow (not much but still exiting). I remember when, in fourth grade I tried to sled in half an inch of snow, and was crushed that it didn't work. Anyway, we all ran out to the library where my mother immediately began doling out the mittens, hats, snow pants, boots, etc. We bundled up and went outside in our precious half inch of snow and played for awhile before finally giving up on ever doing anything fun in a half inch of snow. ( :  After patiently waiting,we now officially have 6" of absolutely perfect snowball packing snow. My little brother threw his first ever snowball yesterday, got a lucky shot, and landed it at the base of my neck UNDER my coat. *sigh* I shrieked like a girl ( I am one, after all). We built a snowman with buttons for facial features and cardboard strips for hair. My wonderful father had to move the LP tank with the tractor so he drove around a very very tight circle as not to bump our snowman. ( :  My mother is very contented with this snowy situation, the children (including me) are jubilant, and my father is very frustrated. After all, who likes hunting in the snow?

Ericka's Evil Twin!

Let me introduce myself....I'm Ericka's Evil Twin. Mwahaha. The joy of my life is making Ericka cry ( and don't laugh, because I know some of you also have the same passion I do). So today I decided, why not post some blackmail pictures on her blog? After all, I know the password and who can pass up such a glorious opportunity? Not I, sir, not I. So for those of you looking for blackmail, here you have it.

Sweden and France at war!!!

I was just remembering what weird games my sisters and I have played during our awesome  farming summers over the years. One of my personal favorites is "Swedish fighting the French". It is a game I invented some years back, in sixth grade I think.  The name is a weird one, but so is the game. Explanation: my father is 100% Swedish American, and so the children (that would  be me just in case you were wondering) by nature are very loyal to Sweden.  So this is how the game goes:  we are the Swedish, and our parents are the French. We are at war with each other, Daddy being the King of France and Ericka being the Queen of Sweden ( I did have a name tag that said 'King  Kristina' and yes I know women are not 'kings' but I was a major feminist when I was in the sixth grade). So we would sit in the treehouse that overlooks our cattle yard  and give commands to our 'troops' the steers. One day the 'French' came outside with water balloons. We climbed from our 'fort' and, singing our Swedish battle song ( I wrote it and it had several stanzas. I still have it  memorized, no kidding) , were bombed terribly but not before retreating to a tree. So if you were at my house that day, you would have seen two adults throwing water balloons at  four children in a tree, who were all screaming like girls. ( : Another game we played was that America, France, and England were at war, except this time the CHICKENS were the soldiers, not us. So,  Eliza, Shannah, and I would go into the chicken pen and put all the red chickens ( Americans) in the barn, the black chickens ( British) in one side of the pen and the buff chickens ( French) in the other side of the pen. We guarded them so they wouldn't go out of their 'country'. Then we would yell,  " France and England at war!!!"  and would let the according chickens 'fight'. Of course they didn't fight, they just 'invaded'  the 'opposing territories'. After the allotted time for 'invasion' was up, we counted how many French chickens were in the British territories, and so on and so forth. We really play like a bunch of girls, don't we?

So, out Swedish Battle song went something like this:  (Chorus is yelled with much waving of sticks, stanzas are sung)
---------------------------------------------------
Swedish Fighting The French
WE ARE THE SWEDISH
FIGHTING THE FRENCH!
SO IF YOU'RE FRENCH,
YOU'D BETTER GIVE UP!
CUZ WE'RE MARCHING ON TO VIC'TRY!

When the Captain of the hold
Sees a Swedish, he throws down the ladder,
But when he sees a Frenchman,
He draws his sword!

CHORUS

Bridge: For God, for Country, for Sweden, for Youth! (x10)

CHORUS

All hail King Kristina! All hail King Kristina! (x6)

CHORUS

CHORUS

BRIDGE

CHORUS
(Battle Cry)
------------------------------------------------
My parents were sooo sick of that song!!!!!
I wonder why!

Crazyness

Today is my baby sister's birthday...she's FOUR already and very excited about that fact. Our family tradition is to pile on my parents' bed before they get up and open presents, but Linnea woke up late so we opened presents in the TV room. Actually, the TV room is more of a family entertainment  room, but that's another story. So Nea has been eating candy and drinking pop ( presents from her siblings, including me) all day, and if she is anything like her big sister (hehehe) she is probably headed towards a majorly scary sugar high. Today I made chocolate cupcakes for her, and not only managed to make 16 cupcakes when I should have been able to make 24, I also smeared mayo ( yes that was in my recipe) , cake batter, and cocoa all over the kitchen counter,  the electric mixer, the cookbook, the floor, the dishtowels, and myself. I also managed to drop the electric mixer (yes the electric part) in the bowl of cake batter and get chocolate soupy stuff all in the vents. ) :  Then I finally got them in the cupcake papers ( now THAT is a story I'm not going to tell you) , and our oven gasket  broke. Now, the broken gasket affects the oven so that it will not heat. Splendid. And all because I was NOT thinking about baking, I was thinking  about the Christmas music I was singing and dancing to (yet another story you will not hear). *sigh*

Welcome to my blog!

Hi! My name is Ericka and I am new to blogging. (I guess it's a good thing I attended the National Bloggers' Conference this weekend or else I might not have known what to write. By the way, for those of you who didn't go, it was extremely helpful in the wonderful world of blogging). Today I have been doing school(I LOVE school), chores, and dishes. Fun, fun, fun. I just finished revising a history paper for school, so I keep looking over this post and thinking, out of habit, "What in this paragraph would my mother have me revise?" That was my blurb of the day. I am Ericka Nelson and I approve this  message.