11 minute read
Mommy and me
from Chicz - Nov/Dec 2022
by Echo Press
By Melanie Danner
TOILET PAPER ROLL CHRISTMAS TREE
(Pinterest)
TOOLS AND SUPPLIES: Toilet paper roll Paint Pencil/Pen Scissors Glue/Glue gun Findings (gems, buttons, stickers)
DIRECTIONS:
Draw a pine tree on one side of the toilet paper roll. The point should be at the top of one end and the trunk should end about 1/2” from the other end.
Gently fold the toilet paper roll in half and cut out the tree. Be sure to cut the end with the trunk, keeping a ring at the bottom for the tree stand.
Paint your tree and let it dry completely.
Use the glue to add your gems, buttons or stickers.
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!
BEADED CORN
(Pinterest)
TOOLS AND SUPPLIES: Pony beads 12” Pipe cleaners DIRECTIONS:
Take four 12” pipe cleaners and twist them in the center to create eight equal sides.
Your pipe cleaners should look like a star.
String each side with beads (about 15 beads), leaving about 1” on each side without beads.
Once each strand is covered, it’s time to shape your corn.
Gather all the ends together and twist two to three times.
Then fan out the ends to create the husk.
This would look super cute arranged with a few small pumpkins or gourds.
NATURE’S THANKFUL PUMPKIN
(Pinterest)
TOOLS AND SUPPLIES: Cardboard Pencil/Pen Scissors Glue/Glue gun Finding from outside (bark, leaves, etc.) DIRECTIONS:
First, bundle up and head outside. What fun objects can you find? Leaves, bark, maybe a pine cone or two?
Then it’s time to head inside,
Draw a pumpkin on a piece of cardboard.
Cut the pumpkin out,
Glue your findings on the pumpkin.
Discuss what you are thankful for as you glue the items together.
WHO’S THERE?
(Pinterest) TOOLS AND SUPPLIES: Black and brown craft paper Standard cupcake liners Mini cupcake liners Googly eyes if available Pencil/Pen Scissors Glue/Glue gun Markers or crayons
DIRECTIONS:
Cut a tree branch out of brown paper.
Glue the branch on a sheet of black craft paper towards the bottom.
Next, glue a standard cupcake liner right above the branch for the owl’s body.
Cut a crescent shape from one of the standard cupcake liners. This is going to become the head.
Glue the liner, with the points facing up just above the body.
Draw feathers on one of the mini liners.
Glue to the center of the body.
Draw eyes on two of the mini liners or you can glue googly eyes, one in the center of each.
Glue the eyes to the owl’s head.
Take a standard liner and fold in half.
Glue one on each side of the body.
If desired, you can glue the crescent to the top corner of the black paper.
Who’s there?
craft stick sled
(Pinterest)
TOOLS AND SUPPLIES: Crafts Sticks A picture of your child, posing pretending to sled. Glue/Glue gun Findings (gems, buttons, stickers)
DIRECTIONS:
Take a photo of your child pretending to sled or a picture of your child sledding and cut out.
Glue a craft stick across three craft sticks to create the sled.
Add the picture to the sled, mine decided to be daring!
Embellish the sled with fun gems, buttons, or stickers.
Let’s go find the sledding hill!
CROSSWORD
WORD SEARCH
ANORAK ARCTIC BALACLAVA BITING BITTER BLIZZARD BLUSTERY CHILLS CHIMNEY COLD DECEMBER DRAFTY DREARY DUVET EARMUFFS EVERGREEN FIREWOOD FLANNEL FLEECE FLURRIES GALE GLOVES HOCKEY ICICLE
answers on page 19
CLUES ACROSS
1. Polish city 6. Very eager 10. Identifies a specific person or thing 14. Tennis great Naomi 15. One concerned by professional advancement 17. PGA Championship reward 19. A fashionable hotel 20. Norse mythology afterlife location 21. Stood up 22. Car mechanics group 23. Weather forecasters use it (abbr.) 24. Broken branch 26. Astronomy unit 29. East Asian nursemaid 31. ‘Airplane!’ actor 32. Exclamation that denotes disgust 34. ‘Batman’ villain 35. Downfalls 37. Philippine province 38. Once-vital TV part 39. Valley 40. Tax 41. Classic Scorcese film 43. Subway dwellers 45. Book part 46. Taxi 47. Pancakes made from buckwheat flour 49. Swiss river 50. Founder of Babism 53. Have surgery 57. Withdrawal from a larger entity 58. Lot’s father 59. Greek war god 60. 2,000 lbs. 61. Lemur
CLUES DOWN
1. Quarrels 2. Right away 3. Comedian Carvey 4. Egyptian unit of weight 5. A Brit’s mother 6. Tropical tree 7. One who speaks Gaelic 8. NHL legend Bobby 9. Vacation spots 10. Military personnel 11. Shakira’s don’t lie 12. Wimbledon champ 13. Teletypewriter 16. Mistakes 18. Whale ship captain 22. Thus 23. From end to end 24. Kids love him 25. One and only 27. Fencing swords 28. Taxis 29. Basics 30. Refuse of grapes 31. Go quickly 33. French ballet dynasty 35. Most open 36. Popular soap ingredient 37. US time zone (abbr.) 39. Items of food 42. Backbones 43. Infrequent 44. Blood type 46. ‘Let It Snow!’ songwriter 47. Dutch colonist 48. Pike 49. Egyptian sun god 50. A cardinal is one 51. From a distance 52. Bolivian river 53. N. American student organization (abbr.) 54. River (Spanish) 55. Chinese life force 56. Chinese surname
SUDOKU
RICE
continued from page 5
wanted to do a full search for her birth parents.
“John and I talked about it and I talked with my folks,” she said. “I didn’t want to upset them, but they said they knew the day would come and were very supportive.”
Tina was told that Lutheran Social Services could only spend up to 90 days doing the search and as she neared that 90-day mark, her research person, Cindy, still hadn’t found anything. However, she told Tina she would continue looking.
“It took her eight years,” said Tina, noting that Cindy said it was the longest search she had ever completed. She also said that the reason it took so long is because her birth mother had lots of different last names, lived in the same area since 1971, but hadn’t worked so there wasn’t much of a paper trail.
Rita was found through an adoptive sister in California. Turns out that Rita’s parents both died when she was young and she and her five siblings were all adopted by other families, Tina said.
Tina had believed she ended up finding her birth father after doing some research herself, along with doing the DNA Ancestry test. She sent a registered letter to a man living in New York explained who she was, saying she didn’t want anything but was looking for medical information and even included a photo of herself.
“He replied via his work email that he was not the person I was looking for,” Tina said.
MEETING HER BIOLOGICAL FAMILY
In 2009, at the age of 39, Tina, John and their two kids drove to Ohio so she could meet her biological mom and her half-sisters.
“My research person, Cindy, had prepared me the best she could, but I was not prepared for what I experienced,” said Tina, noting that they had been exchanging letters back and forth with her family and that they were not comfortable hearing about her own family.
The meeting didn’t go as planned. Tina said her family was poor and lived in extreme poverty and that the conditions were less than ideal. No one, including the children running around, had clean clothes on.
“All the adults were smoking and not all legal substances,” she said.
Tina shared a photo album that had pictures of her at various stages of her life.
Rita, her birth mother, told Tina she didn’t want to give her up and then explained what happened.
Apparently she had joined a commune in New York City and became pregnant while there. She had left her abusive husband and ended up having an affair with Vincent. Rita’s father and her husband picked her up from the commune and then drove her to an Unwed Mother’s House in Fargo and left her there, forcing her to give up the baby.
Tina said she and her family didn’t spend more than a day and a half with them.
“I felt very overwhelmed and needed to process everything, so we left,” she said.
She ended up not having a very good relationship with anyone in her birth family, except for an aunt. There were some trying times between her birth mother and her half-siblings and it was a Facebook post that her husband saw – the family had blocked her – that she learned that her birth mother had passed away.
“I finally got to talk to someone and was told that I ‘was a disappointment to mom and that she never really cared about me in the first place,’ that I was a horrible person and they never wanted contact from me again.”
Except they did make contact again – to her husband, asking him for money. She said he ignored them.
She has continued doing research on her birth family and found out that they came to America from Sweden and they actually came to the Douglas County/ Grant County area.
“I was able to find my great-greatgrandfather, Petter Setterlund (also spelled Sutterlund), who moved here in 1883. His brother, Axel, carved the heart-shaped runestone in Elbow Lake,” she said. “I was able to find their graves in Zionsborg Cemetery in Douglas County. It was exciting to find that I had a connection to
Tina Rice of Alexandria, left, who was adopted as a baby, met her biological mother and two half sisters, in 2009. Rice, her husband, and her two children, drove to Ohio to meet them.
Tina and John Rice, left, are pictured with their children and their significant others at the 2022 Minnesota Renaissance Festival.
this area and that there is still Setterlunds in the area. Maybe sometimes I’ll find the courage to contact them.”
THOUGHTS ON ADOPTION
Tina said she feels bad for people who seem to “blame” being adopted on things that are wrong with their life because she truly believes that life is what people make of it and that everyone has choices. Yes, she knows there are some things that are out of people’s control that make it seem like they don’t have a choice, but she said they do have a choice with how they feel about it and deal with it.
She also believes that the adoption process is far too expensive and that it robs people of the opportunity to have a family unless they are wealthy. She said in the 1970s it was expensive and that nowadays it is almost impossible. She wishes it was less expensive so more babies could be adopted.
When asked what being adopted means, Tina said there are so many things and that it can sometimes vary depending on the day.
“I sometimes wish I would have had a better relationship with my birth family, but I feel that way with my adopted family, too.” she said. “At different times in my life, it made me feel like an outsider, that I didn’t belong anywhere, not with my birth family and not my adopted one, either. In the end, though, it has made me feel thankful for what I do have and brought me closer to my husband and my kids.”
Tina Rice, far right, is pictured with her adoptive parents and three of her siblings.
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