Simple Joys Surrounding Easter Weekend

It seems a good time to take a minute and consider with gratitude the many ways I have been reminded of how blessed I am these past few days. Here are a few:

*Eating a grand Easter Supper with a multitude of dear family and friends

*Planting spring flowers with Abigail and Jonathan

*The delectable smell of roasting turkey

*Snuggling in bed early in the morning reading books with my two boys

*Seeing the startled expression on Jonathan’s scrunched-up face after tasting a sour pickle

*Homemade frozen chocolate pie with fresh whipped cream

*A clean oven (my “automatic” cleaning cycle always causes the oven to short and blow a fuse or something, so i must do this task manually. hence, when it finally gets done, it is an event, and one to be most grateful for!)

*Receiving an unasked-for kiss and hug from little Jonathan

*Getting a letter in the mail from a lovely grown-up young woman whom I mentored as a junior and high school student

*Watching my husband and children fly a kite (even if it did end up stuck at the top of our tallest tree, thereby ending the fun!)

*Little Nicolas’ extreme delight over the fact that he is now staying dry and can wear his adored “Bob the Builder” and “Thomas” underwear

*Celebrating Jesus’ resurrection by worshipping on Easter Sunday with family, and listening to all three of my children sing “Up From the Grave He Arose” with utmost enthusiasm

Death cannot keep its prey, Jesus my Savior;
he tore the bars away, Jesus my Lord!

Up from the grave he arose;
with a mighty triumph o’er his foes;
he arose a victor from the dark domain,
and he lives forever, with his saints to reign.
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!
~Robert Lowry

A Fortuitous Mistake

Saturday night I mixed batter for Nestle Toll House Cookies, so we could eat freshly-baked cookies during our family movie night. Bambi was the featured presentation, by the way. It was well-received by the children, and inspired an interesting and healthy discussion about hunters, animals, etc.

But back to cookies: by some mistake I set the oven to 350 degrees, instead of the recipe-called-for 375 degrees. I’ve made these cookies dozens of times, and for whatever reason just messed up. Well, I’m here to tell you that I will never again bake my chocolate chip cookies at any other temp than 350, for this batch yielded the softest, most beautifully-colored, and delightful cookies I think I’ve ever had. It took a bit longer than the 9-11 minutes cooking time in the directions, but the end result was spectacular.

If you’ve never heard how the Toll House Cookie came into being, you’ll enjoy this link. Turns out the original batch of cookies were a result of a “mistake” too!

Hang on to your hats: Spring is Breaking!!

This from our 4 year old earlier today as I was getting his breakfast,

“Mommy, on Monday, is spring going to break?”

Jonathan has an uncanny sense of time and an amazing concept of days and dates for his age. He had been told sometime last week that this coming week is spring break. While I’d tried to include the fact that school would not be in session for the week, etc, he evidently had other concerns about this week. Such as the idea that the season, spring, which he knows comes in March, would start breaking on Monday.

I love the privilege I have as a Mommy to see the world in entirely new ways, courtesy of the thoughts of my children.

Children in Church

We have been helping our two year old, Nicolas, learn to attend church worship with us. He is actually very enthusiastic about being at worship, sings lustily during songs, and likes to try to “respond” along with the rest of the congregation to the liturgy. Despite his enthusiasm, at times his behavior is admittedly, very much like that of an active, not-so-quiet two year old, and not always appropriate for church!

Throughout the process of teaching our three kids about being in church with us and worshipping God, I often think I learn more than they, and today was one of those times. One element of our church service is a rather long pastoral prayer about 1/2 hour into the order of worship. Only recently has Nicolas even stayed with us during this prayer because, quite frankly, it is very long, and he gets pretty wiggly and tends to make noise after 8 minutes of Pastor Dave praying.

Well, today during the long prayer in the service, Nicolas excitedly whispered to me, “Flowers!”. I began to try to silence him and then realized he was keying into what Pastor Dave was praying about. Dave was talking about God clothing the flowers of the field. (from Matthew 6: 25-33). He then mentioned God feeding the birds of the air, after which Nicolas even more excitedly told me, “Birds!”. I whispered to him that yes, God takes care of the flowers and birds and we are even more important than they are, and He always takes care of us. He asked me, very earnestly, “God takes care me?” to which I smiled and replied, “Yes!”. “Yeah,” he affirmed, “God take care me!”.

He went on to repeat a couple more words/phrases in Pastor’s prayer and I was pretty surprised, I have to admit, that my little guy was actually, on a level very appropriate for a two year old, LISTENING to the words being offered to God in prayer, and at his tender age, assimilating the words being spoken into a simple truth about God’s care for him. It was a sweet reminder to me to not assume I always have a handle on just what a young child might (or might not!) understand of worship, and of how precious it is to have my children in church with me, and indeed, an encouragement to continue to patiently instruct them in this oh so important element of our lives as part of God’s church.

Please Pray…

for our friends, Greg and Christine tomorrow, as Greg undergoes an involved surgery to hopefully eradicate what remains of his tumor. You can read more about it here on Greg’s website.

Greg, may God guide the surgeons tomorrow, and give you healing, and great comfort and peace. We love you.

Shop-Vac

I’ve always appreciated an orderly living environment (so long as the word “always” is taken to mean “always as a post-adolescent and adult”), but actual cleaning has never captured my attention quite as strongly. I can remember a time in college, as I was shopping at Wal-mart in preparation for my first semester living off campus (that being my 9th and final semester), I ran into a few friends from college. All of these friends were of the female persuasion. So I ask them to look over what I’ve got in the cart and tell me if I’m forgetting anything crucial to apartment living. Approximately 8 tenths of a second later, one of them pipes up and says, “Well, you don’t have a toilet bowl cleaner.” To which I smoothly replied, “Yeah, but I’m only going to be there for 6 months.”

For whatever reason, however, I’ve always wanted a clean garage. Oh, it’s always been organized and kept up, but how do you get rid of all those dead bugs and such that clutter the corners in behind stuff? Enter my new Shop-Vac. Last week, inspiration struck and I headed down to Harbor Freight Tools (which, if you’ve never seen one, has fantastic prices on tools and other cool stuff that belong in a garage) and bought a discontinued 1.5 HP wet/dry Shop-Vac for a song. Though sick as a dog, I have been out in that garage every opportunity since vacuuming, and today I finished.

Absolutely amazing. For the first time in my 10 years of home ownership, I have a clean garage. Not simply organized and swept, but actually clean (or as clean as bare concrete which houses two automobiles can get). I was tempted to set up a folding chair and write this entry from the garage, but it was getting a bit chilly. But let me promise you that prior to Mr. SV I’d have had no such urges.

Happy Birthday, Jay!

Today is Jay’s 34th birthday. What a blessing to have the joy of celebrating yet another birthday with him. Jay, you are a dear husband and a loving father. How thankful we are to have you in our lives! We all love you so very much.

Shortcuts

This past weekend, I installed some component speakers in the front doors of my car. Quick side note: eBay rocks! I picked up a brand new set of speakers for about half of what they sell for locally. Okay, back to our story at hand.

It proved to be a fun project. I’ve never taken apart car doors, and figuring out where and how to mount the crossovers proved challenging, not to mention overcoming intense inhibitions to actually drill holes in the doors to mount the tweeters. Anyway, it was a fun project and the new speakers are a huge improvement. Think AM radio to CD quality sound.

But that’s not the meat of the story, so let me cut to the chase. I did the first door on Saturday, and, as you might expect, it took far longer than the second door which I completed Sunday evening. So on Sunday I’m cranking through the second door, hanging out with my brother-in-law Andrew, and I’m perhaps taking a shortcut now and then.

I’m making the modification to this plastic doohickey that serves no apparent purpose other than getting in the way of where I want to mount the crossover, and I decide to forego the jigsaw (which I had used on the previous door) since the plastic had seemed pretty soft. Well, once I got it in my mind to cut this plastic with an exacto knife, I sort of ignore the warning signs (e.g. the knife getting stuck) and decide I’m going to make it work, even if it means resting the plastic doohickey on my leg while pushing down really hard with the knife.

Right as I’m thinking “this probably isn’t too bright” and contemplating a retreat to the jigsaw, the knife slips out of the plastic, makes short work of my jeans, and ends up in my leg. Thankfully the blade was only extended about half an inch, and the jeans really did slow it down a bit. I sort of look up at Andrew, and he’s waiting for an indication that I did in fact just stick a knife in my leg before he bursts out laughing, so I graciously offer confirmation.

After retreating to the bedroom and dropping my jeans, I found a neat half-inch cut that was perhaps a half-inch deep. Interestingly, it didn’t really hurt for quite some time. However, I’m carrying my keys in my left pocket today so they don’t bump the wound, as the amnesty was only temporary.

Small Victories

Those of you who know our children well can attest to the fact that like many children, they are fairly picky eaters. I wrote about this last summer in Suppertime At the Hornes’.

Our youngest, Nicolas, has thus far held the honor in our family for pickiest eater. However, tonight, his enthusiasm for his supper almost brought tears to my eyes. He ate grilled chicken, long grain wild rice, and steamed green beans with vigor. While the chicken wasn’t too surprising, I was floored by his delight with the side dishes. He’s never allowed a green bean (other than the mushed-up infant variety served in a jar) past his sweet lips. Tonight he ate two without complaining! In addition, he had three nice-sized helpings of the rice, plus another three helpings of chicken. And indeed, his Mommy was smiling and pleased throughout the supper hour.

“It’s the little things, like green beans, that may yield some of the greatest feelings of contentment and gratitude at the end of the day.” ~Patricia Ann Horne