Paybacks and gravy

Join me in a tour of my home after 3/4 of a day with the kids ...

And guess what?!  They're still here, so I could improve on this if I really wanted to!  The good news is that, like it or not, they WILL clean it all up before they go home!

After lunch today Lexi asked if they could do a "food experiment."  I started to say no, just because ... well, just because that was my first reaction, I guess.  But I thought, what the heck, the worst that can happen is a mess, so we went for it.  They asked for water, flour, salt, pepper and garlic salt.  Well, once they mixed up the sloppy mess it dawned on me that they basically had the ingredients for white gravy ... so we cooked it up.

For dipping, Mason chose toast and Lexi chose barbecue potato chips.  Mind you, they used a LOT (and I do mean a lot) of garlic salt, so it was entirely disgusting, but they manned up and ate quite a bit of it, proclaiming that it was "better than Grama's"!  Whatever that means ... Mom, if that's true, you might want to work on your gravy! 

Oh and yes, of course it was a disastrous mess.  I spared you the pictures.

Weighing in

So we weighed our giNORmous cat today, and he weighs 15 pounds.  That's like two babies!! A friend suggested after seeing his picture on Facebook that he might be a Maine Coon - and oh boy after googling the creature I'm pretty sure she's right!  They are referred to as "gentle giants" ... and although he is very even-tempered for a cat, he is not very gentle when he head-butts me for attention, or launches himself from the floor to the armrest to the top of my recliner, usually pushing me backwards what feels like two feet.

We got to go to the KU/Colorado game today - it was marvelous to be back in Allen Fieldhouse.  It's been years since we've been, and so much has changed, but the electrically-charged atmosphere is just the same.  It's an all-sensory experience, for sure ... right down to the older lady who insisted on sharing my seat with me.  (We were on benches, and she just couldn't get the hang of sitting ON her number, but rather sat between hers and mine.  We were almost married by the end of the game.)

Christa and J went to Lincoln to see family this weekend, and asked us to look after their super-cute beagle/something dog Bentley.  So we went over last night to feed him and let him out, and got a little ornery.  We rearranged some things in the kitchen, changed all the clocks by six hours, switched all the stuff on the tops of their vanities (J's stuff on Christa's and vice versa), put Callie's potty training chair on their toilet, and last and best, we short-sheeted their bed.  So far she's found everything except the bed ... as I type I'm expecting an indignant call any moment.  Very amusing, I must say ... and good for the budget, as it was definitely free entertainment.

Lexi apparently said to Christa, "UGH!  Why did your parents do this??"  Which TOTALLY makes me laugh because this is the child that rearranges entire rooms every time she visits.

Mason is honing his handyman skills by removing the screws from the kiddie chairs during "naptime" at preschool - he's done it twice now, and hides them under his blanket.  LOL!  The second time Brenda (my friend and his teacher) told him to put them back and he just grinned that Mason grin and said, "But I don't know how!"  To which she replied, "That's not my problem!  You better figure it out!"  Apparently he did, at least to some degree.  Greg and I figure he's going to take over House Calls some day!

Dilly Bread and other such things

I think I've probably posted this before, but it is my most favorite bread!!  The credit goes to my mother-in-law, Pat, who gave me the recipe years ago.

DILLY BREAD
Pat Clayton

1 pkg dry yeast
¼ c warm water
1 c cottage cheese
2 T sugar
1 T minced onion
1 T butter
2 t dill weed
1 t salt
½ t baking soda
1 unbeaten egg
2 ½ c flour

Soften yeast in ¼ c warm water. Heat cottage cheese to lukewarm; add sugar, onion, butter, dill weed and salt. Beat egg in large bowl; add cheese mixture, soda and yeast. Add flour to make a soft dough.

Let mixture rise in warm place until double, about 1 hour. Stir down; turn into 2 well-greased bread pans. Let rise in warm place 40 minutes. Bake until golden brown at 350* (30-45 mins). Spread butter and salt on top of loaf.

---

Today's a baking/cooking day.  It's cold outside (no kidding, huh?), I'm home all day, and I've been "getting by" with easy meals for long enough.  Think I'll do some parmesan chicken and baked parmesan potatoes.  Too much parmesan, you ask?  No such thing.  The potatoes are divine ... I'll post that recipe too if anyone wants it.

Life is clicking along.  Work is still going well, and retreat planning is moving at a good pace.  We did have one small hiccup when our speaker had to cancel, but amazingly God provided a pair of women to take her place that I am so excited about - Nancy Moser and Brenda Josee.  Their material fits perfectly with our theme, "Free to Be Me," and they were available the weekend we needed them.  This all fell into place in a matter of days ... how's that for "coincidence"?  :)

I miss my littles - haven't seen enough of them lately.  Lexi took quite the spill the other day ... her version of what happened:  "My toe slipped under my foot and I stepped on it and fell down!"  Poor little urchin, she is most certainly blood of my blood.  Despite the fact that her middle name is Grace, physical grace is definitely not one of her finest attributes!  Or mine ... or Christa's ... or Linda's ... sorry guys, but the truth hurts.

Brandon is still plugging away looking for more work in San Diego, but thankfully he has found a great group of Christian guys to live with and fellowship with - the community he's been missing so much since he finished The Race.

Christa looks super cute in her "police" uniform (sans weapons of course) ... I would have thought 'super cute' and 'police uniform' to be mutually exclusive, but she pulls it off.  :)

Off I go ... laundry to fold and bread to bake!

Tasks or People? People or Tasks?

I've had a mixed up week, not in a bad way, just in that I have been pretty evenly divided between spending my time with people and spending it working at "tasks."  I used to be almost exclusively task oriented - give me a job to do, and I'll "git 'er done"!  But I think that was to the exclusion of relationships.  I've always heard that we all have a tendency toward one or the other, and I would have always said I was bent toward tasks.  The more I look back over the past year or so, especially the last six months, I am thinking that has changed, and for the good.  Of course I'm still all about details and task completion (HEL-LO!) but I am spending more and more time talking, listening, sometimes counseling, but generally just building relationships with other women. And I've found that I love love love getting real with each other - none of this fake surface-level relating for me, let's get down to what matters, right?  I think God is balancing my scales, in this arena at least, and it feels good!

Banner day!

What a great day.  I was up early, exercised even longer than I planned (when has THAT ever happened before?  I could stop right there!), vacuumed early (another almost-never ... I hate vacuuming), and worked a little via e-mail.  I ran my errands, including picking up a book I had on hold at the library - "Healing Water" by Nancy Rue and Stephen Arterburn.  This is the second book in the "Sullivan Crisp" series, and while I'm not far enough into this one yet to know for sure, the first one (Healing Stones) was absolutely terrific.  As much as I read, it takes something pretty special for me to recommend a book this highly! 

Anyway, my afternoon suddenly stretched out in front of me, so I grabbed up Lexi from school and we hung out.  I picked up her Easy Bake Oven from her house, and we set to work making sugar cookies.  The oven had to "preheat" for 15 minutes - I had no idea a lightbulb runs this thing.  Meanwhile Lexi mixed the batter - a packet of mix + 3/4 tsp of water.  That alone should tell you how little dough actually resulted.  We split it between the two pans, then cooked the first one.  For 10 minutes.  Then it had to cool in the "cooling bin" for 10 minutes.  Then we put the other one in.  And cooked for 10, then cooled for 10.  Do the math here, folks, it took 55 minutes to make TWO cookies.  They crumbled coming out of the pan, and were generally disgusting.  We cook together almost every time she comes over, and I'm thinking we'll go back to the old-fashioned way, which takes much less time and produces several dozen delicious cookies!  She actually lost interest as soon as the dough was mixed, so her attention was captured for approximately 2 of the 55 minutes.  So look out girl, we're back to reading recipes and learning fractions next time you're here!

Last weekend at a conference, I picked up a book called "The Princess and The Kiss."  It is a beautiful story of how God gave the princess' parents her first kiss to be held until she was grown up.  Then they pass it on to the princess, with the encouragement to save it for the man she will marry.  Many suitors come to her, but she saves the kiss and dismisses them all (for various good reasons), until she meets the farmer who loves her just for her and has saved his own kiss for her.  Needless to say, they share their kisses at the wedding and live happily ever after.  There is a companion book for boys, "The Squire and The Scroll," that I haven't seen but suspect is just as good.  It was a great way to dialogue with her, even at six years old, about how precious her kisses are and how important it is to save them.  (We did talk about the difference between the kiss in the story and the kisses she shares with mommy and daddy, etc.)  She re-told the story to Papa with surprising accuracy when he got home, so it seemed to make an impression on her.

Then we got her library books out of her backpack.  One of them was for her to read to me, and the other I read to her.  Hers was about a garden, and how some veggies and fruits grow above ground and some grow below the ground ... one page had a picture of a mole (and various other critters) burrowing around under the ground, and she said, "Did you know moles are nocturnal?"  I might have known that, I'm not really sure. 

We played Chinese Checkers, Uno, Go Fish, and Old Maid for a couple of hours.  She won some and lost some - remarkably, she's a very good loser!

Of course there were a couple of cartoons and some art thrown in for good measure.  I love the special bond I have with this child, different from the special bond I have with each of the other two - hard to explain but oh so true. 

And last but not least, we had chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner!  How's THAT for undoing the hard work on the treadmill this morning!

Baby steps

Nothing momentus going on ... just found this picture from the last time the kids were here and got a little pang from seeing how big the shoes and coats are getting, and the fact that Callie already has to have her own backpack.  I'm also amused by the way they line everything up so neatly on my stairs - OCD rules!!