Just Give it Away

As has been previously mentioned, I work for a missions agency.  One of my responsibilities is to help train missionaries in developing a support team (formerly known as support raising) and to help coach/encourage/commiserate with them through that process.  Even though the 5 years I spent living off of support have passed, I still spend a lot of time thinking and learning about this whole phenomenon.

One of the reasons that I help with the support raising training at MTW is because of how much I love this whole crazy, messy process.  Don't get me wrong, I'd be pretty much scared to death if God called me back into that for full-time ministry, but there are so many things I adore about this process.

1. Being surprised and totally humbled - resources come from the least expected places.  Seeing friends and even strangers give so generously and sacrificially brings tears to my eyes and warmth to my heart in a way that few other things have.

2. Relying on God's faithfulness in new ways - one thing you realize about DST (developing a support team) is that you're so not in control.  You can send letters, and write blogs, and post updates, and call folks, and make fancy powerpoints or whatever that crazy stuff you can do on ipads is, and pray, pray, pray (the most important component) until the end of time, but NO MONEY is going to come in if the Lord's hand isn't in it.  I think DST was the best training I could have had for growing the kind of day to day, minute by minute dependance on the Lord that is necessary to survive on the mission field.  

3. Being confronted with my sin - few things reveal my sin like raising support.  How I expect God to respond immediately to my efforts. How my mood is measured by how much money came in that day (and by mood I mean "how I feel about God that day"). How I'm grossly judgmental as in "I know how much you go out to eat, you could totally give more to missions" - blech.  God has continuously used this process to refine the tar out of me.

However, now I'm a full time worker and committed US church attender.  I love, love, love being part of the sending team.  I wish I could do so much more to help support my friends and co-laborers who are obeying the call to expand the Church to the ends of the earth, but I'm thankful for what I can do and for the ways God is refining and blessing me on this side of the equation.

God has given me an amazing crash course in the blessings of being a giver, donor, sender, supporter, team member (whatever you want to call it!) this week.  For months and months I'd been wanting to be able to start giving to some pretty cool folks that God is using in pretty cool ways.  Instead of praying about it faithfully and really seeking the Lord, I'd been looking to my budget and bank accounts and planning that when this happens or such and such lines up, or I finally don't have to pay all this medical crap, I'll be able to start giving to these folks.

However, 8 months later, there's still no change and I want so very, very much to be a part of what God is doing through these folks.  In a moment of frustration last week, I was finally like "Screw this" (sometimes the conversations in my head involve less than polite language... sometimes the ones not in my head, too. :), I'm sick and tired of waiting for things to "line up" before I start giving.  There's no end in sight to these medical expenses, fears about car problems, potentially buying new furniture, etc.  I can't give much but I'm going to go ahead and start giving this piddly little amount and hope that I can increase it at some point in the future.

I was so excited to finally fill out my bank info and begin to regularly support these folks.  I knew that even though my gift is small, it was going to be a blessing and encouragement to my friends and to the people to whom they'll be ministering.  I didn't entirely know where the money was going to come from, but I was just so thankful that I'd finally stepped out and done this.

And, you know what?  God, who is so insanely, sweetly, unfailingly good to me, turned around blessed my socks off.  The very next day I was talking to a pretty awesome person who said that they really wanted to step in and help lift the load of some of my medical expenses for the next few months.  What an amazing blessing!!!  It lifted such a burden to know that there would be help in facing the overwhelming task of meeting my out of network deductible twice in two months.

So this week, I was like - well, that went so very well last week and there are so many I know who need the church to come alongside them and help fulfill God's call.  I thought that maybe I could step out again and give another little baby amount to start supporting another family's ministry.  Once again, it was such sweet fun to fill out that online form and know that this gift was going to bring smiles, hope, and encouragement to more friends, and even more than that, to bring more souls to the kingdom.  And once again, there was trepidation about not knowing exactly where this going to come from.

And, you know what?  Once again, the Lord surprised me with such a super sweet blessing.  I had submitted an appeal to my insurance company months ago and it did not look promising that it would go through.  However, the very next day, a refund deposit appeared in my account, which meant that the subsequent appointments would be paid as well.  What an encouragement!!  I immediately set up a bill pay to pay off the ole credit card (cause I'm one of those bad Christians who occasionally uses a credit card for medical expenses and the like).

I share this not to preach any type of health and wealth gospel (especially since that's more of a curse word in Reformed circles than the actual curse words), but to proclaim God's faithfulness to a girl who kept trying to figure it all out on her own, but when she stopped and stepped out in faith to help the Kingdom, was given the two-fold blessing of participating in missions and of being reminded that He cares for me, and He will not leave or forsake me.

So, if you have any tug on your heart to give, I would encourage you to do so.  It has been immeasurably rewarding to me to see God's care for both the missionary and myself in this process.  And, if you need some suggestions on where to give, I could probably connect you with a missionary or two.  ;)

Recipe: Caramel/Toffee Apple Dip

This is another recipe in the "Quick and Easy Crowd Pleasers" series.  Simple, relatively cheap, and usually a big hit!!  I can't take credit for the recipe since I learned it from dear friend and former roommie Melissa D (now Melissa E).  Amazing that the girl who grew up in Africa brought the best dish to the American wedding showers. :)

I made this on Sunday for the Advent Kick-off at church.  I was running kind of late, so didn't take pictures as I was going.  It's so easy you won't need them, though.

Step 1:  Buy 1 bar cream cheese (8 oz), 1 tub caramel dipping sauce (that they sell by the apples in the produce section), 1 bag of Heath toffee pieces, and 5-6 apples.  The Heath pieces can be the trickiest part of this recipe.  They're sold in the baking chips aisle (semi-sweet, milk, butterscotch, etc.).  I've only ever found them at Publix (because it really is where shopping is a pleasure!), but not every Publix has them.  I usually buy them when I see them and have a bag or two around the house.  Or, apparently, Amazon has them.

Step 2:  Get a dinner plate (or a plate with a rim or edge) and take the cream cheese and smear it all along the plate inside the rim.  This goes more smoothly if the cream cheese has been softened.

Step 3:  Dump the caramel sauce on top.  I don't usually need the whole tub.  I also use whatever's on sale - store brand, fat free, whatever.  Spread it around so that it covers all of the cream cheese.

Step 4:  Sprinkle toffee Heath pieces on top of caramel.  I generally only use 1/2 - 2/3 of the bag.

Step 5:  Wash and slice apples.  I usually get a mix of red and green (Granny Smith) apples.  I also slice them really thin.  Instead of getting my usual 8 slices out of an apple, I try to get 12-16.  The main purpose of the apple is a means of conveying the yummy dip to your mouth, so they don't have to be thick, just enough that you can scoop some yummy dip onto it.

Step 6:  Place apple slices around the edge/lip thing of plate.  I have mine stick into the dip a little bit and I might go ahead and start it off by having one or two when I set it up if I'm taking it to a big event so that folks know what to do when they walk up.

Enjoy the yummy dip!!  I do really wish I'd taken pictures now, but oh well.  Also, it does not taste as good when it's leftover in the fridge 2 days and you try to eat it with pretzels because you're out of apples.  In case you were wondering.  

Learn Something New: Glass Fusing

Eventually, I'll get around to blogging about the my official "learn something new" for this year, but in the meantime, I'm going to share about a "mini" one that came along.  One side effect of intentionally trying to learn something new every year has been a great willingness to make a fool of myself put myself out there when other new opportunities come along.  Take a painting class?  Sure.  Try something potentially hazardous sounding like glass fusing?  Why not?  So here's the glass fusing story -

A friend at work (of Bumble Bee cake ball fame) organized a group of us to go glass fusing.  It was at one of those paint some pottery places.  You can make all kinds of really cool things with glass fusing - bowls, plates, jewelry, decorative wall stuff.  As Christmas was coming up, I opted for a Christmas tree ornament. This was a pretty basic way to go as it didn't involve very much measuring or breaking glass ourselves.  They give you a triangle shape and you decorate it.

Ok, so I can't figure out how to rotate this picture, but we started with a base, a green (sparkle!) triangle, and then I added fettucini glass to make my strings of lights.  And I added a special piece of fancy glass to the top for a sparkly star.  Initially, you just work on placing everything where you want it to go and then later on your glue it down before it goes in the kiln.

There were lots of pieces of glass that were already broken that I looked through initially for my lights and decorations. And then, if I didn't find what I was looking for, I could break the noodles or rods of colored glass to the shapes that I wanted.

Next, I used tweezers to place the little ornaments where I wanted them to go on the tree.

Here's my tree!!  The colors here are very distinctly yellow for the lights (I straightened up that bottom one) and orange, but after being fired they kind of ended up the same color.  That was a little disappointing.

But all in all, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  You can see where I added a little trunk at the bottom. And the star at the top actually has a little gap in it so that you can put a wire hook through it.

I took a quick picture of it on the tree, although I haven't left it up there permanently yet.  The cats still haven't been convinced that the tree and ornaments aren't a giant play toy for them.  I think my $22 hand-made ornament will be safer on an ornament stand for the time being.  It is a bit of a pricey activity, but I opted for the larger tree, sparkle glass, and a fancy piece of glass for my star (that's a $2 star!), so my choices led to several up-charges.  You can make smaller ones for $8-12 or so.

Here's most of our group at our Creative Clayhouse.  You can see Kris (in orange) has a square piece, that will end up being "draped" over a mold and as it's fired it will melt into the shape of a plate with slightly raised edges.  Pretty cool!!

And Cheryl made an awesome snow flake where she did a lot of the glass cutting/breaking herself.  It turned out great!!!

Christmas Tradition: Ornaments

My family doesn't have a ton of traditions and most of the ones we do have involve cooking/eating food of some sort - Daddy's special, chocolate covered cherry cookies (to die for), chocolate lady finger pudding (look for these recipes later in the month).  One of the traditions that we do have that I love, love, love is collecting ornaments.  Ok, collecting ornaments at Christmas time is probably not so unique, but I love the tradition my mom started when we were kids.  This tradition started during the post-divorce phase that I fondly refer to as "Vacation Wars." Seriously, 2 kids who'd never been anywhere more exotic than Tennessee are, within an 18 month time span, taken to NYC (mom), on a cruise (dad), to London (mom - and that's a really cool story about how my mom saved all of her change in one of those big 5 gallon water jugs and after we rolled coins for months - this is pre-Coinstar- we had $1500 which was enough for tickets  to London for 3), and finally to Vail (dad - but also we had a free place to stay).

My mom had us start collecting ornaments from the different places that we'd been.  We didn't start this until the London trip, so we missed a few trips early on, but we have 3 little beefeater guys to represent England.  And every year, when we hang the ornaments, we tell our favorite stories from those different travels.  For instance, with the beefeaters, we talk about how Michelle and I hated British food (duh!) and really only wanted to eat at Burger King, and how at the tourist attractions we really just wanted to rush through to the gift shops, and how Michelle got car sick on the bus to Windsor Castle and we had to get off before even leaving London and I missed my chance to see a castle (umm...until I studied in London in college and then traveled Europe and saw about a million castles).  

Here's a glimpse at some of the ornaments that I've collected on my travels in recent years and what they remind me of.  

This little birdie is from Bangladesh.  I went there with work in the Spring of 2010 to visit our workers.  Fun story, my boss took me on a "short, little hike" to a remote little village where I almost died from dehydration.  That might be a slight exaggeration.  Slight.  Fun times.  Really, it was great to meet the amazing people who are ministering there, though. 

This one might be kind of hard to see, but it's a little filigree heart with a cross inside from Nepal.  Fun Nepal memories - 16 hours on the night bus (ha, ha, ha that was so horrible, so very, very horrible).  The first time I got altitude sickness.  The first time I rode on top of a bus.  Seeing Mt Everest.  A-mazing.

I bet you can guess where this one is from!! :)  Although I don't know why the kangaroo is making the Home Alone face.  My favorite thing about Australia?  New Zealand.  I know that doesn't quite make sense, but New Zealand is so amazing and everyone is sooooo nice there.  Australia is amazing, though. A wonderful, wonderful friend parted with some frequent flier miles so I could come visit for 3 weeks and we took a little holiday in New Zealand.  Christchurch, because it was the cheapest place to fly to.  We spent one day on an island filled with vineyards going on a wine tasting tour.  And another day was spent on an active volcano island.  Something cool actually from Australia?  The zoo is amazing!  Platypuses are pretty much the coolest animals ever.  And the kangaroo enclosure?  Oh yeah, you walk right in and just hang with the kangaroos.  

It's William Shakespeare!!! Direct from Stratford-Upon-Avon.  I studied/worked abroad in London in college.  I took two classes:  The British Novel...on Film (read a book, watch a movie - awesomeness!) and, um, Survey of British Theater (where you go see a play each week and write a little paper on it).  I did also have an internship where I worked for RNLI - the Lifeboats.  It's ROYAL charity.  Kate & Wills' first event as an engaged couple was launching one of the lifeboats.  British people get really excited when they hear I worked for RNLI since Americans typically know nothing about it.  

So this little heart is totally from IKEA, but it's from IKEA in Chengdu.  My first IKEA adventures were all in China.  And I brought this one little guy back with me.  Ah, those sweet, sweet trips to Chengdu - with IKEA, and Pete's Tex-Mex, and Papa Johns. 

Yay!!  This is my Mele Kalikimaka hula girl from Maui.  I've been a lot of places, like 24 countries or something, but Hawaii just might be my favorite place.  Love it.  Love it so much. Love the 5 pools interconnected with slides (slides!!!), love the ladies who bring those yummy drinks around in the afternoon, love the breakfast buffet.  And love the sweet, sweet friend who redeemed frequent flier miles to fly me out there, pay for our hotel, and get the rental car.  

So those are the recent ones.  Some of the particularly awesome ornaments are still at my mom's and go on the family tree there.  And by awesome, I mean things like the Chicago Bulls Christmas bulb I picked out Christmas of "92 because I was obsessed with Scottie Pippen and the Bulls for like 5 months following the Barcelona Dream Team Olympics.  Those pictures/stories will have to wait until I'm home for the holidays.  :)  

Friday Night at Home

1. Get off work early (score!!) and head to park for a walk in gorgeous 65 degree weather while the SUN is still out.

2. Trim cats' nails.  Be ignored by cats for rest of evening.

3.  Debut this hairdo.

4. Make 3 separate Christmas lists - Mom, Dad, and extended family gift exchange.  This is harder than it may sound. It involves dividing items based on price and extent of desire to receive them so that shoppers have a variety of items to choose from and also that I still get the items I would most like/need (new ironing board cover - that's a need not a want, folks).

5. Write 2 VERY overdue thank you notes.

6. Fold laundry.

7.  Gaze at this tree a bit.  Ok, the bottom 1/3 is actually lit, but it just doesn't look like it in this picture.

8. Decide whether or not to do something about piles of books on bedside table - ALL of which I have started, only one of which I have finished.  Sigh.

9.  Make pizza for dinner instead of healthy thing with cabbage from my garden.

10.  Make list of folks to send Christmas cards to.

11. Write another blog post.  And a second scheduled to be posted later.  And maybe start another.

12. Work on this knitting project while watching guilty pleasure Revenge (which is maybe getting too soapy/stressful even for me).

13. Decide what recipes to bring to December events where a dish is required:
         - ranch bacon dip with garlic rounds for SEC championship
         - caramel/toffee apple dip for Advent kick-off at church
         - Pioneer Woman french pastry/donut things for neighborhood brunch
         - Aunt Dorothy's rice casserole for community group dinner???  (still debating this one)

14.  Search itunes for Christmas albums to add to Spotify Christmas playlist.

15.  Drink hot cocoa with marshmallows while sitting next to fire in fireplace!

Belated Vacation Book Reviews

A couple of weeks ago I went on vacation and took 4 books to read.  Normally, 4 books in 5 days wouldn't be a big deal, but this vacation also involved lots of drifting off for a nap while lounging beachside, so...two weeks later, I've still only finished 2 1/2, but I'm going to go ahead and review the two I've finished.

1. The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost.  Yes, it does have an unfortunate title.  And as I think back on the book, I don't think that was even addressed much, maybe like for a page.  A better title might have been "Bathroom Habits on an Atoll."  This book takes place on an itty bitty teensy tiny bit of land smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  I work at a missions agency, so there are maps all over the place.  I was looking for Kiribati and Tarawa on the map when a coworker walked up and asked "why are just staring at the Pacific Ocean?"  There's nothing there but these tiny dots of land.  It's really kind of freaky to think about.  And to read about.  Troost does a great job of explaining living on a tropical island, existing in a 3rd world country, going native as well as coming back to the US after that.  And seriously, he also spends a fair amount of time addressing what you do with all the crap (literally) generated by one of the most densely populated specks of land in the word which lacks any type of plumbing.  I'd just read a friend's Masters project on clean water and so I was actually particularly interested in how this book addressed issues with waste, clean water, and foreign aid.  I'm just beginning to understand some of the ways that foreign aid has done a huge disservice to developing nations and this book was very informative in that regard.  While I still prefer his book Lost On Planet China, I do think that anyone who's lived or traveled through a third world country is going to find much to identify with here.  Future missionaries, be warned, you'll get glimpses of what is to come.  All in all, an interesting read, though.

P.S.  It also does address WWII and the toll it took on the islands.  After reading Unbroken (see review here) and having my eyes opened to so much more of what the war was like for Americans in the Pacific theater and particularly in Japan, it was another eye opening experience to be confronted with the immense toll these wars took on the tiny Pacific islands who had no stake in this war at all.

2. Until There Was You by Kristan Higgins.  This was my "airplane" or "beach" book.  Totally light and fluffy (and of course, the first book I read).  It seemed particularly apropos on my vacation with high school friends as it was about the girl who was kind of an outsider in high school and how she finally confronts that as an adult (and "that" means mostly the boy who broke her heart).  It was an entertaining read that actually dealt with some big issues - adoption, anxiety attacks, widowhood, single parenting, consequences of sexual promiscuity in high school.  Ok, that makes it sound super serious or totally melodramatic which it wasn't, just a relatively light book that dealt with big topics in a fairly real way.  I will have to say that it was a bit, well, lusty.  Not that it was graphic or explicit, just that the characters seemed more motivated by "lust" than "like" at times which was a little off-putting.  Not bad for a beach read (I've definitely read worse), but not my new favorite, either.  

Movie Review: We Bought a Zoo

This past weekend, my family and I were trying to figure out what movie to go see.  Since no one was taking my suggestions to go see the new Muppets movie seriously, I opened up the Fandango app (remember when you had to open a newspaper to find out what movies were playing?).  This didn't help very much because my family (step-dad) and I tend to have different taste in movies.  He prefers artistic, independent, foreign, Oscar-bait, make you think kind of movies.  I prefer... a more commercial type of fare. (This is the girl who's seen all of the super hero movies that have come out this year... in the theater).  They'd already seen J Edgar and the movies I wanted to see (Ghost Protocol, Sherlocke Holmes, War Horse) don't come out until later in December.  Mom's suggestion of Happy Feet 2 was taken even less seriously then my Muppets suggestion, so we were kind of at a loss...until...while watching Modern Family on DVR we forgot to fastforward through one of the commercial breaks and heard about a sneak preview of We Bought a Zoo on Saturday night.

That settled it.  I was all for seeing this movie - a nice family friendly good hopeful message type movie that we would get to see a month early (bonus!).  I had my mom get the tickets online early (in case they sell out) and had us arrive at the theater 30 minutes before showtime.  As the 2nd people to arrive in the theater, I realized that maybe I had overestimated the appeal this movie would have to the greater Jacksonville community.  As more folks with little kids started to arrive, I started to worry just a bit.  By family friendly, I had meant something along the lines of Blindside or Remember the Titans, but my step-dad took it to mean "kids" movie.  (Sidenote: nothing against kids films, I just generally wait on Redbox or an international flight for those).  As the pre-movie show and then previews started, I was increasingly worried that he was right and that this was a kids film and that my family (entirely comprised of adults 30 years of age and older) would bring this evening up to mock me at future Thanksgivings (Remember that time Jen made us get to the theater so early for that movie about talking zoo animals).

Well, rest assured, this movie did not have talking animals.  In fact, there were a couple of times I wanted to ask the other parents in the room if they'd read anything about the movie (you know, since I knew so much before coming) or had just chosen a movie with animals in it.  I would say this is definitely not a little kids movie.  I quite enjoyed it, but even though it's only PG, it did have some language that I wouldn't want to expose any kids under 10 to.  Most of the themes were rather more adult as well - finding a new job, dealing with the loss of a spouse, how to make a business work.  There were some funny bits and I thought the cast was excellent, especially the girl who plays Matt Damon's daughter - adorable!!  My mom really like Matt Damon's hair in the movie and my step-dad remained mum on Scarlett Johansson.

All in all, I think the movie was pretty much what I expected going into it.  A great "family" film for the holidays.  As previously mentioned, I think it would only be for more mature kids.  There's a dad/teenage son fight that's pretty intense and I didn't particularly love the way that was done.  But if you're looking for a family film with a lack of awkward moments (and that would definitely be me as the girl who suggested No Strings Attached for a family movie night, seriously, awkward much?), this should be just the ticket for you.  

Thanksgiving Edition: Gratitude #18-30

18. Thanksgiving at home with FAMILY!!

19.  A safe and uneventful drive down from Atlanta

20.  Seeing the stars over the beach as I was driving into town (why don't I ever see stars in Atlanta?)

21.  Singing camp songs to myself when the drive got boring

22.  A lazy day watching football

23.  Favorite family recipes

24.  And new ones, too!

25.  Dr K's sermon at the last staff meeting

26.  Rediscovering knitting projects

27.  Prayer guides on healing and grace given to me by a sweet friend

28.  Gorgeous weather for Thanksgiving at the beach

29.  That God is for me (even though I forget that one frequently)

30.  This movie trailer (Hunger Games!!!)

Learn Something New: A Philosophy for My 30s

My 20s probably could have been titled "Do Something Kinda Crazy That Maybe You Didn't Think Through All the Way".  This involved lots of interesting decisions with vehicles (riding on top of them, hitchhiking with truckers, accepting rides in vans from strangers in foreign countries), religions (that whole accidental cult thing), clothing (on top of that waterfall in Thailand, that prison in Venezuela), and education (2 MAs.  Really?).

As I reached the end of my twenties, I began to realize that
1. I was unlikely to keep making these decisions that resulted in totally cool stories (some of the above will be forthcoming in future posts) because many were, ah, kind of dumb
2. There was lots of stuff that I still really wanted to learn how to do

So, I decided that my philosophy for my 30s would be "Learn a New Thing Each Year."  Each year of my 30s I choose one thing that I've kind of always wanted to learn how to do and I make a conscious effort to learn it.

The year I turned 30 it was move back home to America and get a full time desk job and learn how to be a normal grown up person.  That wasn't so exciting, but kind of necessary.

Year 31 was learn to knit.  All through my 20s I'd be hanging out with cool friends who would knit during movies. How cool was that?!?!  You could watch a movie and do something productive at the same time (and be hipster cool before hipster cool was even a thing)!  Knitting worked way better for this than my previous main hobby: reading.

When a knitting friend was visiting, I coerced her into a trip to Michaels and a quick beginner lesson in knitting.  My first scarf looked horrid.  But I totally love it!  It gets skinnier and then thicker and has some holes in it where I dropped stitches.  And I totally did the major knitting no-no and (gasp!) tied my yarn together when I ran out.  Also, I had no idea how to actually end the whole knitting process and get it off the needles.  Thank goodness for youtube videos.

My scarf definitely looks like a 3rd grader made it, but I love it because that's exactly what it's supposed to look like.  The very first time you try something, it's not supposed to be perfect, and I think that's something I lost track of as an adult.  I only liked to do things that I knew I would perform reasonably well at.  My first knitting experience was so awkward - how on earth do you hold your fingers like this?  And the yarn goes where?  But over a year (and a knitting group at church later), those finger movements come automatically.  It was weird and awkward getting started, but I've come to realize that you've just gotta embrace the awkwardness.  It all felt strange and uncomfortable at the beginning and I totally sucked at it, but the pay-off - totally worth it.

Here's my very first scarf!!  With a close-up of that bedraggled uneven looking part. :)

Stay tuned for an upcoming post on this year's "Learn Something New" Project.   What's something new that you're learning??

Jennifer Circle

While I was on vacation last weekend, we came across a road sign with my name on it which was totally awesome because that never happens.  If we were still in high school, then we might have been tempted to come back later in the evening and locate it to new premises (i.e. my room), not that we did anything like that in high school. Nope. Never.

However, this street name seemed oddly appropriate when I considered my foray to the local 7-11 for a "midnight" run (well, lazy vacation midnight which means like 9 pm) for cough drops as it seemed something like a circular comedy of errors.  Our last evening there, I ran out of cough drops.  I've never actually used cough drops very much but they seemed vital to surviving this cold.  All of sudden I was picturing myself having one of those coughing fits and not ever being able to stop coughing because I didn't have any cough drops.  It was scary enough to propel me to change out of pjs and find my way to the store.

I leave the condo and head to the elevator.  I walk into the elevator (which have never been my favorite since I got HORRIBLY trapped in a VERY crowded one on a missions trip to Buenos Aires).  This elevator had a shopping cart in it.  I look very warily at that shopping cart.  Now, while I had seen it in use earlier in the week as a type of luggage cart for guests, the thought did cross my mind that a murderer/rapist type person had left it in the elevator in order to easily cart me off for his evil purposes once he knocked me out.  (Active imagination, huh?).  So I stayed well-away from the menacing looking shopping cart and extra vigilant for bad guys who might pop out.

On the first floor, I realized I didn't have the clicker thing to open the gate to get back into the community after I left.  Phew. That was close.  Back up the elevator, and then down again while suspiciously regarding the shopping cart.

Disembarking from the elevator the second time, I realized I didn't have my cell phone.  But hey, I grew up without a cell phone, we're overly reliant on them nowadays anyway, I'm only going a half mile to the 7-11.  I can do this without a cell phone - no problem.  Look at how liberated from technology I am!!  As I pulled away, I did start to worry, though - um, but Kira up in our room is the only person I know in this whole town right now, and I have no idea what her cell number is because the only numbers I have committed to memory anymore are my parents' home numbers, my work number, and some approximation of Kira's parents' number since they still have the same number from high school (pre cell phones doing all of this crazy memorization work for us).  Well, I figure, worse case, I can borrow a phone and call Kira's parents and have them call her.  And I'll just make sure that the clicker works before I leave so I'm not stranded outside of this gated community.  There is a passcode you can type in , but the email with that code is on my phone.  Sigh.  Technology, you have crippled me.

Double checking to make sure the clicker works seems like an easy enough proposition.  As I'm exiting I'll just point the clicker over the other side and make sure it works as I slowly drive out.  I'm halfway through the gate and clicking and madly and ...the clicker isn't working.  Crap.  What if ran out of batteries or something.  I really do need to make sure I can reenter this compound.  Hmmm...what to do, what to do.  I know!  I'll back my car up. Oops! Let's make sure to avoid that giant planter in the middle of the road.  Even though my sister totaled my car in college, I don't think this is a situation where "turnaround is fair play" applies. I'll just park around the corner here kind of in the middle of this lane, that seems smart, to leave my car in the middle of the road with no lights and no caution lights in the "middle" of the night.  Ok, I'll do this quickly so no one comes flying by and runs into my sister's car.

I proceed to exit by the little walking path gate to side of the drive through gate.  I walk over to the entrance gate and click madly.  Success!!! It works!!  I feel ridiculous, but it works!  I walk in through the gate, hop in my car and drive the 50 yards to the 7-11.  Walking seriously seems like it would have been the better option at this point.

I pick up the cough drops, wait 10 minutes in line while the two workers do a cash register shift switch (seriously?  only me).  Open my cough drops and start sucking on one, yeah, even before I bought them - such a rebel!  I make it safely back through the gate, survive one more ride with the threatening shopping cart and then am home where Kira wonders why on earth it took me so long to run to the 7-11.  Welcome to Jennifer Cir.  

Vacation Update

Vacation was wonderful!!!  5 days at a gorgeous condo on a tiny sliver of land between the beach and intracoastal (I have no idea how to spell, when you live there, you call it the "innercoastal" but I'm pretty sure that's not right).  We could see both from our balcony!!

Top 5 Vacation Things
1. Laying in the sun & reading
2. Aviary/Sea Turtle Hospital
3. The station playing 90s music (just like high school, although then we just called it music)
4. Veterans day fish fry
5. Hanging with amazing friends (duh)

Least Favorite Things about Vacation
1. Being sick (boo)
2. Losing my voice entirely for 48 hours of Girls Weekend (double boo)
3. Only finishing one book (GASP! but I'm over halfway through 2 others, I was having hard time deciding where to focus my energy)
4. It ends :(

Vacation was such a fun, sweet, lazy, restful, laughing time that I am so very thankful for.  While it sucked to be sick, on the other hand, if you have to be sick, why not be sick laying on lounge chair in perfect 75 degree weather under the shade of palm tree.  Am I right?

So here is our one photo from vacation.  Well, technically that's a lie because we have like 5 versions of this 1 photo.  But at the very last minute before Heather had to drive home and return to reality (grading papers, which I so very, very much don't miss), I was like "oh, we have to get at least one picture."  I feel like pictures document things that are unique or special or one of kind or one time only (yes, I just said the same thing 4 ways) and what I LOVE about this trip is that it didn't even cross our minds to take a picture until the very hand because hanging out with these two friends was something that felt like it should be happening every day.  Even though we only see each other a couple times a year (it helps that our parents all still live in our hometown) conversations pick up right where they left.  And there's almost 20 YEARS of memories, jokes about previous crushes/past boyfriends, embarrassing high school memories, possible law breaking episodes, and discoveries of new countries, careers, relationships and religions to draw from.  So very thankful for these ladies.  Umm...and that Heather's parents have an AWESOME condo.

First Thing I Pack

As I previously mentioned how much I enjoy reading, it should come as no surprise that the first thing I think about when packing for a trip is which books I'll bring.  Last year I was able to go on several "reading" vacations.  These are vacations where the point is relaxation and the destination usually involves a body of water and lounge chairs.  Last year I was so blessed with this type of vacation that I was able to read the Hunger Games trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, gigantic Pillars of the Earth, The Help,  and probably a handful of other books I can't recollect at the moment.  This year, I've read World Without End on vacation.  That's it.  One lonely (1,000 page) book.  I've had amazing vacations this year, but they've been city vacations.  The point of going to Baltimore, DC, and New York is not so much to relax as it is to do everything you possibly can.  Super fun, but less than restful.

So you can imagine that I am beyond excited that my last 3 precious, hoarded vacation days are going to a beach vacation (apologies to my family who will be seeing me for four days instead of seven at Christmas - this is so needed, though!).  I have had my stack of books set aside on my bedside table for close to a week now.  There are four books, roughly one for each day.  And here they are...

1. Until There Was You.  Sigh.  I'm a little embarrassed that this one is in top.  This is my book version of a romantic comedy.  Light, funny, you know how it will end, not terribly edifying in anyway.  This type of book is what I call my "airplane book".  A page turner that still keeps things light and isn't (hopefully) going to get dry or boring.  When traveling, I generally like a book that helps me lose track of all time.  I think this stems from all of those horrendous 24 hours trips to and from Asia.  This book is about a guy and a girl who had some kind of heartbreak saga thing in high school (imagine that?) and are reunited years later surround by pretty New England, quirky family, and a dog.  We'll see how it goes.

2.  Olive Kitteridge is a book that a friend has been recommending to me for years and I'm finally getting around to reading.  It's a Pulitzer Prize winner; however, after watching Newsies again last weekend, I'm not sure how much a fan of that Mr. Pulitzer I am.  From what I can gather it's a collection of stories about one woman (Olive) who lives in Maine with her family.  The stories are told from the perspective of people around her so we get to see her through many different lenses.  That could be totally off base.  I'll let you know how it goes.

3.  The Sex Lives of Cannibals has a really ridiculous name, I'll admit.  Earlier this year my boss gave me a book on CD by the same author (J. Maarten Troost).  The book was called Lost on Planet China and after two weeks of forgetting it on my desk at work, I finally put it in the CD player.  And from that point on I wanted to drive everywhere and never ever car pool so that I could keep listening to this book.  It was dead on about China, such a pitch perfect take on how a foreigner feels and what a foreigner experiences in China (at least this foreigner).  So he's written a couple of other books, and I thought I'd like to get his take on other places since I know he speaks with a voice I appreciate.  He spent two years living on South Pacific islands and this book is about that time.  Very much looking forward to diving into this one.

4. Matched is a YA book (that's young adult, ya'll, look how good I am with the library slang).  It's planned to be a trilogy and it wants to be Hunger Games so bad you can practically taste it.  We'll see how it measures up. I'm increasingly becoming a fan of YA lit as it lacks many of the qualities I dislike in contemporary adult literature: moral ambiguity, relativism, and no happy ending.  YA lit still seems to have some of these basic ingredients.  For instance, there are generally values, some concept of right and wrong, and if not a gloriously happy resolution, then something that begins to at least look in the same direction.  Please note: I realize these are gross generalizations.  I'm just saying that on the whole I find myself more drawn to these types of stories than a lot of the contemporary adult lit out there today.  I do realize that I've told you exactly nothing that's actually informative about the book, but I can't quite exactly remember (and it's upstairs and I'm sick, enough said).  Basically, some kind of future society where the government arranges your marriage.  I imagine the teenagers aren't going to take that for too long.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Vacation Club

Later this week I get to go on vacation with two awesome friends.  Heather and I have known each other since middle school and then Kira moved to town at the start of 9th grade.  There are so many memories wrapped up in those 4-6 years!  I'm so thankful for how we've not only kept in touch, but also maintained a great friendship for so many years (and over so many continents).  We've not all lived in the same place since we were 18, but we have traveled together and seen each others' homes across the country and around the world.  Here are some snap shots of those different travels. Of course, Kira and Heather have also had travels without me, but I don't have any of those photos. :)  We didn't get very good at having all three of us in the same place until a couple of years ago, and I can't wait to add another photo to the list later this week!!

First in 2003, I went from China to Nepal to visit Kira where she was with the Peace Corps.
Look how young we were!  And how freezing cold we were in that dang hostel.

In 2004, Kira came to China to see me.  It's May holiday, but you can't see the 1 billion other people
at the Forbidden City with us.

In 2007, there was some hiking in Shenandoah 

In 2009, Heather came to join me in Thailand for vacation.  There was also a tiger.

Then a few months later, hiking in a National Park in South Carolina (I have no idea what the name is).

In 2010, all 3 of us were finally in one place at one time for vacation - Montreal!!
Also, we all have very red eyes here, sorry about that.

Just this past summer, Heather and I came to Baltimore to visit Kira. 

And I can't wait to add the next photo to the list this weekend!

Things I Love About My Church

My church is awesome.  I love so very many things about All Souls Fellowship (which is actually PCA although it sounds like it might be a nice little Anglican place).  Today I am going to share 2 of my favorite things.  

Thing 1 - I LOVE that when I'm in the teacher supply room getting ready for Sunday school in the morning that it's me and like 7 dads sorting through construction paper.  This is for little kids Sunday school, not middle, youth, college, whatever.  It's for the toddlers through elementary.  This morning our large group (K- grade 3) consisted of me and three awesome dads (who are regular teachers, not just subbing for their wives).  I love that ministering to the covenant children at our church is truly a church-wide endeavor - married, single, male, female, even some whole families who teach together!  And I love that these kids get to see strong male role models both living out their faith in this way and directly speaking into these precious little lives.

Thing 2 - I HEART communion.  I mean big time.  Like "pull yourself out of bed and go to church 20 minutes late so as not to miss communion" big time.  This may mean I have some faulty theology regarding the role/effects of communion OR it may just mean that I understand it really, really well (for obvious reasons I prefer the latter train of thought).  Maybe it's because I grew up Catholic and I have a residual love for some of those "high church" things.  I LOVE that my church serves communion every week.  EVERY WEEK I need that physical, tangible reminder of God's grace, of His love, of my utter lostness and utter redemption, and of the fact that I am not alone in this. Every. Single. Stinking. Week.  And today  (guys I'm so excited about this I might start squealing), I got to help administer communion. I'm not sure if "administer" is the right word, but it sounded better than "be a bread holder girl".  This is actually a vital role in our church because each person comes forward and tears a piece of bread off of a common loaf and so you really have to pull hard when people are tearing their piece of bread, but not so hard that when they let go their hand goes flying up and whacks them in the nose.  And, of course, it's also vital in that you're offering to them the representative symbol of our Lord's body broken for us.  All that to say that I love communion every week, but that it was a particularly special communion day for me.   

Recipe: Redneck Cobbler

This is a crazy easy, crowd pleasing recipe that I learned at Depression Camp (story for another time) a few years ago when I came home from China.  Apparently, some people may call it Dump Cake (for reasons that will soon be obvious).  It's cheap, easy, and people love it which makes it exactly my kind of recipe.  I actually made it for a Bake-Off at work a couple of weeks and took home first (only) prize!  Although since there were like 10 desserts and 10 judges really only 2 people had to vote for mine in order to win, so you can take the whole "award winning recipe" thing with a grain of salt.

Here are the ingredients.  All of them.  That's it.  (Notice how I placed the ingredients so you can't see the dirty dishes in the sink).

This is for a 9x13 pan.  To halve it, you know, use half the stuff pictured here (Jiffy sells yellow cake mix in smaller boxes, so one of those works great for an 8x8 pan, but they're not sold everywhere).

Preheat oven to 350-ish.  Sometimes, if I'm feeling impatient, I'll bump it to 365.  It's pie filling, butter, and cake mix.  There's not a lot of places to go wrong here.

First, dump the pie filling in the pan.

Next, sprinkle the full box of cake mix on top.

Then, slice the butter in little tabs all over like this.  You can absolutely use less butter (you might need to change the name to South Beach Cobbler, though).  I find the topping forms the best with this much butter, but you can also tell you used this much butter when eating it.  I'm hoping to experiment with using less butter at some point for the sake of my arteries.  If you do, let me know how it turns out.

Stick in the over for about 45 minutes, until the butter is all melted and the topping turns golden.  Like this -

It tastes great served warm with a scoop of ice cream on top.  But it also tastes amazing as is (and is a carton of ice cream less expensive and less caloric that way, too).

You can substitute lots of other kinds of pie filling.  Add pineapple.  I even heard about a version that's pumpkin and pineapple filling layered together.  I haven't quite wrapped my head around that one yet, but maybe I'll brave it sometime this fall.

Enjoy!! 

Gratitude #1-17

I've seen this gratitude thing on other blogs and had adopted the practice in my journal (you know, the twice a month I actually journal).  I love how it changes my perspective for THIS day as well as the smiles it brings when I look back over the lists.  What a great habit to cultivate - looking at everything through a lens of gratitude.  So here's my first blog on gratitude-

This day I'm grateful for -

1. "Blessings" by Laura Story which I could listen to about 100 times a day and not tire of

2. Dinner out with awesome people every night for 7 days in a row

3. And the laughter and conversations that come with that

4. Friends who have been so faithful to pray me through this current trial

5. That I get to learn more about this verse in the States than I ever did on the field

"For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him but also to suffer for him" Philippians 1:29

6. A donut this morning with my family's fabulous traditional brunch - "Daddy's Special" (which I will have to post about someday because I find the history of that recipe fascinating...and it's crazy yummy)

7. Fall leaves

8. Sunny days

9. Windows down in the car

10. Mix cds

11. #7-10 combined with singing really loud and not caring

12. That these guys don't hate me even though I accidentally locked one of them in cupboard for 10 hours last night

13. That the cat I locked in the closet didn't destroy everything in it

14. New boots!!

15. That I've been with MTW for 5 years and get a WHOLE EXTRA WEEK OF VACATION next
year

16. And speaking of vacation - that I get to go to Florida with some awesome girls later this week (more on that soon)

17. This daily prayer guide* that I have a love/hate relationship with (available in multiple versions, I'm the "college roommate" mentioned in the second one). It has been changing my heart day by day, even though half the time I end up praying that God would make me actually want to pray the thing that I'm supposed to pray for (see #24 and #25).

*I'm having trouble getting this link to pull up correctly, so I'm posting the prayer guide in it's entirety below.  And adding a different general link to Katie's blog here - it's posts from October 10-11 that have the different versions of prayer guides (singles, for your husband, for your married self, for your kids, etc.)  The one below is for singles but should be applicable to most folks, except if you're already married you should probably reword #15  ;)

1. To have a healthy fear of the Lord which is the beginning of knowledge and to graciously receive wisdom and instruction
2. have a gentle and quiet spirit
3. to not be wise in my own eyes, but seek the Lord for wisdom and direction.
4. that I would respect those I live and work with and seek to serve them
5. that I would guard my heart in what I watch, listen to, read, etc.
6. that I would seek to serve friends and families around me
7. that I would not be as concerned for my happiness as I am about my character
8. that I would manage my household well
9. that I would be a good steward of my time and efforts
10. that I would be a prudent (wise, discreet, careful) woman
11. that I would be a model of modesty
12. that I would be hospitable… even when it may be an inconvenience
13. that I would be a gracious woman, friend, coworker
14. that I seek to learn from the Lord, continually being trained up in righteousness
15. that God would provide a faithful man of the Lord to husband me if it is His will…and that I would rest in contentment
16. that I would be an encourager- thoughtful and tactful with my words
17. that I would be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry
18. that I would seek the Lord for my identity and not the opinion’s of others or the magazines I see in the store, etc.
19. that I would have a love for the Word of God
20. that I would keep short accounts and not harbor anger or bitterness toward those around me
21. that I would bring honor to my family and not shame
22. that I would be protected from the schemes of the devil
23. that I would guard my tongue
24. that I would be willing to make the hard choices when I know that they are right
25. that I would pursue discipline in my own life, rising early and honoring my body
26. that I would be one who builds up my house and doesn’t tear it down
27. that I would have perseverance
28. that I would commit to the Lord whatever I do… even if it’s just filing expense reports
29. that I would learn to be content in any circumstance
30. that I would not worry about tomorrow
31. that I would not be deceived by charm and beauty, but be a woman who fears the Lord

Reading Recommendation: Unbroken

I LOVE reading!  When I was a kid I would curl up on this big wingback chair by the front window and read for hours.  My younger sister used to make me repeat whatever she said to me because she'd tell me she was going to a friend's house and I'd have no idea where she was when Mom came home and asked after her.  Anyway...

Unbroken by Laren Hillenbrand (the chick who wrote Seabiscuit) is one of the very best books I've read, ...like maybe ever.  If you like the Olympics, history, cocky guys who get saved, airplanes, Hollywood, love stories, survival stories, war stories, buddy stories, incredibly well written books or if you have grandparents who were alive or fought in WWII, then this book has something for you.  I'd seen reviews when it was released around Christmas of last year so I immediately added my name to the request list at my local public library which means that I actually got to read Unbroken 6 months.  There was one brief moment where I thought I might win a copy in a raffle at work, but no.

I'd heard it was an interesting read and I have a grandfather who flew planes over the Pacific in WWII so I was excited to get a little glimpse into what his world might have been like (he passed away in 2007 and I so wish I could have asked him the questions I had after reading this book, but Grandma's been great).  I was immediately swept away by Hillenbrand's writing style.  She's so. stinking. good.  As previously mentioned, I've read a lot of books.  Some have had great writing and some have been... well, the Twilight series (I read all 4.  Seriously.  This writing is NOTHING like that writing).  This is really some of the best written literature I've read.  Hillenbrand is amazing at presenting an intimate and engaging portrait of the subject while at the same time letting you make your own judgments about what's going on.  This is very different from the book I picked up after Unbroken which had already beaten me over the head with it's thesis about Cleopatra: not a crazysex pot a la Elizabeth Taylor's portrayal, in case you were wondering.  I was so spoiled by Hillenbrand's biographical style that I sent Cleopatra back to the library to save until I had a little more distance from Hillenbrand.

Well, what's the book about?  Unbroken follows the path of American hero Louis Zamperini from hooligan to Olympic track star to B-24 bomber to "adrift on the Pacific for a crazy long time" survivor to "held in Japanese POW camps for a crazy long time" survivor to other stuff (that I'll leave a bit of mystery around so as not to blow the ending).  The book is gripping and exciting and was especially interesting to me because of the aforementioned pilot grandfather.  I learned that my Grandpa actually flew the B-29s that appear later in the book.  (I think is was B-29, I remember at least that is a B-not24).

For me, the hardest part of reading this book was my reaction to the Japanese and the prison camps.  Admittedly, almost no culture is going to shine when you're looking at how they treat prisoners, especially in a war, and Hillenbrand showed an admirable amount of restraint in never blatantly pegging the jailers as a bunch of sadistic meany-pants en masse, but still...there were some seriously bad dudes there and it made me very, very angry.  Angry enough that for a little while (I'll shamefully admit) I wanted to manufacture a reason to call back all the missionaries I assist who work in Japan (that's my job, helping people do missions in Asia, particularly in Japan).  But then God reminded me 1) my culture has it's own nasty history (and...um... present) with POWs, 2) Duh! That's exactly why they need the Gospel (and me, too, because honestly I'm no better than them), and 3) of this guy and his message (you should really, really listen to this if you're not familiar with Michael Oh - 12 minutes of your time).  So all of that was just a wee bit convicting.

I will say that Hillenbrand also made a point of mentioning the Japanese in the camps who risked their own lives to aid the POWs which is very powerful stuff.  Anyway, the whole story is fascinating - as is Hillenbrand herself who writes these books while frequently confined to her bed with chronic fatigue (or something like that).  I definitely recommend the author and the book!

Bumble Bees

At my office, we're very lucky to be able to throw delightful showers for weddings and babies.  These generally aren't your typical, run of the mill, workplace parties that have some colored napkins and streamers.  These are elaborate, hand-made decorations, fancy cakes, don't worry about eating lunch because there's plenty of food type showers.  Our department was up to bat in September.  And while I did want very much to celebrate the dear, sweet friend who was expecting a precious little bundle of joy, I maybe also somewhere in the back of my mind didn't want to get shown up by the other departments (4 babies at our office this summer, so there was a lot of pressure).

We decided on a super-cute bumble bee theme.  And a coworker who knows about this pinteresting business made a super cute board (or whatever it's called) of ideas (you can read her blog here)  and I decided that we absolutely must have a beehive cake with little bumble bees flitting about, so I volunteered to make it.  This might have been a little shocking to some coworkers as I'm generally more of "why make something super complicated that may taste great when you can make something super easy that we KNOW tastes great" kind of a girl.  But as I've watched a whole two seasons Buddy and the Cake Boss crew on my instant Netflix, I figured I could handle this.

So first I made the lemon pound cake.  I made a double batch of the recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook.  Umm...the first batch may have been the teensiest bit dry since I forgot to add the milk.  Whoops!  It made a sturdier base for all the bee hive business, right?  I used a regular cake round (8", 9" who knows?) and then I got crazy clever and pulled my "married people tupperware" (aka Pyrex) out of the cabinet to use as smaller rounds for the middle and top of the beehive.  The second batch was just going to be cupcakes to go around the cake (they had milk, so I just encouraged folks to eat those first, much easier to grab).

Here's a shot of my three layers after I started cutting and shaving them.  They may be the teensiest bit dry and dark because of that little milk issue.  Oh well.  Also, all photography is care of my phone, so you know, don't judge.  The fancy pyrex tupperware things worked awesome for the top two layers!!

Next I stacked and frosted (the frosting may be Betty Crocker from the can, but surely it's the same recipe as in her cookbook, right?).

Then I added some yellow food coloring and frosted the rest of the bee hive - ta da!!

Oh snap!  Apparently I used Pillsbury instead of Betty C!!  Caught on film (or digital camera thingy).  Must have been BOGO at Publix.

My next step was to beg and plead a crazy awesome coworker who knows all the fancy cooking things to maybe pretty, pretty please make little bumble cake balls.  She's totally the bomb and I would link to her blog here if she had one.

How awesome did that turn out!?!?  However, if I attempted this again, I would find a type of chocolate frosting to use where it wouldn't appear as if the entrance to the hive is melting off the face of the cake.

The whole shower was great, with lots of beautiful decorations and fun garden/bee themed items (note the EDIBLE dirt cake centerpieces in the back) and it was such a delight to shower a sweet friend with love during this time.

Please don't assume there will be many future step by step fancy baking things posts because this is probably the one time this decade I'll do something like this.  Do stay tuned for the super easy, crowd pleasing recipes I'll be sure to post, though!

Unforfeited Grace

The name of this blog comes from Jonah 2:8

Those who cling to worthless idols

forfeit the grace that could be theirs.

Yes, I do realize that "unforfeited" isn't (strictly speaking) a word.  But I believe in beginning as you mean to go on, at least when it suits my purposes, and so I've made up a word to try and make this verse blog-friendly (also, it seemed like a good idea to introduce you to the parentheses early on as I'm kind of addicted to them).

The book of Jonah has helped me through some of the darkest, hardest times in my life and this verse seems to sum up pretty well where I frequently miss the mark in my Christian walk as well as what I'm actually missing (GRACE) when I choose the things of this world to soothe/numb/distract myself instead of turning to Him and His Words for comfort.  I actively choose to forfeit grace each day.  Sadness.  

However, I'm hoping that naming my blog Unforfeited Grace will help me to remember what is actually at stake in decisions I make each day (um...and maybe help me to remember the grace that is extended to me even when I make the wrong choices).  And, hopefully, it will also help remind  me not to talk only about books, movies, recipes, and culture here.

But if you want to know what the blog will be about, it will be about a lot of things just mentioned: book reviews, movie reviews, favorite recipes, reactions to our culture, general things I think are cool, and hopefully some insights on what the Lord is doing in me and through me.

This blog will not include lots of pictures of little children (as I have none) or do it yourself home projects/decorating tips (as I basically do everything within my power to avoid those).  Caveat: it may occasionally include knitting projects as that's the one crafty thing I do.

I hope that it makes you laugh or makes you think or is at least worthwhile enough to kill a few minutes at work reading it.  Thanks so much for stopping by!