Monday the in-laws came for dinner, and we also had a couple over who met at our wedding as he was a groomsman and she was a bridesmaid.... and now they're talking marriage too! Dad-in-law had made a beautiful 1st Anniversary gift for us - one of the roses from our wedding ceremony centerpieces dried and arranged in some fabric I had used as decoration and all put tastefully in a shadow-box! And a signed copy of the picture of Kyle and I and Mr. President Jimmy Carter and Rosalyn Carter with a personal message from the former president! So that was pretty cool. Tuesday we babysat for the youth minister's wife. Youth Minister has been in Iowa for two weeks for military training, and the poor mama was going stir crazy in the house with a 4 year old and a 3 month old. So we entertained the kiddo's while she went and grocery shopped and enjoyed the peace and quiet. After that we came home and tried to get the house clean (home for 2 days and already the kitchen is trashed!) and put away stuff from our trip. We went to some neat spice stores and international grocery stores while we were in Florida, and I had a LOT to put away! The good news is that I have at least a year's supply of Cardamom, Sumac, Paprika, Basmati Rice, and hot sauce. And at least two weeks worth of Ahmad Cardamom tea!! (can ya tell I like Cardamom? So there's the update. We also have had dinner at two other friend's houses in the meantime, have seen "Austenland" (which, for those of us who grew up on Jane Austen is H.I.L.A.R.I.O.U.S!!!! - if you don't mind a little crassness here and there; but it is a good satire commentary on our times vs. the Regency era and how they are similar/different) done some stuff around the church, and are getting ready for another quick trip up to Chicago to see my dear little Great-Grandma who is 98. Then Kyle starts his new job and we buckle down and start acting like boring responsible adults again with their nose to the grindstone. Ha yeah right. The thing I love about the life God's given me and the husband God has blessed me with and the calling He's put in front of us is that: Even in the mundane, life is an adventure! There is beauty in the ordinary and joy in the routine, and the adventures make us treasure the regular and visa verse!
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The best part of the garden is how many people we're able to bless with it. We've given veggies to several friends who are really struggling financially right now. In addition to all the glorious outside work, I've been trying to get the house clean. I've deep cleaned the bathroom and living room (and discovered that our front windows are apparently where june bugs and flies go to die) and after this blog post is finished and I scarf down some food am gonna deep clean the dining room. The kitchen I have tried my best to deep clean but we have this awful habit of eating - and that keeps messing it up. The whole 'clean as you go' thing only works when the both of us aren't dashing about like mad, trying to cram as much life into the day as possible. Its wonderful and adventuresome, but the poor house suffers. We also got my office cleaned of all VBS stuff and switched my office to a different, smaller room in the building. Hopefully that will cut down on people mistaking my office for a storage closet or a place to sort all the daycare's leftovers. We'll see though - I remain skeptical. I can't tell you how excited I am to be getting ready for a VACATION! We're going to Kyle's family reunion in Alabama first, and then going on to Florida for our FIRST ANNIVERSARY EVER!!! I'm gonna take him to Venice, where my Grandma always used to take me, my sister and my cousin when we were kids. Did I say I was excited? I can't wait to feel the salty waves swishing the sand between my toes!! We had yet ANOTHER event at church this last week. I tell ya, I see the fruit of such things. There's definite benefits to it. Things happen as a result. But they are EXHAUSTING! The good news with this event was that the drama was very minimal and the spiritual warfare was not nearly intense, and we still had some good fruit. However all of last week was pretty much consumed with purchasing door prizes, coordinating with hostesses, cooking, cleaning off the china, and trying not to panic when a few people had to back out of responsibilities due to various reasons. And then it hit me: I forgot to polish my silver sugar and creamer service! It was late Friday afternoon when it hit me, and I was NOT about to go BACK to the store for the billionth time to get some silver polish. And I had no idea how much such things cost. Either I could get it for a song or have to pledge my first child, and I wasn't in the mood to find out. So I did the only rational thing a semi-crunchy homeschool graduate woman could do: I grabbed the bottle of Ketchup from the refrigerator, a handful of paper towels and the silver and headed to the porch. My husband saw me out of the corner of his eye and started laughing. "What are you DOING?" he asked, with a hint of, 'The stress has finally gotten to her. My wife has just snapped.' in his voice. "I saw it on Lydia's Blog. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing!" I called over my shoulder. (to read her article on the matter, click here) I will say that I think Lydia's experience was probably more enjoyable, because she had two toddlers quite willing to do her ketchupy bidding. I however, do NOT like gooey things on my fingers. Like, I wash my hands at least five times whenever kneading dough because I can't stand the dry yet sticky gooeyness on my fingers. Yeah I know. I'm a weird wimp. But back to the ketchup polish. It also requires a good deal of scrubbing and buffing with the paper towel, and for some reason I had thought that I could just squirt the ketchup onto the silver, let it sit for a half hour, and then just wipe the red goo away to reveal silvery glossiness. No such luck. I had to scrub and buff and scrub and buff. The tarnish eventually wore off to reveal some shiny silver, but not quick enough for my over-busy, somewhat impatient self. I finally squirted some vinegar into a small bowl and splashed some salt in with it to finish up the polishing. The trouble with that is I had to have the right proportion of vinegar to salt so that I wouldn't scratch the silver. (at that point I was thinking, 'You know, self, it would have been soooooo much simpler to just go to the store and pick up some silver polish! But oh no, we had to take out our stress on all of our cooking supplies and a poor worn out set of silver!') The good news is that all the experimenting was non-toxic and au natural. And used up some ready-to-hit-their-expiration-date items in my fridge and pantry. It would have helped if I had been willing to dedicate 15 minutes to pure buffing of the ketchup like Lydia prescribed, but I was stressed so my ADD was kicking in full swing. And the ladies sitting at my tea table didn't seem to notice or care, so it really didn't matter anyway! At some point when I have nothing to do and am bored (HA!) I'll probably pull out whats left of the ketchup and give it another go as there are still some spots that need polishing. However I was quite pleased with the result irregardless: The Tea Party went really well also. Several ladies came up and thanked me for putting it together, which is a definite FIRST. I honestly thought it was going to be a disaster, but it all ran smoothly. We had cool door prizes, our guest speaker moved most of the ladies to tears with her powerful testimony, the food was delicious and it looked like everyone had nice conversations while they sipped their tea. One little wizened lady (who has kept me sane throughout most of the events at this church and threatened to spank me if I canceled this one) said as we were cleaning up, "Well, this was fun. Lets do another one in the fall. But we should decorate with hay bales and forget all this china stuff!" Heehee. Well.. maybe... but if we do a hoedown then we'll have to invite the guys!
Springtime in Kentucky = thunderstorms and a tornado here and there. And I ALWAYS forget that each spring!!! Yesterday I took the kids on a field trip to the local Crisis Pregnancy Center. Two RSVP'd, and seven more called an hour before we were supposed to leave - AND needed rides from their house to the church. Once I was done figuring all that out, one of the girls who RSVP'd called to say she was on her way. She wanted to be early so we could hang out. All this probably wouldn't have made it to the Crisis level. However, I weaned myself off of the narcotic pain killer a few days ago, was behind on my Ibuprofin dose AND I'd been up til 3 am the night before due to the barometric pressure from the two massive thunderstorm systems coming through. *sigh* It all went well once I figured it out. However, I took my stress out on my hair with a curling iron. Think 80's. The day redeemed itself when I drove home after carting all the children back to their various abodes and discovered the UPS truck arriving just ahead of me with a HUGE box of plants I'd ordered two months ago. Spent the next 3 hours happily covering myself with mud, getting dirt under my fingernails, mixing fertilizer with potting soil and the red clay that surrounds my house and praying these plants lived and bloomed. And then went to bed, where I tossed and turned because of MORE barometric pressure. My husband convinced me to take another narcotic pill, which I did, and then got very loopy telling him all about a blackberry trellis. And then I dreamed one of my good friends fell in love with a G. I . Joe toy who came to life and was from Terminator. So today I have done nothing so far besides browse pinterest, youtube, and facebook. The kitchen is a mess, the dining room table needs help, my bedroom does too, and the living room needs tidied. Lest you think I am just some suzie-homemaker who keeps her house pristine and knits and whistles and has it all together. Hopefully you don't think that with all my posts starting with the time and the fact that I'm still in my pajamas, but a good disclaimer is always healthy. Off to wash dishes... altho today I think I either need a nap or a 7:30 bedtime. It is 10:30 am. So far, I am still in my pajama's, but I've read Hans Christian Anderson's "Snow Queen," made the bed, taken all meds, and drank tea. Breakfast is still pending. I have this problem. I'll have a SUPER duper productive day (yesterday) in which I cook, clean, get projects for work done, have meetings, etc. and so forth. Then I have a super lazy day. That would be today. Part of the joys of being a newlywed with no children and a job that allows you some flexibility. But today I can't afford that... today I have to be productive two days in a row!! Today I have to get the kitchen clean, get more groceries, make enough decent food to last my husband the next few days, and smoothie-ify a bunch of fruit and kefir so it can be easily whisked from the freezer and consumed. Then I have to get my lesson for tonight prepared, and then probably come back and clean up whatever mess I've made in the kitchen. Then go back to the church to teach the hooligans about missionaries, and try to have a strategy in place for when one of them melts down about something that has caused a crisis in their preteen world. I'm going to get my wisdom teeth removed tomorrow. Thats why I have to get all this stuff done TODAY. I'm not scared about the surgery itself (although it did dawn on me last night that I will be going under full anesthesia for the first time, and that was a weird thought). I'm scared about how I'm going to react to all the medication. My body doesn't do well with foreign chemicals. I'm fairly confident I will be higher than a kite for the next few days. Either that or swollen and miserable. The concept of only consuming liquids for a few days was a little disappointing, but I've wanted to change my diet and get back into shape and lose some weight anyway, so I figured I'd just use this opportunity to make super healthy shakes and jump start the diet change. However that will probably shock my system as it goes into a massive detoxification process too... As all these conflicting thoughts and musings swirl about my brain, I've decided upon the cowardly course of action: Procrastination. :-) Nope nope nope. Get up, self! Grab trial and challenge by the horns! Grr. Off I go. You probably won't be hearing from me for at least a week... aufweidersein! |
AuthorA normal woman learning to serve an Extraordinary Lord in Ordinary ways, and watching Him turn it into Amazing Grace! © 2014-2015 Rachel Hester. All rights reserved. Archives
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