Eating a nutrient-packed peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, and feeling the baby kick, I sit here.
Homeschooling is happening around me and I'm just taking a break to check email and xanga stuff. My daughter does math behind me at the kitchen table. She has just felt her baby brother kick her through my tummy for the first time and her excitement tears her away from her math problems. "I just felt the baby, I just felt the baby!" she shrieks excitedly. "We're going to have a baby!" "Yes, yes," I agree, "But let's talk more about that later. Do your school."
My son is downstairs doing his math lesson. We just had a neat discussion about the new baby coming and how that works with "sharing love." "So, with me and my sister, we each have 100% love," he mused. "But with the baby coming..." he wondered, trying to make sense of the equation I had told them earlier that just said that when new kids come, it's not like the parental love for the kids is portioned out in smaller and smaller quantities. (Like 100 divided by three now instead of two.) Nope, I assured them. It's really cool because you get a whole new portion of love for that new one that doesn't delve into the other kids' love portions. It's like they each have their own 100%--both he and his sister have their own 100%. When their brother comes, a whole new 100% is started, not taking any of their own. We stood and looked at the cute picture of his new South Korean nephew. "When Jack came, did that take away any of the love you had for your cousins K or R?" Grinning at the adorable picture of his round little cousin, my son said "No!", and his eyes even glistened slightly with love for his cousins. "It's just like that," I concluded. We stood and stared at Jack's cute chubby tummy and plump arms in the photo. My daughter had come to join us in that discussion in our living room. "Don't you just want to kiss that face?" I asked. We laughed and agreed.
Hugging, we all went back to our work.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Spring Blitz and Ethiopian Doro Wat
It is quiet in my house now, and we are recovering from a busy but fun weekend. Fresh cookies are on the stove, and the kids and I just grabbed two each. Mmm, warm chocolate chip cookies. (They are from a pre-made mix, but still wonderful when hot from the oven.)
This weekend was Spring Blitz, the senior high retreat in a northern city. It was such a great weekend. We had 28 of us there, and had great times of worship, good messages, fun hotel room Hot Seat bonding times, and awesome Holy Spirit movings in people's lives! It was so moving to see and experience it. Peggy and Terry, thanks for watching J & M! Sorry about the delay.
Today I worked, enjoying glimpses of the big soft flakes of snow whenever I passed a doorway or window. It's beautiful! Then Mark and I took a nap this afternoon, catching up on Blitz sleep. This evening I made an easy Ethiopian dish from a recipe I found and used last week. It's a new form of the Doro Wat, a common Ethiopian chicken "stew" or sauce that they eat with injera bread. Here's the recipe, if you are interested.
Brown 1 large onion, getting it quite brown.
Add:
3 oz oil
1/2 teas. Bere Bere powder
1/2 teas. black pepper
1 tbs fresh minced ginger
Blend them into the onions, Add 1 cup water. Stir.
Earlier, while the onions were browning, put raw cut up pieces of chicken (3 lbs) into a bowl of 1/4 cup lemon juice and 2 cups water to marinate for at least 10 mins.
Later, drain the water from each handful of chicken pieces, dropping the chicken into the simmering onion sauce. Stir through, then cover and simmer over low heat until the chicken is cooked and tender.
Add more water if necessary to bring to stew texture or add flour to thicken. (I usually had to thicken slightly.)
Optional: add 8 hard boiled peeled eggs. I didn't actually have eggs in the house each time, so I did without the eggs. Today, I added about 1 cup of cooked, almost mashed red dal lentils into it to thicken it. Delicious! It serves our family of 4, with some leftover for my lunch tomorrow at work! :)
The kids flew outside just now to build Calvin and Hobbes'-inspired snowmen--probably some of the last snow of the season! I dissuaded them from having the snowmen block our cars into the driveway. They settled for having the snowmen march up our front steps. They play happily in the darkening twilight.
Mark is at a VBS meeting tonight and then he'll have a Men's Bible study here tonight at 8:30.I will hide away in the bedroom then to give them privacy and try to clean my room.
How are you? What is new in your life?
This weekend was Spring Blitz, the senior high retreat in a northern city. It was such a great weekend. We had 28 of us there, and had great times of worship, good messages, fun hotel room Hot Seat bonding times, and awesome Holy Spirit movings in people's lives! It was so moving to see and experience it. Peggy and Terry, thanks for watching J & M! Sorry about the delay.
Today I worked, enjoying glimpses of the big soft flakes of snow whenever I passed a doorway or window. It's beautiful! Then Mark and I took a nap this afternoon, catching up on Blitz sleep. This evening I made an easy Ethiopian dish from a recipe I found and used last week. It's a new form of the Doro Wat, a common Ethiopian chicken "stew" or sauce that they eat with injera bread. Here's the recipe, if you are interested.
Brown 1 large onion, getting it quite brown.
Add:
3 oz oil
1/2 teas. Bere Bere powder
1/2 teas. black pepper
1 tbs fresh minced ginger
Blend them into the onions, Add 1 cup water. Stir.
Earlier, while the onions were browning, put raw cut up pieces of chicken (3 lbs) into a bowl of 1/4 cup lemon juice and 2 cups water to marinate for at least 10 mins.
Later, drain the water from each handful of chicken pieces, dropping the chicken into the simmering onion sauce. Stir through, then cover and simmer over low heat until the chicken is cooked and tender.
Add more water if necessary to bring to stew texture or add flour to thicken. (I usually had to thicken slightly.)
Optional: add 8 hard boiled peeled eggs. I didn't actually have eggs in the house each time, so I did without the eggs. Today, I added about 1 cup of cooked, almost mashed red dal lentils into it to thicken it. Delicious! It serves our family of 4, with some leftover for my lunch tomorrow at work! :)
The kids flew outside just now to build Calvin and Hobbes'-inspired snowmen--probably some of the last snow of the season! I dissuaded them from having the snowmen block our cars into the driveway. They settled for having the snowmen march up our front steps. They play happily in the darkening twilight.
Mark is at a VBS meeting tonight and then he'll have a Men's Bible study here tonight at 8:30.I will hide away in the bedroom then to give them privacy and try to clean my room.
How are you? What is new in your life?
Monday, March 10, 2008
K, UK, T-TAP
K,
UK,
T-TAP.
My 9 year old daughter rattles these letters off triumphantly. My family and I have been working to memorize various country locations and names in order. Can you figure out where these are and what they mean? There is a map of them in my bathroom right now, replacing the Civil War battles map that was there for a few months earlier. We love maps, languages and cultures.
One fun game we like to do during meal times is to stare at the world map under our plates on the kitchen table and quiz each other on countries. "Who can find Yemen?" "Good job... okay, who can find Indonesia?" "Yep, good, now, find Brazil!" We take turns and have fun choosing countries. Some of them are harder to find. At times the ones who can read faster will help the others by hinting, "It's a green country on the map."
I spent some time on the internet this evening looking up boy names' meanings. Some of these were names you gave us! :) Elijah means "My God is the Lord." Judah/Jude means "praise, thanks." Nora called from Montana to tell me the name Hosea. That means "to deliver." Daniel means "God is my judge." Micah means "who is similar?" Katelyn, what does Jayden mean again? I couldn't find its meaning online. Levi is a nice name, but I couldn't find its meaning very well. Anyone know? Luke is nice. We like Elijah at this moment but are still pondering names.
Do you know something that baffles me and amazes me? The baby grew four inches last week! That is incredible and the only time in life when a person grows that much in one week, probably. Last week he went from 6.5 inches to 10.5 inches. Isn't that wild?! It's odd to picture a 10 inch long baby inside me right now. Knowing he can hear us, we say good night to him, and try out new names aloud.
So, have you figured out where K, UK, TTAP is? 100 points for those who do! :) I'll give the answer soon.
UK,
T-TAP.
My 9 year old daughter rattles these letters off triumphantly. My family and I have been working to memorize various country locations and names in order. Can you figure out where these are and what they mean? There is a map of them in my bathroom right now, replacing the Civil War battles map that was there for a few months earlier. We love maps, languages and cultures.
One fun game we like to do during meal times is to stare at the world map under our plates on the kitchen table and quiz each other on countries. "Who can find Yemen?" "Good job... okay, who can find Indonesia?" "Yep, good, now, find Brazil!" We take turns and have fun choosing countries. Some of them are harder to find. At times the ones who can read faster will help the others by hinting, "It's a green country on the map."
I spent some time on the internet this evening looking up boy names' meanings. Some of these were names you gave us! :) Elijah means "My God is the Lord." Judah/Jude means "praise, thanks." Nora called from Montana to tell me the name Hosea. That means "to deliver." Daniel means "God is my judge." Micah means "who is similar?" Katelyn, what does Jayden mean again? I couldn't find its meaning online. Levi is a nice name, but I couldn't find its meaning very well. Anyone know? Luke is nice. We like Elijah at this moment but are still pondering names.
Do you know something that baffles me and amazes me? The baby grew four inches last week! That is incredible and the only time in life when a person grows that much in one week, probably. Last week he went from 6.5 inches to 10.5 inches. Isn't that wild?! It's odd to picture a 10 inch long baby inside me right now. Knowing he can hear us, we say good night to him, and try out new names aloud.
So, have you figured out where K, UK, TTAP is? 100 points for those who do! :) I'll give the answer soon.
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