A New Flavor

Okay, tonight I am eating a bowl of Edy's "Checkered Flag Sundae" ice cream. Oh my. Here's what the container says about it:

"Vanilla Ice Cream Swirled with Thick Fudge and Chunks of Real Brownies"

Limited time only, and in honor of the honorable sport of NASCAR, I guess, so rev up your engines, friends and try this one out! (FYI, Harris Teeter has Edy's buy one get one free this week!)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have another bowl!

Sooo tired.

Today is my birthday... and our anniversary!

Due to circumstances beyond my control, and the fact that I'm exhausted, we're not out on our date. Instead Matt went to get dinner from Wolfgang Puck Express and a movie for us to watch. Sweet, yes. But all I want to do is sleep!!!

I've actually had two naps already today. I should be able to wake up a little bit to enjoy time with my hubby... hum... if only I had a diet coke...

But no! It's been an entire week! Today, I actually had a sip of a dc, thinking it would help me wake up a little during a graduation party. BUT... I had one of the new ones with Splenda... bleah! I couldn't even drink it. So, I think I can say it's been a week!

It's been a delightful day, all in all. I have a wonderful husband, precious children and good friends, great parents and fun brothers. I am tremendously blessed and so very thankful for my marriage, and my life. Fun to celebrate them both on the same day.

I found it:

The bottom of the laundry hamper... it's really there!

Wing Haven & Salmon for Dinner

We went to Wing Haven today with some friends. It was a delightful garden on three and a half acres hidden near uptown Charlotte! Look at the website for a treat, and if you're in town on one of the three days they're open, go for a visit. Our favorite part was the children's garden which included a "Peter Rabbit" garden in a white picket fenced-in corner for a very large rabbit. We came away in awe of the beauty of God's creation and with many fun ideas for our own garden (which is doing quite well, btw!), too.

We also came away tired and I got to take a much needed nap this afternoon. Thanks, kids!!

We had B's official birthday dinner tonight instead of last night because the salmon is now on sale at Harris Teeter for $2.88 a pound (that's down from $7.99 on his actual b'day!).

Salmon seems to have become the official birthday dinner of choice around here! Maybe we should call it:

Birthday Salmon
Place the fillets in a ziploc bag.
Mix together some olive oil (at least a couple tablespoons) and the juice of a couple lemons.
Add to that rosemary, salt and pepper.
Pour over the fish and marinate for 30 minutes.

Then broil on a rack in a foil lined pan for 20 minutes or so (um, until it's done!)

Serve on a bed of brown rice and baby spinach leaves. Squeeze some lemon over it and wow your family!

All the children love this. I have the actual recipe with specific measurements somewhere, but you get the idea! It originally came from Southern Living.

My sister-in-law, Rachel, sent another salmon recipe. I've never tried it, but it also sounds good! (Maybe we'll have it next week with the rest of the $2.88/ lb. that I bought!)

Roasted Salmon with Cilantro Pesto
Melts in your mouth!

Ingredients:
2 lbs salmon fillet or 4 (6-8 oz.) portions
1 garlic clove
1 c. cilantro leaves, loosely packed
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. lime juice
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2-3 ripe roma tomatoes, seeded and chop

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Make the pesto in a food processor or blender; process the garlic, cilantro, oil, and lime juice until creamy. Season to taste. Spray baking pan with oil and place the salmon skin-side down. Spread the pesto on the salmon, cover with the chopped tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Bake uncovered for 15 to 18 minutes.
(from the Fresh Market online)

Serves 4

Enjoy!

Oh, the merry, merry month of May

I just realized today that this is the last full week of May. Time is a flyn'!

Today is B's birthday, he's 7! Friday is the NCHE bookfair. Saturday is our anniversary (11 years!) and my birthday (yes, we have a date!!) and the RTS graduation.

We've had a piano recital and two violin recitals.
We've had a soccer end of season picnic.
We've been to my brother's graduation.
We've been to a golf tournament (that was fun b/c Matt and I went alone --thanks, again, Gayle!).
We've been to a birthday party.
We celebrated Mother's Day (with a delicious brunch and the announcement that I'll be a mother, again!).
We've said good-bye to our pastor, & to my parents who are in England for two weeks (yes, I am envious!).
We've done all the normal stuff, too.


And we've had special visitors I never even blogged about! Can you believe that I could let a visit from my sister-in-law (married to Matt's twin brother) and their six children go unblogged?!? Brave Rachel traveled with the children from Ohio and spent three days with us here. The 11 children had such fun together, mine were so sad when it was over. I think the best thing about the visit was the pirate birthday cake Rachel made for her son who turned 8 while they were here! She not only brought everything to make the cake, she brought party plates and things, decorations, costumes for everyone and the gifts. What a fun party! I sure hope the b-day boy enjoyed it b/c my boys are still wearing their bandanas like a pirate! Thanks, Rachel!!

For some reason, I can't get the pictures to post right now, so I'll add them when I can.

Now, what I really want to know is this: why do they call it "morning sickness?" It's 8:22 and I feel gross. Maybe it's better this way, I can just go to bed.

I think I'll do that right now. G'night!

Change may be good,

...but it sure makes me sad.

This was our first Sunday without a pastor. He and his family are moving north of town to plant a new church, a "daughter church" of a 250 year old church in that area. We are excited about the new work, we are supporting them in many ways, but we are sad. I was in the nursery during worship today so it wasn't as hard to be there as I thought it would be. You see this isn't just a pastor, but the whole family to whom who we are so sad to say good-bye. They also have five children, most of whom line up with ours, by age. My sweet 9 year old daughter and their 9 year old daughter are such good friends, have been since we moved here 4 1/2 years ago. And his wife is such a wise friend, whom I respect so very much. Especially now, willingly doing this with her husband, leaving her comfort zone, changing everything for such a very big unknown.

I won't go on anymore about how sad I am (just started crying again!). It was this pastor who taught me the phrase, "in God's providence." He actually means it when he says, "Lord willing" or "if the Lord wills it" before he talks of plans. So praise God for the new work He is doing and the way He is using this dear family. Lord please help me trust more completely and embrace more willingly Your perfect providence...

... even though I miss them already.

Beginner's 'Providence'

Update: two full days, no diet coke!!

Today I joined a unique group of people who get up really early on a Saturday to scrounge through other folks' discards and try to get as much as they can for as little as possible. Yes, I went "garage sale-ing."

And, boy, did I have a great time!!

Encouraged to "try it" by my friend who claims she's not addicted, I left the house before seven this morning, stopped by Starbucks for a tall Earl Grey and a chocolate cream cheese muffin (one thing I love about being pregnant, eating what I want!) and headed towards the street where I'd seen the sign.

Well, at 7:05 a.m. (even though the sign said 8-4) I pulled up to this house and since there already were other cars there, I parked. Grabbing my purse, I strolled down the driveway, passed piles of clothes (which really, I was not at all interested in), looked at tables full of toys and puzzles (of which really, we don't need any more), started to wonder why I was doing this at all, when suddenly I spied...

a box full of hardback Landmark history books!!

I glanced around to make sure no one else had noticed them, and then sat myself right down to claim my territory! I was close to tears, I was so happy. I asked the lady if I bought the whole box, would she make a deal... so she sold them all to me for $1 each!! (What I really wanted to ask was if she was sure she really wanted to sell them at all.) What a treasure! What a rush!

As I drove away, I understood.

Maybe I'll add a list of the books in that box sometime... 26 in all! But now that I have indulged the desire to gloat... I will go fold the 4 loads of laundry on the kitchen table so that we can eat breakfast in the morning, and so that I can enjoy my Sabbath rest.

It's over.

I ended a long-term relationship yesterday.

And today I am sad. Right about now I would be cracking open my second can of diet coke of the day and enjoying the sweet treat that was all mine. The sense of refreshment, a little pick-me-up at the point of the day when I just want to drop down.

Yesterday I finished the last can in the case and vowed not to buy anymore... it can't be good for me or the baby. I guess now it will be ice cold water and tea for me.

So, it's over and I'll be a healthier person for it... but I miss the indulgence!

Oh, wow,

This is really good.

edit: "This" was the Elisabeth Elliot devotion from Monday, May 16. I'll post it here, b/c the link didn't link to that particular one:

On Motherhood and Profanity
"OK now, which one of you clowns put that bag of M 'n' Ms in the grocery cart?" The mother looks harried.

Two boys, maybe five and seven, eye each other and race away toward the gumball machine near the supermarket door. There is an infant strapped to a plastic board on top of the groceries, and a two year old occupying the built-in child seat in the cart. The mother picks up the M 'n' M candy bag and starts toward the aisle to return it. The two year old screams and she relents, throws the bag in with the rest of her purchases, patiently waits her turn at the check-out, fishes five ten-dollar bills from her purse, receives her small change, and pushing the cart with the babies in it, herds the two boys through the rain to the station wagon in the parking lot.

I go with her in my mind's eye. Jump out in the rain. Open the garage door. Drive in. Close door. Babies, boys, bags into the house in how many trips? Phone rings. Answer phone, change baby, wipe muddy tracks from kitchen floor. Feed baby, put groceries away, hide M 'n' Ms, start peeling vegetables, take clothes out of dryer, stop fight between two older children, feed two year old, answer phone again, fold clothes, change baby, get boys to:
1) hang up coats,
2) stop teasing two year old,
3) set table.
Light oven, put baby to bed, stop fight, mop up two year old, put chicken in oven, answer phone, put away clothes, finish peeling vegetables, look peaceful and radiant--husband will be home soon.

I see this implacable succession of exigencies in my mind's eye. They come with being a mother. I also see the dreams she dreams sometimes--write a novel, agents call, reviews come in. TV interviews, autograph parties, promotional traveling, a movie contract--preposterous dreams. Try something a little more realistic. Cool modern office, beautiful clothes, make-up and hairdo that stay done all day. A secretarial job perhaps, nothing spectacular, but it's work that actually produces something that doesn't have to be done over at once. It's work that ends at five o'clock. It means something.

I know how it is. I have a mother. I am a mother. I've produced a mother (my daughter, Valerie, has a two year old and expects another child soon). I watched my own mother cope valiantly and efficiently with a brood of six. ("If one child takes all your time," she used to say, "six can't take any more.") We were--we still are--her life. I understand that. Of all the gifts of my life surely those of being somebody's wife and somebody's mother are among the greatest.

But I watch my daughter and other mothers of her generation and I see they have some strikes against them that we didn't have. They have been told insistently and quite persuasively that motherhood is a drag, that tradition is nonsense, that what people have always regarded as "women's work" is meaningless, that "roles" (a word we never bothered much about until a decade or so ago) are changing, that femininity is a mere matter of social conditioning, that it's time to innovate. If the first-grade readers show a picture of a woman driving a hook-and-ladder and a man doing a nurse's job, see what happens to the conditioning. Abolish the stereotypes and we can abolish the myths of masculinity and femininity.

I hear this sort of claptrap, and young mothers often come to me troubled because they can't answer the arguments logically or theologically. They feel, deep in their bones, that there is something terribly twisted about the whole thing but they can't put their finger on what it is.
I think I know what it is. Profanity. Not swearing. I'm not talking about breaking the Third Commandment. I'm talking about treating as meaningless that which is freighted with meaning. Treating as common that which is hallowed. Regarding as a mere triviality what is really a divine design. Profanity is failure to see the inner mystery.

When women--sometimes well-meaning, earnest, truth seeking ones say "Get out of the house and do something creative, find something meaningful, something with more direct access to reality," it is a dead giveaway that they have missed the deepest definition of creation, of meaning, of reality. And when you start seeing the world as opaque, that is, as an end in itself instead of as transparent, when you ignore the Other World where this one ultimately finds its meaning, of course housekeeping (and any other kind of work if you do it long enough) becomes tedious and empty.

But what have buying groceries, changing diapers and peeling vegetables got to do with creativity? Aren't those the very things that keep us from it? Isn't it that kind of drudgery that keeps us in bondage? It's insipid and confining, it's what one conspicuous feminist called "a life of idiotic ritual, full of forebodings and failure." To her I would answer ritual, yes. Idiotic, no, not to the Christian--for although we do the same things anybody else does, and we do them over and over in the same way, the ordinary transactions of everyday life are the very means of transfiguration. It is the common stuff of this world which, because of the Word's having been "made flesh," is shot through with meaning, with charity, with the glory of God.

But this is what we so easily forget. Men as well as women have listened to those quasi-rational claims, have failed to see the fatal fallacy, and have capitulated. Words like personhood, liberation, fulfillment and equality have had a convincing ring and we have not questioned their popular definitions or turned on them the searchlight of Scripture or even of our common sense. We have meekly agreed that the kitchen sink is an obstacle instead of an altar, and we have obediently carried on our shoulders the chips these reductionists have told us to carry.

This is what I mean by profanity. We have forgotten the mystery, the dimension of glory. It was Mary herself who showed it to us so plainly. By the offering up of her physical body to become the God-bearer, she transfigured for all mothers, for all time, the meaning of motherhood. She cradled, fed and bathed her baby--who was very God of very God--so that when we cradle, feed and bathe ours we may see beyond that simple task to the God who in love and humility "dwelt among us and we beheld his glory."

Those who focus only on the drabness of the supermarket, or on the onions or the diapers themselves, haven't an inkling of the mystery that is at stake here, the mystery revealed in the birth of that Baby and consummated on the Cross: my life for yours.

The routines of housework and of mothering may be seen as a kind of death, and it is appropriate that they should be, for they offer the chance, day after day, to lay down one's life for others. Then they are no longer routines. By being done with love and offered up to God with praise, they are thereby hallowed as the vessels of the tabernacle were hallowed--not because they were different from other vessels in quality or function, but because they were offered to God. A mother's part in sustaining the life of her children and making it pleasant and comfortable is no triviality. It calls for self-sacrifice and humility, but it is the route, as was the humiliation of Jesus, to glory.

To modern mothers I would say "Let Christ himself be your example as to what your attitude should be. For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his prerogatives as God's equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as a mortal man. And, having become man, he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, even to the extent of dying, and the death he died was the death of a common criminal. That is why God has now lifted him so high. . ." (Phil. 2:5-11 Phillips).

It is a spiritual principle as far removed from what the world tells us as heaven is removed from hell: If you are willing to lose your life, you'll find it. It is the principle expressed by John Keble in 1822:
If on our daily course our mind
Be set to hallow all we find,
New treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.

Drum Roll, Please...

We have an announcement to make:

Baby #6 is on the way!

Due January, 2006 (although Matt is hoping this one will be early so we'll get the child tax credit this year...), this new little one already has us all excited and guessing about boy or girl and talking about names, and planning bedrooms...

I am humbled and honored that God has chosen to bless our family with so many sweet ones. Thankfully He promises never to leave me or forsake me, 'cause I'm really gonna need Him now (not like I didn't before, but ya know, the thought of being Mama to so many little ones kinda makes my head spin!).

Not again!

Words no mother likes to hear when sitting at a stoplight waiting to turn left:

"Yikes, Mom! The frog just jumped off my lap... I think he's under your chair!"

(We're hoping he hopped out when we parked in the driveway and left all the doors open....)



Wierd creatures caught by my (almost 7 year old) son in the past month:

• a garter snake (H caught the other one) --named Sneaky and Slinky
• slugs
• a big click beetle -- named Pincher
• a salamander -- named Sticky
• today's frog -- named Toad