Jeremiah 15:16

Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of hosts.  Jeremiah 15:16

This year it was Timothy's year to pick the birthday cake for his birthday.  Since he and Christopher share a birthday, we switch between choosing a birthday cake and choosing the birthday meal every year so that they both get a chance to choose something and I don't have to make two cakes. 

Timothy, Mr. Creative, decided that this year he wanted a Holy Bible birthday cake.  He gave me specific instructions on how it should be made, what color it had to be (he insisted on black and I kept hinting that brown would be just fine), there needed to be a red bookmark with pointy ends and the pages needed to be gold.  Oh yeah.  And it HAD to say Holy Bible on it.

Yikes.  How in the world could I do a cake like this?!  I'm so thankful for my friend, Barb, who I happened to be telling about this cake that I had to make and she said, "I have an idea.  Come over on Wednesday."  That's when Barb introduced me to fondant!  WooHoo!  She was amazing!  She had fantastic ideas of how to make the pages gold (yellow food paint with food grade glitter mixed in and then brushed onto white fondant), she had cut out letters for Holy Bible, she designed the red bookmark with pointy ends and made the beautiful black cover.  In real life, it looked just like Grandpa's well-loved Bible!  Did she do a fantastic job on this cake or what?!



Barb and her finished work of art!



When the kids got home from school that day, they all hovered around the cake and one of the after-school kids said, "Holly Bibble?  Who's that?"  While I held back a giggle, Timothy ran over to the book shelf and pulled out his Bible and replied, "It's Holy Bible!  Have you ever seen a real one?  You can look up verses in here and everything!" and then he proceeded to look up some verses that he's memorized and told the kids that they can read this Bible any time they wanted because we have lots of them!  What a witness he was.  What a blessing.



Timothy's joy was undeniable!



I made tabs with their names and ages.


We did enjoy eating God's word in the form of a cake and we're so thankful for our sweet birthday boys, Timothy - 7 and Christopher - 5.

Maybe Mothers Shouldn't Multi-Task

Seriously, I'm thinking after today that maybe mothers should NOT try to multi-task.  Well, maybe I should just be speaking to myself.  Ever have one of those days, moms?  (Please agree with me here!)

I may as well just jump right in and tell you why I'm saying this.  No need to beat around the bush (since it burned up at McDonald's anyway.  Hahaha!  Ok.  It's late at night and my humor is lacking.) so I'll just tell you what happened.

This afternoon I decided to freeze corn so I got all my supplies ready, had the water on to boil and started filling the kitchen sink with cold water to stop the blanching once the corn was done.  I couldn't remember how long I was supposed to blanch the corn, so I came over to the computer and looked up pickyourown.org to find out how long I should keep it boiling.  (By the way, this site is really good for telling you where to find pick your own produce as well as telling you how to preserve just about anything!  Check it out sometime, when you're not doing anything else.)

As I was sitting there reading how to freeze corn and getting totally sidetracked by all the pictures and links and suggestions, I remember thinking once that I should turn off the water at the sink.  Being distracted by the discussion on enzymes and blanching, that thought of the water didn't cross my mind again.  In the back of my mind, however, I heard a fountain of sorts, you know, running water in a continuous stream that is quite soothing - uh - when it's out in nature ... but not when you realize that it is coming from your kitchen sink and is now flowing across your kitchen floor!!  Oh boy!  Did I ever jump up fast!  Water was absolutely everywhere!  I've never, ever in my life seen a kitchen sink overflow, but I'll tell you right now, I wish that I could still say that.

Christopher, my little helper, ran to get the mop and did a great job (for an almost five year old) of cleaning it up.  There was way too much water, though, and both of us worked and worked at it to keep the water from going much further.  What a disaster.  What a mess!  All because I was trying to do more than one thing at a time.

And by the way, I never did find out how long I was supposed to blanch the corn because by that point, those cobs had been boiling away for quite some time!  I froze it anyway, so we'll see if it really makes a difference in the long run.

Earthquakes and Fires

I heard that there was an earthquake today.  Some people around here said that they felt it, even though the epicenter was in Virginia.  Supposedly the ground was swaying a bit here and people felt "wobbly" for a few seconds. 

I was trying to figure out why I didn't feel anything.  Nothing.  Well, maybe I did, but not really. I'm not sure.  We were at McDonald's for an after-blueberry-picking treat with Auntie Jo and as we were sitting there I heard a terrible rumbling sound and the ground was shaking but that was from the guy in the front of the store who was using a jackhammer to rip up the old sidewalk.  The thought briefly crossed my mind (seriously!) as I watched a girl pull through the drive-thru that I wonder if she thought that was an earthquake.  Hahaha, my tired mind thought.  Why would anyone think there would be an earthquake around here?!

We finished our ice cream cones and headed out to the van.  As I opened my door to get in, a thin trail of smoke in the mulch of the flowerbed next to me caught my eye.  I stuck my foot out and tried to stamp it out, thinking that some irresponsible customer must have thrown a cigarette butt in the flowers.  The funny thing was the every place that I tapped my shoe, another blackened and burned spot appeared.  I figured that I should probably warn the employees inside that there was something smoldering outside so I went in and told the teenagers behind the counter that there was smoke coming from the flowerbeds.  (Those oblivious teenagers, I thought.  They won't take me seriously.) 

I went back out to the van and an older manager came out to check it out.  She stamped it a bit and then said, "Thanks.  We'll keep an eye on it." and went back inside.  I finished buckling in the kids and turned around to see a modern day version of Moses' burning bush next to me!  The whole thing was in flames now!  The mulch, the flowers, and a bush!  Smoke was billowing up in the air and into the van.

I went running in, pushing past the long line of people and shouted, "There is a fire out in the flowerbed!  You need to get it out!"  The teenagers stared at me blank-faced and then repeated, "There's a fire in the flowerbeds" to which the manager shouted from the drive-thru window area, "I know.  I told her I'd keep an eye on it."  I shouted again (across the whole restaurant), "NO!  THERE IS A FIRE IN THE FLOWERBEDS!  The whole thing is on fire!"  They really didn't seem to care, so I went back out, along with a few more customers who could see the evidence and watched as the area was totally going up in flames.  A man ran to his truck and pulled out a huge fire extinguisher and started to blast the fire when the manager came out with, get this, a cup of water to pour on the fire! Another employee came out chowing down on her McChicken Wrap and a third stood there and said, "Wow.  There really IS a fire."  Well, DUH!  Do you think I'd go running in there shouting like a maniac that there was a fire out there if it wasn't true?! 

By this time, a few more customers had grabbed fire extinguishers from their vehicles and were spraying the whole thing down while the manager waited until they had finished and then she bravely walked over and dumped her little cup of water in the middle of the smoke. POOF! By this point, Jo and I were no longer sympathetic, but laughing with great amusement at this manager.  This McDonald's had just been remodeled and the finishing touches were being made.  They spent a pretty penny on this place and she wanted to put out a flowerbed fire with a little cup of water.  We pulled out and backed away and she impishly glanced at me and mouthed, "Thanks."  No problem, Ma'am, but the next time someone yells to you that there is a fire in front of your new store, you should probably take it seriously.

And so sometime in the middle of all that ruckus, there was an earthquake.  And I missed it.  Sigh.

And Now ... the Rest of the Story

You don't think that the incident we had with the carrier on the way home from Virginia was the end of the story, do you? Well, read on, dear friends. Read on.

Fred and I left the carrier on top of the van because we're going to the cottage this weekend for a week and we decided to keep it on instead of taking it on and off. WELL......I was coming back home from a visit with my friend Jenny today when all of a sudden I heard flapping around on top and saw the straps that were once securely tucked inside the carrier now flapping behind me. A transport truck was flashing it's lights at me so I pulled over on the 401 as soon as I could and saw that the other lock had now lifted from it's secure position and the straps that were stored INSIDE were now hanging outside and nothing was secure anymore.

I climbed up and tried to pull the straps back into place to maybe secure it again when a truck stopped in front of me. I heard the beeping of it backing up and thought, "This is the last thing that I need right now - some trucker telling me what to do and trying to 'help' me." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guy get out of his truck and run over to me. Can you believe, it was Chris, Jenny's husband!! He had seen me on the side of the road and thought, Look at that. Someone else is having problems with their carrier (because he had read my blog last night and laughed about it, so said Jenny), I'd better stop. Once he stopped, he saw that it was ME! How amazing that God allowed HIM to be on the 401 at that exact moment! Chris climbed right up there and buckled that thing down like it was no big deal at all.  I couldn't have gotten it strapped up without him there. What an amazing blessing to have him on that 401, see me, and then stop just when I needed it.!!  Thank you, Lord!

Now, I hope that this really is the end of the story.
Anyone want a car carrier?

Well, THAT Was A New Experience!

Saturday morning our family left the Eastern Mennonite University campus in Harrisonburg, Virginia and headed north on 81 toward our afternoon destination of Syracuse, New York.  Fred and I were recapping our week at Eastern Camp and had only gone about 15 or 20 miles when we heard a whump - THUMP on the top of the van.  I didn't recognize the sound, so I glanced behind us to see if we had hit something on the highway.  OH NO!!!!  What I saw sure surprised me and we all started shouting as Fred tried to find a place to safely pull over.  Somehow our car top carrier had opened up and our clothes were ALL over the road!  I still have visions of cars and semis driving over our clothes, dragging some of them down the road and blowing others into the ditches.  Unfortunately, Christopher also saw his sock get blown down the road and run over by several cars. 

When we were finally able to pull over, we noticed two cars in both northbound lanes stop and the traffic backed up behind them.  As we backed up, the kind people in those vehicles had jumped out and were gathering up our stuff.  One lady ran over to me with a handful of my dirty underwear, handed it to me and we both just burst out laughing at the awkwardness of that brief moment! 

As Fred was running across the lanes gathering up as much as he could and the other helpful strangers did their grab-and-runs, we noticed a van had stopped ahead of us and was backing up across the now-empty lanes to our side of the road.  I glanced up and recognized the license plate of our friends Gary and Darlene who had left Camp later than they had hoped - but designed perfectly by God to be on that long stretch of highway at exactly the time we needed them!  Gary helped Fred fix the carrier enough to keep temporarily until we could get to an exit to buy a bungee cord or strap to tie around the carrier and I got to decompress for a few moments with Darlene as we talked about how embarrassing this was, yet how thankful we were that it was just a few garbage bags of dirty laundry that had exploded all over the road.

We think that what happened was that a burst of air had somehow managed to get between the top and bottom lids of the carrier and just sucked it open, ripping the locks and clamps off of their "secured" positions.  It must have just been a freak thing because Fred said that he had double checked the security before we left the parking lot.  All I know is that it was a shock and we're thankful that God protected us through that whole ordeal!

Poor Christopher, though.  He was so traumatized by that sock that he saw that he wept and wept for about 15 minutes straight until he finally fell into an exhausted sleep.  Timothy wanted to know when we would go back to pick up the rest of the items that were in the ditch on the other side of the road and we had to convince him that it was ok that they were left there and that we would never see them again.  We did our best to reassure the boys that we can replace socks and Sunday shirts and underwear, but we could never replace Daddy if it had been him or Mommy if it had been me.  We had so much to be thankful for since it was ONLY dirty clothes and not someone in our family or another person. 

The rest of our trip was quite uneventful, but we will never forget that experience, that's for sure!  It also didn't help that it was another hot and humid day in Virginia.  Running around on hot asphalt with your adrenaline pumping at extreme levels does NOT help for remaining cool and collected!  We are now home, all clothes are washed and it looks like only one pair of shorts has been destroyed by tire marks.  We are missing some articles of clothing, but nothing that can't be replaced.  God is good and we are safely home!  HOME SWEET HOME!

The Treasure Hunt Birthday

We had decided several years ago that when the boys turned 8 years old, they could have a "real" birthday party, so this year Stephen asked to have a Treasure Hunt birthday. It was such a fun idea and the kids LOVED it! Bonus for me: it wasn't that hard to plan, execute and clean up either!

We decided to celebrate twice, though, because we babysit several children after school and Stephen wanted all of them to participate as well as his best friends from church. I'm thinking that maybe it was a good idea to do it twice. That way I had a trial run the first time and fine tuned it to run MUCH more smoothly the second time! I have a year and a half to convince Timothy, though, that two parties is not only unnecessary, but it will also be non-existent. We painted and then decorated treasure chests as part of the party favors for the kids to take home. After each game we played, the prize was another "treasure" for them to put in their boxes: chocolate coins, candy necklaces, Hershey's kisses, and $100 paper napkins that were supposed to be used, but the kids all wanted to save them and put them in their boxes!

At birthday party #1, we had X Marks the Spot cupcakes. Inside each cupcake was an M&M treasure. So simple, but such a hit with the kids!

We also had several treasure hunts. This is one of the teams reading their next clue after finding this one on a jar of jam in the refrigerator.

Here are two of the treasure chests that the kids made.

And here is the REAL birthday cake! A treasure chest FULL of treasures!

Wouldn't this tempt any child?! They loved this cake and had such fun helping to decorate it! (Thank you FamilyFun.go.com for the great idea!) Stephen's joy and excitement was worth every moment spent preparing for this special party of his. I think that what touched me the most, though, was the way he handled himself and was very kind and considerate and gracious the whole time. I was surprised at his maturity because I had seriously thought I'd have a wild and crazy kid to deal with at his one and only "real" birthday party. I guess he's growing up. Sniff. Sniff. Sniff. Just yesterday he was a teeny tiny preemie and today he's showing the beginnings of becoming a fine, young man. Thank you, Lord, for my precious son!

Coffee

Coffee has been on my mind lately. I never drank coffee until I was about 30 and my co-worker, Margaret, would start off her day in our little office with the most wonderfully, aromatic cup of coffee. The folks at the office would tease me since I was the only n0n-coffee drinker so one day I set out to prove to them that I just did NOT like coffee! Well, I lost that proof. I fell in love with it! We never really had coffee growing up at home. Dad was a tea drinker. He'd fill that green, insulated cup with black tea, saving 1/4 of an inch for his sugar and milk to fit in. It would be swimming over the rim of his tall cup and then he'd complain when we'd shake the table and make his tea spill. Mom would make coffee VERY rarely when we had a party or guests, but not often enough to have us get used to drinking it. So, I didn't grow up with coffee, but I sure love it now!

During the month of March, the coffee king restaurant, Tim Hortons, had it's Roll Up the Rim contest going - buy a medium, large or extra large hot beverage and roll up the rim to see if you won a prize of cash, bikes, barbeques, cars or free coffee and donuts. Or the most frequent "prize", as my friend Chris always says, "Tim Horton's is so nice to me. They always let me 'play again'." Yep. When I played Roll Up the Rim, we mostly won "Please Play Again" to the point that when we would drive past a Tim Hortons, Christopher would say, "Mommy, do you want to go get a "Please Play Again?" Over the course of the month and a half that Tim's had this contest going, we ended up winning three free donuts and a free coffee. The boys were thrilled to choose their own donuts and share a hot cocoa from these winnings and we felt as if we had won a lottery!

Other random coffee comments:

Stephen came home from school a few weeks ago and was so excited! He asked, "Mommy, have you ever smelled coffee beans before?!" Well, as a matter of fact, I have. Why? "They smell sooooo good! But I don't like the taste. Maybe some day I will."

During a conversation about the definition of caffine, Timothy says, "When my next tooth falls out, I want to drink a cup of coffee before bed." Why, I ask. "Because I want to stay awake and see if the tooth fairy is real, or if it really is just you."

While sipping on a lovely cup of vanilla flavored coffee recently, Stephen again commented on how good my coffee smelled. I offered him a sip, but he refused with shock on his face. "But I'm not 10!" he said. 10? What does that have to do with anything? Well, I guess someone told him that you weren't allowed to drink coffee until you were 10 and he was so shocked that I would offer it to him when he was still seven! He ended up politely telling me that he'll wait until he's 10 and until then, he'll just smell my coffee beans.

Even though I enjoy a delicious cup of coffee, I am happy to say that I am not addicted to it either. Sometimes days go by before I realize that I haven't had any, yet other days, I know that if I had a whole pot here, I'd probably drink it all non-stop. I'm the only coffee drinker in the house, so it's not uncommon for me to go without making any for long periods of time. Besides, for some reason, it's always more enjoyable to drink that hot cup of coffee when you're sitting with a friend anyway. Anyone want to come over for a cup of coffee?