Month of Thankfulness - Day 16

I have just had THE best day and I am overflowing with thankfulness.

Hubby and I are spending a chunk of time with our kids. They will both be at their in-law's for the Thanksgiving holiday so we thought we'd go hang out with them for several days.

I think the best way to recap this day is to go right into my list:

I am thankful for...
...breakfast at Chic-fil-a
...more time in the car with Hubby (I was in a very chatty mood this morning and he put up with me graciously)
...almost TWO hours at the Missouri Star Quilt Company (such a great quilt shop and I had so much fun chatting with several different people. I even got a signed pattern from Jenny. She does the YouTube tutorials. SO MUCH FUN!)
...the joy my hubby has when I am excited about buying a bunch of fabric
...my hubby's encouragement of my hobby and my obsession love of all things quilting
...lunch at Panera (LOVE their Mediterranean Veggie Sandwich)
...Peppermint Chocolate Chip Shakes from Chic-fil-a's
...an afternoon and evening spent with my son and daughter-in-law
...watching the very first Star Wars movie with my son and daughter-in-law
...celebrating daughter-in-law being 7/8 of a doctor with a yummy supper
...a new cell phone (!)
...my son's willingness to be my tech support and adviser in choosing a new cell phone

***happy sigh***

Month of Thankfulness - Day 7

A couple of weekends ago our son and his lovely wife came for a visit. I can tell you I was quite excited to have some company and loved planning the meals for the weekend. I tried three or four new recipes. (And they all turned out to be yummy!) One of my son Caleb's favorite meals is my homemade chicken noodle soup and home made biscuits. So, of course, that was our lunch on the Saturday when they were here.

When Caleb was a little boy he would watch me cut out the biscuits and ask me for a piece of the dough scraps.

He still likes the dough scraps:

See how excited he is?

 Here's a collage of him enjoying the meal:

Despite the look on his face in the bottom right photo, he really did like the meal. He's just a goof. A funny goof.

Since they were here on a Friday, Hubby took the whole day off. Well, most of the day. He did go in for one meeting. In the afternoon we went to a historical museum in town here. It was pretty interesting, especially when we stumbled upon this:

This is a photo of my Hubby. Can you see him on the bottom right? I've attempted to blur the rest of the photos to protect the innocent, or something like that. This is a photo of all the Plant Managers. Hubby is the current one. I call this The Plant Manager Hall of Fame. Oooo! (Caleb took the photo of his dad at our daughter's wedding.)

Throughout the weekend we did several things together. We shopped for a plaid flannel shirt for Caleb (what better place than rural Minnesota to find one?) and some cute boots for Amanda. I watched them all play some of our new Wii games. (I didn't play because of my burned fingers. I couldn't really bend them to hold the Wii-mote.) I made them watch a couple of episodes of The Middle I had on the DVR, because it is simply my favorite sit-com. They even laughed. We watched the movie Social Network with them. Quite interesting. I'm glad we recorded it on TV because some of the bad language was edited out.

I am thankful for...
...cool days that are made for homemade chicken noodle soup and biscuits
...my mother-in-law's recipe for biscuits
...the visit with Caleb and Amanda
...laughter with Caleb and Amanda
...my son's hugs

July Journal -- The Sunflower Runner

Ready for some more pictures of one of my projects?

A few months ago I was watching this video tutorial about how to make a Dresden Plate Quilt Block.



As I was watching it, I thought to myself, "I could do that with yellows and make sunflowers."

So, I made this table runner:::

I'm so happy with how it turned out. I mailed it to my daughter-in-law for her birthday. Yesterday she texted me a picture of it on their table. It looked so cute!

I kind of improvised it as I went. I wasn't sure about how to quilt it, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

I also tried a different method of attaching the binding.  I usually sew the binding onto the front, then turn it over the edge to the back and hand stitch it down. With this method I sewed it to the back, turned to the front side and top-stitched it down by machine with a decorative stitch. I like how it turned out.

July Journal -- The Daughter-in-Law

Today is my daughter-in-law's birthday. Happy Birthday, Amanda!

I've thought about how some mothers-in-law resent their daughters-in-law. Not me. When I see how much she loves Jesus, how much she loves my son, how much she makes him happy, how they seem to have fun together and work together as a team, my heart swells with thanksgiving. I prayed for her for over twenty years. I didn't know who my son would marry, but I prayed for her anyway. So amazing how God answered all those prayers.

I love Amanda's sense of humor and her sweet compassionate spirit. She's studying hard to become a doctor and will make such a good doctor.

I am so excited to see what God has in store for Amanda and Caleb!

Happy Birthday, Amanda!

July Journal -- The Anniversary

Happy Third Anniversary to our son and his beautiful bride!

They are trying to look tough...

We just love their sense of humor and how they seem to really enjoy being together. We are blessed to have them a part of our lives.

Anniversary

Happy 2nd Anniversary to Caleb and Amanda!

Your wedding was an awesome way to celebrate the 4th of July.

Egg-In-A-Hole (Pioneer Woman)

**My daughter, daughter-in-law and I are cooking our way through Pioneer Woman's cookbook and writing about it here. Today's entry is from my daughter-in-law, Amanda.**

This is a really yummy and easy breakfast recipe! Since I made it six months ago (oops), I've made it for my husband several times again because it's a good hearty recipe for when you don't want cereal.

Here's the huge amount of ingredients:

First, cut a hole in the bread. Use a biscuit cutter if you're sophisticated, but if not, use a knife and cut a wonky hole.

Pretty!

Butter and cast-iron are a beautiful thing. Toast the bread and crack the egg in the middle. Or, put the egg in a hole! So clever.

Yums!

PW Cinnamon Rolls (Pioneer Woman)

**Another great addition from Amanda for our Cooking Through PW Cooks Adventure.**  

These cinnamon rolls are fantastic... and that is all that needs to be said.
Ingredients...
I decided to make the dough the night before and finish the rolls in the morning. I'm a morning person and my wonderful husband isn't, so I figured I would finish the rolls just in time for him to wake up to the glorious smell of fresh-baked, gooey deliciousness.

The only problem with being a morning person ... I don't always function at my best later at night. Example number one... Making a half-batch doesn't include adding the full amount of the flour. Oops.

I eventually got the proportions right after I made a trip to the store for more flour. The dough aged to perfection (?) overnight, and in the morning this wonderfulness happened.
What a delicious sight!!! And a delicious bite!!! (hee hee)
I put extra love and goodness vitamins in these rolls, so I'm sure eating 14 of them is healthy.

Warning: This recipe makes a ton of rolls. Sharing is encouraged.

Pico de Gallo (Pioneer Woman)

Hello all! My name is Amanda, and I'm a new contributor to Just Enough Light and new to the blog world in general. A few things about me... just so I don't feel like we're strangers ...

I'm married to a wonderful man who loves God.

I have an outstanding mother-in-law who organized this exciting tour of Pioneer Woman's cookbook.

I'm also in medical school, and I enjoy everything about it except that we don't get snow days. :)

I also love cooking and eating good food.

This week I made a deliciously simple Pico de Gallo.

In typical PW fashion, we have the cast of characters:

Roma tomatoes, onion, jalapeño, cilantro, lime and salt

(By the way, the recipe in the cookbook doesn't include amounts or numbers, so I kinda estimated.)

I sliced up the onion and tomatoes. I took the seeds and squishy stuff out of the tomatoes. It's just less messy that way.

I need to improve my herb-chopping skills. I always end up with bigger bits than I want. Perhaps this will be a job for my new food processor.

Yummy cilantro!

Jalapeños are great to cook with until you accidentally touch your eyes. Ouch!

Stress relief after getting jalapeño in my eye. Also, I love the smell of limes. So fresh and wonderful.

The finished product. Perfect addition to tacos ... or eaten by the spoonful. :)
I would like to thank my husband for photographing this and future food posts. He did a great job considering the terrible fluorescent lighting in our apartment.

A List of Recaps

I have much to blog about, and a lack of creativity, so a list is ahead.

1. Our kids were able to come to our house for Christmas Day. (I can count on one hand the number of times we have been able to to that as a family.) (It was also the first time we had all been together in this house.) We had such a fun day together complete with eating lots of food and exchanging gifts.

Getting ready to dig into our feast. It was all very yummy! 

I love this family of mine sooo much!

2. Hubby read us the Christmas story from Luke 2. He also led us in a time of prayer and praise for what God has done for us by sending His son, Jesus to earth.

3. A couple of days after Christmas we headed to Iowa to see both of our parents. We weren't able to mesh our schedule with my side of the family, but we were able to spend a day with my parents and to surprise them with Caleb and Amanda. 

This quilt was on the bed we slept in and I marveled at how beautiful and well made it is. My grandmother made it 50+ (?) years ago. I wish I could have talked quilting with my grandmother.

4. We made a road trip to Kansas for the New Year's weekend. Hubby and I got there sooner than we had thought we might, so we decided to have a date night.

We had a hard time deciding on a restaurant because there are so many choices. (Choices is not what we have in this small, rural Minnesota town.) Kind of on whim, we choose a Japanese Steakhouse. It was excellent! I really enjoyed the evening.

Dates with Hubby are always good. :) (And no, I did not eat the tofu)

5. We spent our New Year's Eve at Megan and Zach's. They did a great job of hosting and we had a lot of good food and and played some fun games.

6. I would say the funnest, most fun, best fun, coolest thing that happened over the Christmas vacation was the result of a movie we watched with Caleb and Amanda. I had seen Julie & Julia in the theaters and recently bought the DVD on a whim. We sat down to watch it with Caleb and Amanda the night before Christmas Eve. (If you have never seen it, you should! Go here to watch a trailer of the movie.)

Basically the movie is about how Julia Child came to be, well, Julia Child. (Meryl Streep does an awesome job of protraying Julia.) Paralleled with that story is a story about a woman named Julie who was trying to find some purpose in her life. Julie decides to cook through Julia Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year's time and blog about it.

Amanda (my daughter-in-law) and I started talking after the movie about how it would be cool to cook through a cookbook, but neither of us wanted to try out French cooking. (Maybe it was the aspic that did us in...). Since we both had a copy of Pioneer Woman's cookbook, we talked about working our way through that. When Megan (my daughter) got here, we threw the idea at her. 

What was the idea? The three of us are going to cook our way through Pioneer Woman Cooks AND blog about it here! We split up the recipes New Year's Eve and even made our first dish. (I'll blog about that in a few days.)

I am soooo excited about doing this. We'll attempt to post about once a week. I say attempt, because, while I have nothing better to do in this frozen trundra but cook and blog, my daughter is studying to be a Pharmacist and my daughter-in-law is studying to be a Doctor. They are kinda busy. But they excitedly agreed to work on this and I couldn't be more thrilled!

The Cooking Threesome. I think Hubby suggested we call ourselves "The Kan-Sota Connection" or something cheesy like that. :)

Here we are working hard at splitting up the recipes. (and no, this photo is not at all staged....) The dividing of the recipes consisted of comments such as, "My husband won't eat that, will yours?" And, "Ooo, I want to make this! Me too! Me too!"

So keep coming back here for some yummy food pictures and great blogging!

House Pictures -- 3

**Before we get on with the next round of pictures...Our daughter-in-law was released from the hospital Friday morning! The doctor is unsure what caused her severe vomiting. At first they thought it was sepsis (a potentially serious blood infection), but they now wonder if she had a severe case of food poisoning. What ever it was, we are so thankful for her healing.**

Our Master Bedroom.

The Master Bath. Oh how I love that tub!

I discovered Red Letter Words through another blog that's called Nesting Place (which is a fun design blog). When I was exploring the Red Letter Words website and saw this verse, I knew it would be great in our bedroom. I love to read this verse right before I turn off the light at night and when I wake up in the morning.

An Army in the Flood and Fire

 We got one of those phone calls yesterday evening that makes it hard to be so far from our family. Our son called to say he was heading to the hospital with his wife. She had been vomiting quite severely and they just knew something wasn't right. Turns out she has a not-very-serious (but serious enough to be admitted to the hospital) infection in her blood (sepsis). She's been getting antibiotics and is doing much better. She has an Army praying for her. (I'd appreciate prayers from my Internet friends, too!)

Our son is a music junkie. He says he turned on his iTunes this afternoon to random and this is the first song that played:



(It is basically the 23rd Psalm.)

His comment on his Facebook page was "Random song, huh God?"

God is so awesome in His tender care of His people.

This verse came to mind:

When you pass through the waters,
   I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
   they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
   you will not be burned;
   the flames will not set you ablaze. 

Isaiah 43:2

Hopefully our daughter-in-law will be able to go home tomorrow morning.

October Photo Journal -- Day 17

We went to church this morning with Caleb and Amanda. I just love their church. I love to hear the truth preached from the Bible. I love how it all comes back to the cross.

Here is my boy working the sound board this morning:

 Well, okay, not so much a boy any more...

A picture of the outside of the church. They bought an old church building in downtown Kansas City. (Well, not our son and DIL. They didn't buy the church building, the church did. Well, you know what I mean...)

We sang a song called Rock of Ages (When the Day Seems Long). I was about in tears by the end. The words are so powerful. Enjoy:

Music Monday

Everlasting God

 The third song from Caleb and Amanda's wedding. Another fantastic song focusing on God Almighty.

Music Monday

Be Thou My Vision

Another song from Caleb and Amanda's wedding. This has been a favorite of mine since college days.

(I like the group singing this song, but not real sure how the pictures on the video fit with the song. Just listen to the words.)

Music Monday

As my readers likely know, both of our kids have gotten married in the past year. Sometimes I wish I could relive those wedding days. They were so special and fun and exciting. We praise God for the spouses our kids chose. It's wonderful to think that Amanda and Zach will be a part of our lives for a very long time.

One thing that really moved us about the kids' weddings was their choice of music. An 83 year old friend said she really liked the music at Zach & Megan's wedding. She liked that it focused on God and not "all that lovey-dovey stuff." I must say I agree with her.

I have a reader in Tennessee would has said she loves the music videos I post. So I thought I would share some of the wedding music with you all. Music Mondays is my cheesy title for that. So, for the next several Mondays look for some great music.

This is a song from our son's wedding. It still brings tears of gratitude to my eyes just to think about how our son and daughter-in-law desire to have Christ be the center of their marriage.

Center

My Daughter-In-Law

I goofed.

Two months ago today was my brand-new-daughter-in-law's birthday. I totally forgot to wish her a Happy Birthday on this ol' blog. Oops!

My hubby and I are so thankful for Amanda. Caleb chose well. She is just the sweetest person ever. And pretty darn smart, too! She has just started medical school and it's fun to ask her what she learned and to get the summary of the day. Impressive. She loves God and she loves Caleb. What more could we ask for? I told her at their rehearsal dinner that we had prayed for her since Caleb was tiny. We spent twenty-plus years praying for his future wife. It has been exciting to meet her and see how God has answered those prayers.

I took this picture on Caleb & Amanda's wedding day. Isn't she beautiful? I remember telling her she might as well keep smiling all day because she was going to get her picture taken a lot. Her reply was, "I don't think I can stop smiling!" It was such a happy day!

So, two months late --- Happy Birthday, Amanda!

In Kansas

This morning I flew to Kansas City to see my kids. I had a terrific lunch with Caleb and got to see my daughter-in-law when she had a break from classes. That was fun.

Tonight I went to a Navigators meeting with Megan. It was pretty awesome to see a room full of college kids (80 or so?) seeking and worshiping God. Megan sang on the worship team. Man I love to watch that girl sing and worship God Almighty. We sang a song that I had heard before and just love. It really can send you to your knees in worship. I will share the video with you. It's kinda long, but oh so worth it.

Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang:
"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!"

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing:
"To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!" The four living creatures said, "Amen," and the elders fell down and worshiped.

(Revelation 5:11-14)

We have studied the book of Revelation in our Small Group. While it is a hard book to understand, I find encouragement from it. Yes, we live in a sinful world and our country has really taken a sharp left turn away from God. But you know what? In the end... The Good Guy Wins. The Lord God Almighty WINS!

Living It Up

We had a terrific weekend.

Caleb and Amanda and Megan came to visit us. Because Caleb and Amanda's wedding was 500 miles away from here, we thought it would be fun to have an open house for the people from here who weren't able to make that trip. Saturday afternoon we had about 35 friends come over to love on the newlyweds. Man that was fun.

I wish I would have taken pictures. But I forgot. Phooey.

We also got to see the 650-some wedding photos from the photographer. (starting at about 11:30pm....oh my...) It was fun to re-live their wedding day.

This morning I went to the post office to mail Megan a package to her ..... she forgot her toiletries. She'll have to survive for two days without those essentials.

I also decided to go to the bank to close out an account that Caleb has there. My name was on it too. It's one he opened when he first got a job when he was in 9th grade. The banker asked what I wanted to do with what was left. What did I do with the money? I asked for it in cash and have already spent most of it:
I just couldn't control myself. Yep. I'm livin' it up!

There was $1.79 in the account. I have 63 cents left to spend! WooHoo!! Thanks Caleb for "paying" me for all those years of raising you! It was so worth the $1.79!!!