Recap (2017.01.21)

In my spirit:

• Rejoicing in progress
• Praying for so many friends and family members with health concerns
• Continuing to delight in hearing my daughter’s voice sing praises to God or recite memorized Scripture

In the living room:

• Pompoms, pompoms everywhere! I got some pompoms to use for a color-matching activity with Tirzah Mae – and she’s found plenty of other uses for them. The most recent has been to make soups – she stirs them up in a pot, ladles them into bowls, stirs them some more to cool them off, and then serves them to her parents or her brother.
• I’ve been getting back into exercising and have been encouraged that things are getting easier – it’s time to either pick up my weights or work out to faster music or both!

In the kitchen:

• So far, using a cycle menu is wonderful. I’m finding that there’s more than one day a week where I don’t want to cook – and that my recipes generate enough food that incorporating an extra day of leftovers is probably worthwhile. Thankfully, I have at least one recipe on each week’s cycle that doesn’t include fresh ingredients that’ll go bad if I skip it.
• Daniel made this Bacon Cheese Ball for a snack day at his work and it was delicious!
• Daniel brought home some stale hot dog buns that had been sitting around at his work and I tried an overnight Blueberry French toast recipe with frozen blueberries and cream cheese chunks to use them up. Definitely going to add that to the repertoire of breakfast recipes.
• I used a new technique for making my homemade tortilla chips (brushing just one side of a corn tortilla with canola oil, stacking up a whole stack of the tortillas, and then cutting them into sixths before sprinkling with salt and chili powder and baking at 350 F on full convection for 14 minutes.) In contrast to previous attempts where I oiled the tortillas after cutting, I ended up using only a single tablespoon of oil for 20 tortillas. That translates into 0.7 g of fat (6 calories from fat) per serving versus 7 g of fat (63 calories from fat) per serving store bought tortilla chips. People, that just saved me 57 calories per serving (and how many of you eat just 6-9 chips at a time? We’re talking something more in line with 200 calories in a real-life serving.)

In the nursery:

• Louis continues to become more and more mobile – he’s rolling and scooting all over the floor :-)
• I started putting Louis to sleep in the nursery (as opposed to the bassinet in our room) this past week. We’re still too early to tell how it’s going, but I am looking forward to having our room to ourselves again.
• We’ve started putting on a Seeds Family Worship CD for Tirzah Mae at naptime and bedtime. She loves turning on the CD and it’s a delight to hear her singing God’s word – yesterday it was “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened. And I will give you rest, I will give you rest.” Balm to a mother’s ears (in more ways than one.)
• I’m working on being consistent with training and discipline, being clear about when I’m giving an instruction versus asking an opinion or offering an option. As someone who tends to use “asking” language when I’m making a request (“Would you like to change Louis’s diaper?” I’ll ask my husband, when I really mean “I’d really like it if you’d change Louis’s diaper”), it’s been something of a transition.

In the craft room:

• My biggest “craft” this past couple weeks was making Tirzah Mae a color matching activity to go along with Donald Crews’s Freight Train. I cut train cars out of felt and have pom poms for Tirzah Mae to match to the train cars. I expected it to be an activity she’d play with for a couple days before I put it away for a rainy day – but she’s been playing with it multiple times a day for a week now and showing no signs of stopping. Hooray!

In the garden:

• I spoke to a master gardener friend and she encouraged me to check my charts because I might need to start my broccoli seedlings soon. Maybe I should check those now? Looks like February 8 is my date, so I better start figuring out where to source my seeds.

In the library:

• Great People of the Bible and How They Lived by Reader’s Digest
• Paul: In Fresh Perspective by N.T. Wright
• True Community by Jerry Bridges
• As They Grow: Your Two Year Old by Diane O’Connell
• Spiritually Parenting Your Preschooler by C. Hope Flinchbaugh
• Honey for a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt

Added to the TBR List:

• Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus (added based on Amy’s review at Sunlit Pages)
• Bellevue by David Oshinsky (added based on Harriet’s Review at Science Based Medicine)
• A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner (added based on Barbara’s review at Stray Thoughts)
• First Bite by Bee Wilson (added based on Katherine’s recommendation at Nutrition Wonk)
• The Great Starvation Experiment by Todd Tucker (also added based on Katherine’s recommendation at Nutrition Wonk)
• Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibottsen (added based on Amy’s commentary at Hope is the Word)
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck (added based on Amy’s comments at Hope is the Word)
• Praying Together by Megan Hill (added based on Tim Challies’s review)
• The Silent Songbird by Melanie Dickerson (I think I’ve added every book in this series every time Barbara reviews one at Stray Thoughts – one of these days…)

Around the web:

• Reliable Rhythm, Contagious Character – Mystie Winkler shares her phrase(s) for the year. I read this and thought…THIS. This is exactly what I’m thinking about my own life.
• Why Your Risk for Divorce is Probably Lower Than You Think – Daniel and I are on the lower risk side of every category (but I remind myself that “he who thinks he stands should take heed lest he fall…”)
• When Someone You Know Foster Parents – An acquaintance shares how others can love their foster parent friends

In blogging history:

• 2 years ago – I took A Much Needed Holiday
• 6 years ago – My Greatest Idol