Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Frozen Fog and Little Chefs

I woke up this morning to this beautiful scene. Frozen fog. Isn't it amazing how the fog freezes in those little pieces??!






Lord, Your beauty in nature is spectacular!
* * * * * * *

Tuesday afternoons I get to have the girls over while Jill teaches piano. Today, Hannah arrived with her pink "visiting Nana" suitcase!

She brought her Pooh cookbook and her apron and chef's hat along. Guess what she had in mind for the afternoon?!

My little cooks
Nana? Can I eat some of the chochate (translation: chocolate). We were unwrapping some Hershey's Kisses to use in the recipe. How can I resist this sweet face?




This recipe was just a little wierd - never made something like that before. Oh well. It isn't something I will share with the blog world. But the girls had a blast doing it! We took a lot of it to their daddy at church to share with the office staff. Hope they enjoy it!!


After we finished cooking, it was time for our "lesson". We are doing "Nana's Preschool" on Tuesdays. Today our lesson was about how the Bible came to us. God's Word is true, it is like a letter from God, filled with many treasures! Just like we don't put a letter from someone special on the counter just to ignore, we should long to open and read the love letter from the lover of our souls.






Monday, January 11, 2010

Waffles and Spaghetti

This past fall, we began leading a new young married's community life group at our church. Each month we have one night of study followed the next week by a game night. Then another study night and then one week off. Each week we have supper together and one person shares their life story, along with how they came to know Christ and about their decision to follow Him.

We started studying "That The World May Know" by Ray Vander Laan. Very good video series to help you understand the Bible by learning more about the culture of the time it was written. There is nothing like having a Biblical scholar like Vander Laan talk about history and guide you through the historical sites and explain the importance of those Biblical sites and how the Jewish context affects the Scriptures. Very eye opening!

Starting this evening, we switched gears and are going to learn about marriage. How to make marriage "work". Most of these couples just got married this past year. A couple have been married a little longer, but still, all young couples. We've been married almost 35 years - and these "kids" are mostly in their 20's.
We are using the book:

The basis of the book is that men and women process life very differently. "In this refreshing and humorous look at relationships, Bill and Pam Farrel explain why a man is like a waffle (each element of his life is in a separate box), why a woman is like a plate of spaghetti (everything in her life touches everything else), and how the differences can work".

So it was appropriate that we have waffles for supper tonight! Kathy Beverlin's Belgian waffle recipe*. Waffles with lots of different toppings.....

German sausage (from the Yoder Mennonites), strawberries, bananas, blueberries, whipped cream, scrambled eggs, eggs over easy, peanut butter, syrup, ice-cream and chocolate chips.




This was a new one for me - Kristin put peanut butter on her waffle and topped that with syrup!


But look at Andy's waffle.
Look closely!

It had everything on it! Oh my!

We look forward to growing closer as a group, as couples, and closer to our Lord this year. Just as being a Christian means walking through life with Christ by our side, going through the hard times and the good times with Him, so too we walk with our spouses by our side. The good times, the tough times. Often couples who have been together for years begin to look like each other, can often know what the other one is thinking, can finish eachother's sentences. So, the longer we are in relationship with Christ, hopefully we become more like Him. Hopefully people see the resemblance. And when we don't, how forgiving and loving He is! And we need to be forgiving and loving of our spouses when they don't meet our expectations or when they fail.
When we finish this book in May, we will have to have a spaghetti supper!
*Kathy's Begian Waffles
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1/2 cup melted butter
1 T. vanilla
Mix all together.
2 cups flour
1/2 t. salt
1 T. baking powder
2 t. sugar
Mix and add to wet ingredients.
Bake in waffle iron.
This makes about 5 BIG waffles. I had to quadruple it to feed all of us.