What's In My Teapot?

What do you get when you combine a collection of stories about life around the table with a variety of  recipes that will leave you licking your lips- if not digging deep into your own culinary skills? Why, Bread and Wine , by Shauna Niequist, of course!  Now, I am just going to tell you upfront that I am "cheating" a bit this month by picking and choosing from the handy-dandy list of questions in the book-club section at the back of the book!!! I didn't know when I chose this book that the review would come on the very day that I was giving achievement tests to nine  third graders in the morning, or that I would be faced with nine workbooks to check, or that I would be finishing the book on the day that the book review was due, or that I would not have tried a single recipe...but here  we are! Sticking to schedule, but giving myself a few breaks in the brain department while I am at it!!! Why try to come up with my own unique questions when I can have...

Bible-school is over, and I am sure there is a mixture of disappointment and relief at it's passing. The good news is that I heard very positive reports about Bible-school, so I think we can put the year to rest, so to speak, on a good note! I was one of several hundred people who sat in a crammed auditorium this morning and listened to the Bible-school students sing in the chorus, their special finale, and I was inspired and blessed. In my first post about Bible-school, I said that one of my desires for the week was that Christ's kingdom would advance and that we could reclaim some of  what the devil has stolen, and this morning I felt an air of victory, buoyed by the testimony of another young man from our church who has decided to follow Christ. It may feel like a lot of work and effort on the behalf of many, and that would be true, but I think each and every person who had even the slightest bit of involvement would say that it was worth every moment if we have gai...

Today my sister and I spent approximately 5 very enjoyable hours at a homeschool curriculum fair in Frederick, Maryland, and I came away with new wind under my sails! I guess you know you're a homeschooling mom when you go to a curriculum fair and feel like a kid in a candy shop, but there's nothing like brand new school books and other fun educational things to get a person excited!!! It may seem a little odd to be worrying over second grade before we're even through with first, but taking care of curriculum decisions now means that you can think about the next year based on how the current year is going, plus enjoy summer vacation when it arrives knowing that you're books are ready when you are! I looked at curriculum a bit, but actually spent the majority of my time fascinated by all the "extra-curricular" books, games and gizmos and picking up a few things I thought would be good additions to our family library and homeschool experience in general, l...

It's Friday evening and I thought I would be at our special Bible-school service right about now! Instead, I am home with Parker, who has a fever and a runny nose, while Wesley is at church with the other two. So, in between setting up a wooden train track and reading a child's book about ambulances and feeding Parker yogurt and peanut butter cereal (he wasn't hungry for supper, but later seemed to think it was breakfast time!), I have caught snatches of the service going on at church (information for using our conference line is found  here ) and tried to come up with a few thoughts pertaining to Bible-school! It's a little hard to write about Bible-school when I've only gotten a glimpse of the students on one occasion, and then while I was busy and preoccupied with serving a meal, but the exercise of writing things in connection with Bible-school and youth in general has helped me to be with them in spirit... and it has reminded me to pray. After writing ab...

We made it! We fed the young people and we fed ourselves and we had enough for everyone (with leftovers!) and we chatted our way through the cleanup so that it took way longer than it should have and we returned to our respective homes thankful that Bible-school comes only once a year!!! How's that for a success story on feeding the multitude? Just in case you wish to know more (and since I promised details!) here are a few things for the record... We served right around 95 people (10 were children and the rest youth through adult.)  Keep in mind, though, that a group of young people never eat as much as you think they should during Bible-school, with their well-fed and under-active lifestyle, so if you were preparing this menu for a crew of young people who had just put in a hard days work, you may want to figure accordingly!!! Enchiladas: we made 101 and had several pans leftover (exact amount unknown) but I would still make about that many again if I was aiming to f...

If there is one word that sums up what we want to give our young people this week, I think we could say it is nourishment . We want to give them solid, Kingdom-based teaching, opportunities to form good relationship and interact with other youth, and plenty of food at our tables. If we can do all of these things, we will have nourished the soul, the emotions, and the body respectively, and in turn should be looking at a healthy bunch of young people when they stand up to sing on Sunday morning! As you already know if you read my other two Bible-school-related posts this week, The Beginning and The Dynamics , I am on the physical food side in the nourishment department, and my kitchen can prove it! When I signed up for providing supper for the Bible-school students on Thursday evening, I already had in mind that I would like to do a repeat of the meal I did last year! It may not sound very creative to do the same thing twice, but sometimes, trying to figure out a menu for a cr...

We are all familiar with the words of Paul,  it is more blessed to give than to receive , but I often conjure up visions of wrapped packages and clandestine envelopes of money stuffed into mailboxes when I think of them. Today I had a new thought about this verse in light of my subject matter this week, and I was wondering if in the context of Bible-school this means that the the teachers, the principal, the cooks, the cleaners, the families hosting students and the man updating the website (better know to me as my husband!) will be more blessed than the students? I signed up to serve supper to the Bible-school students on Thursday evening of my own volition and am really looking forward to it, but sometimes the work of planning a menu, lining up helpers, searching for the best buys in bulk quantity, mixing up huge pans of food, and scrambling to serve it up fresh at just the right moment can feel like hours of work compared to minutes of consumption! We'll probably be fin...

This week the church that I call home is hosting Youth Bible-school, and with due regard to that and what will be happening in my week because of it, I am planning to try to post something every day! All good things must have a beginning, and for our Bible-school, it was 1998, when I was 14 and permitted to attend because it was my family's home church, even though the "official" age for coming was 15 (it has since been moved up to 16.) You may do the math if you wish to see what that makes me today, but either way, now I am on the other side of things: figuring out how many enchiladas one needs to feed a crowd, preparing to get a family of five to church for Friday and Saturday evening services, and looking forward to hearing the chorus instead of singing in it. How times do change. The first year I attended Bible-school, I was not a Christian and while this has a way of making one realize that you are on the outside looking in at events like this, the year was...

This week I have something for the girls! And the good news is that my selections also relate nicely to Spring, so I felt that I was killing two birds with one stone! Several months ago I did a post about truck books for young boys , and since then I have wondered what the "equivalent" would be for girls? Books on moving vehicles seems so obvious for boys (at least if my boys are any indication!) but what comes to mind when you choose a "genre" for girls? Quite frankly, I have reasons- moral and otherwise- for avoiding Barbie, Pinkalicious and Disney Princesses. Instead of showing our daughters through the books we read (even if they are just picture books!) that someday their prince will come and that the best way to get his attention is through immodest dress and mindless action, why not show them that the world needs the unique gifts and beauty they have to offer in other forms? According to the two books I am featuring today, this can be done in as si...

I can't help it- whenever I have a day in which one thing after another goes awry, I think of Anne and her Jonah Day. It comforts me, somehow, to know that I am not the only one who has these kinds of days. Above all, it helps to give these days a name. Jonah Days...  ...are when the two-year-old tries to refill his own water bottle from the BRITA tank in the fridge and ends up leaving the spigot turned on so that the fridge requires several towels and a spontaneous cleaning right in the middle of doing flashcards. ...are when it's raining for the fourth day in a row and the children are climbing walls and turning couch cushions into horses and picking fights every time you turn around- and then some. ...are when you put a zipper in a dress you are sewing for your daughter and the sewn-in belt absolutely does not line up in the back and needs to be fixed, but you have to put the project away at this disconcerting point because you are suppose to be teaching school a...

I struggle almost constantly with being indecisive... Put me in a fabric store, a restaurant, or in front of the computer trying to choose a quilt for my bed and I can soon turn myself into a ball of knots! Should I go with the grey or the coral?  Am I hungry for pesto linguine or the fettuccine alfredo?  Will this quilt clash with my curtains?  And don't even get me started on paint colors! There's a reason you still haven't seen my new bedroom yet, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that there's a certain yellow on the walls which I still can't decide if I like or not, and it's been about a half-a-year since it was rolled on! Now that I am choosing a book of the month, I have a whole new world of options in which to be indecisive! This month would be a prime example: I researched quite a few options on Amazon and other sources, ordered several books from the library as a result of that research, browsed through the actual library and sele...

The winner of the  Spring Break Giveaway is: Diana!!! Who left this comment:  "I just love giveaways!! And I just love those adorable sunglasses. I would sit outside and dream about the Florida beach and the palm trees and what good times we had there for a week this winter. And about dolphins and bodysurfing. I think I would be pretty lucky to win these things!!! Does the pretty material go with it?" It's a special honor to give this to my oldest niece!!!  Happy Springtime, Diana! 

I was standing at the kitchen sink  washing and tearing lettuce and tossing it into a salad bowl for supper  when it happened. I glanced through the kitchen window  and saw something on the tips of my neighbor's lilac bushes. I blinked. I squinted. I leaned in closer for a better view. Is that what I think it is? Green sprouts reaching for the sun... Tiny leaves just waiting for their first breath... New life on the verge of exploding!  This is it! This is it! And it's what we've all been waiting for!!! Quick ! (Breathe in! Breathe out!) The baby ( better known as Spring ) is coming!!!