New Site!

Baking to Satisfaction

I really do not believe that there is anything much more satisfying to a young wife than baking that perfect dessert. You know the one I’m talking about. The one that’s the perfect density. Melts in your mouth. Leaves a lasting impression on your taste buds. Contains that perfect amount of sweet delightfulness. Your mouth is watering just now thinking about it because you know the exact dessert I’m talking about.

I don’t know what’s happened to my baking abilities over the past month, but I have nailed some recipes lately. These are recipes I’ve been baking for a long time. They are the same ones that my mom has used over the years and is famous for. Everyone knows that if you need a good dessert recipe to call up my mom (I do it all the time). Her recipes never fail. If something goes wrong, don’t blame the cookbook, blame the cook (sorry!). Her recipes are just good, plain and simple. So when you get to the point like where she is, you can nail it every time. This past month I nailed two recipes: Oatmeal raisin cookies and brownies.

The Blessings of a Father

At the beginning of July Josh and I sat in the pew at church with our checkbook and pen in hand. Money had been really tight the past two months. Our apartment rent had been coming out of my excess scholarship and grant money while I was in school. But I graduated in May leaving us with an extra $475 bill to pay each month. Granted, our rent price being so low is a huge blessing and we certainly praise the Lord for that! But needless to say, between taking on that extra bill and transitioning pay from once a week to once a month, the past couple months have been hard.

We sat there and I started to make out our tithing check. Admittedly, a little nervously I asked Josh how much he wanted me to write it for (this was the first time I had asked him, before this day I had always just written the 10% check because we’ve never had to worry about money before). The question took him a little off guard as well. We had never been in this situation. Money was really tight and we needed every cent of this first full paycheck. But we also knew that the whole of the paycheck was a gift from God. Everything we had belonged to God. We knew that he would provide. He asked how much my paycheck was, and then we wrote the 10% for the check with our hearts and mind at ease. We knew the month ahead was going to be difficult, but we knew God would see us through. We just didn’t know exactly how.

A Sinner Saved By Grace: A Portrait

Awhile back I shared with everyone a very personal piece of writing about my grandfather who passed away a few years ago,  Grandpa: A Memoir, that I had written during one of my classes this past year. My teacher Mrs. Reid, challenged us with every piece we wrote. We had to reach deep inside our hearts, and truly express emotions, fears, hopes, dreams, frustrations that some of us had not dealt with in years. It was a very difficult class, but very therapeutic. The hardest piece for all of us was the Portrait. We had to pick a person, any person, and describe them without just simply describing them. In other words, we had to let go of “tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, liked by everyone”. We had to give personality to a paper. Emotions. Desires. Experiences. We had to make our audience feel like they really knew something about the person we wrote about. This was intense, and really really really hard. By the grace of God we all pulled through.

What I’m about to share with you is my portrait of a man. He’s left anonymous. 1) because I always name the people in my writings and I was trying to get away from that. and 2) because the story of this man can easily be the story of us all who are sinners saved by grace. So please enjoy. There’s nothing that is left to be analyzed or that will hurt your brain if you’re not an English person. This is an entertainment/pleasure piece, and I want to share a bit of my heart and this man, with you.

Things My Husband Says

It occurred to me the other day that my husband says some very interesting things, which of course makes for very interesting conversations. Do you remember that show “Kids say the darndest things”? Well, I think they need to make a new version called “Husbands say the stupidest things.”

Granted, I will give him credit, most of the time he is simply being honest. Some times he is just oblivious. And other times, I do have to wonder if there isn’t a slight hint of stupidity, and then I remember one very important thing: he is male, he doesn’t know better 😉

While Josh and I were still engaged, a lot of people jokingly told us that the three most important words in a marriage are “You’re right dear” and the two most important are “yes dear.” Now I know Josh and I have only been married a year, but I am pretty positive that I have heard those words less than 5 times. In their place I’ve heard a lot of other statements that fell into conversations like the ones I’m about to share with you.

A Trip to the Aquarium

The last time I went to an aquarium I was probably in elementary. I may have been to one since then, but it must have not had too much influence on my life. Well this last trip to the aquarium, I will never, ever forget.

What Brought Us There?

A few months ago, Josh decided he wanted to go to the Southern Baptist Convention as a messenger for our church. I then took off work in order to go with him. One of our friends, Drew and his wife Rachel, decided to go as well. Drew and Rachel have a 20 month year old boy Harper. Our plan was for the boys to go to the SBC while Rachel, Harper, and I had fun around New Orleans. So what do you do with a 20 month old in New Orleans? You go to the aquarium. The Audubon Aquarium is highly spoken of across the state. It has tons of fun activities, and gets you out of the heat.

Josh and I missed going while we were in New Orleans on our honeymoon, so this was a must this go around. Rachel and I were ecstatic about it, and we couldn’t wait to go. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into.

Madams’ Blueberries

I never know what kind of adventure awaits me when Josh and I travel down to Moss Bluff to visit my parents. It may be good, it may be bad, it may wind up on Dad’s blog. But most of the time it’s good, and most of the other time it winds up on Dad’s blog. One of the good adventures hasn’t arrived on Dad’s blog, so I’m going to share it with you. It was the Mother Daughter Blueberry Adventure.

It was somewhat early Saturday morning and I had just returned to a quiet house after getting my hair done. I was surprised to still not see anyone stirring with it being after 11. I knew Mom had to be up because she was awake when I left earlier that morning, and sure enough I eventually found her outside in her garden. I went to visit with her for a few minutes before venturing back inside for my “brunch” and to see if there appeared to be any garage sales worth going to this late in the morning. Mom sulked in a few minutes later with a sad realization “I have no blueberries to pick today.”

It was indeed sad. No more blueberries, no more today. But then, a light bulb lit over Mom’s head and she had a wonderful idea. “What if we went to pick blueberries?!” I was definitely game and said maybe even Josh would want to go (which he didn’t). After calling around to a couple of places, we found one which had just opened that day and they had tons of blueberries! Mom and I gathered our hats and mosquito bracelets and bid our husbands farewell and we headed off to DeRidder to pick blueberries, three pailss full.

Mom had her “Huckleberry Finn” outfit all together, and I looked like a city girl trying to play the part (and failing obviously). But, I must say we still looked cute!

So we got our sweet tea and headed north. We had a good conversation, the details of which I cannot disclose, and soon we arrived at the house of the blueberries. Too excited for our own good we ventured to the rows and rows and rows of blueberry trees. The lady was somewhat shocked that we wanted to pick blueberries at one in the afternoon in Louisiana Summer heat, but we were determined. She told us that most people come in the morning, but we were welcome to pick, and if we got tired (she said in a tone assuming we would) they had some in the freezer we could always purchase. “Psh,” we thought, “she must not know how excited we are to pick blueberries.” And away we went.

Like a kid in the candy store we had our bucket in hand and began walking down the rows reaching high and reaching low grabbing clusters of berries of all sizes. It was very Secret Garden-ish.

Graduation Snapshots

It seems like only yesterday I was standing with my three brothers after my high school graduation. Adorned in purple and white, carrying a single white rose and a “princess” tiara on top of my head. It wasn’t just yesterday, it was four years ago.

From the left to the right we have, Paul, who was currently working his way through college. Michael, who was still much shorter than I was, and a very young boy. Then there was David, who was now halfway finished with his college education at the school I planned to attend. Paul, David, and I all graduated from the same high school, and now I would begin my college journey at the same location as David. Thankfully, he was okay with this, and had even let me come and visit him from time to time.

I knew Louisiana College was going to be the right choice for me. I had determined it by my Junior year of high school. It was small and Christ centered. The way they had treated our family through David’s wreck only helped solidify my choice. I was going to be a wildcat.

It didn’t take long for me to feel at home on LC’s campus. I had friends, and good ones too. Friends and teachers who encouraged me and challenged me in my walk with the Lord. I had some rough patches over the years, but there was always someone there to help stitch things back up.

After the first two years, David graduated from LC. A soon to be married man to one of the best girls I know, one who I am proud to call my sister-in-law. So he left the campus, a graduate of a great college.

And so time went on. And little did I know that as time was progressing, I was about to run into my future husband. Josh and I met that fall after David’s graduation. We met, fell in love, and decided we should definitely get married :). So on the weekend before Valentine’s Day 2011, Josh proposed to me and we got married that May. And that led us to my final year at Louisiana College. At first it didn’t feel real. I felt as though I still had tons of time left, but in reality, I didn’t. I only had a few short hours left at the school. Thankfully, they were some of the best. I enjoyed to the fullest every single one of my last hours that I took at Louisiana College. And on Josh’s and mine  anniversary weekend, I prepared for a day full of celebrating four years of God’s grace in my education.

Are You My Mother?

When my brothers and I were but wee little children, my mother used to read to us a story Are You My Mother. It was the story of a little bird, a baby bird, who had hatched while his mother was away. Curiousity sent the little bird on an adventure to find his mother. He came across dogs, cows, chickens, all sorts of animals, and at every animal he would stop and ask “Are you my mother?” and the animal would always reply with “I’m not your mother, I’m a (insert animal)”. Mom never failed to do different voices for each animal, and even now as I just typed those two sentences, her voice still lingers in my mind.

So in honor of my mother, I beg this question: Are you my mother? Because if you were, here’s what you’d be like:

If you were my mother, you’d…

…have been a beautiful bride on the brink of her 30th wedding anniversary to my Dad, and a loving and caring wife of 30 long years

Pantry Skeletons

A crazy thing happens when you get married: you get a lot of stuff. I am pretty sure Josh and I never imagined that we would have enough stuff to fill the shelves of the one storage place in this apartment.

The Pantry

Basically, a long skinny walk in closet with top to bottom shelving. Rather nice and rather convenient for new couples with lots of new gifts. The scary part of the pantry is once something goes in, you never know if it will come out.

Breakfast in Bed

Not long after Josh and I got married, I decided I wanted to do something extremely sweet and make him breakfast and coffee and take it to him in bed. As novel and innocent as this idea was, the execution was probably poorly done. I went about making his eggs and toast (let’s remember I was a new bride, so fancy breakfasts weren’t around yet). As I was getting it ready I got real excited about getting to use one of the many trays that were given to us a gift.

So I entered the pantry.

Still unopened gifts lined the walkway to the back of the pantry where the tray were stored, so I climbed in as far as I could (which wasn’t very far) and realized I could get at least one  foot into the empty space a little closer to the back shelves. So I twistered my way and leaned and grabbed hold of the fancy tray my mom got me. Unfortunately, it too had some stuff already stored in it. So…when I lifted it up my body weight shifted towards the tray, and also toward the shelves. I lost my backward momentum and fell shoulder first hard into the front panel of the wooden shelves. It dug deep into my shoulder and crashed me to the floor.