Joy and Anguish

As I sit here in our beautiful, giant, God-given backyard listening to Sophia playing nearby [and the 7 million doves that live in our trees] I am overcome with most every emotion: sorrow, anguish, happiness, and gratitude.  Beth Moore teaches in the James Bible Study that joy and anguish are strangely linked - and in this moment I am living proof.  I am broken-hearted for the Adkins' family over their tremendous loss.  I cannot even begin to imagine what they are feeling now - only one other time in my life have I felt such sorrow for complete strangers.  I have been brought to tears time and again today as they cross my mind.  

And yet the sadness I feel for them has led to intense gratitude and joy for and in our God.  It has opened my eyes fresh to the incredible blessings that surround me.  Grieving for their family has convicted my complaining spirit.  Do I REALLY have ANY problems? Really?  Is the lack of a diaper changing table in the doctor's office today anything to be upset over?  Really?  We have money to visit the doctor.  We have a clean diaper to put on.  I have my baby...and she has me.  

Life is precious.  Every moment is a gift.  I have a choice - live in each moment thankful for the good it brings -OR- squander it away with complaining.  OH HOW I HAVE WASTED SO MUCH TIME these last two years!  

God is so good.  God has provided for our every need.  He has protected us from danger.  He has given us each other. 

I am wholeheartedly convinced that God was prepared for this season of my life and prepared the details of the season for me - though I had no idea it was coming.  He knew that I would have this time of waiting for His direction - and He prepared the perfect place for me to wait.  He brought us home. He put us in this house.  I can sit in this beautiful giant back patio listening to the birds, watching our children play - and praising God as I thank Him for these months of waiting.  

However, NOW, in the hurt I feel for the Adkins, and in the knowing that life is truly a precious gift - I think I will spend less time focused on the "wait" and more time soaking in the goodness and glory of God.

Things I will miss...

I think I've said it before... but I will say it again ;) I cannot wait to move! It's strange though - I spent my whole life dying to move out of Houston. I never thought I would be counting down the days till we move back there! (87 by the way) If I could choose anywhere to live - and my friends and family could move with me - it would DEFINITELY not be Houston! BUT we have learned over these last 14 months that friends and family (and a great church family) can make or break your location.

In terms of the actual city though - we do absolutely love this place! There are some things I will miss about living here and when I look back on the months we spent here I want to remember them:

Gorgeous hills! Just driving to the store I am blessed with a beautiful view. There have been many times that this has saved my sanity! More than once, Sam and I have just taken a drive. We don't even have to go far - just driving around and taking in the scenery of the horizon has a great calming effect and is a beautiful example of God's handiwork.

Entertainment! We have thoroughly enjoyed much of the entertainment San Antonio has to offer! It is so easy to jump over to the River Walk/downtown/Market Square area and spend a couple of hours just walking around. We have enjoyed the outdoor feel of La Cantera and the indoor shopping of North Star Mall. We loved our visits to the zoo, rides on the train, hikes and picnics in various parks around the city, and the beautiful Christmas lights at the River and the University. The icing on the cake has definitely been our Sea World passes. We went too many times to count over the last year! (Definitely more than 2 dozen trips!) We love the animal shows, the rides, AND the water park. (Look for a post later with insider tips!)

Local Food! We definitely spent way too much money when we first moved here trying out all the wonderful family owned eateries! I now understand my Austin friends' obsessions with avoiding chain restaurants! We have hardly eaten at any large chains since we've been here and I am definitely going to miss that!

Outgoing Strangers! I have to admit...when we first moved here they really creeped me out! Although this is a big city - it really has a small town feel and that took some getting used to. Sam was still very young (about 8 weeks) when we moved and strangers were always smiling at us and telling me "Congratulations!" It took me about 2 weeks of this to even figure out what they were talking about! Sam got used to being the center of attention - even with strangers. He was quite confused on one of our trips to Houston when every stranger in Olive Garden did NOT stop to talk to him! LOL I surprised myself the first few times I randomly said hello to a stranger and well now... I am officially one of "those people"!

Day trips! We are SO close to SO many wonderful places: Fredericksburg, New Braunfels and Austin just to name a few! On my birthday last year we just popped over to Fredericksburg and spent the day shopping :) (Might have to do that one last time this year too!) I loved driving to Austin to host a 31 Party for my cousin Kara, and another day meeting for lunch with a great old friend who I hadn't seen in years! We visited New Braunfels many many times - for day trips of rafting, to meet up with family and have ice cream, and even just for dinner.

I have big plans now for when we move! This experience has inspired me to explore Houston and the surrounding areas more than I did before - and to take full advantage of the hidden treasures within!

Our family has enjoyed living in the city of San Antonio because of all that it has to offer. We will miss the city and amenities but Brian and I both agree that these great things we will miss still pale in comparison to the benefits of having friends and family to share our life with.

Going home!

PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW

We have a plan. We have a destination. We have an answer - and the answer, the destination, the plan did not come from anything that we did! Those are the best answers, aren't they?

I have been racking my brain and resources trying to find a way that we could live on one salary - either here in San Antonio or in Houston - and have continuously come up empty. I would find what I thought to be a solution, would get SO excited, and then within a day or two would find out that what I thought was the answer was no answer at all. We have lived these past couple of months with the reality that we can't afford to stay in our current home - and with no obtainable plan for the future. I was at the point of looking for dwellings in dangerous neighborhoods that we had no business stuffing a family of 7 into - but could afford to live in at least until this baby arrives and I can go back to work - but even then I was coming up empty. I was at a complete loss. It has been an emotional roller coaster that I have been more than ready to jump off of!

Well our answer came this weekend with no prompting or planning or research of my own! Just plop down into our lap at church on Sunday morning we received God's answer in the form of a very wonderful friend. I won't go into too many of the details but we have an arrangement where we will rent a friend's 4 bedroom home (1000+ more sq ft than where we currently live) for a very low price! Our friend will continue to use his garage space (and whatever else he wants as far as I'm concerned!) but will move into an apartment so that we can have the house. Who does that? I would have NEVER in a million years come up with something like this - or put someone out and asked for them to do this. This has to be bigger than us.

In all honesty, the last year has been incredibly difficult for us (well - me). Don't get me wrong... we have been in the place we know we were supposed to be and have learned amazing life lessons! But sometimes lessons aren't easy and the test is even harder. The trials of this past year have left me burned out and depressed. I never realized how important friendships and church family were until we had neither. I am so thankful though for the experience. We are walking (ok - maybe I'm running) away from this experience with new understanding and respect for the need we have to form relationships with other adult couples. We have also grown tremendously as a family. We have learned to really rely on each other in the good and bad. Because we had no distractions or entertainment of other families we have also learned to really play together. Our kids have changed in amazing ways - each one differently - but we know in ways that would not have happened if we had not jumped out of our comfort zone and taken this journey together.

I am still reeling from the news of this new living arrangement and completely flabbergasted and humbled that God would work something like this out for US. For ME. It's not that I don't believe that He can do ANYthing... I just don't think it should be done for me. I know that even if we were to live in a van down by the river - God is still God and would still be providing for us. It just might not be in the way others would imagine. He has provided for us here - in our home situation, in our family situation, and financially (sometimes through other people). It's not always easy - but He always gets us through. I never could have asked for something like He is providing in Houston. My tiny human brain cannot comprehend the blessing.

I keep hearing the chorus of "Home" in my head... though the words I hear are a little different than originally written:

Well, I'm going home, back to the place where I belong
And where their love has always been enough for me
I'm not running from, no, I think you got it all wrong
I don't regret this life You chose for me
But these places and these faces are getting old
So we're going home, we're going home

I cannot wait to be "home" with our friends, family, and church home. I'm looking forward to the healing that will come (in time) and seeing where God leads us. I'm also praying that we stay out of our old comfort zone and continue to grow as a family and as followers of Christ.

Calzones!

My favorite recipe from last week turned out to be calzones! I modified a recipe I found on pinterest that enabled me to use what we already had in the kitchen plus a few extras. This was a hit across the board - even Sam loved it!

Here are the ingredients I started with:

I don't LOVE the pizza sauce from HEB but I had a couple of cans in my pantry - so that's what we used! :) We absolutely love the ground Italian Sausage from HEB and use it to spice up many dishes. I started with the sausage... I always heat the skillet for 2-3 minutes on high before I pop the sausage in (and then I turn down the heat to med/med-high). We use a potato masher thing to break up the sausage (also use for ground beef). It works great!

While the sausage cooked I got the first pizza crust ready. I chose to do this on foil that I measured to fit my pan. I sprayed the foil with Pam first (I have never done this before and wasn't sure if it was ok but it worked!) and then I spread the crust out as far as possible using my hands. We used Pillsbury refrigerated crusts and were VERY PLEASANTLY surprised! They were delicious!

After this I started layering ingredients. (Don't forget to take the sausage off the stove and drain the grease!) We like pepperoni and sausage so our assembly was simple! I suggest spreading the sauce out a bit wider. I did that with the second and it worked better.

I like to put the cheese on top of the pepperoni but under the sausage ;)

Now comes the really fun part! Cut slits along both sides of the crust. Cut pretty much all the way up to the filling. This is why I decided to use the foil - it made a nice flat surface for cutting but still allowed easy transfer onto the pan.

Now you wrap it up! Alternating one side then the other you criss-cross the dough to hold in the filling. It doesn't have to be perfect!

Right before I stuck it in the oven I brushed the top with some EVOO. Then I just followed the cooking instruction for the crust!

Here's the finished product :

I used a pizza cutter to cut the calzone into rectangular shaped pieces and placed 2-3 on each plate along with a small bowl of some of the leftover sauce for dipping.

I got to enjoy this twice (the 3 leftover pieces were my lunch the next day) and I loved it both times!

(Please excuse the horrible formatting of this post!)

Pot Roast! Finally!

FINALLY! I made a pot roast! For the first year or two of our marriage we were constantly throwing out pot roast. Uncooked pot roast. I always wanted to make one and bought the ingredients with every intention of cooking it - but the meat would ALWAYS spoil before I could get to it. We finally decided to stop buying it because we were wasting so much money. Well... thanks to Pinterest.com and the Pioneer Woman I finally bought AND COOKED a pot roast!

I have to admit - it was a little more challenging than I planned but only because Sam decided that a nap was not in his plan for the day. SO... I got to add playing with/caring for/watching a 14 month old to the recipe :)

Like I mentioned above I found this recipe on Pinterest. It is from a blog by the Pioneer Woman who has her own show on Food Network (I think). To be honest- I had never watched her show or read her blog or really even heard much about her until this recipe. BUT - I like that she gave pretty detailed instructions (with pictures) which is a MUST for me! I am a decent cook - with a decent recipe - but I like VERY DETAILED instructions. I'm finding that a problem in my new crafting adventures... but that's for another day!

Below is a (very long) summary of my experience but for the full recipe visit:

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2011/09/2008_the_year_of_the_pot_roast/

Here are the ingredients for the pot roast! I like to get everything out ahead of time so I'm not scrambling at the last minute to find what I need. (These pics are from my phone so please pardon the quality)

The first step was to heat up olive oil in a pan and I have to admit I overheated a bit because I started doing things out of order. I blame this on trying to multi-task too much and being a freak about onions... I decided to cut the carrots first (DUMB) because I didn't want them to taste like onions and I worried that if I cut the onions first their yucky onion juice would spread. ANYWAYS - the house filled with smoke but no detectors went off! YAY! (And scary...) I just opened the doors and turned on some fans and went back to business!

On a side note - Sam loved having the doors open. I never take him in the back yard and he saw this as his opportunity! This of course added to the challenge of keeping him safe and cooking at the same time but hey - I like a little adventure in my life!

Next I browned the onions, then the carrots and finally the meat...

Now this part got tricky. This is a 4 pound pot roast and apparently I do not have the right kind of tongs for this hefty meat. You are supposed to brown one side, turn over to brown the other, and then hold it on its side to brown those... I could NOT turn this meat very easily! I ended up having to take it off the burner and using both tongs AND a spatula work very hard to flip it over. It wasn't stuck to the pan or anything - just too big and heavy for my little rubber tipped tongs to handle. I had to skip browning the sides altogether because it just wasn't doable.

After this you deglaze the pan. You have the option of using red wine but I opted to just use beef broth. I don't mind cooking with wine but our HEB is not so fabulous and their selection leaves much to be desired. I only buy the small bottles so I'm not stuck with leftover wine that would spoil so that takes my options down even more (I know some of you might be choking on your wine right now to know that I wouldn't drink the leftover wine but I HATE wine. Gives me an INSTANT headache!) I didn't get a picture of this part as I was running back and forth removing BBQ utensils from Sam's hands, chasing a stray cat away, and overall just trying not to burn the house down or end the day with a one-eyed, cat scratched child.

Once the pan is deglazed you add everything back to it... meat first. The recipe called for adding enough liquid to halfway cover the meat - or 2-3 cups. Well... I got focused on the 2-3 cups so I WAY over did it! OH WELL! :) You will see in the picture that it looks more like a stew than a pot roast at this point but at least we know it won't be dry ;) I then added in the rosemary and my fake thyme. Remember the HEB isn't fab so I had to go with a substitute because they didn't have any fresh thyme. I won't tell you what I used... those real cooks/chefs out there might hang me! But I work with what I've got!

Here it is - ready to go into the oven. Now comes the hard part. She says "don't fiddle with it." WHAT? You know about every 20 minutes I want to go in there and peek! But I haven't. I'm following directions - even if it kills me!

Four hours turned out to be too much - thankfully I peeked early ;) and was able to turn the heat down all the way to just keep it warm until the potatoes were ready and Brian was home.

I moved the meat to a cutting board and it was sooooo juicy it fell apart on the way! It looks pretty fatty but I guess that's what makes it juicy. The fat grosses me out but it was so easy to remove as I cut it to serve. I also pulled the carrots out so they were easier to serve and put the onions aside for the trash - none of us eat them - we just like the flavor they add.

The Pioneer Woman suggested that you serve this with mashed potatoes instead of cooking the potatoes with the roast so I used my own recipe for those. It's nothing fancy - and DEFINITELY not healthy but its a combo of old family recipes and just my tweaking over the years.

I started with 4 large bulk baking potatoes. I scrub them really well and peel most of them. I don't worry about getting every little fleck of peel off - and my family doesn't seem to notice. Next I cut them into uniform pieces. It takes a little more time to be specific about this but it really helps them all cook evenly. I put them all in a pot of boiling (and salty) water and I just watch them. Every couple of minutes I take one out and give it a "fork test" to see how soft it is.


When the test potato is mashable I remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon and place them into my mixing bowl. I don't use a colander because I want to save the water for later. *Make sure you remove the potatoes BEFORE they start falling apart. Before I start mixing I add in several spoons of the leftover potato water (from the pot), a large amount of butter (about 2/3 of a stick), and some heavy whipping cream. I warned you they were not healthy! But MAN ARE THEY CREAMY! :) I don't usually have to add any salt because I use the heavily salted water at the beginning. I just mix them until there are a few lumps left and they are ready to serve!

We followed the Pioneer Woman's serving suggestion and it was GREAT! I put a bed of potatoes, made a "fence" with the roast, and laid a couple carrots on the side. Then I covered it all with the leftover liquid in the pot roast pan and it really pulled the whole dish together.

Sorry for the length of this post! I just couldn't leave anything out! You might make pot roast all the time - but for me this was a new challenge that I had been putting off for year. Hopefully it will encourage you to try something new. Don't be intimidated by the unknown! Hey - if it doesn't work out (like my paella last week) at least you will have a funny story and great memories with your family :)

Ch-Ch-Changes!

Life changes. There's nothing you can do to stop it - it is what it is. And I'm not sure it's bad. I really don't like to be bored... and when life changes it is anything but boring! At least at the beginning ;)

I am no longer pursuing full time ministry - or any formal ministry position - for a season of time. Not sure how long this "season" will last but I'm gonna ride it out until God shows me something different. The unexpected news of our FIFTH baby sparked us to make this change. Working full time and being Mommy to Sam full time was proving to be too much already so we knew that adding a new munchkin to the mix would be impossible. If you had asked me 6 months ago if I would be taking a break from ministry I would have thought you were crazy - but life changes.

I am now on day 10 of being a Stay At Home Mom and I LOVE it. There is only one problem. Now I'm bored. Like I said changes keep life from being boring... at the beginning. I realize 10 days in might still be the beginning but I'm bored. Don't get me wrong - playing with Sam NEVER grows dull! And it's not that I don't have other things to do around the house to keep me busy - I am really enjoying getting the house clean to my standards, organizing, cooking, etc but I need something more. I'm bored.

Thus this blog. My husband told me last night "You should blog. So you won't be bored." What?? I have nothing of interest to say! I am not a writer. I said - what would I say? "Today I woke up, cleaned the living room, did 5 loads of laundry, picked up the same toys 4 times, changed 2 poop diapers, cooked dinner." Wow - that's worth reading........... lol But he is my husband - and pretty fantastic - and pretty full of wisdom - so I thought I would try it. ;)

Good thing is - I just might have something to say in the next few days and it could end up being a bit comical for those who follow. I have a plan to attack my boredom: crafty decorations for our home. Now this could end up quite funny for three reasons... I am NOT crafty. I am NOT artistic. I am NOT good at creating anything with my hands. I plan to try these great projects I find on pinterest and other sites and document my failures - and successes should I have any! It's the strangest thing - I can have GREAT ideas and pictures of what I want to produce in my head but something happens between my head and my hands and there is a complete breakdown!

I'm not sure how long this will last - could be another 10 days and then I'm bored again - but that just means I will get to find something new to try!

Two of a Kind

A broken van AC just might change my life. Well - many lives. A couple of weeks ago our van AC went out. We went to have it fixed but things just kept popping up that prevented that from happening. Around the same time my cousin, Kara, posted on Facebook that her husband, Chad, was building his mobile car repair company. We decided that since we only live an hour and a half away now we should take our van to him. Our plan was to take it immediately - the whole family would go - but again things kept popping up. We FINALLY worked out a day but the whole family wouldn't be availble to go this time. As I got ready to leave with Sam and Isabel it was raining - it hasn't rained in MONTHS! I decided it would NOT be a good idea to take little Sammy in the van with no AC and the windows up so everyone but me stayed home. This was not by chance. Without a doubt it was not. 

What an amazing visit I have had with my cousin and her family! We have shared stories, talked "shop" (aka ministry), and even a discussed a little theology. It turns out we are living parrallel lives only an hour and a half away from each other. We are both called to full time ministry. We both currently work with children in just slightly different capacities. We both know that we are where we are supposed to be - for now - but that God is calling us to more radical living that may or may not be where we are right now. 

I am intrigued. I have no idea what is going to happen in the future. But I know that this is the start of something. I know that some day (could be months, years, or even decades) we will look back at this day as the beginning. I am excited at the very real possibility that we might one day serve God together with our families side by side. 

I miss my family (even though I've only been gone for a few hours) but I know if I had the distraction of my precious Sam or my older "babies" we would not have spent these hours deep in conversation. 

I LOVE HOW GOD WORKS