70% Chance of Rain

All weather sources predicted a 70% chance of rain for today. Rain through the night and an overcast morning sky seemed to indicate the accurateness of this prediction. So we reluctantly canceled our plans to meet friends in Charlottesville for a fun afternoon of apple picking. By 11am, this is what the sky looked like outside our front door...

What?! What happened to the 70% chance of rain?! Grrrrrrrr.

Truthfully the apple orchards are most likely a messy mud pit due to the past three days of constant rain. We'll probably enjoy ourselves more on a day when the ground is firm and dry again. And yet I still find myself shocked that there is actually a profession (ahem, weathermen) where you are well paid to consistently make inaccurate predictions.

So now we're sitting at home during a rare Saturday that Hubby does not have to work at Starbucks all day. Hubby is watching football, Little Boy is sleeping, and I think I'm going to take advantage of the free afternoon to check out Short Pump's brand new Trader Joe's that I've waited all summer to be open and have been dying to visit. Fun times are still to be had, I suppose!

Top Chef

Hubby and I love Bravo's show Top Chef. The contestants are creative and amazingly quick on their feet when it comes to whipping up tasty and elegant dishes. Unfortunately, while the show posts all the contestants' recipes online, you can rarely find a dish that is easy to duplicate at home. Until this past season, that is.

This spring, one of the challenges included making an easy, healthy, affordable dish that a family of four could recreate at home. The dish had to include a lean meat, whole grain, and vegetables, and the ingredients should cost less than $10 total. I'd been dying to make the winning dish for some time. finally got around to looking up the recipe, and making it at home.

All I can say is YUM, YUM, YUM! Even though this recipe involves quite a bit of chopping, the dish made a large quantity of delicious food and will definitely be a repeat in our home!

STIR FRY IN A TERIYAKI PEANUT SAUCE

1 lb of boneless chicken breasts, cubed
1/2 head of bok choy (leafy Asian veggie), chopped in 1/2 inch pieces
1 red pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
2 carrots, chopped or sliced
1 cup edamame, cooked and removed from pods
1/2 box of whole wheat noodles, cooked
Teriyaki peanut sauce (recipe below)

In a large skillet, saute chicken in 2 tablespoons olive oil until fully cooked. Add all veggies and cover, stirring occasionally, until veggies are softened to your preference. Add noodles and mix thoroughly. Drizzle teriyaki peanut sauce over dish, stirring until stir fry is well coated. Serve hot.

Teriyaki Peanut Sauce

2 heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter
2 tsp honey
2 tsp orange juice concentrate
2 tbsp olive or canola oil
1/4 cup bottled teriyaki sauce

Heat all ingredients on LOW heat until well blended. Add water if necessary for thinning sauce.
**If you do not like peanut sauce, you can use 3/4 to 1 cup of plain teriyaki sauce instead.

Note to Self

Note to self: Do NOT take Little Boy in to Michaels (or any other party store, for that matter) until well after Halloween.

Here's why:

Last week, while standing in line at Michaels to exchange yarn colors, I noticed a little girl, about 4 years old, trot past the main Halloween displays with her 2 year old brother. Part of the display included an extremely creepy looking groom standing with a headless bride. Triggered by the children's motion, the groom sprang to life unexpectedly and cackled, "What do you think of my lovely bride? Ha, ha, ha, ha..."

I can honestly say that I have never heard a child scream as loudly as that little girl (and I have worked in preschool settings for over five years!) She leaped at least two feet in to the air and burst in to hysterical tears, which then caused her little brother to start sobbing uncontrollably as well. Their mother came tearing out of a near by aisle, most likely thinking her children were being kidnapped, and she spent the next ten minutes trying to calm them, to no avail. The family ended up leaving without purchasing anything in their cart, the little girl crying, "Don't make me walk past it again!" all the way out of the store.

Meanwhile, every customer in the store was glowering at the embarrassed Michaels employees, and every mother muttered, "I am NOT bringing my children in here for the rest of the year!"

Too sad! I can understand Spirit and Party City with their inappropriate Halloween displays, but I expected better from a family friendly craft store.

And speaking of inappropriate store displays, on the same day in the same store, I walked out of the knitting section and smack in to a huge CHRISTMAS display of ornaments, wreaths, and bows. Ahem...in case no one's noticed, we're barely through SEPTEMBER! I love Christmas more than anyone, but even I will concede that four months out is just too early for Christmas displays. I think I stood there stunned for a full minute before moving on, shaking my head.

What are stores coming to these days?!

Seeking

One of Little Boy's current library books is Saxophone Sam and His Snazzy Jazz Band. This absolutely adorable book takes two children through the house on a gloomy day searching for the mysterious source of jazz music. After searching every room in the house, they find a jazz band and troupe of dancers comprised of miniature people hidden in an old, antique radio. The kids spend the rest of their rainy day jiving to jazz music on the radio. Meanwhile, the band is "off to Sicily, and when that show is through, then perhaps, we'll visit you!"

Saxophone Sam is one of Little Boy's favorite books at the moment, and you don't have to look far to see why. Full of huge, colorful illustrations and jazzy, rhyming verses, this book is just plain fun. And I started thinking...

Lately I've been pondering how to seek (or search for) God more fully. Two specific verses that I've been mediating on are Jeremiah 29:11-13 and Matthew 6:33.

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and He will give you everything that you need. Matthew 6:33

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future. And then you will call upon me, and pray to me, and you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart. Jeremiah 29:11-13

Both of these verses talk about seeking God above all else and with all of your heart. I feel like these verses could not be clearer (seek God) and that I should know exactly what to do (seek God). And yet I've wrestled with how. How to seek God above else. How to seek God with all of my heart. As I've prayed, I've felt like the answer is right in front of me and that I'm just missing it.

And then while I was reading Saxophone Sam to Little Boy the other day, I made a startling realization. When I think of seeking God, I think of reading my Bible more, praying more, becoming more disciplined in my devotions. While those are definitely important ways to seek God, on occasion, I find those disciplines to be both difficult and boring. I realized the two main points I've missed: Seeking is supposed to be fun. And in seeking, you are not limited. You seek everywhere.

In the book, the children smiled and danced and laughed as they searched the refrigerator, the bathroom, the books, the attic. No room or object was left unturned. In the same way, in a game of hide and seek, you search everywhere for your child or friend, laughing and calling out to them the entire time.

In seeking God above all else and with all of my heart, I want to seek Him all the time and in everything I do. I want to see Him in Little Boy, I want to see Him in the wind, the rain, and the sun, I want to see Him in my friends when we hang out and in those I don't know when I'm out shopping. I want to see Him when I'm by myself reading my Bible and praying to Him. And I want to have fun. God is imaginative and creative and probably has the best sense of humor. When I'm seeking Him, I don't need to be somber or reserved or bored. I can laugh, smile, and play.

And I think I will. Who knows what I might find if I do?

13 Weeks

I am 13 weeks pregnant today! According to Baby Center, the baby is almost 3 inches long and is the size of a medium shrimp. Nice. And since I don't like seafood, I have no idea how big a medium shrimp is. Larger than a lime, I'm supposing, since that is how large the baby was at 12 weeks. And just why is the size of a growing baby so often compared to food?

Since the second trimester starts at week 14, I only have 6 days left of the first trimester! Yea! The time is going much faster this second time around, and I'm extremely grateful for that! I am more excited than words can express about this new baby. But I am already ready to be finished with this pregnancy. And I still have 27 weeks to go. Yikes!

Why am I in such a hurry to have this baby that I have not even carried for a full trimester? Because I am ITCHY. Yes, I do have the normal symptoms of a daily headache (migraine) and random bouts of nausea, but my biggest complaint is ITCHINESS. Some of you may remember that I experienced that towards the end of my pregnancy with Little Boy. Severely. In fact, the doctor induced early because of the fast spreading, painful itchy rash. (Think poison ivy all over your body from your neck down...yes, it really was that bad!) Now the rash I had, PUPPS, is not supposed to recur in future pregnancies and certainly not this early (as in the second I became pregnant). So who knows what is going on now. Thankfully the itch and rash is confined to my feet and hands and has not spread. Yet. Honestly I am praying for healing and relief before that happens, and I would be so glad if you would pray for that as well.

In the meantime, I'm on medication (that is barely helping), I soak my feet in ice water every night before bed (off to do that after this post), and I have found a wonderful lotion called Sarna that actually brings helpful, temporary relief.

And on that happy note, I wish you a good night! 

(Wow. Two posts in one day? I must be inspired by the cute new blog background!)

Blog Makeover!

So as you can see, I've given my blog a makeover! Truthfully I do not think I blog often enough or well enough to deserve a super cute makeover - hopefully that will change in the near future, like when new baby stops sapping all of my energy! - but I can justify this indulgence because this design is FREE through The Cutest Blog on the Block! Yea!

The main reason I took the plunge and ventured in to HTML code is because I plan to redo our baby blog once we learn the gender of our new little one (November) and I wanted to know exactly what to do before messing up or ruining a blog I've spent two years investing in! So I decided to practice on my own.

Installing the new design is much easier than I'm making it sound, though I did have one catastrophe this morning that I doubt anyone saw! Let's just say thank goodness for Blogger's "back up my current template" button! If you're interested in a new look for your blog, head over to The Cutest Blog and peruse their hundreds off free backgrounds!

Also, if you have no idea what I'm talking about and my new blog design has either not downloaded for you or is quite a mess, let me know!

Happy Friday!

Priorities...Or Not

What I should be doing while Little Boy and the Little Girl I nanny sleep...

-Baking cookies for our girls small group tonight
-Reading the first two chapters of our small group book which we will be discussing tonight
-Vacuuming the carpet since the guys small group will be meeting at our house tonight
-Picking up about 100 toys off the floor so that I can vacuum the carpet for the guys small group that will be meeting at our house tonight
-Thawing chicken for dinner tonight and cutting up vegetables
-Balancing the check book

What I am doing...

-Viewing and editing pictures that I took of Little Boy and Little Girl today while they played outside
-Blogging
-Eating chocolate

Am I going to regret this lack of priorities later when I'm running around shrieking about the house not being clean and dinner not being ready and my small group homework not being done? You bet I am!

But tell me these kiddos aren't cute? See! You're looking at their pictures instead of cleaning just like me! And I bet you're eating chocolate too!

 

 

Awake

Yes, if you look closely at the time stamp, you'll realize I'm awake and blogging at 3am. What's worse is that I've been awake for almost two hours and downstairs for at least 45 minutes.

Why?

-I'm nauseous and wanted a bowl of cereal to settle my stomach.
-I'm itchy due to pregnancy hormones and wanted to get my blood moving.
-I have a cold and wanted a cup of hot tea to dislodge the painful golf ball residing in my throat.
-My nose is completely congested, and after find nothing appropriate in the medicine cabinet, I settled on one of those ridiculous looking Breathe Right strips that you tape to your nose. Thankfully it's clear, so I don't look too silly, though who is going to see me and care at 3am.
-I decided to relocate to the guest bedroom so I can toss and turn without waking up Hubby and so I can sleep without the fan blowing on my already dry and congested airways.

Sadly this is not going to be the last time I'm blogging at 3am. Yes, friends, this is going to be a long 40 weeks.