A Cookie Jar!

Something that was lacking in our little home was a cookie jar.  That was remedied last week with a find at MCC.  And of course, I had to fill it with cookies!

Also, our little sunflower plant is blooming!  So beautiful and cheerful.

A Week in the Life...

I have been thoroughly enjoying my "summer off".  However, that does not seem a very fitting name for it, since I always have so much to do!  Now that I'm not feeling as sick or tired as I was earlier in my pregnancy, it is nice to be able to work on some projects and do more around the house, especially since Jesse is really busy with work these days.  Here is a peek at what I've been up to over the last week or so.

Mom Winger's oatmeal cookie recipe - a double batch so I could freeze some

Lots of blueberries!

I found strawberries for a good price, so I made two batches of jam last week

Quiet times on the deck

Fried tortillas with cinnamon sugar - a favourite snack of ours!

My Grandma and I started making a maternity dress that I bought a pattern for

I like putting in the extra effort to make dinners pretty

And there was so much else to enjoy too - an encouraging and uplifting Bible study with a couple friends, getting started on "mission declutter" around the apartment, finishing a painting that I started months ago, our weekly date night, and hanging out with friends.

We are very blessed, and I am so thankful!  What are you thankful for?

Trust

I had a great experience last week: I got to hear my baby’s heartbeat.  The midwife said that it sounded good and strong.  It was encouraging to get the positive report, and hearing the heartbeat added another depth of reality to the fact that we’ve got a little one on the way!  Reflecting on the experience since then, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to share about something that I have been reflecting on a lot lately.  Being an expectant mother for the first time has given me a new perspective on trust.

Here is why:  In normal, every-day life, I don’t get to hear the baby’s heartbeat.  All I have is a slowly expanding waistline to tell me that everything is ok in there.  Sometimes it is easy to wonder and worry.  Is he or she healthy and growing properly?  Some days I get to know, but most days there isn’t anyone checking in to make sure. 

I do a lot of reading on the internet about pregnancy, and I’ve enjoyed getting more information, but one thing that I found surprising is that there are some expecting mothers who buy for themselves the instrument that lets you hear the baby’s heartbeat, so that they can hear it any time they want.  I think that would be amazing – to be able to hear my baby’s heartbeat any time I want, and to know that it’s doing ok.  But then I had to ask myself – what about trust?

This child belongs to God, the Father of all, even more than he or she belongs to me.  While I can do what I can for my baby, ultimately God is the one who will protect them and watch over them as they grow.  And that will always be the case, not just now. 

I feel like there is a stereotype out there – the worrying mom.  And it’s not really surprising; there’s lots for mothers to worry about!  Wondering about what is happening inside me is just the beginning.

There’s a lot to worry about in this life without being a mother – my vivid imagination leaves me no doubt about that.  The struggle against fear/anxiety/worry has been a pretty consistent theme in my life, and I have a feeling I’m not the only one.  I want to be a person of prayer and faith, not worry.  Some days it feels like a losing battle, but looking back I am encouraged to see progress and growth.

There are always opportunities for growth.  Most recently, I’ve been learning to trust God with the safety of my wonderful – and adventure-loving – husband.  There are lots of reasons to worry when he’s out on his mountain treks and other outdoor adventures, but I have found that lifting him up in prayer and then carrying on with my day is much more life-giving than fretting and worrying.  And he has always been ok, despite the occasional mishap, whether from a car-size falling boulder or a malfunctioning GPS. 

And now there is a new arena in my life in which to learn trust – a child.  From wondering about the miracle going on inside me, to the day they leave for college and beyond, I am sure that I will have many new opportunities of learning trust.  It’s a little daunting, but I am also excited.  And I am very thankful for a patient God and a loving husband (who is much more optimistic than I am).  It is my prayer and desire that I will not become known as a worrying mother, but as a praying mother and a trusting mother.

Jesse's New Favourite Food

Last week I was going to a wedding shower, and I needed to bring some baking.  I thought, since I have a pretty relaxed schedule, I might as well have some fun and try making some fancy treats.

To start, I made Rocky Road Fudge Bars, a recipe of my Grandma’s.  That went well, but there were lots of extras, and Jesse couldn’t eat them because of the cream cheese in them.  As a result, I still have a bunch in the fridge, since I am not much of a sweets person.  I think I’m going to have to freeze them, until there’s another event I can bring them to!

  

I also decided to try out a recipe I found on the internet for Chocolate Donut Holes.  Sounded good to me!  Here is a link to the recipe:  Chocolate Doughnut Holes

The process of making this treat begins with making a cake-like dough.  I changed the recipe a bit, substituting whole grain flour instead of all-purpose, and using a mix of honey and cane sugar for sweetener.

After refrigerating the dough for a while, I had to rig a deep fryer for myself.  Our most heavy-duty pot served the purpose quite well.  I only put in an inch and a half or so of oil, since it seemed like I was using so much!  I didn’t have a thermometer to gauge the temperature of the oil, but Google is a mighty tool, and some research surfaced an idea: put a popcorn kernel in the oil and when it pops the oil is almost hot enough!

Instead of rolling out the dough and using a cutter, I took a hint from the comments under the recipe and dropped small balls of dough into the hot oil with two tablespoons.  I fried them for one minute, then flipped them over to fry on the other side for another minute.

The first few were a little burnt, so I turned down the element a little, and the rest came out perfectly! 

 

Once they were touchable, I rolled them in the glaze and left them to cool completely on a cooling rack. 

The end result was cakelike donut holes with a crisp, sugary coating.  They were nice and cocoa-y and not too sweet.  Jesse loved them, and promptly ate 10.  Good thing the recipe made a big batch!  He also persists in calling them “Timbits” – I take that as a compliment, since my donut holes are apparently worthy to be identified with the iconic Canadian treat.

Exciting Days

When does 1 + 1 = 3?  Not in math class, but apparently when you’re married it happens from time to time.  Jesse and I are anticipating the more visible arrival of our little one right around New Years.  We are very excited!  Were you thinking it was rather odd that I was talking about being so tired in my previous post?  Yeah, well that’s why I’m tired.  Apparently that tends to happen when you’re pregnant.  However, as I am heading into the second trimester, my energy seems to be slowly returning.  Hooray!

Why am I talking about my pregnancy on my blog but not on Facebook?  Well, I guess I am a bit of a rebel.  It seems like every week or two there’s another big “baby announcement post” on Facebook, and I don’t want to be like everyone else.  But then I thought, why not post about it on my blog?  That way those who take the time to read my blog can have the privilege of knowing.   

You’re welcome.  :)

The Busy Bug

As I have been starting my summer I have noticed an interesting set of phenomenon.  The first is what happens when people ask me about my plans for the summer.  My reply usually involves a rambling explanation about how I’m planning to work on my musical and other projects that I kept on putting off because of school, and how I’m going to do things around the house and get ready for the drama team I’m planning to lead next school year… and all of that is true.  But really, my plan for the summer is to rest and to thoroughly enjoy it!  So why do I feel like I need to make myself sound a lot busier than I am planning to be?  Am I afraid that I am going to be judged?  That people will think that I’m being lazy or wasting time?

The other thing I have noticed is my own need to feel busy.  There have been several days in the past couple of weeks where I have been so tired that I literally lay around all day and didn’t get anything done.  I felt very useless and self-conscious!  It was as if my identity was being threatened by the fact that I wasn’t able to accomplish things, and that I even had to ask Jesse to make dinner when he got home from work!  At first my tired days were filled with “filler”: watching movies, playing games on my laptop, anything to distract me from the fact I wasn’t being busy, anything to fool my mind into thinking it was being productive.  But then even that got tiring.  I lost interest in watching movies, and even playing computer games seemed to take too much energy.  That was when I noticed what I had been doing.  I was not ok with just being still.  I was terrified of being “useless”.  I had caught the “busy bug”.

I don’t think this is something that is unique to me.  I see it all around our culture.  Spare time needs to be filled with something.  Silence needs to be filled with noise.  We pack our lives full – of work, material things, activities, and entertainment.  I think that media is especially useful in our human endeavor to never have a moment of stillness.  It can conveniently fill up every spare moment of our waking hours – go on facebook while eating breakfast, play a game on your phone while waiting for an appointment, eat supper in front of the TV, spend the evening playing video games or surfing the web.  Then you can always be busy, even when you don’t have work or meetings or social engagements.

I’m not dissing technology, well I kind of am, but that’s not the point.  The point is – why do we avoid silence?  Why are we so afraid of empty space?

I have come to believe that stillness and silence and rest are vitally important.  This has been a learning process for me, despite my tendency to get caught back up in the whirlwind of the busy bug.  There are so many things that we can learn through resting that we tend to miss when we are so busy.

One is our value.  I’ve been learning a lot about this in the past couple weeks.  My value should not be found in the fact that I’m an A student, or that I can host a great games night, or that I cook my family healthy meals, or anything else that I do.  Ultimately my value comes from being a child of God, and that is something that I AM, not something that I do.  I should be doing all these good things out of that place of value, not as a way to try to earn value.  Then, when I can't do as much as I normally can, I can be confident in the fact that that does not change my value!

Another thing that I have been finding is that stillness is something that God wants.  It’s all over the Bible, not least in a verse from my favourite Psalm: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10a).  But it is especially found in the concept of Sabbath.  The idea of working 6 days and resting the 7th was not just some law to make people’s lives miserable, it was actually a beautiful gift.  There is so much that could be said about Sabbath, but here is just one thought that I have been mulling over lately.  In Deuteronomy 5, the people of Israel are told to observe the Sabbath and remember that they used to be slaves in Egypt.  Slaves work 7 days a week – they don’t get any breaks, they don’t get to rest.  But God saved the Israelites from slavery and now they never again would have to work 7 days a week – they were free.  In Jesus Christ, we are also set free – so why do we feel like we have to work all of the time?  Why is our value so caught up in what we do, what we can accomplish?  God invites us to rest, because our value is secure in him!  We don’t need to be enslaved to the busy bug!

So this summer, I plan on enjoying some rest, though it may take me most of the summer to detox the busy bug from my system!  As a fellow wayfarer, I encourage you to learn what it means to rest, and to enjoy some time this summer – not just away from work, but in true rest.

Six Months!

As of a week ago, Jesse and I have been married for six months.  Six months!  It is amazing how fast the time has gone, but at the same time it almost feels as if we have been married forever.  I love getting to share life with him.

For our "Six Month Anniversary" we celebrated with sparkling apple juice in canning jars, a special meal that Jesse made for me, and a movie.  We are so busy these days that we treasure the times that we get to have together when we can ignore the incessant demands of school, work, and other commitments.

Here is a short pictorial summary of our first six months.  I have thoroughly enjoyed our marriage so far!  I was going to write some profound thoughts about love, psychology, and God, but I have not had time to formulate my thoughts into words.  So stay tuned for that some day!  For now, all I will say is: I love my husband!

We had the most beautiful wedding I could have ever imagined.  Photo by David Peters

We had a relaxing honeymoon on the east coast of Canada.  This photo is on a beach on PEI.

We ended our honeymoon in Ontario where we had a reception with Jesse's family.  This is a picture with his grandparents.

It was fun to be able to dress up in our wedding clothes again and take more photos - this time with horses!

Back in BC, we set up our small apartment.  We love having people over.  In this picture we had my parents and grandparents over for dinner.

Jesse got to summit Mt. Baker with some friends

On Needle Peak, one of the most amazing hikes I have ever done!

On Lady Peak with Jesse's brother Andrew and our friend Rebecca.  (We did lots of hiking this summer!)

We got to host a Thanksgiving Dinner at our apartment for some friends.