Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing you all a very happy and restful Thanksgiving weekend!


"Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever." [Psalm 107:1]

Victory over brown rice!

I have to share a personal victory with you all. I finally figured out how to successfully cook long grain brown rice!!! Thank you, Lord!

Until now my brown rice has always turned out too crunchy or too soggy and underdone. So, I gave up trying to cook brown rice for awhile. I bought instant brown rice for a bit and then even went back to white rice [gasp!].

Here's the secret: soak the grains for 15-20 minutes before cooking.

Why did I never know this?!? It's definitely made the difference in my brown rice. And my family (Matt especially) is very happy that I finally make rice that actually tastes like rice.

Do you all have any cooking giants to overcome?

We are still alive and kicking

Seems like every time I write a new blog post I begin by apologizing for my blogging delinquency. Arggh! I just can not figure out how to juggle my responsibilities well enough to make my blog-writing consistent. Any one have any suggestions?

November has flown by like a supersonic jet. We've had family here to visit and the calendar is full of activities, preschool co-op, birthday parties, and Bible study.

Clive is on the brink of his 11 month milestone. He's fearless. Who ever heard of a baby who climbed before he could walk?

Chloe is a pretending queen lately. Every game of note includes imagining somehow. Her latest fancy is to be a wonder pet and to rescue animals in distress. Playing school, princess, and train are standards too.

Now I can sleep in peace that I've put to rest that nagging you-should-update-the-blog feeling. :)

[If you'd like to see pictures of our busy fall activities, check out my recent facebook photo album.]

What have you been up to this fall?

Grandma's here!

My mom is in town visiting - YAY! We're busy enjoying grandma time and soaking up her presence during the holiday weekend.

Here are some recent fall photos of the kids to keep you happy during my blogging absence. :)

We spent an afternoon doing fall-y leaf things. And Chloe has informed me that raking leaves is hard work. Tell me about it. We raked and raked and raked and then she only did one jump into the pile. And Clive attempted eating the crunchy moldy leaves several times (only successful once though!). I'm learning quickly that baby boys are tough little creatures.

How'd your leaf-raking go this year?

How was your voting experience?

I voted early this year and waited 3 hours to vote! Turns out I needn't have made such efforts to vote early as our local polls were not overly crowded today.

Oh well! I got some much-needed quiet time to sit and work on a Christmas cross-stitch project while I waited my turn at the polls. It also gave me time to reflect on how fortunate we are in America. We have the right to vote and we can vote without oppression or fear of persecution.

How was your voting experience? Check out my mini-poll on the right hand side bar. Happy voting!

We're mighty popular!

Are you all getting inundated with political phone calls too? Yikes, seems like we get 3-4 phone calls a day endorsing various candidates. We haven't even been answering our phone the past few days; it's been seriously annoying.

The funniest one was a call we got last night, the female voice began her schpiel with the words, "I know you've been getting a lot of phone calls these days . . . " That was all we listened to before hitting the delete button. :)

How many political calls have you received during this pre-election phase?