Our Boring Hum-Drum Life

Life in these parts is just moseying along. Last Thursday my hubby came in from splitting wood with his hand dripping blood. He looked a tad pale. We got the bleeding controlled. He told me he was using the wedge to split a log and a piece of the wedge must have split off and hit him.

"Do you think there is anything in there?"

"No, I think I could tell. It just hurts- the whole way up my arm!"

I left the decision up to the expert, after all, he deals with splinters and foreign objects more often than I do.

Then five days later when it wasn't healing up quite as expected, he was playing with a magnet and ran it over his hand. Guess what!? The magnet stuck to his hand!

He thought I should just use my skills and carefully incise that spot and take out the piece of metal.

"Sorry dear, I'm not that skilled."

The doctor was impressed with the magnet trick though and took a picture to use in a future speech.

Since this one goes to school, I normally go shopping alone.

But this week I took her with me to W-mart, I forgot how loud she is!

AND that she has no filter.

We walked in the door, "MOM, EWW! look at that guy!"

I froze, and looked around whew it was just a Halloween decoration and it was "ewww".

Walked past the toothbrushes and she declared that she needed one.

"no dear, you just got a new one ,"

"You never get me anything!"

" I know I'm terrible."

Next aisle, loudly with an audience "You are just a terrible mother!"

Turned the corner and needed to wait until some little girls moved out of the way

"Mom they are just standing there!"

Next aisle a lady with no hair and a kerchief on her head, 

"Hey! She's wearing a covering."

I had enough, I stopped and talked very quietly and close to her ear, "It is NOT OK to just say everything you think. You need to talk quietly."

I thought I had told her this before.

Maybe it worked, because she missed some announcement opportunities on the way out.

Blowing the milkweed seeds.

We didn't find any Monarch caterpillars this year.

Then Thursday night I got a text from Zeke (who was in a nearby inner-city kids club) saying 

"We're not exactly sure of motive but there was an attempted shooting outside. Karen (one of the teachers) had a bullet hole through her skirt. Caused general chaos. And we had to take all the children home in car rides. Check Fox news."

I figured that it was a case of "wrong place at the wrong time"

But it turned out that it almost could not have been a case of mistaken identity.

So really not sure what was going on. 

Between the boy that is sleeping in a bamboo house on stilts somewhere "over there" and the boy that sends texts like this, I'm getting some extra prayer time.

Gotta remember the Praise story too

A number of weeks ago, Ben was headed out on the first missions trip from Bible school he is attending. He was headed to a desert that has yurts for houses.

The day before he left, he sent a "urgent prayer request"

"A small pimple that was on my knee has suddenly grown and is getting painful. Advice please."

Since I sleep when he is awake, he got my advice when he was sleeping.

When I woke the next day, the e-mail said.

"going to the hospital to have it seen, it grew to the diameter of a baseball."

Finally caught up to him mere hours before he was to leave on a fourteen hour journey of layovers and plane flights.

"It feels better, they lanced it and irrigated it and wrapped it. Gave me antibiotics and told me to come back for the next ten days to have it wrapped."

Umm, "so are you still going?"

"Of course"

"Well Lord, he's yours, but take care of him for me."

Got a precious e-mail, text message "we're here, knee looks good"

Eleven days after they left, we were able to Skype again and it turns out that God had it all taken care of before they even left. The contact that they met, was a medical doctor.

She took care of him.

So the fact that I'm not quite as worried while he is on this trip is because my faith muscles are stronger?  I hope so. 

Auspicious Day

Three Years ago

Four Years Ago

It's her birthday too, but I don't have pictures of her from then.

When Mennonites Cook Chinese Cuisine

First off, it's a trip to the Chinese food store.

I've been wanting to try bubble tea after having it at a local noodle house.

The recipes online make it look so simple (beware of those recipes).

The first attempt was sort of a fail because I had tiny little tapioca and that was just strange.

I even found the huge fat straws at an end of summer discount.

This time I thought I'll get fish eye size tapioca at the Chinese food store and then I should be good to go. Well, when the dry tapioca hit the water, they fell apart into powder and then proceeded to cook into glue! There were a few big pieces swimming in there but then they started to stick together tool

I added them to peaches and decided I'll just have to go on Amazon and buy the $10 bag of tapioca.

This is my garbage dish, but the white stuff is the tapioca after I added a bit of water to the rest of it and found out that the whole bag was like that!

The other thing on the "most requested" list was steamed buns

sorry for the poor picture, I thought of taking pictures after most of them were gone...

and ALL of them had huge bites missing. I filled them with a beef roast that had "roasted" 18 hours in the crock pot. Normally steamed buns have pork filling but, I didn't have pork.

Flavored the beef with sesame oil, char sui seasoning (from a packet- turned the meat a day-glo pink in places- tasted good tho) soy sauce, and a bit of oyster sauce. They disappeared like magic.

Then Zeke thought maybe we could make steamed buns instead of my traditional egg roll for his senior hot lunch at school.  Wonder if you can steam buns for 130 people?

Then because a certain someone was coming I made mashed potatoes and green beans to go with the bok-choy. He decided that sweet chili sauce tasted very good with steamed bun. 

For desert we had steamed bun with lemon curd nestled inside....now that is a keeper!

AND

we had "cream-cream cones"

That boy can eat.

This post reminded me of the cook in China who told me about the filling in the delicious buns we ate every morning. I knew enough Chinese words to figure out that they had, eggs, milk,and lemon.

Aren't they all so cute? 

"My" kitchen while we stayed in Beijing

In Honor of Sensory Awareness Month

When I heard snores coming from behind me, I turned around and saw

Faith up-side-down in the hammock swing.

I'm sure it was filling some sort of sensory need.

Donations

The other week I met my aunts at a local Christian Aid Ministries (CAM) warehouse and we made diapers and baby blankets.

When my mom first told me about this, I was a little confused, "Why would you need to MAKE 

diapers?" They are available all neatly packaged in plastic already sewn and folded.

(Yeah, I know they also come in "disposable" too but you can't re-use them)

CAM has a program where you can put together a "layette bundle", it includes 

a few items of baby clothes, 6 cloth diapers, a receiving blanket (lightweight) and a heavier blanket.

All items are to be new, it says that on the literature.

I used to be a little bit annoyed about the "all new" idea, thinking "if it would be good enough for my baby, why isn't it good enough for their babies?"

I found out the reason, it has to do with shipping regulations, CAM has to say what is in each shipment going to a country and they have to be honest.

AND it costs the same to ship new items as it does used ones, so why not get the most out of each dollar.

These bundles are quite fun to put together, you get to shop for baby clothes!

They are also quite fun to hand to a new mother, according to my niece who helped to hand these packages to new mothers in Liberia.

BUT!

The reason my mom and aunts spent a day making diapers and blankets is because  well-intentioned  donors in an effort to save money are giving un-shippable products.

Each bundle is examined before it is shipped and a quality control person checks that the correct number of diapers, clothing items, and blankets are included.

Diapers that are very thin are worthless to send and end up needing to be replaced 

Baby blankets that have skull and cross bones on are.... also replaced

It is such a shame to let good quality fabric go to waste, but before you go to the work to craft a baby blanket for someone, take a look at the print on the fabric.          

...bones are probably not a good idea

strange looking cartoon characters with or without x-ray images,

strange looking beat up women, or zombie fabrics are just not cool.

(The zombie fabric is the only one that has actually not shown up...yet)

I know there are enough of CAM donors that read this that it is worth sticking my neck out. I guess through this I learned that it is important to follow the directions of any organization when you give this type of donation, they have reasons for their "rules".