SSR

Back when I was in junior high, my science teacher made us turn in an "SSR" every week. An abbreviation for "Stop and Smell the Roses", it was a reminder to us to enjoy the everyday blessings in life. They didn't have to be huge, momentous things, but could be as simple as the smell of fresh baked cookies, or a rose in your backyard, a sun rising in the east or the dew-sprinkled grass. Simple little things that bring us pleasure. Reminders of God and reminders to praise Him in the small things, for He is the one that created it all... well, maybe not fresh baked cookies, but he gave us the means to make them and the wisdom to come up with the recipes :)

"Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created." -Revelations 4:11


For the past week, as I look out in my bedroom window, I have enjoyed some vine that has either grown up the pine from either our or our neighbors yard (I haven't ventured to the side of the house to find out yet). It is so beautiful and has helped bring joy and happiness to my morning to look out and see its large, bright pink blooms among the pine boughs. It's vibrance is refreshing. I like it. :)

What SSR can you enjoy in your life today??

Symbols of Summertime

This past week, I have had the opporunity to experience a couple of "pasttimes" that remind me of life out here in the Midwest. Last weekend was the Founder's Festival in Farmington, an annual weekend filled withstreet shutdowns (I wasn't TOO bitter, though it made for me getting lost a few times!), Art Booths along Grand Ave, local music, both healthy fare as well as elephant ears, the circus and carnival, and a parade. Although the weather was kind of chilly (it really was too, it's not just because I'm so warmblooded) and rainy, we didn't LIVE downtown, but we took advantage of Joel's last weekend off before he would have only sporadic ones and spent a good majority of the time enjoying "small town" America, inside the vast Detroit metropolis, hehe.

A smorgasbord of unhealthy food to meet all your high-fat needs :) The ironic thing is right next to this was a tent set up with some chef advertising this cookware that does not let any of the nutrients escape from the food.

One of the arts and craft booths... and they actually had our baby's name! The guy was also from Lafayette, IN (go figure) so my husband spent a good deal of time talking to him about his alma mater town.

Sir Liam of Farmington. :)

Who would my social husband be if he didn't spend an hour talking to a random stranger?! In this case, the random stranger was Curtis Kaisner. My husband and I were watching a local band play, when Joel was like "I think that guy up at the front is an AC or at least used to be". I asked him if he knew the guy and he told me no. When he expressed his interest in talking to the man, I told him that he could, but I would not be a part of this ludicrous and would stand off to the side with the baby. Well, my husband has the gumption I lack, and went up to him and asked him if his name was Curtis (he didn't know why he thought it was, he just did). Turns out his name WAS Curtis. He DID go to the AC church at one point in time. And he was just as talkative as my husband. ;)

Most of what we did was quite spontaneous, including me reading one morning as I was nursing the baby about a 4 mi run that began in 30 min, and mentioning to my still half-asleep husband tat next time we ought to do it with the baby. Next thing I know, he is out of bed, dressed and running to the park to start the race. My silly yet ambitious husband ended up doing quite well, although he had to try to hide in the pack because he did not make it in time to sign up. After Liam was done eating, we were off to cheer him on, but he finished so quickly that we missed out! Since we were so close to downtown, we ended up walking to Grand River Ave (the main street) and popped a squat to view the parade. I'm not sure the baby was a fan-- at least not of the emergency vehicles and their horns, as well as the Broadway star that sang. Apparently this must be a huge deal though, because MI's governor was there, along with the tw US senators and a couple of reps and city council people. After the parade, I had a momentary reminisce of home when we were able to get together for a quick lunch with the Huette's :)

Waiting for the parade to begin.

Botsford General is one of the main supporters of the festival. And of course some of the people in the parade spotted my husband and pointed us out to others. A true small town feel ;)

My baby all wrapped up. Joel thought I over dressed him, but when we sat in a shady spot and the wind was blowing, I think he agreed that the baby was dressed appropriately :) plus I wanted to try out the outfit on him, and not worry about tucking in a blanket while I was jogging...

Another symbol of summertime (besides all the green and rain), is being able to freeze corn. To preface this all (and to make sure, once again, that I relieve those that live in Phoenix that I am still not yet a "midwest" wife- which Natalie, there is nothing wrong with, but I am merely a temporary transplant that like a foreign exchange student is being immersed in the culture/lifestyle, thoroughly enjoying it, but in the end will return to her home ;) ... anyways, I must confess that I had to look up "corn shucking" to make sure I was indeed saying it right. Shucking is such a weird word. So is the term "putting up". Why can't you just say freezing? I mean, when you take it out to thaw, do you say "I'm putting down the corn from the freezer for dinner"? Oh well.

So I had the wonderful opportunity to go visit Joel's family in Remington early this week. Sherice Reinhard, who we had stayed with while we lived in Detroit for 2 months, is distantly related to Joel and is originally from Wolcott, the neighboring city. She was headed home to put up corn, and invited me and Liam along to just visit Joel's family. So after obtaining my husband's permission (I figured I probably should, since I have only seen him a few hours this week, as he has been on call the two days I've been home-- and will be this weekend too!), Sherice and I headed to Indiana. Sherice couldn't promise me corn, but invited me to stop by and see how "putting up corn" is done. Beth ended up getting a call from Brian Schneider though, who had an overabundance of sweet corn, and she went out to his farm Friday morning and brought back with her a truckload of corn. The rest of the day/evening/night was spent shucking, de-hairing (Random Fact: Did you know that every kernel of corn has it's own hair-- AMAZING!! ...thanks Miranda for teaching me Basic Corn Knowledge 101), cooking and cutting off the corn from the cob, and then finally "putting it up". :) I kind of like saying that term.

My nephew Dakota and others handed (or threw) the corn down to us to husk

It was a long day of hard work, but I guess it's the closest thing to being a farmer as I will get in terms of sweating to produce a "harvest". My friend JaNon asked me if I feel like a more virtuous woman when I put up my own food. It is fun, especially with the fellowship, and I think I will relish the corn more when I eat it later, but I think I have a long ways to go before I could even compare myself to the P31 wife. Something to strive for I guess :)

In the end, my husband who is already stubborn enough to refuse to eat frozen store-bought corn (and he DIDN'T even grow up on a farm!) will now be spoiled with 2 bushels of "put up" sweet corn, which Beth mathematically worked out to last us from September to May.

Oh one more random fact (though I actually learned quite a bit), did you know you can eat RAW sweet corn, freshly picked?? It's actually better for you, as a couple hours after you pick it, the sugars start turning to starches. I learned that one from my healthy mother-in-law, who prefers it that way.

Liam getting his first lesson in how to put up corn. It probably won't be the last. I'm kind of looking forward to doing it every year and watching him get more involved these next 5 years!

The more the merrier :) Lots of work and lots of mess and lots of cleanup!

Beth wanted to make sure there was no air in my corn that would cause freezer burn and lose that sweet taste. My husband is definitely spoiled ;)

Playing "Catch Up"

(...ie- a smorgasbord of our lives will now be blogged)

First of all, for those who have asked me for a picture of our home... voila! There is our backyard too, filled with all kinds of "weeds" as my husband would call them. I think it is beautiful randomness that reminds me as though I was in a field of wildflowers :) I'm still holding off taking pictures of the interior of the home though, because there is still boxes and clutter everywhere. It is amazing how much "junk" we accumulate in our lives, and yet we can't take it with us when we leave this earthly abode. It almost makes me want to start over every time we move- and yet, we kind of did when we left since most all our furniture was on loan from the villas, but oh how much more we accumulated from the previous owners and other wonderful church people upon our arrival!



I do have the start of a lovely herb garden, which I am excited for and already taken partial advantage of (I say this because really I've only used the oregano and parsley, as well as my indoor basil. If anyone has any wonderful EASY recipes that include chives, lavender or rosemary- I may have more, but those are the only ones I can recognize- feel free to share them with me :) I'm already looking forward to the spring, when maybe I will finally have my first REAL garden- it might actually be a good thing that I don't have one yet, because what would a garden be without tomatoes... and I've learned Liam can't take them full force. :(


NANA'S VISIT

So my mom came to visit me a couple of weeks ago, to help me with the transition process of my husband entering residency. We had lots of fun together, although my husband put her to work (sorry, Mom)-- the payoff for visiting us just a few days after we moved in! We were able to talk Joel into taking us down to the farmer's market though on Saturday afternoon.
She was really a jack-of-all trades person though, as I never knew what job she would be doing next to help out! I was so grateful for her help though, and adult company to talk with when Joel would be away. We didn't really get to leave the house much since my car was in the shop (more on THAT later), but there's only so much you can do here, right?! So we will save it for next time...

Nana the "Nanny". She definitely knew how to get Liam to relax!

Nana the Remodeler. My kitchen cupboards aren't anything to brag about, but Joel bought me some rubber liner and my mom cut them to size.

Nana the Landscaper. Joel wanted to mow the lawn, so my mom and I helped weed it to help him out.

Nana the "Plumber". So we discovered mildew/mold growing on the grout in the master shower. My mom didn't want me breathing in the fumes since there wasn't good ventilation (more on that later) and so she cleaned up the grout so Joel could recaulk where necessary.


If you come visit us, we won't (necessarily) make you work, so don't let that stop you :)

4th of JULY

So you all are probably wondering what we did with our 3-day weekend my husband was so generously given. We were going to head up to his grandparents cottage in Linwood for a pseudo bed & bfast getaway, but when we found out that we had the opportunity to go to Marty & Lavila Langhofers' fireworks shindig, we opted for that instead!


...Plus who wouldn't want to surprise visit Natalie and see the new baby Cosette!!

There were a ton of people at the Langhofers', and it was wonderful seeing Bill's family, as well as Dad and Mom Virkler, Ruth, Tim, and Craig and Rachel. We even got to see Janessa and Serena who came up from Lafayette! What a blessing!!
The afternoon and evening was filled with horseback riding, a giant homemade slip-n-slide, LOTS of food, skeet shooting, volleyball playing, rafting and the biggest homemade fireworks show I have ever seen (also one of the only ones I have ever seen, hehe). Marty shot off hundreds of fireworks. It was amazing. Truly spectacular. I've never been so close (I was "burned" a couple of times!), and it was a different experience to have tons of smoke fill the fields. Liam was pretty indifferent to it though. ;) As we were driving back to Nate and Natalie's that night, it was fun seeing all the different firework displays go off across the cornfields simultaneously.

Liam's first horseback ride (we received plenty of raised eyebrows for this one)

Enjoying the fireworks with Grandma.

The next morning, we didn't quite make it back in time for church in Detroit (we had purposely not brought church clothes so that Joel wouldn't be tempted to stay too long, since he had reading to do), but we would both agree that it was truly a blessing to have our own worship service by enjoy a call-in service in our car, while sharing headphones (the speaker didn't work loud enough) and singing praise songs together.



CHERRY PITTING

Thus begins my first experience as a "midwestern wife" ;)

Don't become too hopeful yet though, because I didn't pick the cherries myself (although maybe I will soon with Amy :) ...It's called Meijers. $1.77/lb. Sherice said it was a good deal, and since both of our husbands love fruit and love smoothies, we decided to pit them together so that we could freeze them. Since pitting cherries can be kind of messy (Mike says that it looks like the Passover has taken place), we opted for my backyard. This also meant that I had to invest in a cherry pitter. Since the "fancy" one only costed a few dollars more, it was a no-brainer to go for the deluxe-pit 4 cherries at once- while catchin most of the juices and pits in a convenient tray- cherry pitter. All I have to say is VERY COOL. :)
After we were done, Erica enjoyed watering my back porch to clean up our mess. She also watered the rest of the plants, which may be the only reason they are still green.



By the way, for those who were wondering... residency has begun. I hear it still gets worse, but I'm starting to see those days that I had prepared myself for. He has still been coming home at decent times MOST evenings, and has remarkably yet to miss a dinner (although dinner has been later then 10pm sometimes), but I have stumbled across a passed out husband in various locations of the house. :)

So this is what residency is like???

So Wednesday began what I had considered "the beginning of the end", where I would lose my husband for the next 5 years. When I pictured residency, I pictured my husband leaving before dawn and coming home sometime after 10pm... but for the last two days, he has stunned me by walking through the door at 5:30pm! He told me not to get used to it- his current rotation is trauma, which is new at Botsford hospital, so they are still working on the ropes together. So I decided that this was a fluke.

And then we got the call yesterday evening. We were driving home from Willard Bahr's visitation when Joel got a call from the chief resident. I feared that he was going to have to go back in... instead we were both stunned to hear...

a THREE day weekend!!!

Now we don't know what to do with ourselves! Do we work on the house, or take this opportunity to travel (which it seems this is all we've done lately)... hmmm- the possibilities are endless, although certain restrictions apply. So we get to celebrate this Independence Day together, a celebration of our country's birthdate... a celebration of the freedom to worship an amazing God... and a celebration of a freedom from residency.

I am loving residency. I will probably regret saying that in a few weeks. I better not get used to this. But for now, I'm counting my blessings. :)

... A post on my mom's visit to come...