(And All My) Work Be Praise

I haven't often -- ever?? -- posted recipes, but since we eat baked oatmeal about three out of every four Mondays, I thought I'd share our favorite recipe. I've tried a few different ones, including a peanut butter version (hoping for more protein), but I always come back to this one. I hate oatmeal in its normal form. So when my friend/midwife invited us to stay for lunch one day and announced we were having baked oatmeal, I cringed inwardly. What a surprise to find out that baked , it was a whole different substance! Since then, once a month or so on Sunday evenings I make a triple batch, freeze it in 8x8 pans, and we eat it on Monday mornings. (Once a month or so we have leftovers from whatever I make for Sunday breakfast.) Anyway, without further ado, here's the recipe for an 8x8 pan, which usually feeds myself and my three children twice in a week (or, myself, my husband, and the kids once, and leftovers for most of us to have it again). I've modified it s...

This has become the summer of picking produce! I had no idea my city-born children would become so familiar with "the land" so early in life. What fun! Some friends from church have quite the little farmstead, barely out of the suburbs, just minutes from church. They were out of town when most of their corn was ready for picking, so church families were able to help themselves. Generous folks, that family. Not much else to say about it, really, so I'll just show you the pictures and products of about 20 minutes of corn-picking! "The corn is inside here?!" Lots of help from Oma on this trip. Littlest one wasn't so sure about being among the corn stalks. But it sure was great to have Daddy along! Eating fresh corn! The second full bucket. The swimming pool: the perfect place for shucking corn. So much happening in this picture! Silas climbing on the table while chewing on a corn cob, Levi running with a fresh...

As I mentioned yesterday , the big boys moved into their new room on Tuesday! Our house has four bedrooms: the master bedroom with bathroom, a smaller room that was first the nursery and then became Levi and Owen's shared room, an even smaller room that first housed random furniture and then became Silas's nursery, and a giant room that contained the king-sized mattress (sometimes set on twin bed frames, sometimes on the floor) that someone gave us for free. It was the only room of the house (besides the den and basement, which are paneled) that I never painted, since I wasn't quite sure what it would become. With baby #4 on the way, I knew we'd be needing our second crib free, so it became time to move Owen into a big boy bed, and thus began the transition from un-decorated guest room to official big boy room. As a Mother's Day present to me, Isaac corralled my dad into helping him paint. (I'm kidding -- Dad is always extremely willing to help, especially wit...

My eldest boy is now a four-year-old.  I'm actually not feeling all that sentimental about it. One of the nice things about having children so close together -- which, incidentally, is also one of the horrible things about having children so close together -- is that I have yet to really "graduate" from any particular phase. Missing the sweet small voice of a two-year-old? No problem, still got one. Getting nostalgic for the combination cuddly/silly nature of a one-year-old? No problem, still got one. All the same, it is exciting and wondrous to watch my firstborn grow and mature! Birthdays in our house begin with a special trip with Daddy to a local bakery for doughnuts. Levi, who I don't think has ever encountered sprinkles before in his life, went straight for them, and then picked out a boring twist for his brother. Owen wasn't disappointed, though: "It has sugar all over it!" We did the whole candles/singing/presents thing ...

A somewhat embarrassing (for me) but potentially amusing (for you) story: I do not like to think of myself as a girly-girl, but there are two of God's creatures that I absolutely detest: centipedes/millipedes (or anything with a gazillion legs), and wasps. Actually, I really only detest  the first group; I don't hate wasps, but I'd rather not have them anywhere near, either. They build nests on my front porch and on my back deck, and I'm not entirely sure what it would take for one of them to sting one of my children or myself, and I'd rather not find out. So it was with much chagrin that I discovered a wasp on my kitchen counter  as I was cleaning up on Monday night. Now, you'll remember from this post that I do not normally clean my own kitchen, and it was only because Isaac was on a trip that it was me who discovered the wasp. Sad for me. But, it was really just hanging out in one spot on the counter, and I thought to myself, You can do this. Just get th...

Since our strawberry picking was such a hit, I decided to brave the heat and cart everyone out to Rouster's Apple House in Milford for blueberry picking. I was hoping to be there by 9am, so that we'd be done long before it got too hot, but then I had to stop for gas and then I made a wrong turn that carried us an extra five miles into the country and after all was said and done, it was 9:45 before we had our pails and were headed to the rows of bushes. Happily for little legs, the blueberry bushes are very close to the parking lot. Too hot to be in a carrier, but pleasantly cool in the shade of the stroller! Isaac took the big boys blueberry picking last year, so unless I've forgotten some memory from early childhood, it was my first time. Such an easy thing for little fingers to do, pluck blueberries! Helps that they're close to the ground, too. A little too sunny to smile with eyes open. At first, the breeze was nice and even though we w...

I spent my junior year of college in a tiny town in west Wales. It was a year that would, as I imagine most study abroad years do, forever shape how I saw myself: capable, independent, confident. There are days when I still get a little nostalgic, missing my dorm-window view of sheep-studded hills and the familiar call of the chapel bells ringing, summoning one and all to the Anglican services I grew to love. I could write about half a dozen different facets of my year abroad, but there's one I want to focus on particularly today. Towards the end of my year, a friend and I traveled northeast to the big(ger) city of York, England. I (very briefly) considered graduate school in Britain, and the University of York had a fascinating music program, the title of which I can't remember now. While we were there, we took in the sights, which included the local cathedral. Now, I grew up in a very pretty medium-sized stone church, but by late junior high, my family was involved in ...