My Ebenezer

I am about to give you a recipe for The Best Blueberry Muffins I Have Ever Had. I made them yesterday, and I would have taken a picture of the whole batch, but these are all that's left of the batch! They're that good . So without further ado: Blueberry Muffins 1 C sour cream 2 eggs 1/2 C veg oil 1C sugar 1/2 t vanilla 1/2 t salt 1/2 t baking soda 2 C flour 1 C blueberries (plus a few extra berries) Beat (with electric mixer) eggs, oil, sugar, and vanilla. Stir together (in a separate bowl) flour, baking soda, and salt. Alternate adding sour cream and flour mixture to wet ingredients, beating after each addition. Fold in blueberries. Divide batter evenly into 12 muffin cups. Place remaining berries on top of unbaked muffin batter (I do 3 or so per muffin). Bake at 400 for 18-20 mins. Cool on wire racks. Try not to eat the whole batch in one sitting. Go ahead, I dare you!

At the pool My sister Leah with Noah and me. Sitting in a big chair Mom's last hydrangea of the season My house being mostly under control now, I am sitting down without guilt to blog. YAY! Our trip to PA in a nutshell: Our trip to Pennsylvania ended up being a day longer than we had planned. Tropical Storm Fay was due to hit Jacksonville on Thursday, Aug 21, at the same time my plane was to leave the airport. After calling the airline for help, we decided it would be best to change my ticket to leave Wednesday the 20th instead. This was decided on Wednesday around 9:30am, and the plane was to leave at 12:55pm. I had about 2 hours to pack all my stuff and get ready to leave! Not my style at all, but what could I do? Trust the Lord and keep packing. :) Highlights from our trip: We went to the country club pool on Thursday and Friday, which Noah absolutely LOVED. He fell in the big pool headfirst one time, and I thought that would cure him of swimming for a while, but he wanted right

Noah and I had a wonderful time away, but we are so happy to be back home with Josh again. The video above was taken tonight after dinner in a moment of whimsy. It probably will turn out grainy again, but oh well. :) Still working on my priorities right now, and sadly blogging is down on my list near the bottom. I keep hoping I'll be able to write about all the thoughts and stories I have from the past few weeks, but I literally have had no time. In fact, as I write this, I am stealing time from another important thing and so I must sign off. Sigh.

For the first time since I started this blog I am actually overwhelmed at the thought of posting a new entry. It has been so long and so much has happened that I'm not sure how much to include or where to begin, or..... Plus my house is in sore need of attention after being gone from it for a couple weeks (I was here for 3 days in between our trip to the Wilds and my trip to PA, but I spent that time doing laundry and getting ready to go again). So to my faithful blog readers (all 2 of you! :)) I ask that you bear with me; let me unearth myself from all that I have to do, and I promise I'll get back to this at some point. Hopefully this week!

Noah has learned a new word! He now can say "Hot" in addition to his other 2 stand-bys of "ball" and "uh-oh". Still waiting for "mommy" and "daddy", which we haven't heard yet. :)

At church last night an opportunity was given, and missed by me, to give a testimony of what the Lord did in our hearts at the Wilds last week. Having now had a couple of good nights of sleep under my belt, and therefore am now able to look back on the week rationally, I'd like to tell what the Lord did for me while we were away. There are several areas that the Lord was tweaking on me last week. I can't even say "this is what I learned" because I in no way arrived at any sort of concrete lesson, but the Lord was definitely working in my heart in several intertwined compartments. Many of the Family Camp sessions spoke to my heart. The speaker was Jim Binney, whom Josh and I had heard before when he did a pre-marital seminar at Bob Jones University while we were students there. (Ironically, we both attended that seminar though we didn't know each other at the time. And we both secretly wondered if our future mate was in the audience.) The one theme that the Lord ju

Dickens' famous line is the best way I can think to sum up our vacation! Very fun, and at the same time something I never want to repeat. Ever. It was the best of times : We got to see plenty of family all week long, and catch up on their lives and do quite a few things with them! We got to meet Brianne for the first time. She is so precious and tiny! Noah was never that small. :) She sleeps a lot more than Noah did, and is very "squawky". Cute little squeals and grunts all over the place! I've been able to hold her some and feed her a bottle and I really loved that. We did most of the fun things at the Wilds: we went on the land trolley (a zip line), the paddleboats, two major hikes, made a necklace at the craft shop, enjoyed StarBucks-esque coffee drinks at a fraction of the price, had great food, enjoyed the speaker Jim Binney very much, had a joint birthday party for myself and Joel's wife Hannah, and really had a good time fellowshiping with the family

What a busy week I've had! It's hard to find time to "wax elephants" (as a lady in my church says; she obviously is playing on the phrase "wax eloquent") when you're running around morning, noon, and night and jump into bed exhausted. So finally I have a moment to recap: A few weeks ago I was asked to run the games for Carrie Bennett's baby shower, which was to take place Aug 5. I agreed with a little bit of apprehension, since games are not my forte, but I was excited too to stretch myself and have a little fun with the ladies there. This was also right around the time I had made Noah's dump truck cake for his birthday, and Carrie expressed how cute she thought it was, so I offered to make two more for the shower. Since then I have been working in some way or another on an aspect of planning and executing the games and the cakes. I had been praying that the Lord would give me grace to be able to run the games with a minimal amount of nervousness