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...

My mom always told me that babies and children are smarter than we give them credit for. I believed her when she told me, but now I really believe her. :) Sometimes I am astounded at what Noah understands when I don't think he will. Some examples: I made the comment that something was in the garage the other day, and Noah made a beeline for the garage door and stood there expectantly staring at me! Today I said, "Mommy has to go get the mail. Do you want to come?" Noah headed straight for the front door and tried to open it. If he can manage to get his hands on the remote controls (we usually make every effort to keep them out of reach), he points them at the TV and presses buttons. I know these aren't examples of Rocket Scientist Behavior (ha ha Josh), but definitely he's smarter than I'm giving him credit for! Makes me wonder if I should be a little firmer about what I expect. If he can understand the above things, surely he could start putting his toys...

This means a friend with a blog (Ruth in this case) wants me to list 6 Random Facts about myself. I'm supposed to tag 6 other people, but really, all the people I know who have blogs have probably already been "tagged" themselves, so I'm just going to stop the cycle right here! :) I guess this segues nicely into Fact #1: 1. I am always the person that breaks any sort of Chain Letter. Chain recipe swaps, chain tea-towel swaps, anything where you have to Add Your Name To A List And Forward To A Bunch Of People And You Will Receive 88 Whatevers Back. Please. Don't send them to me! I'll save you the trouble: I have never participated in such things. :) 2. I like my milk Freezing Cold. I believe this to be a carry-over from a day care I went to which always had the milk on the table waiting for us when we got there, and was warm by the time I drank it. Gross! So nowadays, that milk has got to be icy cold or it gags me. Seriously, I put ice in my cereal...

I floated along for a couple days, reliving the "one enchanted evening" we had last Friday, but now we're back to reality, doing the dailies. Over the weekend we had a house guest, Will Martin, who is Matt Rowley's friend from college. He is planning to come to Jacksonville when Matt and Jen do to help start the church and was in the area looking for potential housing. He stayed with us the weekend and left today. This week our church is having VBS, but there wasn't going to be a nursery provided and that, combined with the fact that Josh has a hard time making it home by 6, let alone earlier to be able to eat dinner and make the 25 min drive to church in time for 6:15, meant that we wouldn't be able to help out this year. :( On Wednesday some photos should be ready for pick-up at Walmart. I don't think I mentioned on here that I took Noah to get his picture made for his One Year Birthday. I'm excited to see how they turned out. Next week my friend...

This post could get very sappy! Consider yourself warned. :) Josh and I had the opportunity to go out on a date tonight, just the two of us. "Heavenly" doesn't begin to describe it! Let me back up... It's our own fault that we haven't gone out before now. Several people in the church have offered on more than one occasion to watch Noah for us while we go out. Before now, I haven't wanted to "dump" him on anyone while we go out and "paint the town red". Plus, it's not like we don't like Noah! We love having him around! We never dread him keeping us company, and we aren't burdened by his presence. In light of these facts, it was easy to convince ourselves that we didn't need a night "off". The Hildebrands at church kept telling us we should go out by ourselves and let them watch Noah. The Bennetts (in case you two are reading this!) also offered the same thing. But finally it came down to Melissa Hildebrand looking ...

I found this (crumpled) page with Noah's footprints done at the hospital when he was born, and thought it would be neat to do an update now at one year old. The right footprint is a little darker and fatter than it should be because Noah stumbled a little while we were doing it. I think the doctor's scale is broken or SOMETHING! It said Noah weighs 23.1 lbs. Whatever! He's gotta be at least 28-30!! At least that's how heavy he feels to me when my arms are full and he's wiggling to get down. :) He's 30 1/2 inches tall and, if his weight is really accurate, he's well into the normal range for a baby his age. Phew! When he came into this world so big, I thought he'd be big his whole life. I pictured people assuming he was 5 when he was only 2 or something silly like that. I'm glad to know he's in the normal ranges and not in the 99th percentile anymore. :) Oh, and by the way, the screaming you may have heard this morning from your far corner of the...

The verdict is in.... A penny was swallowed, but the important thing is IT'S BACK where it belongs! Don't worry, we won't be spending it, ha ha! (lest any of you worry that it might make its way into your hands)! I have never been so jubilant over a found item before. Noah must have thought I'd lost my mind. Nope, just a penny, and Praise the Lord it has been found again! This is an answer to prayer, and I'm so thankful the Lord cares about the "little" things in life, the things we wouldn't dare mention in Prayer Meeting. :)

It all started with a penny. A simple penny that we think Noah swallowed on Thursday night at the mall. We're not exactly sure he swallowed it, because we didn't actually witness it, but here are the facts: 1. There were 2 pennies within Noah's reach (stupid on our part, granted, but nonetheless...). 2. We looked away for the briefest second. 3. When we looked back, there was one penny. 4. Josh fished around in Noah's mouth. 5. Noah coughed and gagged. 6. No penny. So, did he swallow it or not? All the sites online said if he did it *should* pass in a day or two and to keep our eyes out for it (guess where?). There haven't been any pennies appearing in Noah's diaper, and believe me I LOOKED. The thing is, all day yesterday and twice today he's had diarrhea. Is this related? Does he have a bug? Is the fact that he's teething causing this? Was it the birthday cake? I DON'T KNOW!!! I called the doctor yesterday after Disgusting Diaper ...

Um, there's frosting on my finger. Hmm, it's not half bad! It's actually pretty good! The photos are a little blurry because Noah didn't ever sit still! And here is the video of us singing to Noah. He didn't quite know what was going on. :) That's pretty much all the Birthday news we have. On to Year #2 in Noah's life, and we pray that this will be a great year for him and for us.

One year ago today I was in labor for 16 hours before the doctor finally announced, "C-section!" At 5:59pm on July 20, 2007, Noah Samuel was born to us weighing 10lb 4oz and measuring 21 1/2 inches long. What a happy moment that was, hearing him cry for the first time, and finally after the years of waiting and heartache, holding our son! Praise the Lord for His miracles and for granting us the desire to have a child! And such a happy one! Here is the year in pictures, one picture for every month:

Noah turns ONE tomorrow!!!! What was originally intended as a smallish party for Noah with a few friends turned into just a family party after our guests cancelled. Bummer! But we decided to party anyway, just a little more laid-back. We had originally invited the Bennetts and the Bundys, but Noah's birthday fell on the same weekend as Pastor Mike's ordination, so with all the Bennetts' family in town plus the busyness and stress of that event, they weren't going to make it. So then it was going to be the Bundys and us, but this morning the Bundys called and said they couldn't make it due to having to go get their grandkids today. Thankfully Josh, Noah, and I were able to make it, Ha ha! :) I made a Dump Truck birthday cake for Noah, hung up some balloons (which he LOVES by the way), and gave him a dump truck for his gift. We ended up spreading his celebration out over the whole day. At lunch we wore our party hats, and then for dinner we went out to Cracker Barrel...

My father's only sister, Lois, died last Friday. She had advanced cancer which was just found this year and had refused any treatments, so it was only a matter of time. I do not know if she was saved, for she always would emphatically affirm that she was, and that she was "trusting the Lord" as she told my mom shortly before she died. However, we just don't know for sure. I wish I could attend the funeral which will be this Friday, not necessarily for her sake since she won't be there, but more for my family's sake. I haven't seen some of them in quite some time, and even under circumstances like these, it would be wonderful to see them again. Instead, I'm making plans to go up north in August to visit my mom and sister, and see whoever we can get together. In the meantime I'll be praying for the funeral and those who will be in attendance.

It almost worked out that I could be in Pennsylvania today for my Mom's 74th birthday (more about that in post later), but then we decided it would be better if I went next month instead. I wish I could give you a hug in person, Mom! Wishing you a very Happy Birthday. Is it the hottest day of the year there? :)