Coffee and Calendars

The enemy of your soul and your marriage will whisper this in your ear...:  "You don't have enough."  He will work to convince you that you simply do not have what you need to face the realities of your differences with hope and courage.  He will tempt you to give in and give up.  He will tempt you to run and hide.  He will tempt you to give way to things that you have the power to resist.  He will work to make you feel poor and weak.  And if he can get you to minimize your sin and doubt God's provision, he's got you.  ~Paul Tripp, "What Did You Expect?"

Nowhere are our differences made more visible than when it comes to our weekly "coffee and calendars".  Most weeks we stay at home and make a fresh press of coffee, some weeks we get all fancy and head to a local coffee shop.  When we're planning, Aaron (INTP) is Mr. Flexible and can roll with whatever God throws his way.  On the other hand, I (ESFJ) like to know what to expect and find it hard to step outside of my comfort zone.

We've found this personality website incredibly helpful:

...no one is more enthusiastic and capable of spotting a problem, drilling through the endless factors and details that encompass the issue and developing a unique and viable solution than INTPs.... People who share the INTP personality type aren’t interested in practical, day-to-day activities and maintenance.

ESFJs are excellent managers of day-to-day tasks and routine maintenance, enjoying making sure that those who are close to them are well cared for....Valuing stability and security very highly, ESFJs are eager to preserve the status quo.

So it's a good thing when we can remind each other that together we fill in each other's weaknesses.  And it's an even better thing when we can remind each other that God gives us what we "need to face the realities of [our] differences with hope and courage".

Feather Bed Eggs

My hands smell like oregano as I type because I've been digging around in my herb garden this morning.  Everything is coming back to life as we get ready to turn the calendar to March tomorrow.  I love that exercise outside in the early morning is more pleasant now, too, with the sun beginning to make everything a little bit rosy and the temps warming up just a wee bit above freezing.  My girls offer us the gift of breakfast on school days so Aaron and I can steward our bodies well.  I like to make their task a little bit easier with this recipe that can be made ahead and easily diminish or multiply as needed.  Olivia and Katherine add a big fruit salad, and we have a yummy breakfast to start our day off fueled well.

Feather Bed Eggs

from "Comfort and Joy"

2 Tbsp butter, softened

6 thick slices of bread

pepper to taste 

1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese, divided

6 eggs

1 1/2 cups milk

oregano to taste

Grease six large muffin cups (I like to use ramekins).  Butter one side of each bread slice, place buttered-side up in muffin cup and press into place.  Sprinkle each slice of bread with pepper to taste (Our Community Supported Agriculture offers "Beaverfork Blend", which I use instead of pepper.  Pick your favorite seasoning!) and 1/4 cup cheese.  Beat eggs and milk together in a large bowl and add oregano to taste; divide mixture among muffin cups.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.  In the morning, uncover and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes or until puffed and golden.  Serve hot.  Makes 6

Spring in her step...

or maybe just the smell of spring in the air.  

After a week of rain, an afternoon of sunshine was the perfect time to play a game of basketball with the Schalchlin cousins.

Worm Dissection

Four years ago, we gathered with another family at SITAG to combine forces in dissecting worms for biology.

Here we are again, with another Choate discovering the intricacies of how God created the inner workings of animals.

"How many are your works, Lord!  In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures."  Psalm 104:24

Olivia is well on her way to becoming a focused and determined nurse.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

I am still basking in the fact that we are so close to our extended families.  My dad was gracious enough to allow us to celebrate his birthday belatedly, since we were out of town over the weekend.

My girls figured out how to play "Happy Birthday" on their instruments, and my mom spontaneously jumped in to play the piano with them while the rest of us sang.

Chocolate cherry cake made an easy and delicious birthday cake, and I loved having these people around my table to celebrate life.

Weekend Wanderings

We made a quick pilgrimage up to see Benjamin at JBU this weekend.  No trip to Siloam Springs is complete without a trip to Pure Joy Ice Cream (in fact, we went twice!).

Benjamin produced the sound design for the school's play, Sense and Sensibility.  We are super proud of him and the whole cast and crew (especially the theater professor) for all their hard work.  It was a fabulous show!

"The spiritual gardening that will make for a beautiful marriage (pulling and planting) must largely be done within your own heart.  There are self-centered thoughts, attitudes, desires, motives, choices, and goals that must be uprooted from the soil of your heart, and new seeds of other-focused thoughts, attitudes, desires, motives, choices, and goals must be planted in their place.  And you need to remember that this pulling and planting is not a one-time thing, but something that must become the lifestyle of your union."  ~Paul David Tripp

On this Valentine's Day, I'm extra grateful for a guy who doesn't let little things slide, but chooses to do the hard work of "pulling and planting" every single day.

Yesterday, we drove a few hours up the road to spend some time with Aaron's grandmother.  She is always so gracious to allow our kids to practice performing their music for an audience of one.  We tried a new recipe to share with her for an early Valentine's Day treat, lemon hearts from one of my favorite cookbooks:  The Great Holiday Baking Book.

Exploring India

We found some high-quality books at our library to enhance Katherine's study of India.  I am SO grateful for our local library.  I have sweet memories of walking to the library (built in 1896 and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places) as a child and breathing in the smell of old wood and books while perusing the shelves on a hot summer afternoon.  Now our library is housed in a new, much bigger building, and they offer so many amazing resources!

Our book basket had some gems this time.  Family unity showed up again and again in both the fiction and non-fiction books.  

Fiction:

Hot, Hot Roti for Dada-ji by F Zia

The Five Fingered Family by Shakta Kaur Khalsa (love how this promotes family working together!)

Mama's Saris by Pooja Makhijani

Non-fiction:

Foods of India by Barbara Sheen (great maps)

The Cooking of India by Matthew Locricchio (we love this series!)

Festivals of the World:  India by Falaq Kagda 

Civilizations of the World:  Exploring the Life, Myth, and Art of India by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (this book is absolutely beautiful, and I hope to buy it for our personal collection)

Eyewitness Books:  India by Manini Chatterjee & Anita Roy

Gandhi by Demi

DVD: The Story of India (by PBS)

India:  Nature's Wonderland (also by PBS)

Katherine made several recipes from "The Cooking of India", it was hard to choose!  I'm seriously thinking about trying more of them, just for fun, especially since I also checked out a "grownup" cookbook, "Made in India:  Recipes from an Indian Family Kitchen" by Meera Sodha.  We all loved the Spicy Chicken (Bhooni Murgh), and it was super easy because Aaron has a way with chopping up a whole chicken!

Spicy Chicken

Bhooni Murgh

Ingredients

Spice Mix

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon garam masala

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

The Chicken

3 1/2 pound skinless chicken cut into 8 to 10 pieces

1 garlic clove

1 lime

4 tablespoons vegetable oil or ghee

Wash the chicken pieces and dry thoroughly with paper towels.  Place the chicken in a bowl large enough to hold all the pieces.  Combine the ingredients for the spice mix in a small bowl.  Add the spice mix to the chicken and, using a spoon, toss well to evenly coat the pieces.  

Slightly crush the garlic by laying the flat side of a chef's knife on the clove and pressing evenly to break open the skin.  Remove and discard the skin, chop the garlic, measure 1 teaspoon, and add to the chicken.  Cut the lime in half, squeeze the juice into a small bowl, remove any seeds, measure 2 teaspoons, and add to the chicken.  

Toss the chicken pieces a second time with the spoon and marinate for 15 to 30 minutes in the refrigerator.  Lightly oil an ovenproof baking dish large enough to hold all the chicken pieces and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.  Remove the chicken from the refrigerator.  Using a pair of tongs, place the chicken pieces in a single layer in the prepared baking dish.  Drizzle the oil over the chicken and roll the pieces back and forth so they are evenly coated.  

Place the chicken in the preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes.  Set a timer so you don't forget.  After 15 minutes, reduce the heat to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and continue to bake for 35 to 40 minutes.  Serve hot or cold.

Taco Tuesday

Yesterday, our Taco Tuesday was extra special because friends were driving through Arkansas and stopped to eat lunch with us.

Short and sweet.  Framily.  Then, they hit the road and we sped off to piano lessons refreshed.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Road trips are hard.  Different food.  Less sleep.  Interrupted routine. Interacting with lots of new people.  As one of my bloggy friends likes to say, this is "life behind the prayer card".  Of course, there are special joys, too.  More snow for snowballs.  Beautiful sunsets over city skylines.  Meeting new people and deepening existing relationships.

On this particular trip, I was reminded of just how very selfish I am.  I can cover it up most of the time, but when I'm exhausted and cranky and impatient, my nasty selfishness rears its ugly head.  By contrast, Aaron gets more patient, more kind, more soft-spoken, more giving.  He drives miles and miles and miles in all kinds of weather and keeps us safe.  He still lets me drag him to the hotel exercise room to sweat.  He doesn't complain when I'm running late.  I'm grateful that I have a husband who constantly models to our family what it looks like to weed out selfishness.

"If I go to the local Chinese buffet and indulge my appetite, I do not have one plate.  Thirty-seven plates later I tell myself that there are still edible delights that I need to enjoy!  Healthy marriages are healthy because the people in those marriages have learned to recognize and say no to selfish instincts that lurk in their hearts and in the heart of every one of us.  Selfishness is one of the big weeds that choke the life out of a marriage, and we must continually recognize that selfishness is first a condition of the heart before it is ever a set of choices, words, and behaviors." 

 ~Paul David Tripp, "What Did You Expect?"

At the end of our road trip, we decided to introduce the girls to some local culture:  Lamberts Café (aka home of the throwed rolls).  It was exactly the shot of fun that we needed to finish the last few hours of our trip with tummies full of down home comfort food, refreshed to tackle the school books and the road ahead.

Fort Wayne

  When we began exploring dates for our trip to Fort Wayne, our hosts, Ted and Deb, asked if we would be interested in attending a production of Carmen  Saturday night at the historic Embassy Theater.  The performance made it easy to choose the first weekend in February for a drive to the frozen tundra.  We jumped at the chance to soak in Bizet's brilliance, but we had no idea that the theater itself would be such a delight to our eyes.  

Sunday morning, we were so excited to be back at Christ's Community Church.  Since we connected with them when they supported printing the entire Solomon Islands Pijin Bible for its launch in 2008, this church has encouraged us.  Aaron shared an update on the Lavukal project during Sunday School, but the highlight of the trip was sitting around the table after church.

There is something about the table and food and the connections that occur when that nourishing foundation is laid.  When the gift of peace is given.  The conversation deepens and people that were strangers just a few hours ago now feel like intimate friends as we share more than just physical sustenance.

And these two couples?  Both sets have been married for more than fifty years.  I came away from our time together encouraged that marriage can indeed grow sweeter with each passing year, despite the sorrows, despite our sin nature.  This is indeed what God designed when He said, "It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a helper suitable for him."  

(Genesis 2:18)

Lexington, Kentucky

"Happiness is a gift, and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes."  

~Charles Dickens

When Aaron and I made the 985 mile trek to attend Stetson University, we had no idea the incredible work God was going to do in our lives.  Not only did we receive a top-notch education, but we plugged into a church that let two teenagers jump in and get involved like crazy.  We also built relationships with students and professors that are still precious to us.  One of those was a biology major from Tampa who became my faithful roommate.  Our time together this weekend was short and filled with catching up while doing the "mom things" instead of taking pictures.  I can always expect to delight in time with Amy.

"A good laugh is sunshine in a house."  

~William Makepeace Thackeray

We've had both in the last week:

Sunshine pouring in through our windows on the south side of the house, and a girl who loves to do math while sitting in the sunshine in the floor of my room.

And laughter.  As friends and SITAG colleagues dropped in to share "Taco Tuesday" and spend the night.  As a former teacher, Aunt Martha is always teaching kids (and adults) new things, and the after supper conversation turned into researching snowflakes and creating some beautiful, as well as hilarious, designs.