Kim 365

I’m a few days late with these photos, but here we are. Our little Deacon Isaac is ten months old! He is now a crawling machine. Not in the traditional hands-and-knees fashion, no, this boy puts one leg behind him that propels him forward, while his other leg is bent in front of him. You’ll get a visual a few photos down.

Watching the siblings play outside.

Testing things out.
“Hmm…am I okay with this prickly stuff on my delicate skin?”

All smiles.

I love his laugh! And does he ever love to scream! When he wants something he will let you know, not in an angry way. It’s more of a, “Hey, I am here! Pay attention to me!” scream.

Bright brown eyes.

There’s the crawling stance I was talking about. Big brother Wyatt was very concerned that Deacon was going to take a tumble down the deck stairs.
Crazy Mommy, why is she taking pictures instead of helping?

Little Chubby. That’s what Bailey sometimes calls him. Wherever would she come up with such a name?

Chicklet teeth! Bright eyes! What a priceless face!
I love you precious Deacon.

Hand-me-down clothes are such a blessing! When the boys were small we were never able to accept peoples’ generous offers of clothes because of our scent allergies. Thankfully I have slowly been adding smell-busting tricks to my arsenal of cleaning know-how, and now smelly clothes rarely stand a chance against me. This means I can go thrifting again (yay!) and can make use of clothes that get passed on to the kids.

I was folding some new-to-us clothes for Bailey when she found me in the basement.

“Oh! Oh, pretty! Pretty, pretty, pretty! Pretty dress. Oh, I love pretty things! These are so pretty. Oh! Beautiful!”

Oh Bailey! You are so rich! In my wildest dreams I could not imagine a girl so delightful.

Clay is out shooting some video. The kids are in bed, albeit not all are asleep. Yet. It’s time to make some tea and get back to reading The Hunger Games. This book is awesome!

Decorating takes me a long time. I painted these blue stripes on a wall in the boys’ room about a year ago, thanks to my friend Sarah’s inspiration. After painting, I didn’t know what direction to take the room in. I wanted something else on the walls, but didn’t know what. Until yesterday, when Batman beckoned from the most unexpected place. Value Village! Seriously, you never know what you’re going to find in that store! The boys are thrilled. Truth be told, so am I. That is one cool poster! Now the black curtains and dresser tie in nicely thanks to the black in the print. I’m a reluctant and apprehensive decorator, but eventually I get things done.

Mom and Dad’s new house is across from some railroad tracks. I did a double take when I looked out the dining room window and saw their Adirondack chairs sitting across the street. While their new construction landscaping still consists of dirt, their chairs are happily planted on some grass with a budding tree promising to grant some shade in the near future. I can picture Dad sitting on his little piece of heaven and watching the world go by. Sunflower seeds will accompany him, of course.

I love you, Dad! I’d love to come join you there once the rain disappears.

You can bet that if we go to Mom and Dad’s house, there will be a bountiful supply of sunflower seeds on hand. Bailey was having a great time pulling them out of the bag and feeling them slip through her fingers. She hasn’t figured out how to crack them open, but sit around for any length of time and she may enlist your services to knack some zote for her. Don’t knock my spelling, Plautdietsch is a spoken language, so anytime I try to spell parts of it, it ends up looking like a jumbled phonetic mess.

Only within the last year have I started enjoying quiche. It just wasn’t really ever on my radar. Thanks, Jean, for pushing me in this direction!

Today I adapted a recipe from the Simply In Season Cookbook. You can pick it up at Ten Thousand Villages, and I highly recommend you do!

Spring Asparagus Quiche

9-inch pie crust
Roll out and gently press into pie or tart pan. Prick it profusely to avoid excess puffing. Don’t you like my recipe writing lingo? Put into a 375 degree oven to blind bake for about 15 minutes. Oh my, I am already speaking in vague Grandma cooking terms!
(Sometime I will share my favourite crust recipe, but use whatever you like. The filling is the star in a quiche, and even a lousy crust tastes good if the filling is good)

3 eggs
1 cup evaporated milk
(Instead I used a combination of whipping cream, half & half, milk, and water from steaming the asparagus: about 1/4 cup of each. This is less about being a culinary mastermind, and more about me wondering what in the world is evaporated milk anyway?)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
Beat together and set aside.

1 1/2 cups asparagus, steamed and chopped
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
1/4 cup bacon, fried and crumbled
1/4 cup green onion, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped
Mix together and combine with egg mixture.

Remove your crust from the oven, and turn your oven down to 350. Pour the filling into your partially baked crust. Be careful not to spill that precious filling all over the inside of your oven, and bake for another 30-35 minutes, or until it’s browned on top and the middle is set. If you have time to waste, let it sit for 15 minutes before you cut into it, otherwise just sit in and don’t berate yourself for pieces that aren’t perfectly smooth on the sides. It will still taste great.

Serve with a green salad. In our house the kids have the option of not eating salad because there’s green stuff in the quiche. Sneaky!

Pinterest. It’s amazing how one word can evoke such strong opinions in people. If you haven’t heard of it, Pinterest is essentially a virtual bulletin board. When you see something you like online, you “pin” its photo to one of your boards for easy reference.

When I first heard people buzzing about it online, it sounded like the most useless thing in the world. A few months later, when I was trying to find a recipe in my multitude of bookmarks, I started to think a photo pin-board might have some merit after all. I purposed to be very intentional about how I would organize my Pinterest boards, and determined my board topics before I even had an account. I try to not deviate from those topics, and only pin things I might actually do. This means I do not have a category for my dream 5000 square foot house with an ocean view. There is too much potential for this site to breed discontentment in my heart, and I am doing my best to use this site as a tool to help me, rather than allow it to make me unhappy with my reality. I have much to be thankful for and I won’t let all the pins of perfect homes, gourmet food, and toned rear-ends tell me that I am less-than.

With all that said, it’s a useless waste of time if all I do is browse Pinterest and pat myself on the back for feeling creative. So as a bit of an accountability thing, I’m going to occasionally post here with my take on a Pinterest project: aptly titled Pinterested. I know, I am so clever. Hopefully I’ll take on a few crafty projects in the future, but for today it’s all about food.

I love scones. I love dark chocolate. How can you go wrong with a Dark Chocolate Chunk Scone? These are so delicious! Use a good dark chocolate. That should go without saying, but I’m saying it. I used Camino 71% Bittersweet. Alright, enough preamble. Here’s the recipe. The original had a glaze, but I skipped that step. I was in no mood to wait around for them to cool so I could drizzle a glaze on. Just gimme the chocolate already!

Dark Chocolate Chunk Scones
Makes 16 small scones
(Adapted from Savory Sweet Life)

9 ounces (or approximately 2 cups) all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small chunks
4 ounces dark chocolate, roughly chopped
3/4 cup heavy cream
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Add the cold butter, and quickly rub the butter into the flour mixture with your fingers until the mixture resembles wet sand with a few small lumps of butter remaining. Add the chopped chocolate and toss to combine.

Meanwhile, whisk together the heavy cream, egg, and vanilla extract. Gradually add the wet ingredients to the mixing bowl, gently tossing with the flour and butter mixture. Add just enough of the wet ingredients to bring the dough together as you stir gently. You don’t want the dough to be too sticky.

Once the dough comes together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Shape the dough into a large disc, and cut the disc into four equal parts. Then, shape each quarter of the dough into a disc and cut it into four wedges. Place the wedges on the prepared baking sheet.

Bake for about 15 minutes, until the tops of the scones are slightly golden. Transfer the scones to a wire rack to cool.

After a busy day of cleaning up the backyard, I had no plan for supper. Not to worry, it’s BBQ season! I asked Clay to pick up some hot dogs and buns, and we ate like the health conscious people you know us to be. After supper it was time for a little backyard fun with Daddy.

Wyatt was throwing the football here.

Bailey is waiting for the toss.

Deacon is hanging out on the deck with me, wishing he could get in on the action. After being sufficiently watered by the kids while he was hanging out on the lawn this afternoon, I figured it was time for him to stay clean and dry up on the deck.

Markus is busy trying to finish his supper so he can join in on the action.

Clay and Wyatt battle for the win!

I didn’t get any shots of Markus and Wyatt playing together. Between those two guys’ near collisions with every toss, and Bailey’s unsportsmanlike yelling, I was in stitches. These kids are hilarious! Life is good.

I considered myself to be a pretty good person. I worked hard, respected authority, went to church, didn’t sleep around, and didn’t get drunk. The worst of my teenage rebellion was seeing how fast I could drive my car. Or if you ask my mom, she might say the pinacle of my rebellion was the time she found me drinking a vodka cooler in my bedroom. No crazy partying involved, I was just curious what the fuss with alcohol was all about.

I was a good Christian girl who played by the rules. While my peers were busy partying and having sex, I looked at them with a healthy dose of righeous indignation and wondered why they were so immature. Didn’t they know they were on the road to destruction? I had answers. I was wise. I was on Jesus’ team. Of course I was. I was a good person. Why wouldn’t Jesus want me on his team? I was smart, that’s why I chose him.

Except that I didn’t choose him. He chose me.

I was dead in my sin.
Allow me to point out an obvious fact: Dead people don’t choose anything. They’re dead.
It takes the God of the universe – Jesus himself – to reach into death and bring us into life.

None of us deserve salvation. The prophet Isaiah tells us that our rightous acts are like a polluted garment. (Isaiah 64:6) The literal translation is actually menstrual rags. Gross? Yes, I’d say so. The good works I was priding myself on were seen by God as disgusting as a bloody tampon. The fact that I had lived my life devoted to Jesus was not a testimony of how smart I was, but a testimony of how faithful Jesus is. He protected me from my sinful nature. It wasn’t for my glory, but for his!

It was like a veil was lifted from my eyes. The truth of God’s grace, which I thought I had known since I was a child, shattered my world.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

As it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” (Romans 3:10-11)

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:1-5)

I knew these scriptures. I had memorized them as a child. But I did not understand them. I didn’t realize how offensive my sin was to God. I didn’t realize that my good works were a result of my own pride, a sin needing to be repented of like every sin.

It doesn’t matter if you play by the rules. It doesn’t matter if you’re a good person. There is one good person, and his name is Jesus. Through his mercy and grace he saves filthy sinners and transfers his perfect righteousness to our account. Our debt is paid in full by the blood of the spotless Lamb of God when he pulls us from death to life.

What a Saviour!