Gobble Gobble and All That Jazz

Hello!

Its been a while since I've given you all an update on where I am and what I'm doing so here it is!

Life has been carrying on at a steady rate since I last wrote. Things have been going quite well and just as busy as ever... but we like it that way. Jr. High has been so much fun this year. We have a very young group of students and they are all full of energy and life every Wednesday to keep me on my toes! (That comment makes me sound like I'm 80 or something....) :D In October Chaille, Kayli and I went to the Set Apart Girls conference in Kalamazoo to hear Leslie and Eric Ludy speak and it was incredible. Very great reminder of why we do what we do and what our calling in Christ is! Chaille and I are hoping to do an event at our own church soon to share what we heard with the rest of the Rhiza Student Ministries Jr. and Sr. high girls. Recently, Chaille has been working on the possibility of getting Leslie and Eric to come to our church themselves and do a similar conference to the one we attended. We haven't heard much on that yet though but if you want to pray for that it would be such a blessing to have them bring their vision to our students personally!

November is practically gone already and I feel like it's been a crazy but good month. At the beginning of the month we had our Jr. high Fall Retreat at Derek Max's parent's house in Three Rivers. We had a ton of kids come out for that and we had a blast. The weather was absolutely perfect all weekend and we had an overall good time. This past week I spent most of my time studying for my final exam to cap off my correspondence course from LSU that will complete my degree. I am so grateful to tell you that God definitely opened up time for me to study and gave me the strength to do it when it was the last thing I felt like doing. I took my exam on Monday and I feel so relieved. Thank you to all of you who were praying for that! :D

After thanksgiving week I am going to start in on a new project. Teaching! ESL is what my degree is in and since my internship I haven't had any real teaching opportunities until now. I met a wonderful lady at work a few weeks back who is helping some refugees from Africa get settled in the area and she has asked me to teach three girls English. I met them two weeks ago and I had so much fun meeting them I can't wait to get started. They are from Burundi Africa but spent some time in refugee camps in Rwanda before coming to the states. They are eager to learn and so excited to be able to have a teacher; you can pray that I will live up to their expectations and that they will learn a lot! :D

I hope everyone will have a very happy Thanksgiving and a safe and fun Black Friday! :D I have to work for the first time ever on Black Friday so I won't get to shop until after work.... Bummer!

God Bless, Sleep well!

CW

Gettin' Domestic

Flavors of Fall
One joy of being "done" with school is that I am home a lot more and I have the time to do some fun domestic things that I didn't have time to do before. For starters, I decorated my house with everything Fall that I had in the basement this week. I had so much fun playing with different colors and textures to make my house feel so warm and cozy... all the great feelings of fall. I even had an afternoon to stroll downtown rockford to get a new candle to add to the fall scents; I went with Yankee Candle's "Autumn Leaves" Scent. This week has been great in the area of having time for things that I didn't have time for before so I'm feeling extra thankful that I can do some of these fun domestic things. Another joy of being at home for me is cooking. My great friend Stacie had Jared and I over for Chicken dinner on Tuesday and it inspired me to be better at cooking fantastic meals like that for Jared at home; not just the usual hot dogs and sandwiches. So here are some of the recipes that we've enjoyed this week.
Venison Meat Loaf Recipe

"My mother, who claims she can detect venison in any recipe, didn't have a clue it was in this tender meat loaf until we told her after dinner. She raved about this flavorful main dish the entire time she was eating it!"-Liz Gilchrist, Bolton, Ontario

This recipe is: Healthy

6-8 Servings
Prep: 10 min. Bake: 70 min.
Ingredients
2 eggs
1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 cup dry bread crumbs
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1-1/2 pounds ground venison
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons spicy brown mustard
2 tablespoons white vinegar

Directions:
In a large bowl, lightly beat eggs; add tomato sauce, onion, crumbs, salt and pepper. Add venison and mix well. Press into an ungreased 9-in. x 5-in. loaf pan. Combine brown sugar, mustard and vinegar; pour over meat loaf. Bake, uncovered, at 350° for 70 minutes. Yield: 6-8 servings.


Nutrition Facts: 1 serving (1 slice) equals 204 calories, 4 g fat (1 g saturated fat), 125 mg cholesterol, 799 mg sodium, 16 g carbohydrate, 1 g fiber, 23 g protein.

Easy Spaghetti Bake

Ready in: 30-60 minutes

Ingredients:

1 package (7 oz. size) spaghetti

1/2 cup onion, chopped1 can (4 oz. size)

mushrooms stems & pieces, drained

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 pound ground beef

1 jar (32 oz. size) spaghetti sauce

2 teaspoons sugar

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 cup Cheddar cheese, shredded

Directions:
Cook spaghetti according to package directions. Drain. In large skillet, brown beef and pour off excess fat. Add onion, spaghetti sauce, mushrooms, sugar, basil and salt. Simmer covered 10 minutes. Stir in cooked spaghetti to combined ingredients. Turn mixture into a shallow 2 1/2 quart baking dish. Cover and bake 20 minutes at 350F. Uncover, top with cheese and return to oven. Bake 5 minutes more.

This recipe from CDKitchen for Easy Spaghetti Bake serves/makes 6

A fun project: I found some pretty Autumn napkin rings that were given to me when we got married that I had never used so I decided to try to make a pretty centerpiece with these napkin rings, my fancy napkins and a fall platter that matches the rings. Here's the website I found helpful to teach me how to do this!

http://www.recipezaar.com/Serviette-Napkin-Folding-Basic-With-Napkin-Ring-241006

Happy Fall!

Sleep well and God Bless,

CW

Outhouses, Cookies, and Jane Austen

VACATION: < class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">vacātiō freedom from something; r. ME vacacioun <>

If vacation is freedom from something... I was in vacation overload this week by being freed from many things this week. Free from the use of modern conveniences; (ie. Toilets, sinks, bathtubs, dishwashers, electricity, running water, ipods, TV, Internet, phones... and the list goes on and on.)
As I now sit in my living room singing along to my Cd player with the washing machine cleaning my clothes for me, my husband in the shower enjoying running hot water, lights on my left and my right to light my work, and my computer at my fingertips I sit amazed at how blessed we are... and spoiled.
I spent this past week in Michigan's vastly beautiful Upper Peninsula with Jared's family at a place appropriately titled "Pretty Lake." It was a challenge for me to be completely striped of all things "comfortable" and yet freeing because I found so much comfort in having nothing to distract me from God's creation. I bathed in the lake with the sunset all around me, the birds singing their melodies, the trees swaying in unison and the water as still as glass. I slept soundly under the stars with the sound of the lunes to wake me every morning. I walked along the shores of lake Michigan, lake Superior, and numerous small lakes in between all in the same week. It's often bitter sweet to leave a place of beauty and rest like that knowing that you're heading back to a busy life full of distractions and noise but something I've learned this week is to take notice of the gifts that God has given us at home and on vacation and to take more time to notice God in the business of life and not just in the "stillness." It is certainly more difficult for me to recognize God in the business but it can be done and He's teaching me daily where to look for him and where he can be heard. It's simple really, He is everything and in everything.... When God called Himself "I AM" He was revealing a very profound part of who He is and how He works.... He just is and I can join Him there. What a gift.

It's amazing to me that sometimes God uses things like outhouses (a thing I, as a devout germaphobe, fear greatly) to get us out of our comfort zone so He can reveal Himself in a new way. This above all things was my greatest struggle during our vacation. I kept telling Jer that I could live like that forever if I could just have a regular flush toilet... that would be my one thing I would take with me if I were forced to live outside for the rest of my life.

I ate way too many chocolate chip cookies this week as well... I've had so much chocolate in the past week that I really should just be one big chocolate bar! I'm not sure why we had so many cookies. I made them before we left and they were just so darn good that we ate at least one a day. So that was my guilty pleasure this week... Ahhh but we were on vacation so I was free from feeling guilty about that!

Sweet Jane Austen was my friend this week as well. I finally finished Sense and Sensibility! I've been working on this book since I finished Pride and Prejudice in May. I was quite satisfied with it as a whole but I can say that I still think that P&P is my favorite of the two. I'm going to read all of her books so I guess I'll let you know later if any of the others top P&P but we'll see as we go because I am a very slow reader it might take me a while. I think I'm going to read Persuasion next.

I did pick up a quick read in between my Austen titles though... "Around the World in 80 Dates" by: Christa Ann Banister
If you remember from last year I got hooked on Erynn Mangum's Lauren Holbrook Series. Well Erynn and Christa both write for Navpress and both are 20 something chick lit writers who know how to write a fun novel and include great lessons in them. So far this is a fun read. It's quick so I'll have a full post on that book soon.

I hope you all are well and that you also are finding joy in God's creation and in who He is.

Pictures to come later!

God Bless, Sleep Well,
CW