A Winter Weekend

Our weekend by the numbers:

• Three days
• 16 total hours of driving (for us)
• Eleven people driving hundreds of miles from Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Washington DC
• One ski resort -- Wisp -- in western Maryland
• At least 3 feet of snow (or so it seemed!)
• One gorgeous house with plenty of sleeping room for everyone
• Approximately one ton of food (seriously, there was more food than we could ever eat in a weekend thanks to mom!)
• Five delicious meals
• 10+ hours of skiing
• One funny Brian Regan DVD
• Three tense games of marbles (boys vs. girls -- girls lost :(

One amazing family (plus some wonderful additions -- Logan and Heidi) together for a weekend that was way too short, but blessed.

And now for the visuals...

Ben and Heidi outside the house we stayed in. Watch out for the icicle above the door!

Good thing no one had any plans to use the grill on the back deck...

Out the back of the house

Getting ready to go skiing

The whole group. From left to right -- my brother Ben, his girlfriend Heidi, Luke's girlfriend Logan, my brother Luke, my first cousin Kristal, her daughter Naomi, my mom, my dad, Kristal's husband Les behind my dad and Rob

Ben and Heidi on the chair lift

The mighty skiers

Superbowl!

It always seems like I'm a bit late in posting things that are happening in our life, but oh well, when you only have one computer and your husband does homework on it most of the time, delays are to be expected.

I had these fun Superbowl photos that I wanted to post so here goes. Not as many as I would like (I always forget to take photos of things I want to -- ie food I made -- until after it's eaten!) but oh well.

We had a pretty chill Superbowl with our friends Bethany and Andrew over for dinner and the game. Of course we were cheering hard for the Colts, but it was not to be this year. At the beginning of the game I even said it would be fun for it to be a close game (at this point we were expecting a Colts blow-out victory) but later when Rob was all tense and the Saints were ahead he said, "Is this close enough for you?" And it was too close and then too late for it to be fun anymore.

But we still had a good time and ate yummy food and talked. I made this really good homemade pizza with shrimp, lime and cilantro. You can find the recipe here. I also made this dip that was a bit like guacamole, but it had tomatillos (green tomatoes) in it. Delicious! That recipe is here. Bethany brought her famous ginger cookies with pumpkin dip which were also a big hit. (Sorry, no recipe for those).

Here are some pictures from our fun party - (minus the food of course - we gobbled that up!)

Rob helping make the food in his Colts apron he got for Christmas.

Ok, we didn't realize how creepy this photo was until after we took it -- look at the TV! Weird. Who is that guy? No idea.

So we took another one that is a little better and not so creepy.

The gang hanging out. They are not "super" fans like us with our jerseys, but we let them in anyways.

There's always next year Colts!

The Help

Working in publishing I spend a lot of time around books. I write about books. I talk about books. I read about books. I wish I read books at work, but alas, I am not in my dream job. Someday maybe someone will pay me to read books...*sigh*

One book I've seen getting a lot of hype over the past few months is Kathryn Stockett's The Help. A quick Google search will reveal over 2 million search results. It is currently #1 at the top of the New York Times Bestseller list for hardcover fiction. As a first time novelist she has what every author only dreams of - a dynamite book that is spreading because it's so powerful and it's about women who will obviously talk to other women like I'm doing right now. It's causing book groups across the country to get out their Kleenex and laugh at the same time.

Well, let me tell you, the reviews for this striking and rare book are not kidding. I just finished reading my copy of The Help on Friday night, just days after I started the 450 page tome. I literally could not stop reading it. I went to bed wayyyy too late every night (and skipped my exercise the next morning) to read this book. If I had two minutes I would sit down and read a page or two.

If you're not familiar with the premise of the book, I'll give you a quick overview. Jackson, Mississippi in the mid-1960s. Extreme black and white segregation and the beginnings of the civil rights movement. Mainly the book focuses on black domestic house servants and their relationships with the white women they work for, the ones they love and hate. The main character, Skeeter, is a white 20-something who has just graduated from college with a degree in journalism. She comes home and to her surprise her family's black maid Constantine (the woman who literally raised her) has disappeared and no one will tell her where or why she went. Skeeter starts to dig a little deeper, finds some old Jim Crow laws and has her eyes opened to what the life of a black housekeeper is really like. She takes a huge risk and befriends Aibileen, another black housekeeper, and they start writing a book, The Help, about the lives of domestic servants in Jackson. If you have any idea what that meant for a white woman and a black servant to write a book together in the 1960s in Jackson (and I really didn't) then you will get the rest of the book and the challenges they face. A host of other interesting characters and expert writing by Stockett will launch you out of your complacency and help you understand better a critical part of American history.

The book is not a true story, but is roughly based on Stockett's own life of growing up white in Jackson in the 1960s and being raised by a black woman she adored more than her own mother. When she moved to New York City after college she finally began to understand the gap in her life story when it came to her relationship with her black maid and what that woman's life must have been like.

This book is completely eye-opening. It's humbling as a white person to read and to think that at one point in our history my ancestors treated people so terribly just because they are black. And this only 25 years before I was born! This is not the Civil War, but civil rights. It's in a way a commentary on how far we've come as a country and how much further we have to go. It's amazing how Stockett writes these characters -- you feel like they are real and you know them. You are nervous for them. Anxious, excited, scared.

So there you have it, a quick review on a book that I know I will be thinking about for a long time. If you have a chance to pick this book up (or live close to me and want to borrow my copy) I suggest that you do.

Rally For Life

On Sunday Rob and I had the privilege of attending a pro-life rally in downtown Bloomington. Apparently this is an annual event on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade that a lot of people from around the community come out to and support, including our church.

I've participated in several pro-life rallies in my life. In high school I would go to Washington DC every January with my friend's church and march down the mall and up Capitol Hill with literally hundreds of thousands of people. In college when I studied for a semester at Focus on the Family Institute in Colorado Springs our whole class participated in a two day demonstration on one of the campuses of the University of Colorado complete with 18 foot high banners portraying the effects of abortion on the unborn. Needless to say on one of the most liberal college campuses in America that did not go over very well. Also needless to say that was an intense two days for me. I talked in my diary about how it was so challenging for me to be there, but good.

But this day was different. This day was in our community. Our home. This was much more that going to an event and leaving again.

I felt a lot of emotions when Rob and I pulled up to the courthouse Sunday afternoon for the rally. What would this be like I wondered? We know what kind of town Bloomington is - would people drive by and yell and throw things at us? But the main question I had to ask myself was, am I willing to be bold for life and stand out in the open for something I believe in? Yes. Rob and I prayed and up when we went to the courthouse. A lot of our friends were there too so that was fun. And yes, people did drive by and yell (as our one friend said, "ok, cue the village idiot - yelling out your car window while driving - not so smart.") and there was a lot of honking (which you never can be quite sure if it's a "friendly" honk or an "angry" honk.)

The itself rally was pretty short -- a pastor spoke, there were prayers and the woman who runs the crisis pregnancy center spoke. The hardest part for me was hearing that 2 out of 5 conceptions in the county we live in, Monroe County, end in abortions. 2 out of 5. The highest rate in the entire state of Indiana.

Heartbreaking.

I hate hearing statistics like 50 million children, new lives, precious lives, have been aborted in America since Roe vs. Wade. And that's an estimate. I hate hearing friends of ours who recently adopted a baby from Africa say to people who ask them why they adopted a baby from Africa instead of America, "Africa doesn't kill their children like people in America do making domestic adoptions almost impossible."

But this is the reality we live in. Abortion is reality for many, many people, people we see everyday that we do not know and even those we do.

The very least I could do was march through the streets of Bloomington in the pouring rain standing up for life and saying all life, even if it is only a few cells, "a blob of tissue" is worth it. I invite you, I even exhort you, to join me and stand up for life.

Three Things

Three things that do not make a Monday morning very happy:

1. Realizing at 5:30 this morning that I left my lunch sitting out overnight and not in the fridge where it belongs
2. My favorite necklace is all tangled and I can't fix it
3. Apparently the air conditioner at work has been broken (the air vent is right above my desk so I definitely noticed its absence) and is now fixed so I am cold again at work. Is it bad when your hands are so cold they can barely move the mouse? Yes, I think so.

And now that I've vented for a moment I will say three things that make this a good day so as to end on a high note and not a self-pity note:

1. Conor and Kerri are coming to play Settlers with us tonight
2. It is already lunch time and I have yummy white chicken chili to eat
3. And to really put things in perspective - I have breath in my lungs, food to eat, clothes to wear, a job, a man who adores me, a roof over my head and a Savior who died for me.

Ok, so things really aren't that bad after all. Glad I wrote it all down to remind myself. Maybe you needed a reminder too!

Book Sneeze

I found the coolest thing today that I wanted to share with all of you. It's called BookSneeze and it's a book review service from Thomas Nelson publishers. If you're not familiar with the actual publisher Thomas Nelson you would probably actually recognize some of their authors. Ted Dekker is one of them along with Max Lucado and Donald Miller. They publish a lot of Christian books from well known authors you probably already know and read.

Apparently they had a book review program already, but today they relaunched it with a new Web site and a new name, BookSneeze. (Side note about the name - it's based on a concept of people being "sneezers" and spreading good ideas, products and services mainly through social media. I think it's a pretty clever name - even if it is slightly gross - especially when you add their tagline, "good books are contagious" haha - clever. Some people aren't so keen on it and they've already lost one reviewer over the name which is slightly absurd in my opinion, but like their CEO Michael Hyatt said "you can't please everyone.")

Anyway, here's how BookSneeze works:

• Visit www.booksneeze.com and sign up for free
• Check out all the Thomas Nelson books available to review and select one that looks interesting and request to review it
• Thomas Nelson will send you the book for FREE and it's yours to keep
• Read the book and write at least a 200 word review, post the review on your blog, post it on another book site like Amazon or Barnes & Noble and then link it back to BookSneeze for others to read
• The review doesn't even have to be positive! They just want you to be honest and write a review of the book
• Once you're done reading a book, hop back on BookSneeze and request another one and so the cycle continues

How cool is that? Free books - I'm signing up tonight. :) Hopefully soon you'll start seeing some good book reviews on here too.

Our 1,800 Mile Trip

Ok, I know Christmas is long over. However, we just took our Christmas tree and decorations down yesterday so I guess it's ok for me to post about our Christmas. It did take us about 1,800 miles to complete this entire trip, but every mile was worth it because of the time we got to spend with our family and friends.

Rob was off from school starting in mid-December, but I didn't start my break until December 23rd. We decided to start a new family tradition this year of going to a hotel on the night of the 23rd as part of our Christmas gift to each other and eventually to our whole family when we have kids. If you remember, last year we were forced to go to a hotel on the night of the 23rd because of our frozen and burst water pipe at our old house. This year we took a step up from Gas City and spent the night in downtown Indianapolis on the Circle which was beautiful all decorated for Christmas.

The Circle in downtown Indy all lit up for Christmas

Love him.

On Christmas Eve we came home in the morning and spent the day getting ready for our trip to Pennsylvania on Christmas day. We decided when we got married that if all possible we wanted to be in our own home on Christmas morning and this year it actually worked. Last year because of our burst pipe we went early to Pennsylvania. We had a beautiful service at church on Christmas eve too.

Christmas morning we woke up all excited because we had presents! We were like little kids. We had some gifts from Rob's mom and then a few small things for each other. It didn't take us very long to open our gifts which was fine because we were excited for breakfast next. I'd gotten a recipe for 'red festive stuffed french toast' from my good friend Ashley so we decided that was going to be our Christmas morning breakfast this year. It's basically regular french toast stuffed with cream cheese, sliced almonds and hazelnut syrup with a fresh raspberry sauce on top. Yum! It was delicious and perfectly festive for Christmas. Then we packed up our car and off we went to Pennsylvania!

Here I am waiting anxiously by our Christmas tree!

Our pile of presents

Rob bought me this lovely hat, scarf and gloves set

I bought Rob this IU hoodie which he hasn't taken off since I gave it to him.

Here's something to consider when you drive anywhere long distance on Christmas day -- nothing is open. The only place we could stop for food was at gas stations. I'm glad that people get the day off of course, but nothing being open was something we did not consider before we left. Thankfully we stopped in Ohio and picked up my brother Ben and his new girlfriend Heidi and they came well supplied with snacks for us. Heidi lives just south of Akron, Ohio and Ben was out there for two days visiting her family so it worked out perfectly for us to pick them up as we went across. This was also the first time we met Heidi so that was cool to spend six hours in the car getting to know her. Rob made sure I didn't overwhelm her with questions as I tried to get to know her and I hope I did ok. She's so sweet and seems like a good fit for Ben.

So with the miles ticking away we made it to my parent's house in 11 hours and of course were relieved to arrive safely and finally be all together. My parents were so happy to have all of us there. We spent some time Friday evening playing a new family game called Quelf. It is a game that is similar to Cranium, but we were pretty convinced that the people who wrote the game were on drugs when they wrote this game that's how strange and hilarious it was. It's a lot of acting out things, but there were also these rules people have to follow like holding hands with the person who shares your space on the game board and not being able to use your hands for the whole game. Strange things. We laughed so hard though and everyone was a good sport, especially Heidi who probably felt very awkward at some points, but she still had fun (I think!)

Here Ben and my dad had to turn in circles for some part of Quelf. Ben was also still under the rule that he couldn't use his hands for most of the game

Rob had to do some weird chicken dance or something -- I actually forget what he's doing here but it was funny I can tell you that

Saturday was our big family Christmas with my mom's side of the family. We went to Lancaster and met up with everyone for a big meal, games, talking and time together. We were missing three cousins, but with Heidi and Logan, (my brother Luke's girlfriend) there, we were at 51 people. We are so tremendously blessed to have such a large family that loves each other and gets along so well.

Looking at photo albums from five, 10, 15 and 20 years ago

It would not be our family time without some people playing Settlers

My Aunt Millie (center) has a tradition of every Christmas taking a photo with all her nieces, nephews and great-nieces and nephews. Here I am with all my first cousins, the girl ones anyways :)

Sunday was our own family Christmas at my parent's with all eight of us. This was the first Christmas that all of us kids have had a "significant other" present so that took a little getting used to, but it was all good. My mom, the gift giver, bought everyone plenty of presents and we had a fun morning sitting around and opening gifts. The rest of the day we were at home playing games and eating a big meal my mom put together. Sunday evening my parents and Luke and Logan and us went up to my cousins cabin in central Pennsylvania. Ben and Heidi left us and headed down to sunny Florida to play in a charity volleyball tournament.

Doing the typical "show off what you got for Christmas" photo

Ben and Heidi and Luke and Logan taking over the couch

Adding more miles to our trip we headed to the cabin (we call it the Kastle) and spent Monday and Tuesday out there with about 25 members of our family. Again, it's a good thing we like each other! We mainly just hang out, play games, hike, talk and eat. It's great and very restful. One family tradition we always do at the Kastle is to pull taffy. This was my grandmother's recipe and thankfully the recipe and the technique to actually pull taffy are two things my mom and her sisters have retained.

Here my little cousin Rio is demonstrating that you have to butter your hands completely before starting to pull taffy

Here is the taffy before it is pulled. It is almost like a liquid carmel and then it cools slightly before you take a big blob of it in your hands and pull it with a partner

Here my cousins are pulling it using a special technique. You know it's done when it turns really white and stretches out.

Ta-da! The finished product. It gets cut and then wrapped in wax paper. It's quite tasty too as apparently the strange person on the right is demonstrating...

We left the Kastle Tuesday night and then spent Wednesday and Thursday at my parent's just hanging out and spending time with them. We were pretty lame for New Year's Eve and went to bed at 11:30! Rob wasn't feeling well and we knew we had a long drive ahead of us on New Year's Day so it made sense to go to bed.

I cried when we left my parent's house because it is always so hard to leave there. Holidays always go so fast and whenever we leave it always feels like we live so far away from them. Actually we do live far away... :(

But my mom is being so great to be intentional about getting us all together and is planning a ski weekend for us in February that we're all looking forward to. I think especially now that my brothers have girlfriends who we still need to get to know and with us all be scattered about family times like Christmas and vacations throughout the year become so much more important. Thankfully Rob and I are in a place where we can take the time to be with family as he gets so many breaks as a student and with my temp job I can take time unpaid when I need to. I figure in the long run of life I will remember the family times much more than a paycheck!

It was a wonderful Christmas and it was good to come home (after I got over my tears) and have one more week before Rob goes back to school tomorrow. We are so thankful for my family and for Rob's (who we got to see the weekend before Christmas and then on New Year's Day we stopped in and spent the night there -- sorry no pictures from those times!) who love us for who we are and support this season of life we're in.

Oh and we were very thankful our car made it the whole 1,800 miles...a little worse for the wear, but a faithful car to us at over 150,000 miles now!