Stormy Weather

We had quite the stormy weather yesterday evening in Southern Indiana and surrounding counties. I had just gotten off work when my phone rang and I was told there were 75 mph winds headed in the direction that I was going. I was 30 minutes away from home and am now terrified to drive in the rain, let alone winds that were going so fast. I said a quick prayer that sounded a little something like this, "Lord, you know that I'm scared to death and I just want to get home, please keep me safe and calm". I drove for about 20 minutes with some wind, a few sprinkles but once I hit the country road that we live off of, the storm decided to hit. It started pouring sheets of rain and I was on a curvy and hilly road that is surrounded by trees on both sides. My prayer turned to one of panic because the visibility was so bad, I almost pulled off numerous times but fear and determination kept me moving. I was only 2 miles away from home when I encountered the first tree but it was only covering half of the road so I could avoid hitting it. Small branches were scattered everywhere but I kept plugging on, I just wanted to get home. When I was only yards away from the road that we live on I encountered another tree, I stopped, evaluated then decided to plow on through, the tree wasn't that big. I managed to drag a portion of a tree branch into my garage. My husband says my good sense was overtaken by the panic that I was feeling. I'm thankful for God's protection but rain storms now scare me to death. There are a couple of small trees that are down in our yard but no other damage. I'm reminded of the scripture in 2 Timothy 1:7 that says, "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity , but He has given us a spirit of power and of love, and of a calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control."

Snow Day!!!!.

I just uploaded the pictures to my computer from this past weekend. Caleb gets to be home from school today, as we have a little over 1 inch of snow here in southern Indiana. My mom always laughs when I tell her if Caleb is on a delay or snow is cancelled because of the weather but I have to remind her that southern Indiana roads can be so treacherous with all of the curves and hilly roads. Northern Indiana folks seldom cancel school for weather, they would be out of school almost 3 months with all the snow they get. Anyhow, Caleb is enjoying being out of school and getting to play in the snow today.

Caleb had a great time playing the back yard with the dogs, sledding and snowboarding.

Here is a picture of our birthday celebration that we had this past weekend, pardon the bottle of dressing, my brother just couldn't resist.

My mom, brother Jon and dad all in a moment of togetherness.
Nathan, Caleb and Savannah were all feeling lazy, they had just woke up.

Spencer got a haircut this past week, we were teasing his mommy that he looked like a little Amish boy. He will be a year old in just a few weeks.

Birthday Celebration

The month of January is a crazy month in my family for birthday's. My parents, brothers and one sister-in-law all share January for their birth month's. My mom and sister-in-laws and I debated about this weekend, did we want to go out or cook dinner. We finally decided that a home cooked meal would be just fine if it included a favorite for each individual. Our celebration dinner included the following:

• Apricot Glazed Pork Loin
• Wild Rice
• Greek Salad
• Orange Salad
• Macaroni & cheese
• Crusty multi-grain bread
• Chocolate covered peanut butter pie
• Carmel Apple Cake

I have to say the pork loin was a huge success. The original recipe was from Angela Nichols in Mt. Airy, N.C and was published by Gooseberry Patch "Magic of Christmas" but I tweaked it just a bit to our taste. The version below is mine.

Apricot Glazed Pork Loin

• 15 slices of boneless porkloin
• Greek Seasoning sprinkled generously over pork loin
• 15-1/4 oz. can apricot halves, reserve juice
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice

Spray 13x9 glass baking dish with non-stick spray. Place porkloin in dish and sprinkle with Greek seasoning. Cover dish with foil and cook at 375 for 2 hours, then turn oven to 350 for 1/2 hour or until meat thermometer registers 160 degrees. Mash apricot halves with juice, blend in sugar and lemon juice. Bring to a boil and cook 2-3 minutes, remove from heat. Pour apricot sauce over slices of porkloin. Enjoy! The Greek seasoning was just something that I had purchased at Walmart in the spice section, it is just another version of seasoing salt with a few more spices.

I'll post some pictures later, just haven't uploaded them yet.

Pictures of our house

This is where Caleb and Wayne love to hang out. This weekend they spent a few hours in the pole barn coming up with ideas for Caleb's Destination Imagination program (DI). Caleb participates with this program through school where they are divided into teams and children are encouraged to think outside of the box, and solve problems creatively. It is a great program that I believe is done nationally but first they compete on a local level. This year his team has to come up with ideas for building a project that will have 4-6 obstacles, it must have a Christian theme, a skit and take no longer than 4 minutes to complete (this includes set-up time, skit and obstacles). It is definately a challenge. Wayne thrives on helping Caleb with these projects. A few topics that were discussed included positive and negative pressure, and flow of gravity. I love creative projects but DI gets just too technical for me.

The living room.

This is a picture of the dining room. Notice the cabinet holding my collection of cookbooks. I collect cookbooks and probably have over 250. This cabinet holds special meaning to us. We purchased it at Wayne's grandparents estate auction a few years ago, it was a cabinet that had been stashed in the barn after catching on fire some 50 plus years ago. His grandparents at one time displayed it in their kitchen. Wayne had it refurnished for me as a Christmas present a couple of years ago. When our house was up for sale, we had to have a sign in the cabinet window stating that the cabinet would not be going with house.

Here is a picture of my new kitchen. I'm absolutely loving it. It is great for entertaining.

My brother, Jon is diligently reading the newspaper. I don't even think that he knew I took this picture, he was so engrossed.

Caleb is patiently waiting to open Christmas presents and trying to have a pillow fight.

This is my sister-in-law (Tammara) acting silly with her camera on Christmas.

Window Washing

It has been so nice outside the past couple of days here in Southern Indiana, that today I decided to wash windows. The windows were quite dirty at our new house, the previous owners never liked to open their blinds, so thus they couldn't see all the dirt. I absolutely hate dirty windows, just can't stand to look out them. My windows are all clean and sparkly for now but in a couple of months they will be dirty again.

Enjoying my Christmas Present

I was unpacking more boxes yesterday and put in my new Christmas present to listen to. I received the newest CD from the group Selah and just had not had a chance to listen to it. I had never even heard of the group until Amy had it playing on her blog, and I enjoyed it so much I asked for the CD for Christmas. It helped to set the tone for what was going to be a boring day unpacking. Check out their website.
http://www.selahonline.com/

Christmas Pictures

Caleb relaxing in the recliner after a day of unpacking boxes.

This was Wayne enjoying his Christmas present with Caleb looking on. I had bought him a box of motorcycle accessories, all chrome of course. It was a great surprise. All the chrome was put on New Year's Day before he took off on the polar bear run. I think it is named appropriately because who else would ride their motorcycle on a freezing cold day except for a polar bear.

This is a picture of Caleb on Christmas morning in our skeleton of a house, we had moved some of the boxes around and had a few pieces of furniture so it seemed somewhat like home.

This is Wayne's dad and brother-in-law. Wayne's dad complains of being cold all the time anymore, so a sweater was in order for his Christmas present.

This is a familiar scene at my mother-in-law's house at Christmas time. Our niece Andrea is at the front of the picture with her husband David beside her. Jonathan and then two of my sister-in-laws, Tamara and Rosanna are in the background. Wayne's sister and family that lives in Colorado were unable to be with us for Christmas.

This is a picture of Samuel, our nephew opening a Christmas present.

This is a picture of Wayne's mom opening her sweater for Christmas.

These are my two sister-in-laws. Aytha was putting away food and Telesa was talking about something. When she talks she uses her hands for expression, can you tell? Love ya girls.

This is a picture of my mom enjoying two things. #1 Spencer is getting alot of hugs and kisses, #2 she is enjoying her new chair that was delivered in the middle of us opening Christmas presents. It was too funny the furniture delivery truck pulled up in the driveway and mom says, they must have the wrong address, Larry, can you go talk to them. My dad goes outside to talk to the delivery truck driver all the time knowing that they are in the right place. Mom was so surprised. We then had the wonderful pleasure of rearranging her living room later that afternoon. What a fun day.

This was my dad cutting the crown roast that he had made for our Christmas celebration, he used a recipe that he had gotten off the internet. The recipe required that the roast be covered with rock salt and cooked at 500 degrees, we were all a little unsure of how it would taste. The roast was so tasty, there were no left over's. His helpers were my brothers and sister-in-law.

Caleb with Spencer and Savannah, under the Christmas tree.

This is Spencer, our nephew, this was his first Christmas at Grandma's house. He is not walking yet but loves to hang onto everything.

This is Savannah, our niece loving the nativity figurines at Grandma's. She looked so pretty in her Christmas dress, it was red velvet trimmed in white fur.

Happy New Year!

It seems like it has been so long since I've actually set down to type something on my blog. 2007 has come and gone and the last few months of it passed in such a blur to me that I look back and wonder how we survived. Christmas is not a fun time to move but that was not our choice, it was just how everything worked out.

I have many people to thank for helping us through this transition. The week leading up to the move my dear friend Tracy came in and shampooed all of the carpets in the house. My brother-in-law came in and painted the living room on Christmas Eve and didn't even leave a paint smell. My dad and two brothers came in the day after Christmas and helped us tremendously, we joked that there was a personal helper for each one of us. Then this move would not be complete without the team of heavy lifters, you know who you are and we thank each of you so very much. When you have any kind of transition you just want life to stop until you get through the change, but life just doesn't happen this way. We continued to work our regular schedules, battled through sickness and survived with boxes surrounding us but God's grace was sufficient. Sunday evening before Christmas, I became very overwhelmed from the enormity of the task at hand but God sent some very special angels to help me lighten the load. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law came in on Christmas Eve, while I was at work and finished packing up our house. They power packed for a few hours and were such a blessing. When Wayne called me at work and told me that the rest of the house had been packed, I felt such a sense of relief. I had been under such pressure to get everything done, my boss had only allowed me to take one day off since it was during the holidays, I was fighting strep throat and laryngitis, I was extremely tired from buring the candle at both ends and just wanted to get through those few days. I did manage to get through the stressful period, I went to the doctor and got some antiobiotics and had to take some time off work because of sickness. I've been able to rest up and take life a little bit easier and look back and marvel at the blessings that God sends our way. The blessings came in many forms, a cooked meal, helping hands, hugs and laughter just to name a few.

Wayne was off work last week and that helped so much with getting alot of the outside stuff organized, his pole barn is up and running. The barn has a car lift in it and trust me, he is absolutely loving it. Tuesday night he had to change the oil in my car, he drove the car from the garage to the pole barn, put it up on rack and changed the oil without even getting dirty. The pole barn is his favorite thing about the new house. The house is pretty much organized, the kitchen and living room are all set up, bathrooms are organized but the bedrooms still have boxes in them. Wayne's grandma came by the house yesterday and made the comment, "Rachel, you know that Rome wasn't built in a day, so don't expect everything to be put away in a week".

I'll post some photos later, just haven't had a chance to upload them yet.