In The Refiner's Fire

John was approved yesterday for ordination into the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the ELCA!   Soli Deo Gloria!       A deep sigh of relief here and now planning for the future.   I'm leaving you with a photo of some beautiful orchids we saw earlier this spring while out and about.  I'm hoping to post photos from my flower garden soon - things are starting to peek out! God is good - all the time.

Stuffed peppers and fruit - I realize this doesn't look like much of a dinner but when we cut the pepper up, the pepper and the filling covered the rest of the plate!  Our dinner plates are pretty big in diameter too. We cooled off this week for right now.  Such a bummer since it was just beautiful last week and on Saturday!   At least everything is green finally and all the flowers and other greenery are poking their way out.  My rhododendron is just starting to open up and I so excited - it's my favorite! Here's what we're eating this week: Sunday, April 19, 2015:     Breakfast: Smoothies     Lunch: Sandwiches and Cut Fruit in the car (we had 45 minutes to drive 30 minutes between worship and the piano recital!)     Snack: At the Piano Recital, bring cupcakes     Dinner: Roasted Black Bean, Corn and Mango Salad, Tortilla Chips, Pineapple-Apple-Banana Salad Monday, April 20, 2015:  ...

Hello everyone! We've had a few very, very busy weeks here so I won't apologize too much for being missing in action but I will say that I've missed you all and I'm glad you stuck with me! We had a big shop this week.  In the last few weeks the children have been eating more and more - they are definitely growing (I've been letting down the hems on Buddy's pants weekly if not more often) and between that and dance and swimming, the food has been flying out of the fridge and the cupboards around here.  One week we ate 20lbs of apples.  And that was just the apples. So, we bought a few more "snacky" type things this week and we had completely run out of other things.  I really didn't feel like or have the time to do coupon matching this week so I wrote a list and stuck with it, though I did skip a couple of things that were definitely not emergency level so the total wouldn't completely blow the bank. I went to one store and here's wha...