I gotta admit, I put alot of work into this Valentine's Day.  Weeks ahead of time I planned all the dishes for a special Polish dinner for us (No, we're not Polish, but last time we had Polish it was great!).  I researched all the recipes, went on a special shopping trip for good ingredients.  Then yesterday I  cooked nonstop from 10:30am to 7pm, but I did it!  Dan, Eddy and I feasted over candlelight on Pierogies, Golumpkies, boiled potatoes with Dill, and the best Polish pound cake you've never seen! =)

By the end of the day, the end of the meal, the end of dessert, I was beginning to wonder whether Danny had anything in store for me at all.  Right when my anxiety began to rise noticeably, Danny disappeared upstairs and came back with a very large flat package wrapped in brown paper.  "Don't wreck the front," he said.  It was A foot-and-a-half wide and 3 FEET tall.  I carefully removed the paper to reveal a particle board artist's painting of a caricatured blues trumpet player! (pictures to come)

He said when he visited New Orleans on his way home from buying our car, he ran across a whole bunch of artists in progress on very New Orleans style pieces.  This artist sold his paintings for less because he put them on less expensive materials, such as particle board.  But they were just as good or better than half the other paintings for sale!  Wow!  With this, and my uncle's blues painting, I have the makings of the perfect music room!  My husband sure knows what I like!  A perfect surprise for a perfect Valentine's.

I hope your Valentine's was just as special.  Tell me about it!

The smell of freshly baked bread wafting from the oven is unparalleled in the happy impressions of my childhood.   It told us that Mom's warm, soft, fluffy, hard crusted bread was about to come out of the oven and be smothered with melty butter for us kids to devour.

The Van Dyke sibling camping trip ended Tuesday night in a delightfully different dinner at Woolgrowers, a French Basque restaurant that serves a family style six-course meal with huge allotments of meat and where delicious red wine comes standard.  All the siblings, in-laws, and little cousins sat around a room-length table, under a tall, warehouse style ceiling, and surrounded by old fashioned French maps, paintings, and advertisements.  I never imagined a French restaurant to be this down-to-earth.  All my expectations of tiny artistic portions of rare food are obliterated.  We feasted on as much soup, potato salad, beans, salad, stew, french fries, meats of all shapes and flavors, fresh fruit and ice cream we could hold, passed around and shared. No wonder this restaurant has sustained 80 years of changing economy.  It's fun and timeless.

A week of hot and sunny makes one appreciate a cool cloudy day.  Plus the scattered showers throughout the day made everything outside wet and soggy.  I took advantage of this to do some house cleaning, remove the weeds and straw from the blackberries and go on a shopping spree with Eddy.  We got mower parts for Daddy, office supplies, and a whole new wardrobe from Goodwill for Eddy.  And, of course, we got to share Sam's Club pizza and an Arby's chocolate shake as a reward.

Dinner for volunteers.  My church started doing this.  We have a Satur-evening service.  The Sunday school workers don't come.  Food makes them come.  The dinners are good.  They have dessert, too.  It helps me and Eddy.  I say I'll fill in.  No time to make food.  We eat after church.  We talk to church friends.  It's a good time. Here's to the effort: dinner for volunteers!  Hooray for you; hooray for my church.  Hooray for the kids who fill it.

Okay, so I borrowed this awesomely cool cookie dough scooper (kinda like one of those squeezable ice cream scoopers...only tiny) from a friend during my huge cookie project in February.  It worked like a charm -- I just had to show Dan how cool it was.  So, when we celebrated my birthday a few days later, what did Dan get me, but a cookie dough scooper!  Boy, was I surprised!

Of course it was the wrong size and he got it way over in Minneapolis, so it took until last week to exchange it...which brings me to my story.

I just got a perfect cookie scooper from Dan AND made my first batch of chocolate chip cookies in our new house!  I stayed up late into the night to make them.  I was astonished -- we had every ingredient we needed at the house except white sugar and baking soda.  Brown sugar substitutes well, but Eddy and I had a fun adventure asking one of our new neighbors for the baking soda, which they were happy to lend =)

It was a success.  The best chocolate chip cookies we ever tasted.  Check out the pictures. P.S. Please excuse the fuzzy phone pictures.  I couldn't find the camera at the time.

My home day went great. I hauled wood onto the porch with a sled, cleaned the house, bathed, played with Eddy, read lots of books to him, Eddy helped me make pizza, we ate and watched tv together, listened to Odyssey on the radio together, and oh, the best part -- while Eddy napped, I organized! Am I the only one, or does everyone find organizing to be soothing and therapeutic? I didn't do everything I wanted to (kinda got carried away and ran out of time), but it was terrific while it lasted, and so satisfying afterward =)

Happiness is a home day.

I just gotta add a word of thanks to someone else who helped with these cookies. Eddy's babysitter! I had a ton of dough left to bake but we had to go to Bible study. I casually suggested to Paige that if she wanted she could bake some, and she graciously agreed. I was thinking a cookie sheet now and then when she thought of it. But in I walked after Bible study and, low and behold, nearly half of the cookies were done! My jaw dropped and I couldn't believe my eyes. Cookies piled on the table and overflowing out of the large bucket that was empty when I left. I feel my thanks in person were insufficient to describe how much I appreciate the extra help. So I say it here as well:

Thank you, Paige, for saving my night with your surprising help!
Thank you, Nicki, for letting me get your house so messy and use up your entire afternoon on this!
And thank you, Beth, for jumping in to help all yesterday, and taking some home to do today as well!

We did it! I feel quite loved right now. And quite tired. Good night.

Do you have people who will get together with you with absolutely no notice and help you bake 1500 cookies? I love community!

Seeing the same people once a week to open up, learn from and help each other spiritually is so live giving! But what's more is calling or seeing those same people between meetings to have fun, hang out, eat with, share encouragement and share HELP in every realm of life. Yesterday the bulk of my baking was done (in someone else's kitchen) while giving Eddy an enjoyable change of scenery and faces, and giving me the kind of personal conversation and encouragement I need so much during stressful seasons (using that word in the most literal sense). And I don't know, but I think my friends were blessed in being able to help and sharing in the camaraderie as well.

Thank you, Lord, for everyday relationships! Let them always be there!

Okay, so I've spent approximately 12 years hating McDonald's. It's about time I started liking it again =) They still have all the greasy food, mayonnaise, expensive salads, and mislaid values, but, I gotta love 'em!

Where else can I go in the winter where Eddy can have a blast for 2 hours with other kids and have a yummy lunch (complete with toy), while his mommy sits and relaxes in the sun, with a friend and a caramel frappe (light on the coffee, heavy on the caramel and whipped cream)?

McDonald's makes it possible for me to parent and be close to people. Who knew?