Today’s my Mom’s birthday. I called her so she could hear Little man singing…and then forgot to tell her Happy Birthday! Oops! I think I’ll be calling her right back in a moment here…Then, she didn’t even get to hear little bug sing – he got upset about something and cried the whole time instead!

Let’s try this again. Happy Birthday Mom!

I backed the van into a wall yesterday and bent the muffler. Stephen and my mom were with me too! We had gone to the bank to open a new account, and when we left, Stephen needed me to drive home. Not a big deal, right? So I looked out the back window, and didn’t see anything, except for a tree. I kept an eye on the tree and backed out as carefully as I usually do…until I heard a huge THUD…and feel a huge THUMP of the van hitting something…

There was a huge curb that I backed into. Stephen said it was more of a wall. No wonder I couldn’t see it out the back window. Grrrrr. Instead of being the usual 8 or 10 inches high, this curb looked closer to a foot or foot and a half tall. Like more of a retaining wall. Grrrr again. I was so embarassed to drive the van home – you couldn’t see any damage, but the muffler sure rattled. It was loud!

When we got home, Stephen was able to bend it back, so that you really can’t hear the rattle much anymore. I’m aggravated that it happened in the first place. I’ve been driving for ten years – I’m not supposed to do stuff like this anymore, right?

That’s another thing that makes me so thankful for the husband that I have. He didn’t give me grief at all about the van. He could have sent me through the wringer, but he was really nice about it. I’m especially glad how nice he was because of how terrible that I felt for the whole incident.

All in all, I don’t think we need to take the van to a mechanic. At least I hope not any time soon! We do need to go sometime in the near future to have the muffler remounted. We’ve had it attached with coat hangers since last summer…but haven’t had a problem with it. I’m a bit suprised that it’s held up this well this long, but I am definitely thankful though!

Another driving lesson learned: look for curbs that jump out at your vehicle before backing out of a parking space!

Stephen came home from work today to tell me some good news: he won’t have to work third shift after all! I was fine with him working third shift, but it is a relief. Apparently a guy he works with needed to work third so he could go to college, which meant Stephen would get switched. He could get switched back at any time, but for now, he stays on first.

This schedule is nice too, because he goes in early enough in the day that we’re able to do some running when he gets home before most businesses close.

Yay!

Our God is such an AMAZING God!

He has provided for us in another unexpected way, again.

We got money in the mail today! This is just like God to do this. We got two checks, each for $50. First, we badly needed the money. Second, I just love the “little details.”

We called the bank a couple weeks ago to open an account here. The account that we would have would be free checking, and it has no minimum balance. Good. Our problem was that in order to open an account, the bank required a $50 deposit. Not a problem in itself, except we didn’t have the $50 to deposit. Sure, we could probably pull every last penny we have from all our accounts, but we didn’t want to do that and risk overdrafting the accounts. So we decided to just wait until we had the money. No big deal.

We had gotten a couple of refund checks in the mail from our old phone service, but since they were such small amounts we just held them until we opened an account. I wondered how long it would be before we could open an account. Stephen is due his first paycheck soon, so I just figured that we’d end up using that to open an account.

So today we get not one but two $50 checks. How neat is that? The exact amount we needed to open an account, times two. Instead of one $100 check, there were two $50 checks. Almost as if God were saying, “Here’s what you needed to open a bank account, and then here’s an extra blessing as well.” Now we have money to pay our bills that are due this week. Wow.

God said that He would provide all our needs. I have a print hanging in my living room with a verse on it:

But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:19

I look at it often as a reminder that God said He would provide. And He sure does.

As if that weren’t good enough – our tax refund is scheduled to be deposited into our account this Friday. What a blessing!

…but I’m getting better. YAY!

No, Stephen didn’t get my medicine. He had a good reason though. We had an appointment at 4:45 yesterday afternoon, and he didn’t want us to be late. We stopped after the appointment to get meds. He got me one of those day and night combination packs – that has both Dayquil and Nyquil in it. That Nyquil is something else – I got a great night’s sleep last night. YAY! I love that stuff. It’s the one cold medicine that I can bank on – it works great!

Today I still sound pretty bad (not much of a voice), but I feel a lot better. I told Stephen’s mom that I sound worse than I feel. I can handle that.

This cold really amazes me – it moves so quickly! Just Monday I started feeling crummy, and two days later I’m on the mend. I’m not used to colds clearing up this quickly, but I am definitely thankful that it is!

It looks like little bug is getting it though…he’s got a runny nose, but he doesn’t act like he feels too icky yet. Hopefully this is the most he’ll get. We’ll see.

Wow – have I ever got a doozy of a cold! It just hit me last night while I was making dinner, and now I feel pretty rough.

There are two good things that come to mind, though. One – Stephen babies me. I really like that. Two – I can’t smell stinky diapers when I change them. Very nice. I can handle that!

Now – here’s hoping Stephen remembers to pick up some cold medicine for me on his way home from work this afternoon.

He provides in such unexpected ways sometimes.

I gave Bug the last of the milk on Friday. I used the last of the regular flour the other day…and have a couple cups of bread flour left. I was seriously starting to wonder how in the world I was going to feed my family if I couldn’t make bread to round out the meals. Stephen and I can live without milk (and we have dry milk in the house), but I don’t want little guy to go without it. So yesterday, I prayed that God would provide.

When we got home from church today, Stephen handed me an envelope. In it was a $25 gift card to a local grocery store. Now, $25 might not sound like much, but it will buy us the milk and flour that we need, as well as a couple other things we’re out of. Like a small package of disposable diapers for us to take to church.

I love it! The person that gave us the gift card probably had no clue how badly we needed it, but it was a huge blessing just the same. It is so neat to see how God uses other people to meet our needs!

I wrote a super-long post yesterday answering all the questions I’ve gotten about the sourdough bread recipe…and we blew a breaker. It was a bit frustrating. Note to self: save long blog posts to avoid losing them!

Let’s see….
After you first make the starter, you can use it after it sits out for a while. I never have; I like for it to get good and strong first. Usually I end up feeding it one or two more times to make sure it’s actually strong enough to use. Bread made with dead starter is nasty. Just ask me how I know… :O)

The dough will be very sticky. That’s normal.

The dough takes a long time to rise – usually about 8 hours to double in size. I’ve had it take as long as 24 hours before. Same with the loaves once they’re shaped. I plan on at least two whole days to make this bread, from feeding the starter to pulling it out of the oven.

This bread is slightly sweet. I think it’s all the sugar in the starter. People have told me that “this is the best bread I have ever eaten!” It is that good. The bread is so good that I’ll give you a warning. Do not slice it fresh out of the oven unless you want to eat the whole loaf in one sitting. We learned this the hard way too. It’s just so soft and yummy and hard to resist…

You can also use part whole wheat flour in the recipe with good results. It’s been a while since I’ve done it, so I don’t remember how much I used. I’m guessing not more than 2 or 3 cups whole wheat flour. This bread is very, very soft, and I didn’t want to make it too dense the first try. I liked the results, and will probably do it that way more often myself.

Hope that helps!