I love Fridays

Happy Friday!

Notice how I can say "Happy Friday" when I wasn't able to wish you a happy anything on Monday? I can't believe it's Friday already. I'm elated.

It's a gloomy, drizzly day here in Seattle. There's a cruise ship out my window. I'm not sure how much longer cruise season will last. Just got back from Starbucks and they didn't mark my drink as a decaf so if I come back to post again later on it's because the caffeine is making my hands jittery and they need something to do.
I'm periodically breaking during the writing of this post to do one of three things:

• Working (...)
  
• Playing "Mob Wars" on Facebook (which really only consists of a couple of clicks every 15 minutes)
  
• Playing "Scramble" on Facebook (3-minute increments. I'm hooked)

To the right you'll see an ultrasound of my twin sister's womb. Isn't it pretty? Inside that pretty womb is my new neice or nephew. Caleb, my 4 1/2 year old nephew (my twin's son), calls the baby Pablo Strong. I guess Pablo is the name of the penguin on Backyardigans and who knows where "Strong" came from. Personally, I think that's a pretty ingenious name and if the Lord blesses D and me with a child, I am going to ask Caleb to please name the child in my womb. I think my twin's baby, no matter what gender, will have the nickname Pablo for the rest of its life.

In other Friday news, we bought way too many groceries at Costco on Wednesday night before Bible class and now our freezers are stocked completely full. I have a love/hate relationship with a stocked freezer. On one hand, I love that God has blessed us with the food in those freezers. On the other hand, I feel an enormous amount of pressure to use every dadgum thing in that freezer and, not ever remembering what I've bought, I never do. I'm sure there are cookies and muffins from 2 years ago in those freezers. Believe it or not, I've gone through everything in the freezers and have thrown out some things like hand-me-down bread from David's bachelor years but there are things I've justified keeping around and now I'm not so sure. Cleaning out a freezer is like cleaning out a closet. Sure, you could throw away a t-shirt you got for donating blood in college, but it's not hurting anything or going bad just by hanging there in your closet. And who knows if you might need it someday? Same with the cookies from D's sweet grandma that have been in our freezer for a good year and a half. She used to save the cookies from the cafeteria at her assisted living facility and put them in a huge freezer bag and give them to D when he'd come to visit. As long as he still thinks they taste good, we keep them.

I do want to point out that I am not like the above mentioned closet-cleaner-outer. I get rid of everything non-essential. D is not so much that way. He has a closet full of t-shirts in his office. He's pretty cute about wanting to keep every shirt hanging up in there, but I tease him that when I'm at home full time, I'm going to put one shirt into a box every day until that closet is empty just to see if he notices. Maybe by that time he'll be more willing to take that box to the Goodwill :)

Oh, I just heard some awful news. Your prayers are needed. This is what I've heard about my friend, Lauren, who was 42 weeks pregnant and went to deliver her baby this morning:

"Lauren was induced this morning and the heart rate started dropping. They did an emergency c-section but it was too late. They believe the baby took in meconium. An autopsy will confirm."

"...weep with those who weep." Romans 12:15

I can't even imagine the pain. Pray for the family, please. It's hard to move on to normal things after that but all we can do is give it to the Father and let the Master Healer do His healing.

To the right you'll see D's current object of confusion. The bird feeder once hung by our kitchen window. However, the birds would perch themselves on the feeder and invariably make a huge mess of the deck with the seeds. D thought he would put the bird feeder on that little table so that surely the seeds would land on the table instead of on the deck. What we didn't realize is that we have a lot of Blue Jay visitors and Blue Jays are inherentely slobs. This specific Blue Jay perches on the bird feeder every day and literally shuffles the food around as much as possible, slinging the pieces all over the table and deck. D just painted the deck a couple of weekends ago so he's trying to figure out a way to keep the seeds off of it. He's puzzled. I am, too. But, I love watching the Blue Jay enjoy the food!

I leave you with a recipe. These were, hands down, the best Banana Chocolate Chip muffins I've ever made. Yum!

This is my adapted recipe. If you don't like it, go find the regular recipe on AllRecipes.com.

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

INGREDIENTS
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 mashed ripe bananas
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips (who really measures chocolate chips?!)

DIRECTIONS
In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, combine the egg, oil, sour cream and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in bananas and chocolate chips. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake at 350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.


Have a wonderful weekend.