Easter

We had a very pleasant Easter – egg dyeing using thrift-store ties on Saturday, church on Sunday morning, neighbors over for Easter dinner, and a very non-Eastery James Bond Skyfall viewing in the evening after a movie and TV-free Lent. For Easter dinner we had:

• Glazed ham with homemade mustard sauce
• Cream cheese mashed potatoes
• Asparagus broiled with butter and parmesan cheese
• Shredded carrots in vinaigrette
• Salad with olive oil and balsamic dressing
• Hot rolls with butter (I made my life simpler by using frozen Sister Schubert’s yeast rolls)
• Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (this recipe was fantastic – I doubled the batter, substituted raisins for nuts, and used 1/4 cup applesauce instead of pineapple. I poured the batter into two round cake pans and baked about 25 minutes. The frosting does not need to be doubled)
• Chocolates
• Drink options of wine, water, milk, and apple juice (for the kids), followed by coffee with dessert

This was by far the largest number of dishes I’ve ever made for guests. My mother loves to set a beautiful formal table and create elaborate special meals for guests. It’s a gift that she’s perfected into both a hobby and a skill. It took me a few years to realize that following the Biblical command to practice hospitality doesn’t mean I have to follow it in exactly the same way. Everyone has their own hosting style, and what’s fun for her is stressful for me. I love to cook, but the key difference between cooking a meal just for our household vs. for guests is that I’m an introvert. Having guests saps a lot of energy. Having them arrive when I’m already drained from two frenzied hours in the kitchen means I dread their arrival and have a hard time summoning social energy to make them welcome.

Eventually I realized that I needed to create my own style of hospitality – something that would enable us to freely and frequently welcome guests with bounty but simplicity.  We set a goal for the number of times we’d like to welcome guests into our home each month, and went from there. Usually I cook a simple but homemade meal that works no matter how crazy the day. Often that means a big pot of soup, a salad, and bread, along with a quick tidy of the kitchen. Sometimes I mentally plan what to serve, then deliberately cut out one dish. More often than not dessert is just chocolates, if anything. The nice thing about a generation raised with terrible fast food and frozen dinners is that guests are delighted to have plentiful home-cooked meals. Once, we knew we wanted to invite a large group of neighbors over. However, the house badly needed a cleaning after busy work weeks for both of us, nd I didn’t have time to cook for that many. Instead, we had an after-dinner ice-cream social on the back porch: I whipped up a pan of brownies, brewed a pot of coffee, and guests made themselves sundaes with brownies, ice cream, and a few no-prep toppings like berries, nuts, and fudge sauce. It was fun and relaxing for guests and hosts alike.

All that to say, a meal like this is not the norm when hosting guests, but it worked. Our neighbors graciously had us over for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners when Carl worked both holidays this year. We wanted to create something truly special, both for Easter and in thanks to them. We prepped everything we could the night before and I wrote out a quick timetable since three different foods needed three different oven temperatures. Once the cold foods were prepared and everything else was boiling and baking I still had time to sit and read with the kids on the couch before guests arrived. After doing the dishes, I think Carl prefers the simpler three-dish dinners though!

What hosting tactics work for your household and personality?

Edited to add: learning to feed guests hasn’t been a perfectly smooth process. There was the episode of greasy ham and too-dry cornbread, the burned soup where we should’ve just ordered a pizza, and a few meals where I didn’t make enough and had to scramble. Practice makes progress.

Manners

Why yes that was our delicate little daughter belching like a tiny frat boy during the quietest, most reverent part of the pastor’s prayer. Burping so loudly, in fact, that the musicians all the way at the front of the church heard and snickered. And yes, it’s true, she was also the one snoring throughout the sermon. And yes, that might have been our son gleefully chatting up his father until he had to be taken out to the lobby, where he vomited all over daddy’s pants despite the burp rag and blanket in the way.

It never ceases to amaze us that humans so tiny and cute can create so much noise and mess. We did get to hear the entire sermon for the first time since the kids came home, a definite improvement on walking the halls with a screaming baby.

Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real

I haven’t settled on blog names for the babies yet. I think Jack and Annie will do for now. For other {Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real} posts, please head over to Like Mother, Like Daughter.

PRETTY

A pleasant surprise since we adopted the twins three weeks ago is that it’s actually easier to get out of the house with them than to stay at home. They love their stroller and riding in the car, and will sleep for a good two hours with the occasional contortionist pacifier readjustment from the driver’s seat. While out at Target picking Christmas ornaments for their first St. Nicholas Day I finally found a tree topper (it’s been a five year hunt). The house may be in a crisis state of disorder, but the tree is decorated thanks to a little help from friends at church, and we’re spending long days baby juggling by the lights and evergreen branches.

FUNNY

Yes, happy should be next, but this photo directly ties in with the beatific pose above. Things look a little less “Peace on Earth” and a little more “Charlie Chaplin” from the other direction:

Jack figured out how to suck his thumb last week. These days, whenever we feed him his bottle he keeps his “emergency backup thumb” an inch from his mouth, ready to pop it in at the first sign of bottle withdrawal. Annie, meanwhile, desperately wants to suck her thumb but hasn’t quite figured it out. While Jack is definitely a right-hander, Annie just wants a hand, any hand, to make it to her mouth. She spends large portions of the day giving us two thumbs up, slowly bringing both fists to her face in desperate hope that one will somehow hit her mouth. Usually it’s more of a “one finger in the eye, another hand in the ear” scenario. When all else fails, you can always borrow your sleeping brother’s thumb. It’s one of the unsanitary perks of being a twin:

HAPPY

The kids are becoming much more calm and content as they settle in, figure out this is home, and get to know us. As they grow, they’re moving on from once a day accidental grins to big gummy baby smiles accompanied by whole-body-flailing.

 

REAL

St. Nicholas visited, just as he did throughout my childhood. However, the good Bishop arrived on the 7th, not the 6th, delayed by two spit-uppy little humans, a mother with only two hands, a father on call at the hospital, and perhaps another fistfight with Arrius. We enjoyed ourselves, for all that. How did he know I love Ferrero Rocher chocolates?

Things Dad has Said

My Dad is normally an actions-speak-louder-than-words type, but he’s given his share of advice. For Fathers Day, my brothers and I compiled a list of quotes from our Dad. Thanks to him we’ve learned life skills, tried new things, built character, and arrived at adulthood with all limbs intact. Happy Fathers Day, Dad!

Angle the chainsaw away from your leg.

Go apologize to your mother right now.

Never make your boss look bad.

You don’t need to go to the Emergency Room - I can fix that.

Good job.

Thank your mother for dinner.

Fat chance, kiddo.

Next time, don’t release the clutch until I tell you to.

Casinos are a tax on people who can’t do math. Don’t go.

Squeeeeeezzeee the trigger.

Don’t be lukewarm. [Rev. 3:16]

A ripple on the surface means a rock underwater. Paddle your canoe around it.

I love you.

Study hard and stay off the hard stuff.

No whining.

Go ask your mother.

Use your compass to line up the next landmark before reaching the first.

Next time [_____] hits you, hit back.

Those shredded trunks mean bears are hunting for grubs.

You don’t have to run faster than the bear, just faster than the slowest hiker.

Read the fine print.

Just make sure she has a good time. [Advice for a first date. Result: engagement, marriage, and a grandson]

Lower the mower deck on the curb side.

What did you do that for?

Behave.

So this grapefruit is the sun, and this apple is the earth…

Watch out for moose.

We wouldn’t let you do this if we didn’t think you were capable of it. You’ll be fine.

Make sure the wires are dead before you start any electrical work.

Do your research.

Chew with your mouth closed.

Go to bed.

Get up.

There should be no jerk when you stop or start a car. Make it perfectly smooth.

This is pi. It’s shaped like a little house. [geometry for 7 year olds]

Never discuss test scores or grades with others.

Thank you.

Don’t stay up past 2 a.m. or drink coffee in college.

Never tell someone how much money you have or ask how much they have.

Gentlemen don’t go to “Gentlemen’s Clubs”

Accelerate out of a turn.

I had nothing else to read, so I read the Bible for two days and it made sense.

Where do you think you’re going?

You’re late.

You’re welcome.

Don’t leave food out and reheat it day after day. You’ll get food poisoning.

Don’t rush.

Hurry up.

When you’re in a situation like that, just remember “somebody has to be the adult here.”

Stop doing that. You’re getting footprints on the ceiling.

That’s a granny corner! Turn the wheel hand over hand or people will laugh at you.

Yes, I’m sure there’s no secret passage in your closet.

Don’t fall off the roof.

Just because you saw it on the internet doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Ow-ow-ow-awwoooooooooooOOOO [Dad, in the dark, after his terrified-of-wolves child had climbed into bed]

You represent our family.

Give people a firm handshake.

Punch with your body, not your arm.

Don’t get into conversations with men on airplanes.

Math first. The harder you work at math, the easier it will get.

Don’t hold your knife like that…………I told you so.

Let’s research coyotes.

Congratulations. Your mother and I are proud of you.

Stay low when you get into a canoe.

It doesn’t matter if you’re right if I can’t read what you’ve written.

Don’t grab someone who’s being electricuted. Knock them out of the way.

Finish your chores andthenwe’ll talk about it.

Biology is for people who like science but can’t do math.

….and then I dropped an M80 off the treefort.

Why did you do that?

Don’t shuffle your skis – slide them.

Thank you.

That’s not good enough. Do it again, well.

Nice try, buster.

Photo credit to my middle brother during a family camping trip on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Up da’ in duh Yooperlan’. For last year’s Fathers Day post, go here.

Found While Looking Around

 

• This list of the 44 Most Common Cooking Mistakes is a great compilation of common cooking errors. I’ve seen a lot of them before, but this summary gives good explanations of the ”why” of errors, and how to avoid the problem in future. Even my been-feeding-households-for-thirty-five-years Mom found new ideas in here. Next time I make blueberry muffins I’m dusting the berries in flour.
• A Fortnight for Freedom is a 14 day period of prayer, education, and action leading up to Independence Day, focused on religious freedom. I’m excited, and also curious to see if there’s anything organized locally. Love that it’s tied to Thomas More, too, since I just finished reading A Man for All Seasons.
• How do you connect Europe, Africa, North America, and South America? A dozen or so really really really long wires through the ocean. This article on running fiber-optic cables across the Atlantic is full of interesting tidbits I’d never thought of: Ships plotting cable routes around underwater mountains, the trade-off between longer routes and shorter shallower routes menaced by ships anchors, or just how much quicker the New York-London internet connection will be after shaving 310 miles off the cable route (5.2 milliseconds).
• Half a dozen at-home circuit workouts, all of which are sounding pleasantly safe after twisting around my belay line while at the rock climbing gym this week. They don’t call it rope burn for nothing.
• Military families can now get the $80 National Parks annual pass for free with a military ID.
• Fettuccine Gazpacho Salad - we haven’t tried it, but it looks delicious and fresh, perfect for hot summer days.
• 25 Handy Words That Simply Don’t Exist in English, in case you need a laugh today. I really do need a word for ”Pena ajena (Mexican Spanish): The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation.” You know when someone acts stupidly in a movie and you’re squirming out of your seat on their behalf?

Far too much about grass

 

Tropical Storm Beryl is side-swiping us, turning our already damp, verdant yard into a soaking neon-green jungle. We’ve had a wet spring. The garden loves it. So does the grass. You can almost see it growing, taunting the lawnmower with an added inch each day, gleefully choking out wistful hopes that I might get away with reading a book this weekend instead of mowing.

It’s not that I dislike mowing. I just like reading more. My oldest brother tried to combine the two activities, holding a book on the tractor’s steering wheel while slowly creeping over the grass. It was not a successful innovation.

We had a lawn-mowing business as kids. Not a big one - usually six or so yards a week. My parents let us use their pushmower and ancient tractor as long as we paid for the gas (and pushed the tractor home when it died, which was often). I started in as low-man-on-the-totem-pole around age seven, relegated to crawling on hands and scraped knees down the sidewalk with our cheap battery-powered edger. At eight, after fruitless protest over the parentally mandated “real shoes” instead of bare feet, I was working the pushmower. An older sibling always had to come along – not because I was bad with the pushmower, but because I was too scrawny to give the starter a sufficient yank.

Our clients rehired us year after year. We were cheaper than all the “real” lawn services, and very meticulous. Dad taught us how to lower the blade on one side for a neat cut along sidewalks, driveways, and curbs. We picked up sticks, made sure the grass was dry for an even mowing, rotated the direction of our path for lawn health, trimmed the grass neatly vertical along borders, blew the pavement clear at the end, and collected our clippings for disposal. Ever the mathematician, my brother once used a measuring tape, string, and stakes at the neighbors so he could cut their yard at a perfect 45 degree angle. Just that once, it was a work of art.

In fall we’d rake leaves. Winter brought snow shoveling. Occasionally we worked odd yard jobs like weeding. Half a dozen neighbors had us walk and feed their dogs when they left town. By 11 I was awash in babysitting gigs as well, moving from the early days (when I nervously called my Mom across the street for especially dirty diapers) to watching 14 four-and-unders at once with my middle brother. Not a job either of us would ever do again, I think – the pay wasn’t worth the migraines from six simultaneously screaming babies.

I don’t recall my parents ever suggesting any of these jobs. They didn’t monitor the work, and left us to run our own accounts, drum up customers, and learn from our own mistakes. One summer my brothers took full-time summer school physics at the local college. With so few hands, the mowing business dropped off as I focused on babysitting (better pay, no capital). I kept just one mowing job for our neighbors across the street. That summer was beautiful. Trees and soccer games and bikes beckoned. I let the grass grow, sometimes three weeks between cuttings. It got so long that it choked the mower, at which point I would give up and haul it home for Dad to check over, wasting another day. My parents never commented. The neighbors didn’t either. But the next year, I looked out the window in spring to see another company mowing their lawn. Well over a decade later, I still blush over that failed business obligation. I’m sure my parents knew a painful lesson on shirked responsibility was heading my way: Do poor work, lose your job.

Funnily enough, other than that one summer of slackerdom, I don’t remember ever minding the work. We looked forward to it. It was satisfying to do a good job. It was fun working with siblings out in the hot sun. It was rewarding to finish an afternoon’s labor and jump on our bikes to meet friends for ice cream. Our schoolwork and chores came first. We still had plenty of time to play. I’m all for letting kids be kids, but part of being a kid is training to be an adult. Not in the sense of bustling between drama camp, flute lessons, yoga class, and organized playdates, but in learning skills and habits for self-sufficiency.

How does it all pay off now? It was great preparation for real jobs and responsibilities. The savings I accrued throughout my teens were a definite plus as I stepped into complete financial independence the day I graduated from college. Juggling babies in the church nursery is a piece of cake after those nightmare years of sitting for a young moms’ Bible study group. And my lawn looks very tidy.

How did you earn cash as a kid? Learn any painful lessons when your parents gave you free reign? Associate summer with the smell of gasoline and grass clippings?

Image sources here, here, here, here and here.

The Choice to Stand Fast

“If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we’d live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust, and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all…why then perhaps we must stand fast a little – even at the risk of being heroes.”

- Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons

A martyr, More was imprisoned, tried, and executed for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as head of the church in England, a church created out of Henry’s desire for a divorce. There’s a nice summary of his life here.

Image source here.

On Pride

Our pastor is preaching through the book of Ephesians right now in narrow, deep slices. Last week he reached Ephesians 2:8-10. Mid-sermon, he made a thought-provoking statement about pride and humility:

“When we hold ourselves up for the admiration of others we seduce them to their ruin.”

Strong words. I typically think of pride as an individual sin – a declaration of personal preeminence apart from God. It’s annoying to others, yes, but dangerous? Demanding adulation has dual effects: It turns others’ attention away from God, and it pins their admiration on an imperfect object. We will make mistakes. Who do we want others to model their lives after? How do we live with excellence while pointing people past ourselves to God?

Image source here.

Maps, Myths, and Mea Culpas

“It hit me right off. I says to myself, ‘That’s a big-city CRIMINAL.’ Mind ye,” Pine Billy said, “I didn’t say it to Smokehouse [the Sheriff]. I jest said it to m’self. But to Smokehouse I says, ‘Smokehouse, ye know I’m agin turning anybody in to the law…but big-city criminals is different, and that feller over there looks total suspicious to me.’…

Pine Billy continued, “Smokehouse said, ‘Where are ye from?’ The feller said he was from Chicargo. Smokehouse said he reckined that was all right, but fer the feller to git on out of the settlement, and the feller agreed that he would. Now in the meantime…” Pine Billy cocked his eyes around at Granpa and Granma ”…in the meantime, I edged back behind the car and lettered out his tag plate. I pulled Smokehouse aside, and I told him, ‘He says he’s from Chicargo, but – he’s got a Illinoys tag on his car.’ Ol’ Smokehouse was on him like a bottle fly on syrup. He pulled that criminal out’n his car and stood him up aside of it, and asked him flat out… ‘If ye’re from Chicargo, what are ye doin’ with Illinoys tag on yer car?’ Smokehouse knowed he had him. It caught the criminal flat-footed; he didn’t know what to say; caught ‘em in a barefaced lie, ye see. He tried to slick talk his way out’n it, but I’ll say this fer ol’ Smokehouse, he ain’t all that easy to slicker.”

I’m halfway through Asa Earl Carter’s The Education of Little Tree, the story of a young Indian boy raised by his Scots-Cherokee grandparents in 1930s hill-country Tennessee. Originally presented as an autobiography, later research shows that the story is a fabrication. Approached as a work of fiction, though, it’s still a beautiful, comical, engaging read. The book lovingly illustrates an Indian family’s life, the land they love, and the racial prejudice and ridicule they faced in the depression-era South. Many so-called “true stories” turn out to be tall tales. What makes this sympathetic portrait interesting is that it was written by a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. Six years before the book’s publication, Carter ran for governor of Alabama on a White Supremacist platform. I’d like to think this book was his mea culpa, his work of penance, a plea for atonement, but nobody knows.

Easter from Odds ‘n Ends

Here’s a quick snapshot to keep things going while we catch up from a weekend camping trip. The little nests and the brightly painted wooden eggs are the only Easter decorations we own; I love them. Our Easter table held nests and eggs, a few potted plants from around the house (those Amaryllis are from Christmas, and still going strong!), chocolate eggs from Aldi, and the ceramic bird from the kitchen window. Not shown, the gorgeous Easter bouquet of Alstroemeria from my mother-in-law; two weeks later they’re still looking fresh and beautiful and brightening the whole room!

The tablecloth is a sturdy material known as Mountain Weave or Chicago Weave, a Christmas gift from my parents. My great grandmother had stacks of these. When she died, my parents continued to use the tablecloths for years, moving the most tattered items to the picnics stash, and adding new pieces as years of wear from toddlers, kids, and teens took their toll. Now I have my own. It’s funny how family traditions evolve by accident – tablecloths from one woman, orchids from her husband. Have any unexpected traditions of your own?