A New Post (cause I have nothing more creative to call it)

Good evening....and a quiet evening it is. It seemed made for dusting off an almost forgotten blog and trying to catch up on some news.

 

A lot has happened in the past few months. God seems to enjoy changing things up every now and then, which keeps life from getting monotonous. Some of the changes have been good and some hard. And through it all, God steadies us with His faithfulness, grounds us with His love, and comforts us in His great, big God-arms.

 

A very trivial, yet welcome change was the addition of Maya, to our family. She's half Australian shepherd and half German shepherd, and altogether adorable and fun. We can't help but love her, even when she pulls laundry off the line, adds yet another stick to her scraggly collection on the patio, and jumps up on us in muddy exuberance at seeing us come home. We are working on her training and are happy that she seems to be a fairly stubborn  smart dog.

 

 

She could about get away with murder with that look!

 

Part of her playfulness/naughtiness issue is the fact that Shadow, her rolemodel, mother figure, seems to be "in the family way" and gets tired of immature puppy antics. Bless her heart :)

 

I've also been on a few trips since the last post. One such trip was to get acquainted with this beautiful little baby:

 

 

Her mom, Tina, and I taught school together in Arkansas and therefore (that is such a KJVword) have lots of shared memories of good times together. I so enjoyed loving up on a little baby again and Sierra sure is a honey!

 

My family spent Labor Day down in South Ga with my mom's folks. We always have such a fun time and get to do things such as visit the Islands. We spent part of the day on St. Simons along, with bakoodles of other people. I tried to get my fill of the beautiful old live oaks with the spanish moss hanging from them. I  would give a lot to have one in our yard. St. Simons Is. is the setting of many of Eugenia Price's books and that makes it doubly interesting.

 

Another major highlight was going flying with my cousin Derrick, who recently got his pilot's license. Flying in a small plane is just way more fun than riding in a jet, because you can do more stuff in a small plane. Derrick is a terrific pilot and did a wonderful job of taking a number of plane loads up and over the area. We are so lucky to have him in the family :) ;)

 

 

My grandma is such a good sport and enjoys stuff like that as much as the rest of us. She climbed right in as agilely as could be and thoroughly enjoyed her ride. I want to be just like her when I'm her age!

 

And then God brought us to a valley.... a deep, dark valley which we are still in but still feel His Presence.

Our dear friend/member of our church was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor two and a half weeks ago. It was a huge blow/shock to us. She went into surgery a few days later and they removed what they could of it. She was in the hospital for a little over a week and came home last Saturday. You can read more of the story here.

She is the mom of some of my best friends, so walking through this valley with them has been so very difficult. Everything happened so fast and they didn't have much time to process things before more were piled on. And yet, I see peace in them.... resignation to God's will.... and a sweet spirit of acceptance. And like I mentioned, seeing people you love suffer so deeply and not being able to do anything but care for them is hard. I'd love to make the pain go away, turn the clock back in time, shake them up from the bad dream. But I can't. Here are a few words I penned in a very dark time for me emotionally in this:

 

Pain

Jagged

Tearing

Blinding

Crippling

Numbing

Stripping

Raw

Hope

Enfolding

Life-giving

Comforting

Soothing

Healing

Trusting

Beautiful

God

Loving

Upholding

Changeless

Timeless

Merciful

Giving

Forever

 

 

Please continue to pray for the Whitt family. The future looks uncertain. There are many things they will have to work through and figure out.

But God is good, and somehow that thought comforted me through this. For some reason, it is His will and His intentions for His children are always good.

 

Well, I should run along. I hope to post more in the future. Several topics include:

 

1. Restaurant Etiquette (I'm loaded on this one :)

 

2. What It Means to Be A Southern Lady

 

3. Living Intentionally and with Purpose in a Ready-Made World

 

etc. etc.

 

until then,

Vicki

 

Photo credits for all but the Sierra pictures go to Kelly. Don't think i could do stuff like that. Please.

 

 

Wherein she returns

Hi y'all!
I know, it's hard to keep up with everything I post on here so just take it easy, okay? :) I have had many posts swirling through my head in the past months but they never made it this far. The convenient thing about mental posts is that they don't have to be edited or polished for viewers pleasure. I'm still trying to figure out the line between writing as a discipline and writing because I can't help it. I took a creative writing class at Bible School one year and our teacher told us never to write unless we can help it. I like that. Typically, when you just can't stop yourself, you put out something that conveys passion and conviction about what you are thinking about. On the other hand, I think writing can be a good discipline.
     Another reason why posting on something as public as the internet is challenging, is because we have no idea who, if anybody are reading the posts. There might be 3 of you, there might be 333 of you, blogger really doesn't tell me all that.
But anyway, a friend of mine (hi, you!) told me over the weekend that she regularly checks my blog to see if there's anything new up and after having disappointed her for 6 months, I figured now is the time to get current!
Today is my day off, meaning that today I am home. I love these days fervently and enjoy just puttering around the house by my lonesome and doing catch up work. I am often greatly inspired to cook while I am at home because I LOVE to cook. To me it's a form of art, a way of expressing what I enjoy through food and spices and condiments. Today I made manicotti. I'll show you how I did it but don't expect a recipe because i'm a cook that doesn't follow rules. I make mine up as I go. Cookbooks are my springboard for cooking but certainly not my rule book. Well, except for baking cookies and cake and all those other things that you have to follow instructions. Maybe tha'ts why I don't enjoy baking....  I have to follow rules. So anyhow, here is my morning of manicotti....

I have two things to say at this point. Number one, I share a love for cooking and especially cooking Italian cuisine with my aunt Marylou. What I don't share is her photography and photo editing skills. What you see in the above picture is a pound of sausage with some fresh mozzarella cheese, some spring onions, some basil and oregano and an egg. Well, you don't see an egg, but it's there. Just didn't want you straining your eyes too horribly looking for it. This dish could probably be made without it but it just felt like it should be in there. I don't believe in predestination in any cases except this one.

Meanwhile I had some manicotti noodles cooking in water. (duh, what else?)

 This is the manicotti in case you needed a mental picture. I guess it's manicotti even if you didn't.

This is the pasta sauce of my choice. There are many options available so I say go with what looks good and sweeten it. A wee bit of sugar adds a pop and really pulls some of the flavors out. I'm really weird that way. I get it from my dad. He taught us how to sweeted Mexican restaurant salsas. They are really, so much better that way. Try it and see if you don't like it better.

 I cooked the noodles a la dente and then stuffed them with the sausage mixture. Pour the sauce over the noodles and bake for I don't know, 45 minutes. I apologize about that brown pan in the above picture. It was the perfect size  for the noodles so I used it. I hold some fairly significant grudges against that dish. It takes me back to my childhood on school mornings. After awakening from peaceful slumbers, wafts of baked oatmeal would come floating back to my bedroom and you know, start my day off on a bad note. It was always served in this brown dish and I've never quite forgiven it.

And here, la-deees and gentlemen, is the finished product. When the sausage was nearly cooked, I sprinkled fresh mozzarella cheese on top. I used fresh because we own a deli and it was readily available but I'm sure the pre-grated stuff would work too. I wanted fresh basil as a garnish but alas! All my basil sprigs are only 3 inches tall and I didn't feel like aborting so young a life.

(the steam arising from the pasta in this picture sorta amuses me. It's heading north east quite rapidly)

I enjoyed an Italian lettuce blend salad with homemade ranch dressing and cashews and more mozzarella cheese. And I ate manicotti. Like all afternoon. My family's really not into Italian cuisine that much which means I probably get the rest of it. Feel the pains of resignation as I accept my plight. 

Anyway, hopefully this inspires you to explore the joys that are manicotti. You can do so many other things with it too. I think a spinach/ricotta cheese stuffing would be good too.

Now this is late and today wasn't my day off. Yesterday was. So I'll  just post and edit later :)

See y'all!

Vicki

The Acquiring of books

Well, after such an exhaustive list of book recs, :) i decided to take a break :) and let you know about some really neat places to get such books..... at a fraction of the price you'd pay brand-new.

First up:

Paperbackswap.com. This is a sort of book club. When you join, you automatically are given a credit or two, to have fun with until someone requests one of your books. This is a really good way to get rid of books that you enjoyed, but don't really want to keep. You post these books and then when someone requests one of them, you mail it to them, and when they receive it, they mark it as "received" and you are given a credit. You can use that credit to choose any book on the website and they will mail it to you. The only expense involved is postage, and the gas to the post office. I've done a good bit of sending and receiving, and the only problem I've had was a book getting lost in the mail, meaning I never got the credit even though I paid to send it.

A few other cheap used book websites:

Thriftbooks.com. They have a really good variety of books and the best part is the free shipping. I often get books for $3.50 or less making it a really good deal. Oh, and you can do a wish list as well. Post what books you'd like to get and they let you know when they become available.

Betterworldbooks.com is another good place to find books with free shipping as well. They also have a bargain bin and sometimes have sales within the bargain bin making the books really cheap.

This next thing is not really book-related but I thought I'd tell y'all about swagbucks, if you have not already been enlightened. Swagbucks is a program that gives you "bucks" for searching the web. You download the swagbucks toolbar and use it to search for whatever you usually do with your google toolbar. And it will randomly give you bucks that you can redeem as gift cards,etc. For example, just the other day I searched for a restaurant menu in my swagbucks toolbar and I won 23 bucks. Now, you don't win every time you search, and if you do goofy searches constantly in hopes of winning, they can detect it and shut you down. You also receive one swagbuck a day for using the toolbar. You can also win swagbucks by voting in their daily polls, completing some surveys, etc. And the best thing about it is there are no strings attached. No junk emails or spam messages. I like to use my swagbucks to redeem amazon gift cards. 450 sb gives you a $5 gift card. So far, I've gotten more than $30 in giftcards.... all from searching. Getting paid to do what I usually do online isn't such a bad idea in my book! If you want to get started, here is my referral link. It will also help me out :)

If y'all know of more great places online to get books, drop a line in the comment section whereby we may all benefit and our lives may theretofore be enriched.

Vicki

Randomocity

"It is virtually impossible to be in a bad mood when surrounded by flowers." I said that to Kelly and the others when we were at Callaway Gardens on Saturday. She said that we should have flowers in every room in the house. She might've not meant it that way.

 When you have a dear friend who volunteers at the aforementioned Gardens and can get you in for free, you go. And let your soul feast on soul-cheesecake, ie-flowers. When I come away from there I dream of being a botanist or a landscaper or a flowerbed engineer or designer or whatever those folks call themselves. I'm playing around with  getting a greenhouse this winter and seeing what all I can grow.

 

The mum balls were breathtaking...........

And don't even get me started on container gardens.

    

Have you ever seen cascading mums? We got to meet the lady who painstakingly tied each mum stem down to train them for the cascading effect.

 

And now that I've sufficiently persuaded you of my love for flowers, shall we move on to other things?

Such as........ flower bouquets?

Just kidding.

I had plans of doing some fairly regular book reviews on here but obviously it didn't last long.

I hope to do a random assortment so today we have....

A cookbook!

   

This cookbooks is more than just recipes.... it has lots of interesting tidbits about the origins of foods, the different ways they are prepared depending on which state you live in, etc. It also contains a few digs at the North, but it is, after all, a southern cookbook. 

That's my thumb in the corner. Hopefully it's a green thumb cause did I tell you that I love flowers?

 This makes me an awful southerner, but I must confess that I really don't like cornbread. Or gravy. Just say it a couple of times..... gravy, gravy, gravy. It even sounds blah. I don't dislike the flavor of gravies, I dislike the lack of flavor. It is monotonous. Dull. A dipperful of gravy over a pile of mashed potatoes does not automatically make it better, just as writing "lol" after a sentence doesn't automatically  make it funny.

I have no clue how I got so far off track. 

Anyway, if you get a chance, at least look through this huge cookbook. It has all the good southern-style recipes that have lived through the years, plus it has more elegant, gourmet recipes. Which include ingredients I can't pronounce. The beautiful, full color pictures are a feast for the eyes as well. 

And lastly, a recipe from the cookbook that I want to try:

Layered Cornbread and Turkey Salad

(I don't like cornbread by itself. It makes a mean salad, though.)

1 (15)oz bottle roasted garlic dressing

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 head romaine lettuce, shredded

1 1/2 cups chopped smoked turkey

8 oz. crumbled feta cheese

1 (12 oz.)jar roasted bell peppers, drained and chopped

2 cups crumbled cornbread

8 bacon slices, cooked and crumbled

5 green onions chopped

Stir together dressing and buttermilk, blending well.

Layer a 3 qt glass bowl with half each of lettuce and next six ingredients; top with half of dressing. Repeat layers with remaining ingredients and dressing. Cover and chill 2 hours.

'till next time,

Vicki

And I remember....

Well, they say the third time is a charm so maybe you will see this post tonight :) I sat down and attempted to write it at least twice but nothing came so here i am today and it will come. It must, because today is a day to remember.

My mind has been thousands of miles away today, re-visiting a land and a time that my family holds dear. Today three years ago we left Liberia and came home to the States. I think back to that day and can remember with a lot less pain then I could have two years ago. I was not prepared for the depth of emotion that I felt as we said goodbye to the people and the land that we had come to love with all of our hearts. I can still so vividly remember the heart-tearing sobs, the unreal feelings of this-is-the-last-time for so many things, the last clasp of Vashti's arms as she hung onto my neck, the sight of all of our friends waving goodbye through the glass doors and the pulling up of the jet wheels as we left Liberian soil. 

And today, three years later, I look back and remember. And miss so many things:

 
The children, who loved us in spite of, or maybe because of, our white skin. They have the warmest of hearts and are so friendly and fun. There were always neighbor children around always up to making pizza or playing lappa. They crept right into my heart and will always have that spot. I miss them so much.....

The ocean, ever changing and always beautiful. We had a  healthy respect for it after a few close calls. We lived only a few blocks from the ocean and could hear the waves crashing on the beach on especially quiet nights.

It feels a bit irreverent to mention our monkeys after the children and ocean. However, they were a very entertaining part of our lives and kept life interesting at all times. Let's just say our dog was kinda boring after we got home :) Stinker's (the biggest monkey) grand finale after we left and gave her to someone else, was her debut into a pot of pepper soup, after she bit the children too many times. I'm sure she died fighting. That's just the kind of monkey she was. We got Sassy, the smallest monkey, as a traumatized, wee little thing. She wouldn't sleep unless someone was holding her, we had to blow her food when it was too hot, and she pretty much lived it up until one night she squeaked one too many times, and had to go out and live with Stinker. Stinker willingly and capably adopted her as her own and they spent many happy hours together, playing and helping each other get out of the pen.

 

We were blessed to work alongside a lot of wonderful people during our four years there. Together we battled homesickness, loneliness, malaria and all those overwhelming feelings of trying to understand a new culture. We became family to each other when we had to miss out on weddings and special events that are part of family life, and holidays when family gets together. 

There is still a special bond there between us and we can do and say things that no one else gets. Our reunions would be fairly entertaining for non-Liberians :) 

This group is the same group as the picture above. A few spouses and children can change a lot :) We had a little Liberia missionary reunion back in July and talked and ate and reminisced all things Liberian.

 

It's a little sad, but the memories are already starting to fade. We have to scratch our heads a little harder when we try to remember names. Our Liberian English is so rusty it's embarrassing to talk it. 

Basically, we have slipped back into North American life. And while we do look back with the most awesome of memories of our Liberia stint, we know that we were called back home too, and are happy to be back. Sure, it still does ache inside sometimes to remember all of "our"children, that we loved on and had in our house and yard so much of the time, to remember the richness of the culture, to remember the fun times we had with our high-energy, interactive monkeys, to remember the chocolate-skinned fingers tentatively feeling our hair and exclaiming over how soft and straight it is, to remember the acceptance and love of even the neediest of the people...... the list could go on but I'll stop.

We came back richer people than when we left. I'm not talking monetary riches either. The Liberian people taught and gave us so many things, and parts of our hearts will always be there.

~~*Vicki

Wherein she has an adventure...

Hey y'all!
Life has been very, very busy. I've been hither and yon and back a few times and have had such a nice time doing it all :) A couple of weeks ago I flew out to Arkansas to be with my friends out there for a very short (48 hour) weekend. I basically always fly Airtran (go Airtran!), cause it's the cheapest way to go. Kelly and Ruth Anne got me to the airport nice and early which I was all over. The last time K and I flew to Ohio, we got to our gate just as the plane was backing up :( It was due to a combination of not allowing enough time and the picker-upper guy who was supposed to pick us up 5 minutes after we parked the car at Park-N-Go, showed up 22 minutes later. Oh, and it was July 4th weekend which meant that flights were packed and even overbooked. We had to change our destination and ended up at our friends' house at 1:30 in the morning. So I was all good with being in Atlanta in good time. I really do love the Atlanta airport. I've been through there so many times i feel right at home and know exactly which train to get on, cause you have to get on the train to get to pretty much any gate. (I'm not sure why y'all need to know all this. Consider this a tutorial on how to do the Atlanta airport).


Ok, so to make a short story very long, everything was on time for my flight to Branson. I boarded, said "hi" to the little old lady beside me, picked up the In-flight magazine, perused it (just felt like using that word :) and then waited, and waited. Finally a flight attendant showed up, and said, "Victoria _______?" I indicated that she was indeed talking to the right person, and then she handed me a new boarding pass and asked if the little old lady and I would mind moving because they were trying to accommodate a family with children. Would I? Not if the new assigned seat was 2A. The little old lady looked at me and said, "What are we doing?" I grinned kinda cheesy like and said, "they're moving us north." I happily got my carry-on down from the overhead bin and headed north. I'm one of those stingy flyers who will do everything not to check in luggage which means I often probably have the heaviest bags on the plane. I always appreciate when a gentleman notices that as well and offers to put them up or take them down for me. I'm never quite sure if they are looking out for me or themselves but that's all okay. I have this phobia of losing control and having it whank some nice old man on his shiny bald head. ( I coined the word, "whank" myself. It means to fall and hit with a resounding, will hear-it-the-rest-of-your-life, sounding thud.)

So I settled into my new seat and tried not to look as excited as I felt. You know, the cool, done this lots of times before, old hat kinda look. It is so roomy up there! I just wanted to stretch my toes and move around just because i could. All my fellow first-classers had already gotten their pre-flight beverages so i tried not to be too miffed that I missed out. It wasn't their fault or anything.

Well, we took off  and I decided that first class passengers get tilted back in their seats further because they are up front. That was my only rational thought on the flight. I spent the rest of the time trying to keep my eyes to the right size. They just kept wanting to get bigger. Because, for one thing, they brought us beverages on trays. We got beverages.... the ordinary people behind us were served drinks.  The trays were little and black and plastic, but every so much more elite than just being handed a glass from a flight attendants' hand.

Oh, and here is where I faced the moral dilemma. How much does an upgraded passenger impose on the good graces of the crew when he or she really paid for drinks, not beverages? Ok, so I wasn't going to ask for a bottle of the most expensive wine. I am a Christian and a teetotaler and all that so I'm good without the wine. But chocolate milk now...... that's where I started to waver. Yes? No? Should I? Should I not? The ordinary people behind me had to pay two bucks for a small bottle of chocolate milk but it was mine for the having. I broke down and nonchalantly asked for a bottle and they brought it, no problem. Even served it on a little black tray.  And then they brought the snacks out. (in a  pretty wooden basket). We had a choice of several elite things such as some kind of gourmet cookie and TGI Friday potato skins. I again, nonchalantly picked out a bag of potato skins, had moment of silence for the pretzel-eating folks behind us, and enjoyed my high class snack of potato skins and chocolate milk. Oh, and then the nice flight attendant came through and asked if we needed anything else. I asked for a glass of water. I needed it, I promise. I have no idea where you'd get the idea that I'd ask for it just because I could. Duh!

The landing was uneventful and I was the first person off the plane! Wit whew for writtendownbig! I love the Branson airport. It's the only privately owned airport in the States and it's decorated like a Bass Pro Shop. Everything is rustic and there are animal heads mounted all around and there's lots of greenery. It has all of two gates I think and the whole terminal area is about the size of a fairly big house. Coming from Atlanta to Branson is quite a study in contrasts.

So that's the story of how I got to Branson. 98% being true and 2% being writers privilege :) What I did in Arkansas is a whole other story. But relax. I'm not going to write it here. It included lots of good times and chats with friends and my first and second graders and family. I taught school out there two years ago and i have so many good memories of my time there. Culturally, it's a bit different than central GA :) You can still buy snuff at Wal-Mart if that tells you anything :)

So that's the story of my first business upgrade..... and I could have enjoyed another first on my way back. It was my first opportunity for being bumped but I felt like getting home and crawling into bed.

Stay tuned for another book review soon.....
Vicki

P.S. I didn't take the pictures in this post. Just didn't want y'all thinking I was capable of such art.

The Hawk and the Dove Trilogy

I love to read. In fact, I often read a chapter or two (or 7) of a new or favorite book before going to sleep at night. I read a large variety of books and I admit to even enjoying childrens' books :) You should pick up or borrow the Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. It is a charming re-telling of the old favorite and I like it better. It is colorful and has lots of great pictures.

I've decided to start doing reviews on the books I love best. Today's book is :

The Hawk and the Dove Trilogy by Penelope Wilcock.

 I find it a little hard to describe what I love about it. It's a book that takes me to places and times I have never been in and will never go. It's a story about quietness and a monastery and prayers and love and forgiveness and fighting personal battles. It's not your average, easy reading book. It is out far enough of my world that it's fascinating, yet not too far that I'm bored and overwhelmed. It somehow strikes a chord somewhere deep in me that not many other books do.

Living away from society and being shut away from the greater world doesn't take care of man's problems. The men in this story facing their problems and facing themselves is a large part of what the book is all about.

Do pick it up and read it. It may be dry as cornbread to you, and if it is, I am very sorry. Then would be a good time to pick up the three little wolves book. :)

And I realize that several months and posts ago, i asked you (whoever is reading this), what your favorite books and authors are. But I'd love to hear again, especially if you are new to this blog.

 I'll try to keep going on this book review thing and eventually I'd like to have a special section for recommended reading (using suggestions from y'all).

So, what's on your bedside stand?