Thanks to procrastinating, today I’ve got a whole list of things that I really don’t want to do.  My house needs some serious cleaning, and we’ve got our Life Group coming over tonight.  Before I dove into the tasks, I sat down with my tea and the Word, and a prayer that God would guide my every moment, task and thought today. (Have to admit that the Word sometimes doesn’t come first, and if it doesn’t, I’m lucky to get back to it during the day.  But today, of course, I welcomed something better to do!)

I’m reading through Luke right now, and the end of Luke 10 (today’s chapter), happened to be a very timely message.  I love God’s perfect timing with His Word!

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!””Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

I’m definitely a Martha.  I desperately want a Mary heart.  I read an excerpt from a book called “Having a Mary Spirit” by Joanna Weaver (sort of a sequel to “Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World“).

Jesus didn’t want Martha to be so caught up on kitchen service for Him that she missed out on the joy of living room intimacy with Him… His disciples were a good example of this.  As they received Jesus’ teaching, they learned the balance between a soul at rest and a body in motion, between working hard for Christ and sitting at His feet.

Ahhh… I’m pretty much speechless as to how well this applies to me.  Off to my tasks, with my heart’s prayer that I would choose what is better and keep Him at the forefront of my service.

Brian’s now on Twitter, @BrianToone, as am I, @beautifulwife. (Sidenote: my username was actually kind of a joke… it was how he directed comments at me on Facebook, and he dared me to see if it was available on Twitter.  It was, so the name stuck!)

He’s tweeted about some Topocreator.com maps he’s created on his website for the season’s first big pro cycling race, the Tour Down Under.  He was excitedly telling me this evening that he’s even got a follower on Twitter from Australia.  I chuckled and told him it was probably a spammer, just wanting to get followers from being on his follower list.  He puffed up and said, “I’ve only got 19 followers, and they’re all important to me.  Don’t you talk bad about any of them!”

I promise, if you follow Brian on Twitter, he will appreciate you!

It’s crazy – I just looked at my blog post about Josiah pulling the toilet paper all the way out into the living room, and I posted it because it was so funny to me at the time yesterday morning – but it almost made me sick just now after clicking our blog link in such close proximity to reading a BBC story and video about possibly more than 100,000 people killed in the earthquake there and an email from Compassion International about the 65,000 compassion children (1/3rd of which live in the Port au Prince area) whose lives will never be the same – if they are still even alive. It puts everything in perspective.

Jesus we don’t have $50, actually all we have is a massive debt so here it is anyway…
http://www.compassion.com/

Well – this is what happened when Josiah went to the bathroom by himself while I was making a taco for lunch. He unrolled the toilet paper all the way into the living room because he couldn’t tear it (well, at least that’s what he said!)

Which snack is for Josiah? Which is for Analise? http://tinyurl.com/yb75qrp

Tea party on the trampoline inside the dora tent. http://tinyurl.com/ye6lhzp

Today it actually snowed! Analise had school anyway but with a 2 hour delay. That set up a fun adventure for us as we had already decided to bike to school this morning. The air temp was 15F when we left and 17F by the time Josiah and I made it home after dropping off Analise, but we were having so much fun we barely noticed the cold.

Analise doing a warm-up lap in our driveway

Josiah doing a warm-up lap in our driveway

Snowy street this AM

Biking together on the way to drop off Analise off at school

Josiah in heavy snow

Josiah almost all the way back home – a little cold by this point

Well, the weather changed just the slightest bit today and that led to practically no snow for us! Still we had fun being together as a family and watching the few periods of falling snow before Kristine left tonight to head to Anniston for a two-day work event. Check out the pics and video from today’s near miss snow-event:

Close-up of some accumulating snow granules

Accumulation on the back porch where sleet had bounced off our awning

Falling snow – front bush

Just 2 weeks ago, we were quietly getting snowed in for Christmas in Wisconsin. It was beautiful, and in the end, no big deal. 14″ of snow, and life went on (though west of us, it was much more of a blizzard). Last week, it was snowing as we were leaving Indiana, and it kept snowing and snowing and snowing after we left on New Year’s Day. After it was all said and done, they got 21″ of snow over 5 days. Whew!

Here we are at about 20degrees outside, in an “Arctic Blast” (supposedly not going over freezing for 100+ hours. Wow… and not so impressive to those of you that haven’t seen freezing in a month!!). Tomorrow we’re forecasted to get 1-2″ of snow. After our Christmas vacation… no big deal. But in Alabama, it is a big deal. School’s canceled for tomorrow at 4pm. So funny!

A couple other random notes…

Monday I cooked this delicious tomato soup, with delicious melty Wisconsin grilled cheese sandwiches.    And as Brian was dipping his sandwich in the creamy goodness, he said, “Wow… this is so, so good!”  “That’s amazing,” I said, “because I didn’t even like tomato soup until this week!”  “Mmm, this is as good as Campbell’s!”  Huh.  What a compliment.

Believe it or not, the kids ate it, even though they supposedly don’t like soup.  Josiah eats tomatoes all. the. time.  So when I gently convinced him that it was really tomatos, he was all in.  He didn’t like dipping his sandwich, though.  Analise had to be reminded that she likes spaghetti sauce, so this really was the same thing.  She gamely tried 2 bites of her sandwich dipped into it, but decided she didn’t like it.  I’ll take that, though, as I didn’t like it until Monday!

Tuesday, I used a bottle of Trader Joe’s Yellow Curry Sauce that I’ve had for a long time.  I sauteed some chicken, added some coconut milk (bc I’d read that mellows curry flavor somewhat, and I’m not a huge curry fan), added the sauce and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.  Served it with brown rice, stir fry veggies and Naan bread.  It was great! Brian said, “This is as good as Surin!” (our favorite Indian restaurant).  Huh.  What a discerning palate  my hubby has!  But I’ll keep him… so glad he enjoys my food, because I enjoy cooking for him!

The kids had grilled chicken and rice, and they were intrigued that ours was yellow.  Brian explained it was Indian, and Analise wanted to know know why there was Indian food.  “Because Indian’s have to eat, too!” was his quick response.

We had an awesome winter wonderland trip visiting friends and family. The map above shows the places we visited on our return trip as well as the snow cover on the ground.

We left Shell Lake, WI on Tuesday driving across the state to Green Bay, WI to visit Kristine’s roommate from college and her family. We had a great time at Chuck-E-Cheese with Dena and Dan and their two kids (Derrick and Delia). Rick and Robin also joined in the fun at Chuck-E-Cheese as we tried to win tickets and played video games. Snow was in the forecast for Wednesday and sure enough, it started to snow pretty good as we left to head down to La Porte, IN to visit Kristine’s Grandma for New Year’s Eve.

It snowed pretty much the entire way, and it was a little bit dangerous because our wipers are not working so well from all the snow and grit. We made it and as you can tell from the map, they were already under a blanket of Lake Effect snow with another big storm coming in Thursday and Friday. We had a great time visiting family and bringing in the new year quietly before our return trip home to Alabama the next day. The snow started before we left, and we got to enjoy one last blast of snow before heading back down to Alabama … where it is supposed to snow this Thursday!!! Check out all the pictures and video below:

Lake effect snow in Indiana!

Scout Island, Shell Lake, WI

An ice fishing hut, Shell Lake, WI

Not quite thick enough to drive cars on, Shell Lake, WI

With an air temp of -10F, your breath freezes instantly onto your beard

Friends from college at UW Green Bay – Kristine, Robin, and Dena

Josiah, Derrick, and Analise hanging out on the jeep

Analise and Derrick danced in front of the camera for a while at Chuck-E-Cheese

I helped Josiah drive this snow mobile game

I worked the accelerator while Analise steered. She ended up turned around and going the wrong way!

Partially frozen Green Bay – I went for a 60 mile ride in VERY cold temps – probably felt the coldest at the end of this ride from all my rides

Lake effect snow falling for my last bike ride of the trip from La Porte, IN to New Buffalo, MI.

I parked my bike here and hiked the rest of the way up the boardwalk across the top of a small sand dune on Lake Michigan in New Buffalo, MI

The view of the rest of the boardwalk

A large floating piece of ice full of sea gulls

This ride was so cold that my water bottle froze and then all the gator-ice accumulated at the top as I tried to shake it down repeatedly into my mouth. I was so thirsty!

So cold leaving La Porte, the windows were freezing on the inside!