Monthly Archive for April, 2010

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And a Blessed Easter to You All

Published by Nancy Ann on April 4, 2010 in Easter and Good Preaching. 4 Comments

He is risen indeed! We had a glorious worship service this morning, and three tables full of wonderful friends and family to celebrate with us afterward. Even the clean up was a whiz (though it’s still whizzing, we’re closing in on it).

And now a  tidbit from the sermon: We do not need to prove the resurrection; the resurrection is the proof itself. The resurrection proves that Jesus is the Son of God, and that He will come to judge the world. Luke refers to the many infallible proofs of Christ’s resurrection in Acts 1:1-3.

The Kingdom of God refers to the realm and reign of King Jesus, and His crown rights were established by His resurrection from the dead. It is not an ethereal kingdom, but a very real and earthy one.  We live like His loyal subjects by loving one another, which is proof to the world that love has been raised from the dead in us. And just like the resurrection was real and physical, our love to one another is real and physical. We touch one another, we feed one another, we give gifts to one another. That is resurrection living.

Hope you all had a blessed day!

Nearly done with prep!

Published by rebekah on April 4, 2010 in Easter. 16 Comments

I thought I should give everyone a quick late-night glimpse into Mom’s living room . . . temporarily transformed into a second dining room. This is the adult table.

Here is the bevy of name tags designated for the two kid tables:

And finally, here is my hysterically ugly “gurgle jug” which for some reason I am insanely fond of. I am the proud possessor of not one, but two of them. (Possibly three, I can’t remember.) Anyway, the two that I can find are holding tulips on the kids’ tables. I do feel that I should explain, in my defense, that I only bought them because I was collecting green Dartmouth pottery while I was in England, and I gathered up loads of other fun green thingies at antique stores and charity sales etc. But it turns out that  the most radically popular of all the Dartmouth pottery (judging from the wide assortment on ebay) seemed to be these gurgle jugs. I held off for a while – but finally I caved and decided that it would be ridiculous to have a collection of Dartmouth pottery that didn’t contain a few ugly fish. So I bought them. Now you know. I also have a snail. But aside from those weird items, the rest of the collection is actually quite beautiful!

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Continuing the Lemon Theme

Published by rebekah on April 3, 2010 in Easter. 12 Comments

Valerie asked what I was going to do with all the nekkid lemons . . . and here’s the answer. Little lemon meringue tarts.

Here are all the little meringues, baking in the oven . . .

. . . here are the little shells, cooling in tiny champagne flutes to give them their shape.

And I completely neglected to take a picture of the lemon curd, but you get the idea anyway.

These are great, because you can store all the components separately for up to three days, and then assemble before serving.

Here’s the recipe (from Martha Stewart): Continue reading ‘Continuing the Lemon Theme’

“Good Friday”

Published by Nancy Ann on April 2, 2010 in Easter. 0 Comments

by George Herbert

O my chief good,
How shall I measure out thy blood?
How shall I count what thee befell,
And each grief tell?

Shall I thy woes
Number according to thy foes?
Or, since one star show’d thy first breath,
Shall all thy death ?

Or shall each leaf,
Which falls in Autumn, score a grief?
Or cannot leaves, but fruit, be sign,
Of the true vine?

Then let each hour
Of my whole life one grief devour;
That thy distress through all may run,
And be my sun.

Or rather let
My several sins their sorrows get;
That, as each beast his cure doth know,
Each sin may so.

Since blood is fittest, Lord, to write
Thy sorrows in, and bloody fight;
My heart hath store; write there, where in
One box doth lie both ink and sin:

That when sin spies so many foes,
Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes,
All come to lodge there, sin may say,
No room for me , and fly away.

Sin being gone, O fill the place,
And keep possession with thy grace;
Lest sin take courage and return,
And all the writings blot or burn.

Spaghetti and Meatballs Anyone?

Published by rebekah on April 1, 2010 in Bekah's Spouting Off Again. 33 Comments

APRIL FOOLS!! HA HA!! GOTCHA, SUCKERS!!

(They’re not spaghetti and meatballs at all. They’re Jemima’s birthday cupcakes.)

You all are getting a little foretaste of the “joke” that Jemima is going to play on her class today at lunch. Are you making sure to notice the grated “parmesan” that’s actually white chocolate? Huh? Huh? Are ya? I have to say, these are turning out a great deal more spaghetti-like than I first imagined they would. The meatballs are those hazelnut chocolate what-nots, rolled in low-sugar strawberry preserves. (The low sugar preserves give the best color apparently.) The frosting is very wildly squirted out of a ziploc bag with the tip snipped off. Not bad, I have to say.

Jemima has always really reveled in the fact that her birthday is on April Fools, and she’s always dying to try to trick somebody. The absolute rudest one on record so far was entirely my husband’s fault. This was before we moved to England, so Jemima must have been turning 6. That meant that Knox was 7. Are you with me? There were five children, and the oldest was 7 and the youngest was 1. Ben got Jemima to call both of her grandmas in turn, and he had prepped her with this little message: “Hi this is Jemima. Um . . . Mom and Dad left to go get a mocha and they said they would be right back, but that was a really, really long time ago and they’re not home yet and the toilet is clogged and now it’s overflowing and everyone is crying.”

Now, come on. Is that rude, or is that rude? Granny, Ben’s mom, was in town visiting . . . and she was over at Ben’s sister’s house when she received that pitiful little call. She was at our front door in about 45 seconds flat – at which point she was very rightfully peeved at her badly behaved son. When Nana got the call she instantly flew into action with lots of “Stay right where you are, don’t move, I’ll be right there . . . don’t get off the phone, hang on, just a minute while I call Papa on the other line . . . . ” Somewhere in there Ben finally had Jemima say, “April Fools!” and then Nana was very rightfully peeved at her badly behaved son-in-law. I, meanwhile, was very rightfully peeved that anyone actually believed that I would have left my 5 utterly incompetent children unattended while I went off to get a mocha!