Great Book

We got up nice and early, well, ok, not that early, on Saturday morning to go pick up a couple of copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Then we proceded to spend most of the day reading it, then we got up on Sunday and read the rest of it. It was soooooo good! I continue to be amazed at how JK Rowling created this whole world in her head, including history several hundred years into the past, and development of very minor characters, then weaved it all together into this cool story. That's all I'll say about it, in case some of you haven't finished this book, or ever plan to read the series. I highly recommend reading the series, if you haven't, by the way... It's a great story of good vs. evil, hate vs. love, etc. that is along the same lines as CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia or Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. This series is a little more "kid" oriented than Lord of the Rings, but the books grow up in style and theme as the characters grow up, which is what got all of us adults hooked, I think. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm going to go ahead and reread this book as soon as I finish one of my other books, it was that good!

Miscellaneous Ramblings

I really don't have anything to write about, so I'll just randomly muse on a few subjects and post a picture of something. Sound good? Good.

Less than three days to go until the last Harry Potter book comes out! I'm sooooo excited! We're actually taking the weekend off from traveling to my mom's house to work on stuff there so we can stay home and read the book. Don't worry, I won't put any spoilers on the blog. I'm still trying to convince Jeff that we need to buy two copies of the book so we can read it at the same time and finish at about the same time and discuss. I read book six first last time, and I just couldn't keep my mouth shut about the end of that one and I was just about bursting when he finally finished it a few days later. Luckily, my boss also read the book over the weekend, so there was some small relief with being able to discuss the outcome with him while I waited for Jeff to finish.

We need a weekend off, anyway. We have been up there every weekend since she passed away to work on getting the house cleaned out. It's going pretty well - we have gone through almost everything and all of us kids have taken what we each want to keep, and we've given a lot of other items away, and started marking the rest for garage sale. We helped my brother, Dan, find a duplex to move to early next month. It's actually really close to my friend, Kansas', parent's house. Maybe they can keep an eye on him for us. LOL There's a link to her blog over on my sidebar. And since I'm rambling, Happy Birthday, Kansas! The big 3-0!

It's officially summer here now. It's been 90+ for a few days in a row, and it hasn't rained for a while. So, here's a summery picture of my boys for you all to enjoy. It's a page from the calendar I made for our mothers this year. Enjoy!

C is for Cookie

Ok, here's the chocolate chip cookie recipe I promised you all a while back. It comes from the cookbook that came with our oven, and every time we give someone else the recipe, it fails. So, it seems that there's something magical about our oven that seems to turn out these wonderfully yummy things. I suspect it's the fact that it's a convection oven, and everyone we give the recipe to uses non-convection ovens to make them. It's much more fun to claim that we have a magical realm surrounding our oven. :)


Chewy Chocolate Chunk Cookies
makes 20 cookies

2 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 sticks (170g) unsalted butter, melted
1 Cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 Cup granulated white sugar
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 Cups chocolate morsels (we usually use 50%-70% dark chocolate, which makes for a more grown up flavor)

Preheat oven to 330 deg F.

Grease two cookie sheets.

Mix together the flour, salt and baking soda in a medium sized bowl.

Combine the melted butter and sugars in a large bowl and mix in the egg, extra yolk and vanilla extract.

Add the dry ingredients and chocolate and stir until just combined.

Divide the dough into 20 even sized pieces and roll into balls. Place evenly on two cookie sheets. Don't flatten the dough balls as they will form cookies that are soft and chewy in the middle.

Bake for 12-17 minutes and allow to cool on the tray for five minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

The cookies should be ooie gooie in the middle when they're done, and crispy around the edges. If you take them off the tray too soon, they tend to deflate a bit and start to fall through the cooling rack, so make sure you let them rest on the tray for the full five minutes.

Heart Attack Central

Yes, it is quite possibly the most unhealthy dinner we could come up with, but it was tasty! Foie de canard with truffles, three cheeses, salami, fresh baked Italian bread, with sesame seeds, real butter, and for good measure, a nice big Caesar salad. We also had a new variety of wine that we'd never tried before. Visiting hours in the cardiac ward are from 3 to 5.

Fang and Errol were quite interested in something up there. They love the smells of butter and cheese, and I'm just guessing that the foie was enticing them tonight as well.

On the road again...

We spent another weekend up in Hays, this time to continue the process of going through my mom's house to clean it out and get it ready to sell. I can't believe what a pack-rat she was! It's amazing how much stuff she fit into the place. We've made it through two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a cupboard so far, and we've found some pretty funny stuff, like small pouches with snaps on them that were made out of some old flannel sheets with a penguin pattern. It's been fun going through all the memories. We're gathering most of her books and her teddy bears in the living room for all of her friends to go through. We've lined all the walls with bookshelves, which are now completely full of teddy bears and books. It's an interesting room to see, and we haven't even brought out the hundreds of Christmas and other holiday themed bears she has yet.

We're making good use of all the driving hours between here and there by trying to learn to speak French on the road. We've got a set of cd's to use, as well as a college textbook that Jeff picked up for me for Christmas. So far, we've learned the most important part of the language - how to order breakfast, lunch and dinner. Haha. Seriously, though, we're planning to take a vacation over there sometime in the future, and we'd like to experience some of the more back-country locations and really get a feel for the people, so we're making an effort to learn the language. Jeff speaks German rather well, and it's been quite useful on both of our trips to Germany. He's my inspiration to try and make my best effort at learning French. For me, the most confusing thing is trying to remember which words are French, and which words are from the bits of other languages I've picked up over the years: Russian, German, Spanish, etc. It's terrible when you only know a few words in each language, and they're all the same ones - Yes, No, Please, Thank You and so on. I have moments where I go through all of them trying to find the correct version for the language I'm trying to speak. It's maddening! And don't even get me started on the stupid genders of the nouns - yikes! Wish me (us) luck!

New Bath Decor!

We're slowly moving our way through decorating the rooms of our house as the decorating bug bites, and we did our bathroom and closet a few weekends ago. We added a rug, some wall decorations, a new curtain for the closet window (finally one that covers the ENTIRE window, not just the bottom half) and a new flower arrangement for the top of our linen cabinet. Here are some pictures...

The new rug sits between our vanities.

We each have a set of these block shelves with candles above the sides of our vanities.

The new curtain in the closet.



Oooh, aaah, the almost total effect (I couldn't get the candles in the shot).

The Memorial Service

I thought I'd write a little bit about my mom's memorial service for those of you who weren't able to be there. She had met with her pastor, Ken, before she died to let him know what she wanted to have done at her service. She wanted a lot of music and she wanted to glorify God, so that's what we did. Here's the order of the service:

Prelude: Piano and Organ music from Loren with a Men's Quartet singing hymns and praise songs

Invocation: Pastor Ken

Solo: "Here I Am to Worship" sung by Shelby, a little girl who was one of Carol's friends

Congregational Song: "Psalm 145"

Celebrating Carol's Life: Words from Mike and Debbie J.

Congregational Songs: "Psalm 98" and "Ancient Words"

Scripture Reading: Psalm 146

Mixed Quartet: "Psalm 73"

Proclamation of the Word: "Lifelong Praise (Psalm 146)" by Pastor Ken

Men's Duet: "I Can Only Imagine"

Affirmation of Faith by the Congregation

Congregational Song: "How Great Thou Art"

Benediction

Postlude: Piano and Organ

I was amazed at how beautiful all the music was during the service. We could tell that God was certainly there with us, because everything was just perfect. I mean, really perfect. Out of a family of musicians, you've got to believe that we're all pretty critical of other musicians, but it was just all so beautiful to listen to. It was even pretty fun. I never thought we'd have fun singing at our mom's funeral, but we did. Nathan had made a request to the organist that he "turn the volume up real loud" on at least one song, and he did for the last one, "How Great Thou Art". It was so loud that everyone was singing at the top of their lungs, and Nathan and I were laughing out loud in the front row from joy. It was cool.

Mike and Debbie shared some college memories of mom, and Debbie talked about their water gun incident that they shared at one of mom's chemo treatments. They read a letter from mom's close friend, Jan, which was really touching, and then they each took turns reading the scriptures that mom had been praying for each one of us kids every day since we were born (Psalm 119 M, N, J and D, for those of you with psalters). Pastor Ken gave a nice sermon.

The place was packed out, and I heard from several people that they were surprised by how many people had been touched by our mother because they all knew her to be a quiet and reserved person. I wasn't surprised, but it was really a neat testimony to her time here on Earth.

We had a reception at the church afterwards where we showed a slide show of pictures of mom throughout her life, and we got to spend a couple of hours chatting with old friends who we hadn't seen for some time. It was a great memorial service, and I think everyone went away feeling refreshed and full of life. I wish everyone's services could be like this, and I'm glad we are a family of believers who can find joy and hope and celebration in a time like this.