There is a neat blog that posts questions for "Flashback Friday". It's here if you want to see it for yourself. So here is my contribution to one of her flashbacks, only I'm doing it on Tuesday because I have to work on Friday and won't have time to play in the Blogosphere. Her questions are in Italics. My answers aren't.

FOOD
What were meals like when you were growing up?
I remember that Mom always made a roast beef, ‘taters & gravy, and a Jell-O salad for Sunday dinner. It made the most wonderful aroma to come wafting out of the kitchen to greet us when we got home from church.
Did your mom (or dad) cook (and was it from scratch or from a box?)
Mom cooked, using very few, if any convenience foods. I considered it a special treat when I was able to talk her into buying Rice-A-Roni. I used to love the stuff, but I hardly ever buy it now. I remember she made bacon and eggs for breakfast almost every day and only had cereal once in a while. I don’t remember for sure, but I’ll bet my older sisters helped her a lot in the kitchen. When she was working at a job and Dad had to cook, he would make bacon, eggs, and toast for dinner.
or did your family eat out much of the time? I don’t remember all of us going out to eat together very much, but I’m the youngest of six, so I doubt we did it very often. We used to pile in the car and drive the three miles into town once in a while to get ice cream at a tiny little Dairy Queen. When the other five were grown up and on their own, I remember once going out to eat with Mom & Dad at a place called the Green Lantern in Decatur, NE. They had the best onions rings I’d ever eaten (until my son started making them a few years ago.) The Green Lantern burned down a few years ago, but they rebuilt it.
Did you eat together as a family or was everyone on a different schedule?
I think we mostly ate together as a family, until extra-curricular school activities got in the way.
What did you call meals? (Dinner vs. supper, lunch, etc.)
It was (and still is) breakfast, dinner and supper. Lunch was a snack in the middle of the afternoon, between dinner and supper.
What were some of your favorite things that your parent fixed?
Mom made the best chicken and home made noodles on the planet.
What did you dislike and vow never to fix once you grew up?
I didn’t like liver when I was young, but I like it now.
Did your family have any food traditions, things that were a must on certain occasions (such as Sunday dinners or holiday meals)?
We had oyster stew on New Year’s Eve and ham on New Year’s Day. The usual turkey, etc. on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Did your parent teach you to cook or did you wing it once you were grown?
I learned a lot of basic cooking skills from Mom, just by watching her. She always made meat, potatoes and a vegetable and I still consider that to be a square meal. Over the years, I’ve learned to cook a lot of different types of foods. I do a lot more international cuisines than Mom did. And my husband likes to have a lettuce salad. I don’t remember having salads much growing up.
How similar or different are your family's eating habits today than when you grew up?
We’ve always had a TV in sight and on while we eat. That’s one thing I would do differently if I had it to do over again. My kids pretty much grew up on mac & cheese and peanut butter & jelly. They had cereal for breakfast most of the time, tho they would have liked pancakes every day. I hardly ever took the time to make them a cooked breakfast, but now I wish I had. As I remember it, they preferred ‘fast food’ to home cooking for dinner & supper. I would be interested to hear their side of it.

Longing to be a part of something larger than myself, I wrote this:

As a fire consumes a sacrifice and draws it to Your Throne;
Let my voice be lost in yours, O God, and my plans consumed by Your own.

Let the single raindrop of my life drown in Your river of Peace
And flow into Your sea of Grace for all Eternity.

May the simple note of praise I bring join Your Symphony;
Until, at last, my voice with Your’s makes perfect harmony.

May the single brushstroke I can be, be lost in Your Masterpiece.
I would that the strand of thread I am, in Your fabric never cease.

Take my temporal earthbound dreams; the things I think I know;
All my silly selfish schemes, I gladly let them go.

“Not my will but Thine be done,” this is my earnest plea
Not my name, but Your’s be praised. “Here am I, send me.”

For Jim
Alder Grove School
Craig, Burt County, NE





We drove past here on our way to making our cemetery visits on Memorial Day and I remembered that you (Jim) said you attended 4-H meetings here. So we stopped and took these snapshots for you. I almost forgot about them until I read your Falshback Friday blogpost about school - which I thoroughly enjoyed and will be posting a flashback of my own some time soon. Where does the time go?

Enjoy!

How do you like my Dahlia?



I planted it this spring and it has been blooming like mad all summer!

Two Verses and a song

I’ve been bearing a heavy burden for more years than I care to admit, but recently, over the past several weeks, God has been leading me step by step to a place where I can finally learn to shed it.

A few weeks ago, I was reading through the book of Job and chapter 38 got me to thinking about a song that got a lot of airtime a few years ago. Sung by Nicole C. Mullen, it was called Redeemer. I haven’t heard it on the radio in years and don’t have the cd (yet), so I just sort of wished out loud that someone on one of my radio stations would dust it off and play it. My Bible reading that morning included the passages 2 Corinthians 10:4-6 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty of God to tear down every stronghold, cast down every imagination and every high thing that exalts itself above the knowledge of God; and to take into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. And to be ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. And Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. I added these to my memory verse list and started working on hiding them in my heart.

I love to get up early in the morning and enjoy the peace and quiet of the pre-dawn. I usually crack a window open so I can listen while the world comes to life, settle into my favorite chair with a cup of coffee and read my Bible for awhile. Then I turn on the TV and listen to Joyce Meyer. She only talks for 30 minutes, and I’m not usually ready to hit the ground running yet, so sometimes I lay my head back and listen to Creflo Dollar, who immediately follows Joyce on the station I watch.

One morning, when Joyce came on she was preaching on 2 Corinthians 10:4-6 and Romans 12:2. I thought, “What a coincidence!”

Silly me.

Guess what Creflo preached on during the next half hour?
Yup: 2 Corinthians 10:4-6 and Romans 12:2.

I don’t have time or space to go into detail about the lessons they preached. Suffice it to say that based on what I allow my thoughts to dwell upon, I have the power within me, to either worry bad situations into existence or trust God and, by speaking His word, I can turn worry into worship. I can “be transformed by the renewing of my mind.” not of myself, but I have access to weapons that are “mighty in God…to take into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ ” (That’s a serious over-simplification, but if you need more details, you can look them both up on the internet.)

Now, lest you scoff and tsk and say, “What a coincidence!” Wait, there’s more:

Guess what song I heard on the drive to work that day?

Nicole C. Mullen’s Redeemer.

And again on the drive home that night.

And one more time, a couple days later, for good measure, just in case I doubted.

I love it when God blows me little kisses like this.

If you want to hear Nicole sing it go here.

When God blows you little kisses, do you notice?

Vacation pics

These are some of Andrea's Holyhocks - they live in Lakota, North Dakota.



This is one of the many ducklings we saw as Andrea was chauferring me all over the countryside so I could do photography. There were two major lakes near Lakota: Devil's Lake and Stump Lake. The water table has become so high over the past 10 years or so, they have merged into one. This is great for the waterfowl - not so great for trees, roads and homes that have to be moved out of the way. Andrea's Chuck told us that homes threatened by the expanding waters are moved during the winter - across the frozen lakes.



And this is Andrea standing by her zip code. She works for the Post Office. Andrea occupies most of my fondest childhood memories. Her mom was my mom's niece and we traveled from northeast Nebraska to visit them in Denver throughout my growing up years.



On our way to Andrea's, we attended a wedding in Aberdeen. Sorry - no pics as I took the wrong camera with me to the festivities. That would be the one with the dead battery... made me want to say some downright unChristian things at the time, but everyone else in attendance had cameras with good batteries, so the event was properly documented. Anyway, after the wedding, on our way to Andrea's we stopped in Jamestown, North Dakota and fell into this cute little tourist trap. It is home to a sweet little historic village, a herd of buffalo (including the white one getting a drink of water in the foreground) and the "world's largest buffalo statue" in the background. The day after we visited Jamestown, Andrea drove me past the farm in Walsh County where the white buff's mother was born. They produce at least two white ones, which are actually albinos, each year - very unusual occurance.

In Jamestown, we stopped at a Hardees for lunch and I had the funniest experience. I noticed that there were several tables occupied by folks who had obviously just come from church. While we were waiting for our food, I left our table two or three times and every time I came back, the other people looked at me with a friendly smile and nod of recognition - the way you would look at someone you had known all your life and had just attended church with. I'm told this is typical Dakotan friendliness. I found it quite charming. I hope I can be as friendly and welcoming to strangers as they were to me.



Can you guess what this field is? Cliff? Anyone?



This is what canola looks like before it goes to seed, gets harvested and becomes oil. I wonder if olives are this pretty before they get made into oil? Does anyone have a picture of blooming olives to share?

That's all for now! There must be more pictures around here somewhere...