Mama On The Move

We arrived in Illinois in the middle of a drought and the hottest summer in living memory.  We went on to freak snowstorms including ten inches of snow on the second day of spring. We've now made it to tornado season. Last night we were at church for the Wednesday night service.  We could hear rain drumming on the roof.  It quickly grew in intensity to the point where it was about to drown out the preacher.  (It was competing with some people in the sanctuary who feel the need to chat during the sermon because of course whatever they are saying to the person next to them is so witty and/or deep they just can't hold it in until after the service and of course they aren't bothering anyone around them who might actually want to listen to the preacher not to mention the fact that it's just plain rude and weren't they taught manners growing up or were they born in a barn ???)  Ahem. Then someone from the children's department trotted into the sanctuary a...

This weekend we travelled over to check out a college that two of Ben's friends from high school attend.  While he likes the school he is attending now, he's looking for a stronger Christian atmosphere and we used his Spring Break to go do some visiting. The college in question has a tumbling team.  Because Ben is currently a cheerleader and already knows some tumbling moves, they let him join in on some of the basic moves.  He did a pretty good job.  Most of the time.  Katie got called up and some of the tumblers did flips over audience members. After each couple of tumblers, they would add more audience members to make a bigger and bigger group to jump over.  Finally, even Kerry and I got called up to be flipped over. I was trying to be unobtrusive and let Ben lead how the visit would go. So of course, while I was trying to take my place in that group of folks sitting on the floor, I tripped over someone and fell flat across...

Kerry and I were laughing about how much our kid's Easter Baskets have changed over the years.  When they were little, their baskets were filled with Peeps, chocolate, plastic eggs filled with candy, and cheap plastic toys. In this day and age, our kids would not be willing to get out of bed to look in their baskets if those same items were in there.   Thus, the contents of the baskets has changed to reflect their current interests:  Now, among the basic candies, Ben's basket contains beef jerky, jalapeno pretzels, creme soda, Nutella, and a bag of Naga Jolokia, the world's hottest pepper.  Ben has talked about this pepper for a couple of years, I couldn't believe I actually found it.  Here is his Facebook post about it:   My Easter basket had a bag of dried Naga Jolokia, the world's hottest pepper. To give you an idea of how spicy these are, a pepper's spiciness is measured on a special scale called the scoville scale. A Bell pepper scores a 0,...