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Year of Miracles #19

I read the following entry on another blog this week and was touched. I hope you enjoy it too as this week's small miracle.

The Brown Thread Miracle

"My friend has a company with her sister that sells incredibly soft baby blankets, burpies and wipe cases. They have a booth at Swiss Days this weekend, were running out of time, and I had offered to help sew some of the burp rags, trading my time for a blanket that I said was for Ainsley, but have changed my mind. It’s mine, all mine.

"ANYHOW, Shelley brought over 25 more burp rags yesterday, and they needed to be done by 8 am this morning. The problem - they didn’t bring the matching thread to me with the fabric. I took the rags downstairs and got to work on the ones I could do with thread I had on hand, finishing 3 before my machine started acting up. Not good. I figured that mess out and kept sewing along, until I got to the point that I needed brown thread.

"I looked and looked on my messy sewing table, and found brown thread! But enough to do probably half of the project. I got the machine threaded up and said the same prayer at least 10 times as I stitched along “Heavenly Father, please make this brown thread last until I’m done with this project. Please. After all, it’s not for me, it’s for Shelley. And this is kind of like a service project anyway. Please, please make this brown thread last.”

"Do I think God cared much about that brown thread? Nope, just like I don’t think he cares if any of those pro athletes make their free throws or touchdowns. But I know he cared about me and I know He knew Shelley was stressed, so this was an ok prayer, I decided.

"You know what? The brown thread lasted just long enough to finish the job. I could probably sew out one more burp rag, even. And my 8 am deadline this morning? They were at her house at 6 last night."

Scripture of the Day: D&C 109:21

Police Beat #4

Something to bring a smile to your face today... thanks again to the misadventures of BYU students!

An individual held a sign offering free hugs in the Harold B. Lee Library. When asked by an officer to leave, he declined to leave the area and continued offering free hugs.

BYU police were called out to assist Provo police who had pulled over a man for a traffic offense who did not speak English. Upon arrival of the Spanish-speaking officer, the man realized he was getting a ticket despite the language barrier and was able to speak English fluently.

A student reported a suspicious individual with long gray hair and a beard inside a restricted lab in the Clyde building. Upon arrival, the officer found a mannequin in the reported location.

Two male students were reported trying to capture a duck using a plastic laundry basket at the botany pond at the base of Maeser Hill. The students admitted to trying to catch the duck but said they weren’t stealing the duck, just borrowing it to put it in one of their friend’s rooms as a joke.

Scripture of the Day: John 4:23

Book Review: The Perfect Basket

A month or so ago I picked up a copy of The Perfect Basket (by Diane Phillips). I was shopping at Michael's that day and they happened to have a good sale on the craft books. I have to admit that I am a fan of gift baskets {it is so easy to personalize a gift by using baskets}, so the book looked fun to me. And boy was I right--really right! The Perfect Basket has over 50 different gift basket ideas for every occasion: from camping to getting a new pet to a guest's bedside basket.

And what is nice is that the book outlines three different spending levels for each basket. Phillips tells what to put in a "Basic Basket" (low cost option), what she calls the "More Than" basket (medium level cost), and "The Works" baskets {and boy does she mean the works! One golfers' basket includes round trip airline tickets to a destination golf resort!}

There are also a number of different food basket ideas: "Taste of the Tropics Basket;" "Festival Italiano Basket;" and the "Sweetheart Basket" to name a few. Most of these come with recipes for do-it-yourself -- or should I say bake-it-yourself? -- mixes. For example, the "Sweetheart Basket" comes with this yummy mix for Belgian waffles to put in a decorated canning jar:

2 Cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 T. baking powder
1 T. vanilla powder

Then there is the label you can photocopy to include with the jar that reads: "Beat three large egg whites to soft peaks and set aside. In another bowl, combine three egg yolks, 2 T. melted butter, and 1 cup of milk. Whisk in the Belgian Waffle Mix and fold in the egg whites with a wire whisk. Cook according to waffle iron manufacturer's directions."Anyway, I am having fun just looking at the pictures in this book and think I will be making some of the bake-it-yourself mixes to give to my neighbors for Christmas this year. Now all I have to do is decide which recipe... Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies? Cranberry Oat Scones? Too hard to decide!

Scripture of the Day: Exodus 3:4-5

Fear of God

Just a quick reminder when reading scriptures about reverence that many of them say to "fear the Lord" or "fear God." Of course, what this really means is we should have respect for the Lord and for Heavenly Father. It means that our behavior should be such that we are acting in deference to His will and our thoughts should be grounded in belief and faith. Heavenly Father does not want us to be afraid of him; on the contrary He loves us and wants us to be willing to turn to Him in all things. These concepts need to be explained to kids when reading about "fear God" otherwise they may end up having negative feelings about Heavenly Father that are unwarranted.

Oh, and yesterday I saw this darling way to help teach younger children about how to act reverent. It reminded me of when my husband used a large stuffed monkey to teach reverence to the kids in nursery class. He made the monkey act irreverent and then asked the children to show him how to behave reverently. The kids adored it!

Scripture of the Day: (one of those "fear God" scriptures) Psalms 89:7

Sweatin' It Out

Saturday morning our air conditioning stopped working. Kaput. Nada. Talk about blowing hot air! Most of the day Saturday was fine as our house held in the cool air pretty good. I was grateful for the good insulation we have. But by the night time it was uncomfortably hot. I kept waking up in the night with sweat dripping off my face. So when we woke up at 6:45 am on Sunday morning and it was already 88 degrees in our house, I packed the kids up and took them out to my parent's house. Steve opted to stay home... the heat doesn't seem to bother him as much as it does me. We came back in time to go to church, after which we headed to Steve's mom's house for dinner and a sleep over. Then we were up by 5 am to get back to our house so Steve could catch the bus to work. And it is still hot in here. In fact, it is cooler OUTSIDE right now than it is in here. Patch opened a granola bar for breakfast and said, "This is too melt-y." {Yikes, I hope I don't lose too much food from the pantry!} The fix-it people are supposed to call today to arrange an appointment. Hopefully that means they can arrange the appointment for today and not several days down the road. I would really prefer not to be sweating and driving back and forth from Gilbert/Chandler for that many days. But I will try to be patient and flexible. And think cool thoughts... ice cubes, winter, swimming pools, ice cream, slurpees, the North Pole {yeah, I am desperate}...

Scripture of the Day: D&C 5:24

Update: The fix-it guy came and diagnosed the problem as being low on freon. $119, 2 pounds of freon, and 45 minutes later the thermostat is already below 90 degrees. Looks like I will be able to sleep comfortably in my own sweet beddy-by again tonight! Yeah!

Year of Miracles #18

I wrote earlier this week that our miracle was in regard to Steve's oral surgery for an implant. He came home from the surgery bleeding a lot. The gauze was soaking it up, but after more than five hours of fairly steady bleeding I began to worry. Before I left to take the kids to my parent's house for the evening I called a former home teacher of ours who is a dentist. He did not answer his cell phone, so I left a message on the voice mail explaining the situation and then asking him to call or check on Steve later since I would be gone. When I returned more than three hours later, Steve was sitting at the computer playing a game and the bleeding had pretty much stopped. He told me that our former home teacher had stopped by and brought him some decaffeinated Lipton tea bags to use as a compress. Shortly after beginning use of the tea bags the bleeding slowed and then stopped. Maybe to our former home teacher this wouldn't qualify as a miracle--to him it might be more mundane. A daily occurrence. The simple application of knowledge. But to us his service was a miracle for which we a truly thankful.

Scripture of the Day: 1 Peter 3:8