Microwave Success!

We tried the Spiced Pork Chops recipe that Rick sent, and it was fabulous!! The pork chops were tender and juicy. Everyone enjoyed them. Aidan made sure Lucy had some, too.

Doug has journeyed to Joplin tonight to both pick up our new range and also get a grill. So our roughin' it days are soon coming to a close. However, the local librarian, Rachel, posted a recommendation on the Barton County Library website for a recipe book called Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. I told her on our first visit to the library that it was a well-timed recommendation, and I snapped up that book. I'll let you know my review!

Family meals you can make without a range:

The day of our closing, our sellers presented us with a contract addendum stating that they were taking the oven. Yes, it was already quite loaded up in their moving truck. We were startled, but the truth is that I had wanted to switch out the existing electric one with a gas version anyway. Doug concluded it was all a conspiracy I had contrived to make sure I got my new gas stovetop.

Yet selecting it, ordering it, and waiting for the new gas line and delivery of the range has taken some time.

So, without out further ado:

1. Turkey sandwich plus bbq potato chips. Ad nauseum.

2. Hot dogs, slightly exploded from too long in the microwave

3. TV dinners, one for each kid. Better get all the same or there might be a skirmish.

4. Waffles and limp microwaved bacon.

5. Burritos. Add some fresh salsa made from grandpa's tomatoes.

Anyone have any other ideas? We still have a week to go!

Jake

Hey this is so cool! I'm blogging. When I read my mom's last post about the priesthood thing I realized that me and my mom will blog back and forth about earlier blogs. I guess making comments on it.
Yeah passing the sacrament with my dad was cool. It was awkward considering that he was following me, not knowing what to do. Yet he was mistakeless, better than I've ever done. Well until today, I didn't make any big mistakes. Yet today was the first time I've passed the sacrament for the second time in the same building.
I can't wait for the football season, and I know half of america is waiting to. If you need an example, I'm counting down utnil 7 o'clock tonight minute by minute I look often. Tonight is the hall of fame game. YEAH!

Father-son priesthood moment

Jacob passed the sacrament today alongside his Dad, just the two of them. (Doug was filling in for the other young man in the branch, who was out of town.) It was a nice moment. Doug volunteered to pass each week once Shelton (the other young man) turns sixteen and is old enough to bless the sacrament.

Ta Da! Our new house!

The park is just a hop, skip and a jump away--that's our house in the background!



Above, Jacob and Sophia took a turn on the dinosaurs. Below, Meredith and Aidan try out the slide:


This is an entrance to our development and the kids' school bus stop. The house is out of the frame off to the right:


This fabulous tree grows on an island in the park. You'll see the bridge on the left in another frame later on:

Sophia is imagining what it will be like to read a book under that great big tree:



All the kids in the shade of the biggest tree in the park:



The bridge to the island in our park, with our house in the back left:


The is the house with a Lamar water tower in the background.


(These photos were taken during a house-hunting trip in June. We've now been here for a week, and find ourselves coming back online at last. Once we get a stove, we might begin to feel even a bit normal!)

Saying Goodbye

There are so, so many to say goodbye to!

Here's Sophia's last sleepover with dear friend Elizabeth:


Meredith at Hidden Valley girl scout camp with Renae and Carli:


Dave, our school bus driver for a full seven years:


The bus drives away on the last day of school in Lawrence:


This is Jacob's last day of homeschool art with Maddie:


Jacob and Noel at sixth grade recognition ceremonies:

Meredith and Jaycee Yanek, her first grade teacher, whom Meredith adored:

Sophia and Krista Hoy, her first grade teacher, and still a best friend!

Sophia and Denise Hobbs, her beloved third grade teacher (we're sorry, Ms. McAlister, that we couldn't find you to get a picture of you, too!):


Sandy, long suffering secretary, with the girls:


Sophia with Activity Day friend Emily Pouliot:

More goodbyes

Goodbye strawberry patch and herb garden!



Goodbye chickens!

Goodbye chicken coop!

Goodbye, Lawrence. Goodbye!

Rare sighting: Dad spotted with family on Sunday morning

The Sunday after Doug was extended a release as Bishop, we noticed that he was driving us to church, in our same car, at the same time as we. Woooooow.

Later that morning, Jacob received the Aaronic priesthood. Here he is with his Dad and the new Bishopric--Bishop Young, Brother Pouliot, and Brother Gordon-Ross:

Jacob's dad had presented him for a sustaining vote the previous Sunday--his last business before being released as Bishop--but Jacob was not yet 12 so he could not be ordained that day! The next week (after Jacob's 12th birthday), on our last Sunday in Lawrence, Jacob received the priesthood from his father just prior to Sacrament meeting and was able to pass the sacrament with his friends Kole Young, Brent Wilson, and the other young men of the ward. Aidan was enthralled but cranky and had to be removed to the hallway before the water had gone all the way around!

Our Beloved Lawrence House

We said good-bye to our dream house in our dream town on Friday, July 21, 2006. We built this house eight years ago thinking we would live in it for the rest of our lives. Our family was young, and we craved stability. Within a few years, we realized that we probably would end up moving a few times before Doug was ready to settle into his last job. Of course, we knew that a house is not what makes a family happy. We knew we could travel anywhere and live in any sort of house, and still find life delightful, and even enjoy the adventure.


Still, it was a little tough to leave. First of all, we have made some of the best friends of our lives in this place. True, some of them have pulled up roots and pulled away already, but there were others to say good-bye to, and it was not easy. We have been greatly blessed by the folks we have known here during the last thirteen years. They have taught us and set stellar examples. We have cried on each others shoulders more than once. We have also watched a lot of reality tv while consuming way too much good foot together! Doug has been serving as the Bishop of the Wakarusa Valley Ward for the last two years, and the day of his release was a melancoly day for him. He loved getting to know all the people of the ward and enjoyed the heightened gift of the Spirit that seemed to come with this calling. But he made the decision to change jobs only after much prayer, so he knew that the time was right to move on.



Also, in an effort to bring my dearest memories of my childhood in to my children's lives, we had added very personal touches when we built the home. For example, look at this china cabinet:

This was in the kitchen of my childhood home in Albuquerque, painted the same pink that had already adorned the walls for years when my parents bought the place in 1963. Growing up, my parents would periodically have my sister and I stand flat-footed against the side, and they'd draw a line to mark our height, then write our name and the date right on the cabinet.

When they remodeled that kitchen after I was married, they tore out that china cabinet, and it held paint cans in the garage for some years before I discovered it there. My dad was very willing to part with it. We brought it back to Kansas (or maybe my folks hauled it up in a rental truck), and I photographed it, traced the lines, and made notes about the entries and the handwriting. Then Doug took it to a place in Kansas City that "dipped" it in a vat of chemicals to removed all the years of paint. I think they said they removed three or four coats of paint, some of it leaden, the first layer being an ancient chalk-based paint. They discovered that it was solid oak underneath--quite remarkable construction for the desert of Albuquerque in the early 1920's! After it had been installed in our new home and painted, I retraced the lines and had my parents reconstruct their entries all over again in their own handwriting. Then, as Jacob, Sophia, and Meredith have grown up, we have recorded their names right alongside those of my sister and me.

That was hard to leave, but we just weren't up to tearing out the whole cabinet and hauling it to our Missouri house--only to sit in the garage again, perhaps holding paint cans like it once did in Albuquerque! There's a happy ending to this, though--when Doug sheepishly acknowledged to our buyers, Pete and Mary Beth, that he knew they would probably want to paint over the markings, they adamantly exclaimed that no, indeed, they would be adding their three-year-old's name to the chart! So now this beloved oak antique as well as its notations will span several homeowners as well as several generations.

When building the house, I had also used antique cabinet pulls, door knobs, escutcheons, and even ceramic bath fixtures that had been removed from my folks' Albuquerque house during various remodelling projects. I swiped the glass cabinet pulls, but left behind all the rest. This set of knobs was collected at a garage sale, but the art nouveau escutcheons were from the Albuquerque house. They all stayed behind:

Here's the rosebush Doug and the kids gave me for Mother's Day when the kids were little--long before Aidan came along:

And here's the bridge Doug built across our little creek. One year, Jacob had a birthday party out there, and the kids dropped lines over that creek to receive fish pond goodies from Doug and Chad Voigt, who were hiding underneath, wearing their fishing boots in the shallow water. In this picture, the bridge is loaded up with the kids and their cousins. It was taken during an expedition suggested by Haley and Megan to visit the bridge one last time.