On my way to blimpy?

Well, let's hope not. But my one activity that was holding "blimpy" back has been suspended for the time being. I guess it could still go on...but not as much fun. To come right out and say it: my walking buddy got a real job. There. So how else will I face 5 degrees in the early hours of the morning??? Three friends said, "Get a dog." Yeah, right. And then what do I do when I want to go out of town or be gone from sun-up to sun-down? And then I think of shots, licenses, vet bills. No thanks. I enjoyed Joanne's dog, but she took her home with her. *smile* I'll miss our walks, Joanne! But I'm glad for you. Now maybe Emily can get her horse....!

A devotional meditation

Last night in worship team practice we sang, "Spirit of God Descend Upon My Heart" to the tune "Morecambe". That same tune is used for the song by one of my favorite hymn writers, Horatius Bonar. It is "Here, O My Lord I See Thee Face to Face". For your morning meditation here are the words. Read and worship!

Here O my Lord I see thee face to face; here would I touch and handle things unseen, here grasp with firmer hand the eternal grace, and all my weariness upon thee lean.

Here would I feed upon the bread of God, here drink with thee the royal wine of heav'n; here would I lay aside each earthly load, here taste afresh the calm of sin forgiv'n.

This is the hour of banquet and of song; this is the heav'nly table spread for me: here let me feast, and, feasting, still prolong the brief, bright hour of fellowship with thee.

I have no help but thine, nor do I need another arm save thine to lean upon: it is enough, my Lord, enough indeed; my strength is in thy might, thy might alone.

Mine is the sin, but thine the righteousness; mine is the guilt, but thine the cleansing blood; here is my robe, my refuge, and my peace, thy blood, thy righteousness, O Lord my God.

Omaha's crazy weather

Look at this crazy weather. It keeps getting colder as the day progresses! I can hardly see across the field for the snow. But it's not supposed to last long, the snow that is. The cold will be here awhile. Yesterday it was 55F!! I cleaned up the driveway, washed the car, pulled leaves out from around the air conditioner and from the eavestrough on the garage. Even raked the willow branches out of the backyard and cut back that wild "Gramma's" rose. I think Sleeping Beauty's thorny hedge must've been made from Gramma's rose. We cooked out chicken, too. Ah, tastes like summer.
But today.....Sheesh, it's January again!

CURRENT CONDITIONS Condition: SNOW Temperature: 5° F RealFeel: -29° F Wind: NNW 31 mph Barometer: 29.80 in/Hg Humidity: 76% Sunrise: 7:38 AM Sunset: 5:35 PM

Girls Night Out

Friday night I went my first "girls night out". We went to a Mexican restaurant, had a great time getting to know new friends and eating good food. The we met up at a dollar theatre and saw the funniest movie! Dan in Real Life is the name of it. About a dad who is a widower and raising three daughters alone. He falls in love with his brother's girlfriend before he knows she's his brother's girlfriend. It is hilarious, especially for those of us who are either in that teenage rearing stage or finished with it. (Thank goodness, I'm in the latter!!!) To make it funnier, the man is Steve Carell, the head guy in The Office. Of course if you haven't seen that yet, you won't get it. The girl is Juliette Binoche. It is well worth a view!

Weekend in Iowa

We went to my mom's this weekend. Over one day and back the next. She needed some help with her computer, so Den took an old one of ours over and bought a new modem. She still has dial-up, but she writes letters and loves hearing from family via email. So she was feeling cut off from everyone. It was a weekend in the 40's, so we figured we could risk a trip across I-80. It was a lovely weekend. Flickr has pictures for you Iowa lovers. I just couldn't resist the "Sprint" silos. Great signal here! *smile* And we had a bit of time to catch up with our old friends, Tom and Sue and Dan and Donna. We went out Saturday evening with the A's and Mom. We had to wait AGES! But we had a good visit. Sunday lunch we caught up with Tom and Sue and THAT is NEVER long enough! We were all young mothers together 25+ years ago. They started their families before I did, but I met them nearly 30 years ago when I went to begin my teaching career. Dan was the headmaster and my "boss"! (Hard to think of him like that!) They both have grand children who all are in the church they go to. What a way to grow the church. Sue (right) and her family have been in this church since she grew up. Her dad is still there along with Sue, her children and grandchildren. I think that is so wonderful! Enjoyed our time with Mom and all the friends.

Oh, just one more today

My begonia is blooming. Great color in January. I'm trying different things with my camera. I need Meredith to help me. I love the pink.

"Endless" music

I can sit here all day and never have to touch a dial, and never have to listen to a commercial, nor a fundraiser, nor a weather or news report. Thanks to a brilliant husband who loves this stuff, the old laptop that seems hardly good for anything, is now giving me as much of my favorite music as I would like. How spoiled is that? And when all my favorites have played, I can play ANY of our CD's that have been uploaded. You know that means any Bob Dylan that I want....!!!! Or Larry Norman, Or Paul Simon, Or any 60's-70's group....Or maybe Cono Choir, or Bach, Beethoven, Brahms....
Right now it's The Three Tenors. Ah, back to my lesson!

Crisp,cold snowy night

Last night about 10, it had finished snowing and the moon was shining brightly. I couldn't resist trying to catch the image of tree branches on the soft, sparkly snow. My camera has a setting for slowing down the speed without too much distortion. Seems there could be a story here.....

Blog connections

Tonight I found out that two of my blog links have introduced people to each other. My sister who is "Quid Nunc..." found out that she goes to church with the "Gentino family"! And they wouldn't have known except she saw the blog link on my blog. So cool, huh? The Gentino family wife is the daughter of our good friends from college, Kevin and Elaine. We have lots of stories of double dating days.....but we'll save that for another time!

Who knows who else will connect?!

A wedding shower

Yesterday we had a wedding shower at my house for the bride of my friend's son. She's my friend, too, since we sing together in church, but I knew her mother-in-law first. It was lovely! I think there were about twenty women in my living room. It's amazing that I can get that many people in here with that many places for people to sit! It was a very simple shower. Mostly we visited with each other. The bride opened her presents, so we ooo'd and ahhhh'd over them. Those of us married for many years wish we'd get another shower to update some of our things! We wrote advice on cute, colorful cards to go into a scrapbook along with photos of the shower. And we also said how long we had been married. The longest married has been married for 47 years and the shortest was one year. How fun to get together for such a joyous occasion. It's great to remember our own wedding showers and weddings, to think of God's faithfulness to us over ALL these years, and then to remind ourselves that OUR GOD is the God of the next generation as well. He will be their guide as He has been ours. Amazing how God even uses a wedding shower to remind us of His steadfast love.

Spurring one another on

Having been inspired by recent entries of Prone to Wander and subsequent comments. And having thought about the happiness/joy concepts, I was reminded of a passage I loved from an old book I read in college (molti anni fa!)

The son said, Forgive me, my Father, but sometimes I wonder if even in the Other Life there will be that for which my heart longs.
His Father said, In My presence is fulness of joy; can fulness be less than full? At My right hand there are pleasures forevermore; can pleasures be less than delight? Dear child of My love, trust My love. Would I leave one longing unsatisfied? You do not know your Father if you think that I would. You shall be satisfied with the plenteousness of My House: I will give you to drink of My pleasures as out of a river. Do you think that nothing could ever be as beautiful as once it was? Turn your eyes from your beautiful beginnings--I will do better to you than at your beginnnings. (from His Thoughts said...His Father said... by Amy Carmichael, with updated language by me.)

I always loved thinking about that verse, "In thy presence is fulness of joy..." and then the response from this writer, "Can fulness be any less than full?" And then the rest of the verse, "At your right hand are pleasures forevermore." Sometimes we have a tendency to think the Christian life is not meant for pleasure. But our pleasures are in pleasing our Father. Our joy is full. Better than our beginnings!

Old friends

I could write tons about old friends, since I have so many of them. Not that my friends are old, but moving around, and well, just being alive after so many years, one tends to gather up friends without letting go of the first ones. So in saying all that, and not saying much, you see a photo of our old friend, Drew. Yes, those of you who know him, Drew came to town today. He's Andrew's friend from elementary and junior high school. They were inseparable for three years. Andrew even stayed at his house for several weeks one summer while I was studying away from home. Drew has been the "other brother". (We've had several of those. He's the only one to still come around!) He was in town for meetings, so he's spending the night. We just had a lovely pork tenderloin dinner with rosemary potatoes, green beans, cauliflower and homemade apple pie. Now the guys are bonding downstairs in the "media room." They've spent hours in that room together when it was Andrew's bedroom. Ah, nice these guys can pick up right where they leave off.....

Can you resist this?

This is what I've been doing this week. Playing with cutie-pies like this. He wanted me to take a picture of his lunch box! I've been helping out in the pre-school room this week. They only needed me for half the day Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. And it has been soooo fun! On Monday the little girl in the front had her dad come in and talk to the class about being a Navy pilot. He brought his helmet ( is that what it's called??) He let all who wanted to put it on. Then he pulled down the visor and some even got to try out the oxygen mask with it. Did I have my camera THAT day? Rats!

A productive Saturday

I used to keep a journal every day. In 1985 when we first moved to Scotland, my mother bought a little "diary" for me to keep track of all the new experiences I would have while living in another country. I wrote about my first impressions, new people I met, finding a new church and how different or the same it was to my American church experience. I also wrote and wrote about all the work I did. I didn't write much about feelings or thoughts in those journals. After that first little one, I bought "Scottish journals" that were big hardback books with dates at the top of every page. During those years, I had two new babies. But my point here is that I wrote about what I accomplished. Like washing clothes, mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms, baking bread, edging the sidewalk, feeding the family at weird hours since Den worked shifts, shopping in Thurso, walking to shops in Castletown. Sometimes it makes me tired just to read the stuff!!
Yet today was one of those days. Dinner's over, lots of baking and cleaning got done, and I am happy with clean beds, dishes, house and lovely sweet rolls ready for a wedding shower brunch for next Saturday. (Don't worry, they'll be in the freezer until then!)
Ah, so satisfying. Now I can read a good book while the guys watch more football!

We watched a funny movie last night called Keeping Mum. A play on words twice over. It stars Maggie Smith and Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) two name the well-known actors. You'll have to look it up on IMDB for a summary. We love both these actors and the movie used their varying talents well. A good Brit story! Funny and twisted if you know what I mean. Sort of fits this weird Minich sense of humor. TTFN!

I threw away my vegetable peeler!!!!!

AKA a potato peeler. Now this wouldn't be such a big deal if it were years ago, but now I own a Cutco potato peeler. This is the best thing I've ever used. The peelings melt off in seconds. I've had it for 5 years and it is still as good as ever. I thought that pile of peelings seemed heavier than it should be!!!

Snow "rainbow"

This morning on our freezing cold, but very bright walk we saw a "snowbow". It wasn't really a bow, of course, but a reflection of the rising sun off the snow that ran in a line across the snow from the sun. I've never seen anything like it, and if I went back out there now the light probably isn't at the right angle. But we were walking south along the bike trail and across the snow to the east was this "snowbow" brighter in some places as we walked along. I suppose the brighter spots were where the snow was piled more loosely and the crystals caught the light better than the packed snow. I've looked and looked for images online, but don't see any. It was like seeing "sun dogs" but on the ground in the snow. Very beautiful!

New post at last!

Has it been nearly a week already? I go to my friends' blogs and don't see new ones, so I thought MY friends might like to read something new. Here you are folks!

Monday Will left for school. I don't know why, but I always have a meltdown after he leaves. I guess the holiday time is over and our family is spread out again. I also clean up after Christmas, put away all the decorations, vacuum, mop. Some of THAT is dealing with emotional energy, I'm sure. I did get out and have lunch that day with a friend which was a good thing!
The living room is all clean and tidy once again. These rosemary bushes....I don't know what to do with them. I've shoved them into the corner between the south and east windows hoping that they'll still get enough sunlight to keep them happy and still be out of the way.

Tuesday and Wednesday I finally got to sub at OCA. Ah, it's like being with family to get back over there. Wednesday was three periods for the history teacher. I like doing his classes because he lets me write lessons. So for world history we did Roman emperors from Nero to the five good emperors. I read a lot of Josephus the night before, so most of the lesson was on Vespasian and Titus and what went on in Jerusalem. Matthew 24 gives hints. Pretty awful during that seige. (And kids love to hear gory details!) American history was the Jackson era. The presidency took some interesting turns during his tenure. I loved studying for those lessons as well as teaching them. And I love those students there, too. I came home happy.

An interesting linguistic note. I taught 6th grade English first hour and the vocabulary lesson taught that "till" meaning "until" and "till" meaning "to cultivate the soil" are homonyms. I've never seen that first usage as a word in itself before, as in "I couldn't wait till Christmas." Is this a new development?

It's dark and cold this morning, think I'll read.

Caucus fever

Yes, we all have/had it big around here. We've been looking forward to the Iowa caucus for weeks. Besides being bombarded with Democratic ads by Obama, Edwards and Hillary on TV for weeks, we've also talked about it around the house as well. Will and Linnea fit neatly into the Obama camp of 29 and below. So they went to a rally in Council Bluffs while they were both at home, and they bought each other Obama stuff, like t-shirts and posters/bumper stickers. It kept conversation lively.

Thursday evening Will and a friend went to Carter Lake as observers (since we live in Nebraska). Will really enjoyed watching the whole process first hand. He said there were 171 people at their site. It ended up that 88 went for Hillary, 44 for Edwards and 38 for Obama. He probably was disappointed at the outcome at their site, but he was pleased that the state went for Obama. All of western Iowa was for Hillary. Don't know the reason for that. I talked to my mom this morning, and she had watched the whole thing from her living room. She doesn't like to drive at night so she didn't go, but people from her church were there, she said.

The whole caucus process seems so basically democratic. You know, meeting with friends and neighbors in the local school or someone's house, talking about one's decision peacefully. I thought it was interesting that Bill Bennett in his comments on CNN that night mentioned the unrest about elections in both Kenya and Pakistan, and then contrasted it to the scene we were seeing in someone's house in Persia, Iowa. How thankful we are for this country's way to peacefully transition power.

Gotta stop. Talking going on in the room makes it hard for me to think. Maybe more later!

My year in review

I meant to do this yesterday, but with running to the airport, cleaning up around here and getting ready for a night out, I never got around to it.

I was thinking of highlights of our year, and of course it centers mostly on family events, but there were other highlights not directly related to the extended family. Here are a few:(This took me hours to figure out how to do.With major help from "Yolie")

• Our annual Italian dinner on January 5th followed by Ellen's wedding on the 6th.

Will going to Slovakia to study for a semester was a big highlight for him.

The Cono choir coming to Omaha and our visit with friends there.

The BIG SNOWSTORM the first of March. I had a picture, but I can't find it right now.

Andrew's going to the state track meet and getting fourth place in shot put and then his graduation. (Guess that's two, but it's all about Andrew.)

Our family reunion in Minnesota. It was great to see aunts and uncles, cousins and all their children. The weather was gorgeous; the scenery was beautiful and the company couldn't be better! How blessed we are.

Dennis running in two marathons!!!! The first on his 55th birthday.

Al, my friend from high school coming to Omaha with his daughter for the homeschool volleyball tournament.

Thanksgiving at Ron's and taking Stephanie with us. I guess that was a milestone in Andrew and Stephanie's relationship--her coming with us and away from her family for an extended time!

Last highlight, was my dad's funeral. Another time for family and extended family to get together to celebrate the joy of eternal life and the promise of reunion. Another blessing of the Covenant, God's family covenant, that is.

In between were days of substituting, working in the garden center, taking short trips to Cono, Minnesota, Mom's and Ron's. Reading, card games and dinners with friends, sitting by the pool, working in the yard, shoveling snow and all those things that keep life going.

Looking forward to many good times with friends and family in 2008. Thankful that I don't have to fear the future, nor do I have to think that it is somehow out of God's control. God raises kings up and brings them down. We'll see what He does in 2008!

New Year's Eve (Hogmanay)

In Scotland New Year's Eve is called "Hogmanay". Isn't that a cool word? Wonder what it means? Yesterday was an interesting day. Linnea flew to Chattanooga at noon to spend her N.Y.E. with her friends there. Andrew went with the Thompsons to Missouri to visit their son. He wasn't too happy about spending his whole N.Y.E. either in the car or with people he didn't know, but he figured it meant a lot to Stephanie for him to go. They drove four hours down and four back. They didn't get home until 1:30am! I guess he wanted to be with Stephanie. He really loves the parties at night and had to miss out this year. Will stayed home and his friends James and Arliss came over. Denny and I met up with some church friends, played a rather interesting card game that changed rules every round. Kinda hard for my brain when the game started about 9pm! We did two sets of 6 rounds, changing teams according to which team won or lost. We lost both times... AND we had to have our spouse be our partner. Not always a good idea in our case! We all had a good time. Lots of good food and of course great conversation. Much to our surprise, we rang in the New Year at their house. The time flew by!