Most Fancy Weekday Breakfast

Instructions for, as Brian termed it, the Most Fancy Weekday Breakfast:

1. Make a single piece of toast.

2. Top toast with thinly sliced pieces of avocado & salt.

3. Make a single-egg lady omelette:
    - beat 1 egg with salt and pepper,
    - pour into your smallest pan, which should have a swirl of veggie oil and be warm,
    - once the bottom of your omelette is set, sprinkle goat cheese the middle,
    - fold each side over the goat cheese, flip and let cook most of the way through.

4. Slide omelette on top of toast.

5. Eat immediately!

Feeds 1 small breakfast appetite.
Takes 5 or 6 minutes.

Weekend Review

Highlights from this past weekend:

The snow (!!!) that fell most of Friday, still apparent on our neighbor's roof on Saturday morning. That was Saturday, April 20th, to be exact.

Some quick Saturday morning waffles. Brian poured the one below. It was a natural lesson in how waffle batter expands when it's cooked!

Children's musical rehearsal on Friday night, Saturday morning and performances on Sunday morning. Do you know how five year-olds react when you ask them to focus and be quiet for the better part of 3 hours? Let's say not well. Also, I was informed multiple times that every.single.part of these costumes itched.

Epic nap on Sunday afternoon (thankfully no photographic evidence) followed by a quick work out and dinner. No photographic evidence of dinner either, but I can tell you that we had delicious boozy dessert: Banana Rum Spice ice cream over Bourbon Blondies. Those, plus a tall glass of wine and a viewing of the hilarious"This is 40" rounded out a perfectly exhausting weekend.

You are His song

Amidst a week that just makes you want to cry, there were my seven 4, 5 and 6 year-olds at our church spring musical rehearsal last night. (And yes, that's six boys and one girl below, if you're counting. A few weeks ago in choir she whispered to me "I wish there were more girls." Me too, honey. Keeping six 5 year-old boys in line is hard!!) 

Watching these adorable littles sing and dance, and play in what must be a tractor tire (can you see it in the back of this photo? All seven could hide in it), reminded me of the chorus of a hymn we sang in church last weekend. 

Rise up and walk!

God made you free, born of His liberty,

Carefree and strong, you are His song,

perfect for all to see.

Weeks like this can make you feel like you can't hear His song, no matter how hard you try. But last night I saw it in the face of my shyest, who wouldn't let go of his mother's hand when he arrived and by the end of rehearsal was shaking his teeny hips with the best of them. He was definitely His song last night. 

This week, I'm clinging to His song in form of squirming children. 

A bit of quiet

I knew it had a been awhile. A week shy of two months, to be precise.

It's been two months worth of discussion in our hour, discussion that I couldn't bring to the internets, as we tried to figure out our plans for next year. (Our life runs on the school year.) As we considered some major changes that would take us to some seriously unfamiliar places, in the end we decided to stay put.

I realized, watching Brian defend his dissertation last week, that he's REALLY good at what he does. He kicked butt on his defense. His writing is fantastic. He's a natural teacher. Just because he doesn't have a full-time academic job next year doesn't mean we should pick up and change courses right now. So we're giving it another year in Milwaukee. He'll continue to adjunct, I'll continue at my job and next year we'll look at opportunities again.

So now it's time to think about settling into our apartment a little more, putting the grill back outside, planting a bit of a garden. Time to make plans for summer bike rides, day trips, farmers markets, picnics, wine on a restaurant patio. Time to look at digging into our community, finding some local mission work, being a good neighbor.

For the past two months the conversation has shifted entirely from here to home. I'll be glad to establish some balance again.