I love Sarahs!

This picture of bread is called Mexican bread. It is a standard egg yeast bread but with the addition of orange jucie, coffee, chocolate and cinnamon. I thought with too many flavors it would be overwhelming. The interesting thing about this bread was that they blended together so that you couldn't really pick them all out. I'm going to tweak it and see what I come up with.

Sarah is the smiliest baby I've ever seen. Here she is on her swing (the one in the pink). I've also included a picture of Jenna on the same swing 3 years ago (actually Jenna was 2months older in the shot). They both love swinging! And Sarah loves Scruff. Check out this youtube video.

I try to stay away from politics on this blog, but I'm very excited about Sarah Palin. Erik and I had been discussing possible choices and she is a brilliant choice (not one we were guessing)! A cool link.

Jenna is enjoying school but wishes there were more girls (only one other girl in class). I hope she likes it more.

In a cooking disaster, I made meringue cookies with espresso in them. They were totally flat and did not puff like normal meringue cookies do. I'll have to investigate and see why they did this. My normal experience with meringues is that they are easy and yummy.

No quiddler score today - apparently the site isn't working!!

School

I love school. Who doesn't? I've chosen a career in academia because I love school (and learning!) so much. Even so, I often dream back to the days as a glass design engineer and wish I could go back. But I digress... Jenna started preschool today. I hope she loves learning as much as I do. I've included a picture of her with her backpack on her first day at Newstart Early Learning Center Preschool. Such a big girl! This morning we all prayed about her first day at school and prayed she would make friends. Well, after school she told us that she only wanted Sarah as a friend and no other friends. Apparently she didn't want to make friends with the kids at school. I'm hoping she breaks out of her shell. She is shy and I have NO idea where that came from :) :).

Sarah turned 8 months on Saturday - the day of Susan's wedding. Here is a family picture at the wedding. We all had an excellent time, especially Jenna who discovered Shirley Temples (a drink made with sprite and grenadine topped with a maraschino cherry). Here's a picture of Sarah with the lamb. She was STANDING UP on Sunday. This girl is everywhere :).

In other news:

1. It is finals week for me and I have a stack of grading as thick as this new book Erik is reading.
2. I've finished the Traveler by John Twelve Hawks and loved it. It is a trilogy so I want to read the next part. Very good and thought provoking!
3. I used to think Mayonnaise was better than Miracle Whip but a friend said he liked Miracle Whip better. So I tried it again and was surprised at how awesome Miracle Whip is.
4. I got 73 points today on Quiddler with a max of 71 so only one 5 letter word - a very poor showing.
   
   

Sarah 2012

Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rxfyuw5OUY

Dual cuties, Dual core

I got my new computer! Yea! It is awesome :). Of course, when I went to move my old hard drive to the new computer I realized I hadn't installed a SATA drive yet. I didn't realize how behind the times I have been - so used to fat IDE cables!

We went camping to Buckeye Lake KOA last weekend and had a wonderful time! It was a chocolate themed weekend and we had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and dipped fruit and pound cake into a big chocolate fountain. There was also a chocolate slip and slide (with apparently gallons of chocolate pudding) but we skipped that part. The girls had a fabulous time as well! I did leave the campsite to go to Susan's bachelorette party at Buca De Beppo. That was a great time (see pic). We all had pink shirts saying "friend of the bride" and Susan had a white shirt saying "bride". The night was made more interesting by a special dish from Buca that none of us were expecting (picture NOT included).

Jenna starts preschool on Monday. I can't believe it! She is such a big girl. Even so, she has difficulty saying some things such as lasagna. It comes out as "masagna". In addition, she won't let me "eat Sarah" - Sarah is not food of course! Although sometimes you just want to eat her up. She's so darn cute!

I did horribly at Quiddler today. I got to make the word "valor" but I assumed I'd be able to make a word from "b" "l" and "u" however it wouldn't let me. It seems to me that blu is definitely a word!

My Meme

Check out my Meme. I got this idea from a friend. I want to see yours! Here is what you do:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Pick the first image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The questions and my answers:
1. What is your first name? Gina
2. What is your favorite food? chocolate
3. What high school did you go to? Perry High School
4. What is your favorite color? Blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Michael Phelps
6. Favorite drink? Raspberry Mocha
7. Dream vacation? St. Johns
8. Favorite dessert? Cheesecake
9. What you wanted to be when you grow up? Teacher
10. What do you love most in life? Jesus
11. One Word to describe you? Attentive
12. Your flickr name? gina cooper

Farmer in the Dell

The farmer in my dell stopped working yesterday. For the past few weeks I've been getting an error when I booted my dell that my second hard drive wasn't working. But I was fine with that since I don't need to back anything up to it anymore (now that I have the NAS). But last night it wouldn't boot or enter setup. We found a jumper on the motherboard labeled CLR CMOS and that sounded promising. So we reset the jumper and rebooted the machine. We got some pretty messages but nothing beyond that. Bummer.





Erik wanted to buy a new motherboard, but with my powers of persuasion, I convinced him that I needed a new computer. Unfortunately for Erik, my dell was better than his computer and my new one will be better than his too. His parent's computer is better than his computer too. I think he's feeling some computer envy :). Anyway, I am getting a Dell Inspiron Athlon dual core 2.10GHz machine with 2GB RAM (but I've got 2 extra DIMMs that should be compatible to up it to 4GB). I'll need more RAM since I'll have Vista.



We have been watching the Olympics every night and staying up late too. I love the women's gymnastics and was sad we didn't take the gold last night. The gymnasts just amaze me!

I'm currently reading the Traveler by John Twelve Hawks. It's an excellent book whose main story about travelers is just his way of conveying his opinion about RFID, video suveillance, monitoring, databases, and lack of freedom caused by (in his words) "the vast machine". Certainly much to think about.

Got 83 points on quiddler today. Apparently PHT is a word.

Mighty to Save

I listen to two stations on the radio most of the time - the River (contemporary Christian) and talk radio. A new song on the River is "Mighty to Save" by Hillsong. Recently I realized it is from a passage in the Bible: "The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing". Zephaniah 3:17.
What a wonderful verse! Our family has been memorizing verses and I think I'll add this one.

Today I picked up a steno pad from Devry. I did not realize they had steno pads in the supply closet.
I love steno pads. They are small, easy to flip through, and excellent for jotting down notes. I love them almost as much as I love mechanical pencils.

Erik bought a propane kitchen torch. I'm excited to make creme brulee with it. I made creme brulee on Tuesday but used the broiler in my oven to carmelize the sugar on top. So much cooler with a torch.

Some videos of Sarah. In her jumperoo, crawling, and talking.
I love youtube!

84 on Quiddler today - and I made the word Gox!

Women

I am somewhat of a feminist. This term has become miscontrued, its meaning is this "the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men". Women should not be allowed to teach or lead or (as some maintain) be in any leadership role over men in the Christian church. Bullhickey.

God created men and women together as equals (Genesis 1:27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
and
1 Cor 11:11-12: In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.)

He has gifted both men and women with gifts of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:17 In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.) Who are we to restrict the Holy Spirit?

In the kingdom of God which we pray "your kingdom come" in the Lord's prayer, men and women are equal (Gal 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.) When Jesus returns, there will be no difference - male or female.

For the best position paper I've read on this topic, please read Rich Nathan's essay on women in ministry.

So why the discrepancy? Many verses such as 1 Tim 2:11 -15 cause the discrepancy. These verses basically say women should be quiet and submissive to not disrespect their husbands and hinder the spread of the gospel. From Paul's life and teaching, the spread of the gospel was paramount to him. It is paramount to us. So do not hinder the spread of the gospel, even if you must be quiet. In 21st century America, telling women that they can not be leaders or teachers due to their gender may hinder the spread of the gospel. I know I struggled with this for many years. Rich Nathan discusses the context of these verses in length in his essay (it's a great read!).

While praying about this several years ago, God spoke this seemingly unrelated verse to me: Romans 14:20 "Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food." To me, it meant a lot. This issue should not hinder my walk with God or the good work he has begun in us.

Thoughts?