My new toy

"sour" dough bread

I used my two starters to make sourdough bread. Well, it was actually just dough bread. While the bread was very tasty, it was not sour. I'm not sure why but neither one of my starters were sour. The sour cream starter was good and had an amazing texture. The other starter was a plain starter and the bread was average. So I made another buttermilk starter to see if that would be "sour" enough. I'll be able to make it soon and give my results. If I can't make sourdough bread sour I may just have to buy it :(.

Yea! A duck

I got a new toy. I bought a Bamboo tablet to annotate lectures and images. You can probably tell from my bread picture I drew on it with my tablet. Then of course I drew on a duck picture :). 

This tablet is very helpful for my online course live lectures. While I'm explaining the material sometimes I will annotate on my Powerpoint but it is clunky. I used my tablet last night to annotate on my powerpoint while explaining material and it worked beautifully! I just need it to annotate on Visual Studio and my lectures will be so riveting and exciting no one will want to do anything else!

75 points on Quiddler today. 

Words!

Matthew is not a man of many words. In fact, for most of his life he only said "uh-oh" and "hee haw" which probably only counts as one word. Last November he started saying more words. Below is an update of Matthew's words:

1. uh oh
2. more
3. hee haw (tick tock)
4. bubbles
5. pop
6. ball
7. eye
8. meh (milk)
9. eeya (cat - meow)
10. ch (cheese)
11. on
12. up up up (up can't be said just once)
13. dirt
14. wawa (water)
15. key
16. moya (money)
17. oo (open)
18. boy
19. snow

He is doing really well and imitates us quite a bit. I'm really happy with his progress!

I caught a picture of Sarah with her "sweetie pie" from the Valentines party from school. The sweetie pie was filled with candy and very cute. The girls had a 4 day weekend because of Presidents day, and Jenna's friend Paige slept over. They had a great time watching movies in the basement and eating lots of popcorn!

Sarah with her sweetie pie from her Valentines party

Jenna dressed up as Laura Ingalls Wilder

My little bumblebee

My wonderful husband surprised me Saturday night with a mocha from Starbucks. He is so amazing and sometimes will bring me a coffee. It is a little gift but I love it. But I gave up coffee for lent. Oops.

Our church had a speaker from Gospel for Asia on Sunday. It was so heart-wrenching to see these kids and the kind of lives they live.  I'm just amazed at what this ministry is doing for the backward castes in India. Christianity is sweeping through India. Praise God!

86 points on Quiddler today

I sulfur when you argon

Valentines day is so much fun for kids and big kids. I love decorating boxes, writing up valentines, and the best part...getting valentines. The girls tore into their boxes and meticulously sorted out all their valentines. Some were treasured (Sarah got Lego stickers that she loved) and the candy was quickly eaten. Erik bought me roses which he does every year. They are beautiful red roses! Jenna even bought ribbon (with her own allowance!) to tie on the roses to make them even more beautiful. To celebrate Valentines day, we all went out to Graeters and got ice cream cones..... yes cones. Graeters has the best ice cream cones. They have a chocolate dipped pretzel cone. I had peanut butter chip ice cream in a chocolate dipped pretzel cone. That's happiness right there. Sarah had difficulty with her cone since she doesn't eat it fast enough and ended up covered in black raspberry ice cream. Jenna had a blue face from her cotton candy ice cream and Matthew just walked around Graeters and played with the water faucets. 

Erik has become suzy homemaker and is making soap. He used bacon fat and lye to make soap for us. Now we can smell like bacon! The soap turned out great and I'm excited he is experimenting like this.

Erik's soap!

 I am also experimenting. Our house is like one big chemistry lab! I love to make bread and have always wanted to make sourdough. However it requires a starter which must sit for 2-10 days. I made two types of starters. A plain sourdough starter and a sour cream starter. I found a recipe for German beer starter that uses rye flour. I think Erik will like this one but I'm going to try these first two and see how it goes.

Two sourdough starters

Don't ask

Books I am reading:

1. We are in the middle of Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson in our book club. This is the last book in the Mistborn trilogy. I love these books and am glad we are reading them. Brandon Sanderson is a writing machine!
2. A Darkness at Sethanon by Raymond Feist is the last book in the riftwar saga. It's amazing how this series has progressed. Just like the protagonist each book gets more complex and interesting. I really like this series.
3. No Longer a Slum Dog by K.P.Yohannan. Our church is having a speaker from Gospel For Asia coming this Sunday. This is a book written by one of the missionaries and it is powerful. It has stories that melt your heart. 

This semester I have had little time to read so I'm going through my books slowly. I'll be submitting a paper to a conference shortly and once that is finished along with this semester's classes, I'll have more free time. 

Erik said I eat too much nutella so I decided to give up both nutella and coffee for Lent. Lent started on Wednesday so no nutella or coffee for me until Easter. Maybe I'll have nutella flavored coffee on Easter?

77 points on quiddler today.

RMD and nunchuck skills

We started our small group again this year and changed the schedule to the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. This will be a better schedule as every week was becoming too busy for us. To kick off this year we served dinner at Ronald McDonald house. It was a fun service project and I took a few pictures after we served.  Of course it is difficult to get everyone in a picture since someone has to take the picture. After several attempts at photoshopping Candi in the picture I came up with the third picture below. Apparently I need some work on photoshopping. I feel like I'm doing everything right but I just don't have the skills. Maybe I have nunchuck skills but not photoshopping skills.

Jenn, Lynn, Callie, Me, Maddie, and MaryClaire with Candi taking the picture

And now with Candi

My attempt at photoshopping Candi in the picture

I came home from Ronald McDonald house to find Matthew rocking to Mary had a little lamb. He loves the keyboard and is always playing it. I could watch that video over and over!

Last week was midterm week and I barely survived my mountain of grading. This upcoming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. I love lent - a time of sacrifice is always so refreshing to me. I am trying to decide between giving up coffee or nutella. I drink coffee about twice a week but eat nutella quite a bit. I have been making peanut butter and nutella sandwiches for dinner when I teach. Who needs pb&j when you can have pb&n? So I'll have to decide by Wednesday.

76 points on Quiddler today