I wrote a little Christmas play for the nursery kids at our church. They were each wisemen and decorated their own crowns a few weeks before our play. They did great on Sunday, it was super cute. I think my favorite part was when one little boy stood in front of the projector and the shadow of his crown took up the whole front wall :D When he realized what was going on he kept waving his hand in front of it trying to figure out where the light was coming from. Cassidy has been in love with her crown ever since and wears it throughout the day and whenever we go out! A few jewels have since fallen off but she still knows she’s royalty ;-)
A little tug on my sanity, but we did it! It actually wasn’t as messy as I thought it’d be and they had fun :)
Last week we had the honor of hosting Sylvia, an international student from Uganda. She’s attending EBI (Elim Bible Institute) down in Lima and since she couldn’t return home for Christmas, families from our church have been inviting her to stay with them over break. It was so cool to hear her story and God’s faithfulness in every step of her journey. We got to take her around town to see the Christmas lights (Americans go ALL out for Christmas). Actually the lights were pretty neat, it was the first year we drove around to see them. Some houses even had lights timed to music you could tune into on your radio. And one entire neighborhood in Farmington put together a spectacular show.
We introduced Sylvia to tacos and Wendy’s fast food and she made a traditional porridge for us for breakfast one morning. She was also able to join us for Ben’s school Christmas party which was neat. We found out she’d worked through her last school semester without a computer, relying on the library and lab computers to get her work done. So Andy fixed up a laptop and we gifted it to her. Before she left she asked if she could pray for us and bless our family. Afterwards Ben exclaimed “Wow! That was a LONG prayer” :)
One of my favorite memories (and the kids’ too when asked) was drumming, dancing and singing with Ms. Sylvia. Thank you for spending time with us and sharing some of your life and culture. We’re thankful to have a new friend!
We decorated for Christmas the weekend after Thanksgiving. The kids had fun helping with the tree and setting up a new to us train underneath it. Thankfully we didn’t need to gate the tree off this year, they’re both a little older and can admire without carnage. I finally have a spot for my nativity scene this year too. The kids even have their own Little People nativity set (even if pieces usually end up all over the house).
I smiled and said “You’re right Ben” and then told him about magnetism. Later that day he was showing Cassidy everything that stuck to his magnets and said in the most matter of fact voice “Now this is called magnetism Cassidy.”
Last year I shared a little bit about the deer harvesting process and my thoughts on it. This year, the kids are actually old enough to notice and comment on the deer hanging in the garage. We’ve just explained that daddy hunts for deer so we have food to eat, simple as that. I’m not sure if they’ll want to hunt when they’re older but we’d at least like to teach them respect for the animal in life as well as in death.
The one night Ben asked if he could go outside and help Andy in the garage. He’s the “soft” one, always loving on the kitties and saying how cute and fuzzy other animals are. So I was really surprised when he asked but we figured, hey why not?
Ben being silly when I asked what he thought. Honestly I don’t really think he cared too much about the deer and just liked hanging out with his dad. He told me he liked sitting on the lawn mower and that’s about all I got out of him.
Admittedly, deer legs on my kitchen table are not my favorite part of the process. Andy does do a really nice job of cleaning up the meat, getting rid of fat and trimming off the silver skin (thin layer covering all the muscles). If you were to take your deer someplace else to get processed they definitely don’t do as thorough work. Deer processing places also just lump your meat together with everything else they received that day when making ground venison too, so you’re not even getting back “your” deer.
Some of the meat will get cut up into steaks and chunks for grilling. The rest gets ground up for sausages, burgers, and plain old ground venison that we’ll used for everything from tacos to hamburger helper. In all honesty we do prefer the taste of beef over venison, but the venison is SO healthy for you and it’s “free” if you process it yourself (minus the cost of the hunting license). The deer lived a good life outside, not eating junk and not getting injected with anything. Venison is also incredibly lean and high in iron. Actually it’s so lean that you need to add a little oil to the pan when working with it since there’s so little fat.
The backstraps are the best cut! We marinate them for up to 24 hours and then Andy grills them up, sooooo good!
