Easter Pictures

Here are some spring photos that Enoch and I worked real hard to take had so much fun taking.  My new camera (we got it just before Enoch was born) is working great for these so far, and Enoch was such a good boy during all of these photos (granted, we split them up over two days).


Okay, so if you're one of my sweet friends, just skip the next paragraph and enjoy the photos below.  :)

If you're part of our family, we would like to send you some Easter pictures of Enoch.  Please choose one or two of the pictures below for us to send to you (printed pics via snail mail).  You can either comment on this post or email me (leanna{dot}medal{at}gmail{dot}com) with your choices, preferably the numbers under each photo.  I'm hoping to get them printed on Wednesday, so please try to get back to me before then.  :)  Also, if you know someone who can't view the blog, and you want to choose for them (for instance, Grandma Mary choosing for Great Grandma Mary), please do that too!



These first few were taken on a bench in a nice man's yard.  (Yes, I asked permission.)

 

Sweet Smiles 

(0957, 0955)

Serious face (while watching cars)

   

Laughing

(0958, 0964)

Here's a short video of Enoch car-watching.  There were a lot of cars driving past while we were outside taking pictures, and he would get this real serious face as he intently watched each one go by.  What a little boy I have on my hands already!!  :)

The rest of these were taken at our city's square.  The flowers are always so beautiful there!

 

Pretty tulips

(0970, 0972)

More tulips 

(0976)

 

On another bench...

(0981, 0990)

A sweet couple took our picture together in front of this white azalea.

These last few are just some shots of the other pretty flowers.

Peonies for my mom (these are larger than your fist)

Pink azaleas set off by the dark ivy background and a bright yellow accent plant.

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Where We're Going

Hugh and I are happy to announce that we are headed to Mississippi State University in Starkville later this summer.  :)

It was a tough decision for us for a few reasons:

• We had a few good options to choose from;
• Our options were SO different;
• This is a long-term decision for us;
• We wanted to make a wise decision based on where we felt God could best use us.

We sought counsel, asked for prayer, researched and visited each legitimate option, prayed a lot ourselves, looked back at our past, solidified our vision about how we feel called to serve the Lord, talked with people who had lived in each place, found out about what God is doing in each place, made a pros and cons list, weighted each item on that list by importance in order to score both options, prayed some more, and then we decided.

Having said that, we feel a great peace about our decision to go to MSU.  While we are so, so sad to leave our little home in NW Arkansas with our friends and much of our family, we have known for quite some time now that the day would come when we would have to move.  Not that that makes it any easier.  :(   We are, however, also so so thankful that God has provided Hugh with a good job, and even now we have a clear vision of what our ministry may look like there and how God might use us.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, 

and do not lean on your own understanding. 

In all your ways acknowledge him, 

and he will make straight your paths.

(Proverbs 3:5-6)

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Man Rebels - Numbers

My theme for the book of Numbers is the rebellion of the people of Israel.


At the beginning of Numbers, God prepares the people of Israel to enter the promised land, but when the spies come back with a bad report, "a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people that we saw in it are of great height," the people rebel against God (Numbers 13-14).

So God promises judgment on all who have rebelled:

...None of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it...

(Genesis 14:22-23)

Even Moses rebels against God at Meribah by striking the rock, causing God to also forbid him to enter the promised land.  By the end of Numbers, Israel really is ready to enter the promised land because of these two things:

1. The old generation who rebelled have all died in the wilderness (Numbers 26:63-65).
2. Joshua is appointed to lead the people into the promised land, thus replacing Moses (Numbers 27:16-20).

It seems that this truth is inescapable:  no matter how much of God's power or glory or _____ (fill in the blank) that we sinful people see, we always rebel and separate ourselves from God.  And so, once again, my Old Testament reading really is pointing back to the need for a perfect Messiah to come and change the rebellious hearts of man in order to restore our relationship with our holy God.  

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One other part of Numbers that I was really interested by was the story of Balak and Balaam.  This story is referenced quite a few other times in Scripture, so I was happy to finally read its full context with the rest of the book of Numbers.  Anyway, what I found so interesting about it was the fact that even though Balaam is a greedy man who is hired by Balak to curse Israel, all Balaam can do is bless Israel and speak truth about God, literally.  Surprisingly enough, as I was reading Balaam's second blessing/oracle, I realized that I had actually memorized one of the verses around 4 years ago!

I wish that when I was memorizing this I would have looked into the context and significance of this verse more because it really adds great depth to the meaning.  I have now changed my method of memorizing the Word though, so that should keep me from doing this again (more on that later).

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VBFFEAE

I'm thanking the Lord this week for my sweet friend and sister (below).  Our babies are three months apart (and may get married someday), we are both only-children, and our husbands are both industrial engineers.   We were pretty much made to be best buds!  ;)  


Really though, we have some crazy similarities (as do our wonderful husbands), and God has truly used our friendship over the past few years to strengthen and encourage me.

Love ya, girl!!

A friend loves at all times, 
and a brother is born for adversity.

(Proverbs 17:17)

___________________~*~__________________~*~_________________

Can anyone guess what VBFFEAE means?  I have to admit that I made it up, so it may not even be a legit acronym...  I'll give you a hint though: it has to do with this post.   (:

*Also thankful for this great photo, taken by a friend.*

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Our Little Shark

Hugh loves to play with Enoch the Shark...



...Enoch the Shark loves to eat little fishies... especially the Daddy-flavored ones!

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Spring is in the air

Well, Spring is officially in full-swing, and we are loving it. Our closets have been changed out and our sandals found.  I absolutely adore days where the temperatures are in the 70s and the sun is out.  Perfect.

Enoch's first summer outfit of the year.

One great thing about the warmer weather is that Enoch requires less clothes! It's so easy to get him dressed now, and diaper changes are a breeze. Seriously, I'm saving at least five minutes a day not having to wrestle pants over his legs and big bottom.  :)  One other slightly cute thing about our little boy in summer clothes is that his chubby little thighs/knees/calves/arms/wrists are no longer hidden under his warm, concealing winter attire.  hehe.  Hugh and I think his rolls are pretty precious, and he has the michelin man beat, for sure.   

Can you tell he's loving the wardrobe change too?

I made Hugh hold him up so that his full cuteness in summer clothes could be seen..  Don't you just love the snoopy outfit?  It says "Play Ball." 

Rompers are definitely my new fav!

We also had a lot of rain here this past week.  I'm excited about all of the beautiful flowers it should usher in.  Hoping to get some cute baby/flower pics soon!   Any good ideas?

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On Raising Children

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them DILIGENTLY to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

(Deuteronomy 6:4-7)

diligent- characterized by steady, earnest, and energetic effort.

*******************************************************

{I pray that these verses shape the way I do life, especially parenting, in every aspect.}

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Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

First of all, please let me just say "mmmm...."

These are so rich and delicious.  Just the way we like our cookies, huh ladies?  And did I mention that they are SUPER QUICK AND EASY?!?!?!!!  even better.

I made a batch today with one of my friend's daughters.  She decided that they were especially good warm.   I doubly agree.

Enoch also helped us bake

Ingredients:

 
• 1/2 cup butter (semi-melted)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon pure mint extract
• 1 box Devil's food cake mix (dry, do not follow directions on the box)
• 1/2 package of Andes creme de menthe baking chips (next to the chocolate chips in the baking aisle)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. Soften/half-melt your butter (30 sec in microwave should do the trick)
3. Combine butter, eggs, & mint extract in large bowl and stir well
4. Stir in cake mix (this will take some muscle)
5. Stir in baking chips
6. Place spoonfuls on ungreased cookie sheet (preferably with parchment paper for easier clean up)
7. Bake at 350 F for 8-10 minutes
8. Let cool on wire rack for 2 minutes before removing from cookie sheet
9. Taste-test... just to be sure they're superbly mouth-watering

Notes:

Cool daddy says "don't burn the cookies!"

This made 2.5 dozen medium size cookies for us.  It could easily make 2 dozen large cookies or 4 dozen small ones, depending on how you like your cookies.  I consider the cookies "done" when the edges are firm, even if they look a little moist in the middle still.  

Visuals:

Semi-melted butter

Wet ingredients all mixed together

Add the mint chips (after stirring in the cake mix)

spoonfuls of batter ready to bake

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It's Official...

...Enoch is rolling over!

This morning when I put him down for his nap, he did his normal fussing, but after about 10 or 15 minutes, I realized that it wasn't slowing down.  It was escalating.  So, as any good mother would do, I went to peek.

This is how I found him in his crib, crying.  

And he was exuding only one word: frustrated.  I couldn't help laughing and grabbing a shot of his first roll (or I guess the result of his roll, since I wasn't there to actually see him in the rolling process.)  Poor little man.  He was just so helpless on his tummy.  There was even a big puddle of drool/tears that had collected.  {All the grandmothers together say, "oohhhhh..."}

So I picked him up and calmed him down and then put him back on his back at the other end of the crib.  Asleep within 5 minutes.  :)  This also happened during his second nap, so I guess I'm going to have to start flipping him back over for every nap until he learns how to get off his tummy (or learns to like it).

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Today Enoch also got to meet his Great Aunt F!  She lives near us but we've both been so busy with life, that she just now got to come by and meet him.  He enjoyed sitting in her lap while we ate lunch and talked about life.  He was such a little gentleman. 

Enoch & Great Aunt F

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Slow Cooker Jambalaya

This is one of our new favorite recipes!  It is hearty and healthy and full of protein.  Hugh likes it because it includes shrimp.  ;)  In creating the recipe, I did some searching online for crockpot jambalaya recipes, but there aren't many out there, and there were none that I could find that actually used raw, healthy ingredients.  So after a few trials, I think this is the recipe that I will stick with (give or take based on what's in my pantry).

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup small red beans (dry, raw)
• 2/3 cup navy beans (dry, raw)
• 2/3 cup black beans (dry, raw)
• 3 cups chicken stock* (frozen or thawed)
• 3.5 cups water (just make sure you have between 6 and 7 cups of liquid, whether stock or water)
• 1.5 cups brown rice (uncooked)
• large (28 oz) can diced tomatoes** (undrained)
• 2 cups chopped onion***
• 1-2 chicken breasts (raw)
• 12 oz bag frozen shrimp (medium, raw, tail-off, peeled, de-veined)
• 3-5 heaping tablespoons creole seasoning****
• shredded cheddar cheese (optional)*****

Directions:

1. Sort, rinse, and then soak beans overnight (meaning you have to start this the night before)
2. Add stock, water, rice, tomatoes, and onion to 5-6 qt crockpot and store in fridge overnight
3. Go to bed and wake up  :)
4. Rinse beans, **boil on stove for 10 minutes** and then add them to crockpot, & stir  (red beans (and kidney beans) could have a toxin in them which you must boil to remove.  Better safe than sorry!!)
5. Place chicken breasts on top
6. Cook in crockpot (with lid) on high 4-5 hours OR low for 8-9 hours
7. Do fun stuff... that's why slow cookers were invented afterall, right?
8. With 30 minutes to spare 'til dinner, remove chicken breasts and stir in shrimp and seasoning
9. Shred chicken, stir back into crockpot, and serve with cheese if desired
10. If it's a little soupy at first, let it stand uncovered, and it will thicken.

Notes:
*I freeze my extra stock when I make my homemade chicken noodle soup.
**You can use fresh tomatoes, but it's not cost-effective for me since I don't have a garden.  Be sure to blanche them and remove the skin though!
***I use the frozen bag of chopped onion, celery, & bell peppers that my mom introduced me to a while back... it's my 'no more tears' solution!
****Two words, one name: Tony Chachere's.  One of my college friends from Louisiana told me that it was the only kind of creole seasoning worth keeping on the spice rack. I've lived by his advice.  ;)
*****Hugh likes shredded cheddar on any&every thing that's warm and stir-able.


Price Per Serving:
1.50  Beans (3 types, 1/3 bag each, ~1.50 per bag)
free   Chicken stock
0.50  Brown rice (1/3 of 32 oz bag, ~1.50 per bag)
1.30  Diced tomatoes (28 oz can)
2.00  Chicken breast (1 breast out of 5 from a frozen Harvestland box, ~$10 per box)
5.00  Shrimp (12 oz frozen bag)
1.40  Onions (1/5 of 5 lb bag, $7 per bag)
-----------
11.70  TOTAL

We get 8-10 servings from this recipe, but I'm going to use 9 in this calculation because that's how many we scored this last time I made it.

$1.30 per serving  ($.075 per serving if you leave out the shrimp & only use 1 chicken breast)

Pretty multi-colored beans

Soaking the beans

This is what my crockpot looks like when I put it in the fridge overnight

Crockpot when ready to turn on 

(stock is still a little frozen, beans stirred in, chicken on top)

I forgot to snag a picture when it was ready last time, so I'll try to add a picture of the final product the next time I make it.

Enjoy!!

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God is Holy - Leviticus

For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God.  You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

(Leviticus 11:45)

I have to admit that when I began reading through Leviticus I was a little overwhelmed by all of the details for sacrifices and uncleanness.  Then I came to the verse above.  It is remarkable that God acted first - He brought the people out of Egypt.  He claimed them as His own people, to be set apart...

You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.  

(Leviticus 20:26)

So the Israelites' holiness was important.  If they were to be God's people, then they must be holy.  This is the heart of Leviticus, I think, and thus the need for details about how to be clean.  How else could God dwell among them?

Enter the great goodness of God in giving the sacrificial system and  priests- because we are not clean, not in the midst of a holy & just God.  One other theme that kept coming up was how the sacrifices must be pure... they had to be 'clean' animals without blemish.

Again and again, this whole book made me realize just how amazing it is that God provided the ultimate sacrifice in Jesus.  The following passage in 1 Peter does well in summing up not only how He perfectly fit the pattern of Leviticus but also what our response should be in light of God's holiness.

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

(1 Peter 1:13-19, emphasis mine)

For more on how Jesus perfectly fulfills the Old Covenant and ushers in the New Covenant, read Hebrews.  It is rich. 

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Our Trip North

Hugh and I were blessed recently with a trip up North.  Hoboken, NJ to be exact.  He had an interview for a job (more on that later), and they paid for both of us to visit.  I tried my best to take lots of pictures (because I forgot to do that on our trip to the South Land), so here goes my best efforts at photo journaling:

The view of Hoboken from our hotel.  We were on the 14th floor.  Most of these buildings are 3 stories high with commercial and retail on the main floor and residential in the basement and top 2 floors.  I really enjoyed how colorful a lot of them were (again, hard to see from this picture).

On the first night, we walked around campus (Steven's Institute of Technology) and saw this amazing view of NYC from one of the overlooks.

It's a little hard to tell from this shot, but campus stretches from the brown building on the left up a 30' cliff to a little past the tall building on the right.  

An even better view from the overlook with the sunset.

 This is the Hoboken side of the Hudson.  See that outcropping into the river with some lights on it?  That's the park I'll show you more of in a few seconds.

Another view of the lovely sunset over Hoboken that the Lord blessed us with.  

And of course, after dark all the lights went on and the view just kept getting better.  Hugh and I agreed that this view was quite spectacular and that if possible, we'd want to live near the water (which we later found out was quite expensive, oh well- wishful thinking is still fun).  

The next day, we attended a Redeemer church plant that we really enjoyed, ate lunch with some of the locals, and explored more of the town.  

Random fact: Hoboken is only one mile wide and one mile long!  

On Monday and Tuesday, Hugh interviewed pretty much all day, so I explored with Little Man between naps.  On Monday evening, we ate dinner with two couples who are doing international ministry on the campus, and we were so encouraged by the fruit they are seeing in such a secular place. 

Here are more photos from my adventures with Enoch:

This is another view of that fun little park.  It has multiple little play areas, great seating, decent landscaping, and amazing views of NYC.   Every time we walked past it there were lots of different people (from varying demographics) enjoying it.  

The Empire State Building

The Freedom Tower (new building going up where the Twin Towers used to stand).

This was the walking/running path that went along the Husdon.  This lady with the stroller was only one of the 6,000 moms in Hoboken that we saw while walking around town. (The realtor I met with told me that more and more people are choosing to stay in Hoboken even after having children, a new trend in the past 5 or so years.)  Even though it was in the 40s the whole time we were visiting, we ran into a lot of other moms and babies which was fun and also confirmed what our taxi driver told us: Hoboken is a pretty safe and active town.

Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed the trip.  Looking back, we see how God blessed us by giving us direction in our decision about where to go next (more on that later), and Hugh and I agreed that we could see ourselves living in a city like this someday.  :)

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Sweet Sunday

Today was such a sweet day.. the kind you want to savor, like a piece of rich, moist chocolate cake..  mmmm....  

Here are a few reasons, in no particular order:

• Refreshing rain.
• Good word from the Lord this morning
• Granny Sandy & Grand-dad Craig visited.
• The sun lasted 1 extra hour this evening.
• Fresh pineapple
• A certain two sweet men in my life who bless me immensely

Here are some photos from today:

Granny Sandy & Grand-dad Craig both got to play with Enoch

Hugh got a nap  :)

Isn't this a cute picture?

Enoch played with Daddy a little...

..and then surprisingly, he snuggled Daddy.  :)  

 See, sweet and savory, right?

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