Breezy Saturday

It's so nice to be able to have the windows open and feel a fresh breeze blow through. There's only a short time we can actually do this in Florida and I'm enjoying it immensely. It's a high of 65 today and sunny. I feel a bit guilty freely enjoying this weather when my parents have had wintry mixes, sleet, and snow off and on for the last week and Matthew's parents have a blizzard happening in Ohio... and no electricity. Guess I should do my best to send some warmth up their way!

Today I was on my way to the grocery store when I noticed that my herbs have sprouted in the pot outside our door. I planted them about two weeks ago - even though January is a bit early for planting. It's Florida... the cold won't last much longer. This year we're going to have cilantro (Matt's pick), garlic chives, and lavender (my pick). With my leftover seeds, I secretly tossed them onto the little landscaped island outside our building. The apartment landscapers never seem to care about that spot, so I thought having some extra herbs pop up would be a nice surprise ;) We'll see! One day, we hope to have a nice spot of land of our own where we can plant to our hearts' content... yes, one day.

I wish my husband was here to enjoy a relaxing, breezy Saturday as well. He's been at work since 7 this morning photographing youth sport teams. When he gets home he'll have just a small chance to rest before we head out to a get-together with our Sunday School class. We both are looking forward to this. It's Mexican themed and I am in the process of making Sopapilla Cheesecake Pie... the recipe looked easy enough so we'll see how it tastes later. I was a bit disappointed as I put the ingredients into the dish because the smell very much resembled breakfast cinnamon rolls and there's nothing really Mexican about cinnamon rolls. Oh well. The recipe got great reviews and I think it'll be yummy served with ice cream.

This past week was a bit rough for me. A very stressful event happened at school last week that carried over to this one. I was constantly reminded to trust God and everything will turn out fine. For me, this was difficult to do because I kept going over every possible scenario in my head that could take place and worried over how I'd prepare for it. After wrestling with this for about four days, I finally began to feel some peace and relax a little. One morning as I was getting out of the shower, this song came into my head and it was perfect:

"I will cast all my cares upon you.

I lay all of my burdens down at your feet

And anytime I don't know what to do

I will cast all my cares upon you."

With this comforting chorus, my prayers, and prayers of others, the incident came to a close this week with little drama. God is so good! I can look back now and see how He handled things and how silly my worrying was.

Matt & I started Crown Ministries this week. It's a faith based approach to dealing with finances the way God intended us to. We've been looking forward to doing this with the small group we meet with every two weeks. There's homework to accomplish, scriptures to memorize, and questions to get us thinking deeply about the direction our financial life should take. Call me a nerd, but when I saw the hard back books, nifty carrying case, and the challenge of homework, I was quite excited :) I'm curious to see what God will teach us over the next 10 weeks.

To finish this post, here is a picture of the latest sewing project - a request by my husband. He asked if I could make him a pouch for his graphics tablet so it's protected in his bag when he travels. We went to JoAnn's Fabrics last week and I smiled to myself as I watched him roam through the aisles of fabric obviously overwhelmed. He decided on simple stripes (yay for easy sewing!) with a soft liner. I hope to have this simple case finished this weekend. It's nice being able to use the sewing machine again and get in some MUCH needed practice. I think I'll go work on finishing it now before we leave.