a few of my favorite things...

A Few of My Favorite Things:

-~- My niece, who is a foster-child, looking up at me with sparkling eyes and saying, “Are you in my family?” Then responding to my nod of affirmation, “I’m glad.”

-~- Cooking beans in the crock pot. One cup to two and a half cups of water, turn it on high and leave it overnight. Never again will I try to do them on the stove! (Unless, of course, I get my wood cook stove that I want so badly. Then I’ll let a pot of beans sit there all day…)

-~- Memories. I was thinking this morning about my husband and the Pringle can. I’m sure some of you have heard this story but for those who haven’t: When we were in Haiti the only kind of chips we could find were Pringles. I would often be working in the kitchen and Amos would come through and grab a handful of chips. I say grab, more like pour. Every day I would watch him dump the chips out into his hand, then put them away. Finally, after seeing this for months on end, I questioned him. “Why in the world do you dump the chips out instead of just taking a little stack? Every time you dump them, the ones on the bottom break.” He looked at me from behind the freezer door (we kept them in the freezer to avoid having houseguests) then lifted up the can of Pringles and without saying a word jammed his hand into the top a few times. I just about died laughing. It never occurred to me that his hand wouldn’t fit inside the little tube!

-~- An empty sink! About once a month I get WAY behind on dishes and they stack up and it takes me about a week to catch up. But, oh, when I have- I feel like dancing when I see that empty sink!

-~- My niece, Lydia, spending the night, talking to me from the bathtub… “Would you like a slushie? Would you like it microwaved? Don’t worry it won’t melt the ice. It’s a special microwave. Would you like peppermint pattis on the top? Lemon on the side?”

-~- After Lydia’s bath and after her hair was braided but before she ate her ice cream- she decided that she needed to be weighed. So, while Amos and Justin and TJ sat at the table, she and I wandered off to the bathroom to check her weight. “53 pounds!” She exclaimed as we walked back out to the kitchen. Amos said, “I weighed that 160 pounds ago.” Lydia replied, “I don’t weigh 160 pounds! But I think Tasha probably does.” The guys all looked at me, waiting for me to start laughing before they dared to start.

-~- TJ calling me “Mom”.

-~- A good dose of Irish whiskey before bed. (Don’t panic, I only take it when I have a cough that racks my chest and makes it hard for me to breath. I’d rather suffer through the horrible burning and awful taste than force down the disgustingly sweetened cough syrup stuff. I think it should be outlawed, there is NO way it’s any good for you.)

-~- Hadassah Grace Siegrist. (She’s just the newest. Aurora, Giselle, Elyse, Lydia, Heidi, Grace, Anna, Ramsey, Lulu, Kaitlyn and Eliza are also favorites.)

-~- The bookshelves that my husband built me in the office. Have I ever mentioned that I love him to pieces?

-~- Seeing the copper teapot that we got at an antique shop on our honeymoon steaming on the woodstove.

-~- Chocolate Chip Cookies in all kinds of strange shapes because a five year old helped make them.

-~- Children’s books for 4 cents a piece at a thrift store in Watertown. I love children’s books all most as much as I love biographies of missionaries.