From Wit’s End

Sometime this month, Jack came up with his second word. It’s what he has for breakfast every morning after a sippy-cup of milk: “Banana”. Except he says it “Ba-la-la”, sticking out his tongue with every “L”. And sometimes he doesn’t know or care when he has to stop the word, so it usually comes out as something like “Ba-la-la-la-la-la…”

Well, shoot. I got a nasty-gram from my webspace provider that I was using too many CGI resources and overloading the MYSQL server (whatever that means, it basically means I was breaking their little piece of the internet.) They shut down my website for a few hours yesterday afternoon and evening until I took out the offending code from my front page. After some experimentation, I figured out that it was mostly the code that rotates the banner pictures at the top of the page. (Reducing the number of posts on each page from 50 to 25 helps also.) So the picture at the top will be static and unchanging until I can figure out a more resource-efficient way of having them change. If the slowness of it depends on the sheer number of banners available for the rotation, then I should be able to fix it fairly quickly. Otherwise, it may take a while. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

UPDATE 07/27/07: Well, it turns out that the scoreboard on the left sidebar of the impersonal site was what was causing most of the trouble. So until I can fix it, I’ve resorted to the sidebar widgets to make a more “standard” sidebar. The end of it will be a page that loads much faster, with a link to the scoreboard instead of the scoreboard itself.

Things I am doing simultaneously with the Mac right now:

• Ripping the complete works of Archangelo Corelli from ten CD’s into MP3 files.
• Downloading the last three days worth of podcasts from Glenn Beck’s radio show.
• Uploading a giant ZIP file of home movies to my webspace for my Dad to download and enjoy.
• Transferring all the latest pictures and movies from my camera’s memory card through my printer.

All this is happening at once, and the computer isn’t even blinking. In fact, its singing the Corelli tracks back to me the whole time. This computer ROCKS!

I just added some new banners to the 18 that were already in the rotation. So reload away! It will be most “refresh”ing, I’m sure! Collect them all! Trade them with your friends!

Also, I wasn’t kidding when I said we would be posting more pictures. Some of them are posted retroactively. See here and here

“Daddy got some new sandals, and he gave me the box to play in.”

Indulgences were to Roman Catholicism as Carbon Offsets are to Global Warmism. Bugs me somehow… like you can buy your way out.

… or “See my mess and fear me!”

Longtime readers will know that I used to post a lot of photos, because all that HTML that I had to use to do so was novel. As the novelty wore off, the pictures gradually petered out. Indeed, it almost took the rest of our personal blog with it. But no more! Because I had a second reason to work to make posting photos easier, I found a really great photo blogging plugin for WordPress called “Photo Blogger”. So watch out world, here come some more pictures!

Sunday morning when we were in church, the congregation was reciting the Apostle’s Creed. Everyone said, “Amen” at the end, and a split second later, Jack said, “Ahh-mmm”. Wow! Up until now, he only used his one word at the end of grace at dinner. This was the first time he used it in a church context.

Then, just a few minutes later, Dr. Ferguson was saying something about baptism right before two babies were to be baptized. He mentioned something about people bringing babies to Jesus so that he could bless them, and out of nowhere, Jack said, “Ahh-mmm,” again! It’s sure to be a coincidence, but it’s still pretty freaky.

Then last night when we were sitting at dinner, Jack was sitting on the floor reading his books because he had indicated that he wasn’t really hungry for dinner. All of a sudden, he stood up with a book in his hand and walked over to us. He walked up to the table and reached up to put the open book up on the table. It was his little cardboard book about Jesus, and he had it open to the page showing a cartoon of Jesus blessing the little children that were brought to him. Okay, so now I’m totally freaked out.

This ice cream does not call for heavy cream, so it is inexpensive enough to invite all your friends. Yum!

Homemade Ice Cream

In a large saucepan combine:

• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1 envelope gelatin

Stir in:

• 4 egg yolks
• 4 cups milk

Bring mixture to a boil over medium/high heat, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add:

• 2 T. vanilla

Cover pudding with plastic wrap, cool and chill.

In a 1 gallon ice cream freezer combine:

• vanilla pudding
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 qts. milk (or enough to fill can to fill line)

Turn ice cream freezer crank until ice cream is stiff.

For about six months, two friends and I have been helping each other fill their freezers with meals. Our system has been working so well I can’t help but want to share it. Meals in the freezer can make evenings so much easier, can save a little money and make menu planning really easy! Here is what we do:

Each of the three of us pick two freezer friendly recipes, make 12 servings of each and package the dinners in two-serving packets. This makes six dinners worth of each of six recipes. When we get together to swap, each of us gets two dinners worth of each recipe, for a total of twelve dinners in the freezer.

We are going on hiatus with the dinner swaps for a little while. Our friend Ellie is pregnant, and so her appetite is really unpredictable! I thought now would be a good time to think about what dinners we really liked and to start looking for some new recipes. Here are some of the hits:

• Turkey Burgers – wonderful with a little mozzarella melted on the top and served in a bun with fresh spinach leaves
• Shepherds Pie – with filling and mashed potato topping in separate freezer bags, you can assemble it in any dish you want
• Calzones – Italian sausage, pizza sauce, mozzarella and anything else you like
• Cabbage Rolls – humble but impressive
• Italian Stuffed Chicken Breasts – flattened chicken breasts rolled up with mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes and prosciutto in the center; served with creamy tomato sauce
• Pirogi casserole – made like lasagna, tastes like a pirogi
• Soups and Stews – lentil and bean soups, chicken and beef stews
• Marinated meats for the grill or broiler – no need to wait! by the time the meat is thawed, it’s marinated

Based on some good advice from a book on the subject, we found that it is best to put our dinners in freezer bags rather than containers for space efficiency, flash freezing them first when necessary. I’ve learned to love my little individual ceramic pie dishes to spoon thawed casserole filling into, top with bread crumbs and bake only as much casserole as I need.

I want to encourage you to try this. Three cooks seems to be ideal (we found that more make things confusing). This can work for any size family as long as the three families are the same size so that all dinner packets will contain the same number of servings.

Ben just put up a blog for a mission school called Jubilee Academy here in town. This is a school for inner city children of all ages, done in a sort of a homeschool/one-room schoolhouse atmosphere. These children are in a really bad school district with not much hope for improvement. Sandee, the “headmistress,” was a teacher in these schools but later came to the realization she could do it better herself. She needs to be encouraged in this effort!

Ben has spent some time tutoring, helping arrange a field trip at his employer’s factory and is now working on this blog. The more time he volunteers here, the more exited he gets! What a great bottom up way to improve our educational system for those who are really at its mercy. Be sure to check out “Jubilee in the News” on the right hand menu.

Chaplain Don sees his mission as “Bringing Courage to the Courageous.” An army chaplain currently stationed in Afghanistan, this guy really brings the fight over there to life for us. He keeps us updated on his work while giving an up close look at the lives and challenges of our soldiers over there. We check this blog regularly for fresh encouragement. You should too.

Sometime last month Jack spoke his first word, but it took us a while to figure out that he was trying to speak an actual english word… After I pray before dinner, I say “Amen”. Jack imitates me and says “Ahh-mmm”, bowing his head on the “mmm”. Pretty good first word, eh?

He’s also acquiring signs a little faster. He still uses a sort of staccato grunt at first when he sees a dog (or any other animal, really) in an attempt to imitate barking, but now at our prompting, he slaps his hip, which is the sign for “dog”. He already knows how to clap when we say , “Yay!” But just last night when I was trying to show him the sign for “more” at dinner, he clapped his hands. That’s close enough for now.

Jack really liked his first fireworks on Independence Day.

Jack finished his last can of formula today! This last one took about a month to finish, because we just put one scoop in with the regular milk every morning and evening. Before then, he used about one can a week. I think that means that he used about 50 cans of formula over the last year! Each one was about $20-$23 each. You do the math. He’s definitely worth it.