(That's a shout out to my friend Clay, who lives in Hawaii. I'm jealous. Hi Clay!)
Well here I am again. This morning I got up and made Benjamin his Nutella on bread for breakfast and looked out the window to see four kittens hanging out on our patio. I'd noticed them earlier, there might be more, but there are definitely some little baby cats that are new to the neighborhood. Here's a terrible picture.
We went to church and got to fellowship and eat lunch with everyone. I miss getting to drop Benjamin off at nursery and having that dedicated hour or so to just worship with a big crowd, but I'm enjoying the total change of pace with meeting in homes and really getting to know the 20ish (?) people who come. But we're losing some people, it turns out that Kristin and her family are going back to DC soon. I'm so bummed, I can't even imagine life here without my friend. She's been completely instrumental in helping us feel settled and at home. And with the miscarriage and everything, Kristin has been there for me and just so generous and loving. I can't believe we just met them three months ago. I know God has a plan for them, but it makes me so sad that it isn't here anymore. Sniffle.
This afternoon we just chilled at home, I finally broke out the Ikea train I'd bought before we moved. I know Benjamin has more than enough toys, but I think he enjoyed it.
We also introduced Benjamin to finger painting, I'd ordered some tubes online a while ago and just had them sitting around. Since tonight was a bath night, I figured we might as well try it out. We stripped Ben down to his diaper and put him front of the paper with a couple squirts of paint, but he wasn't into it at all. He eventually dipped a couple fingers in the green paint, but got upset. I think new things are hard for him, so maybe in a couple days we'll try again. Baby steps.
We got some frustrating news today, a guy named George who does car stuff took the van last night so he could look it over and give it a tune-up. But it turns out there's a lot wrong, including transmission stuff, rear brakes, and a bunch of other stuff I don't understand. So, assuming George isn't pulling one over on us, we'll be spending almost as much as we spent buying the van to get it actually road-ready and safe. Naturally part of it is us being stupid and not having it looked over before we bought it. And trusting the horrible man who sold it to us. Thomas is going to call him and see if he's willing to do the decent thing and help us pay for it. Jeeze.
We had a basic dinner, baked potatoes with bacon and cheese. Yum. I tried the cold-oven-start method of cooking the bacon, and it worked pretty well. Next time I'll do it a bit longer, the bacon wasn't all that crispy but I was nervous it would burn. Ben didn't touch either the potatoes or the bacon, he just wanted his milk. I'm not stressing about food as much these days, four months ago I was really worried he wasn't eating enough, or the right things, etc. But recently he's tried some new things, like today he had some biscuit for the first time. He didn't love it, but he ate a couple bites. And he's really into hot dogs, after we got home from church he ate two for his lunch. I might be doing the cornbread and hot dog lunch a lot. I just need to find a good cornbread recipe that is moist and not crumbly, and that doesn't require buttermilk. The UHT milk that we have doesn't respond to adding vinegar to make it like buttermilk, so I'm out of luck. I'll look at Spinney's the next time I go and see if they carry it, since they have a lot of random American stuff. But I doubt it. So any tried and true cornbread recipes you have, please share!
Tonight on AFN they're showing the Thursday night NBC shows, so I'm really excited to just lounge around and watch my shows. I'm super mad that they're not starting "Community" this fall, as planned. They'd better bring it back soon. I know they're trying to tank it on purpose. Grr. In the kitchen I have my iPod player set up and I've been listening to a lot of country these days while I cook or wash dishes. Maybe it's homesickness, or a byproduct of watching "Nashville" (which is amazing!), but it's lots of fun. Today it was the soundtrack to "Crazy Heart", the movie from a couple years ago with Jeff Bridges. It's really good, if you haven't seen it I recommend it.
Enjoy the weekend!
-Rachel
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