Sorry. (I'm always apologizing.)

I have so much to write about.... vacation, Jacob's first birthday, plus various and sundry rants that I just feel the need to go off about.
However....
I agreed to take on creating a cookbook for our church. I thought the entering of the recipes was going to be the hard part. I procrastinated, because I was having back problems that were irritated by sitting in front of the computer. Then people procrastinated on getting the recipes to me.
I got most of them entered on our vacation last week, and thought I'd breeze right through the editing. If I wasn't OCD about grammatical matters, I'd call it finished. But I'm sorry, it bothers me that there is no continuity between the abbreviations. We've got any or all of the following:
T
T.
Tbs.
tbsp
tbsp.
Tbsp.
tblsp.
Tablespoon
tablespoon
Perhaps you don't notice the minute differences between all the abbreviations. I do; that's how I'm wired. Maybe what bothers me as much as the varying abbreviations (or lack thereof), is that there isn't even any continuity in a single recpie. I know part of this is due to my entering - I'd vary back and forth between typing verbatim what was written, and abbreviating to save time. But in my defense: over half of the recipes were emailed to me, and I just copied and pasted from the email to the cookbook document.
Anyhow.
So I am in the middle of editing nearly 60 pages of recipes. I also am going through the instructions to make sure they make sense - and good thing, because a few of them are missing a line or two of instructions. But it will be finished by next weekend. It HAS to be... We're having a big cookbook-putting-together party at church.
So I'll be back some time after next Saturday. Thanks for sticking around, even though I've been much less than exciting the last few months.

Prayer Request

I got home from Cubbies tonight, completely exhausted and frustrated. Tonight, we had a new child, which brings our total up to 9.... 7 boys and 2 girls. Cubbies is the AWANA program for preschool age (usually 3 and 4 year olds).
I am frustrated because the entire hour and a half is barely controlled chaos. I feel like I spend the majority of it yelling at one or all of the class (mostly the boys). And I'm not yelling in anger. I have to raise my voice to even be heard. The story time is spent trying to keep the children in their seats and not touching each other or sneaking off to play with the toys. I'm pretty sure that the message doesn't even get across because it's interrupted so many times. (And this is a 5-minute or shorter story time... It's not like we're trying to get them to sit still for 20 minutes.)
At our church, Cubbies is supposed to be for the children of the helpers (basically we watch their young children so they are free to help with the older children). This year, only 3 of the 9 are helpers' children. The rest just kept showing up, with no advance warning. There are only two of us to lead all of them, and as rambunctious as some of the boys are, I feel like we need at least 4 helpers most of the time. I would guess that half of the children go to church regularly, and the other half are un-churched or "barely churched". (I don't know this for sure, but it's just a feeling I get.)
I don't know what to do. I don't want to tell people that they can't come, especially when this may be the only chance that some of these children may hear about Jesus, or be able to see Jesus' love. But when you have a class so rowdy, no one can learn about Jesus, and I definitely don't feel like I'm showing Jesus' love.
So please pray for us. Pray that Nicki and I will have patience and wisdom, and pray that we will somehow get another helper. Pray that the love of Jesus will show through, despite the craziness on Wednesday nights.

Norwegian Egg Coffee

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Or something like that.
My coffee pot broke early this year. Since caffeine is [should be] a no-no while nursing, I didn't replace it, despite offers from friends and family members. But some days... You just crave coffee. On mornings like this - a cool, rainy autumn morning. (Maybe it's the weather. Or maybe it's the 5 hourse of sleep I got.)
Whenever I've craved coffee over the last few months, I've made it in the microwave - water, grounds, nuke for 5 minutes or so. Various methods of trying to strain off the grounds were only moderately successful. So I Google-d "how to make coffee without a coffee pot." And I found this recipe.

Norwegian Egg Coffee
10 c water
1/2 c coffee grounds
1 egg
1/4 c water

Boil the 10 c water in kettle. In a small bowl, mix grounds, egg, and
1/4 c water. Add to boiling water. Boil 2-3 minutes. Pour in 1
c cold water. (This makes the grounds settle to the bottom of the
kettle.)
(I halved the recipe (and used a small egg), since there's only one of me. And I don't need 10 cups of coffee!)

I'll admit. I was highly apprehensive of trying it. But I was desperate. And I figured: I like coffee. I like poached eggs. At the worst, it would be like mixing the two for breakfast.
I made it. I poured it. (No grounds! The egg solidifies and holds all the grounds in it.) And.....
Pretty good!
It doesn't taste eggy. And it doesn't taste like Folgers. I will be doing it again, at least until I get my coffee pot (whenever that will be.....). Although it was a little weak - even though it sounds like it should be plenty of grounds... Maybe I need to experiment with boiling it a bit longer.
And I will keep this recipe in mind for camping. I'm thinking it would be very useful since we don't own a percolater.

Overheard:

Nathan: What's this? [patting my backside as I changed Jacob's diaper]
Me: It's Mommy's tushie.
Nathan: Mommy. [again with the patting] What's this?
Me: It's Mommy's tushie, Bud. Is it a big tushie?
Nathan: No. It's a magic tushie.
Me: A magic tushie? Why is it a magic tushie?
Nathan: Because there's poop inside!