Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas friends & family! We've had quite the "vacation" so far. The Reif family flew/drove in from Iowa, West Virginia, Washington, and Arizona to get together in San Diego. Getting all the kids together has been a blast (Logan is 3, Max is 2 1/2, Rachel & Noah are both almost 10 months), and something we don't get to do but once a year. Unfortunately we've all been sick, and little Noah even had to go to the doctors. Rachel also had her 2 front teeth come in last night ("...all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth"), so there have been a few sleepless nights for all of us. Regardless we've been to the beach a few times, a few parks, the zoo, and we got a date night (Chris me, and my brother and sister in-law) while the grandparents and great-grandma took care of the 4 kids. My younger brother also surprised us by flying in for 2 days, which was great since we hadn't seen him in a year.

With all the chaos I haven't had a lot of time to really reflect on what this season is all about...Christ. When I hold my own baby it is hard to imagine our Savior as a little baby. I think about the faith that Mary must have had, the character of Joseph, and just the amazing plan that God had from the beginning of time to send us His Son, our God in flesh, our sweet Savior. I pray that as my children grow up they will learn more about Jesus, about selfless giving and serving, and about our awesome God than they will about Santa, receiving presents, and all the other distractions that we can fill our Christmas with!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures!

Tis the Season...for photos

Well...this is my first attempt at Christmas pictures. Tomorrow I am hoping to find an outdoor location in Tucson for Round #2! Getting both kids to sit still, look at the camera (let alone ask them to smile or at least not look angry) is no small task. Wish I had a better camera and could set it to take continuous pictures...but I don't. If I can get some great natural lighting tomorrow, then maybe it will go better?! Anyway, here's some of the attempts.

Birthday Party Part 2: The Guests

Some day Logan will have a party with kids his own age. We are so blessed to have so many amazing students in our lives that are like family to hang out with Logan on his birthday!

Birthday Party Part 2: The food

The color theme: green and black. Why? It was more like, why not.

Jello Jigglers. I used a muffin pan that was dinosaur shaped, sprayed it and followed the instructions for jigglers on the package.

This pan was shell shaped (I think you make macaroons in it?). I stuck a gummy worm in them for affect (and because I bought them at the dollar store thinking I could figure out something to do with them).

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I used cookie cutters so they were also dinosaur shaped.

Birthday Party Part 1: Dino Cake

The supplies: pans, cake mix (decided the assembly would be enough so I opted not to do homemade cakes), wax paper, eggs, oil, spray.

Not pictured: frosting, candy corn, food coloring, toothpicks

The assembly. I found the idea HERE. I made a rough draft on paper to get an idea and then cut out paper to trace all the pieces. I made the cakes 2 nights before, let them cool, wrapped and put in the freezer. Then, I cut and frosted before they were thawed so that I didn't have to deal with crumbs.

Final Product. The brown lumps are not dinosaur poop, just mountains (or extra cake that I was afraid if I didn't use as part of the scenery I would end up eating by myself). Used candy corn for nails, teeth, and eyes. Also, his head wasn't very stable so I stuck a fondue stick in it and since it looked odd I put a happy birthday sign on it so it looked planned. It still looked like it would topple over so I put a sippy cup upside down with gummy worms in it to rest his head on it (he was a hungry dinosaur).

The Happy Birthday Boy. I asked if he wanted to wear his Halloween Costume to the party (glad I splurged and spent the $3 at the thrift store for this outfit. Couldn't have made a costume for cheaper...well unless it were solely made out of paper bags or something). I like how well he matched the cake!

Keeping It Colorful

I am thankful for a husband who does almost all our grocery shopping ("almost" meaning the only time I am getting groceries is for little items that I need for baking something specific). Chris is an efficient shopper, probably in part because he is great at having a routine! Anyway, two of our favorite grocery stores are Trader Joe's and Sunflower Market. Part of the reason we love these stores is because of all the fresh produce and choices...plus Chris has figured out which place has the better prices on specific items.

Here are a few of the healthier meals we've made lately. I enjoy trying to see what colors we can have included because I've heard (not sure where) that more color means more vitamins and nutrients (wish that applied for frosted doughnuts or skittles).

1. Logan about to enjoy salmon...he was more excited about the picture though. He's been "testing" us lately and sometimes he sits at the table over an hour before he'll eat his food. Eventually he eats what we give him, but he can be stubborn!

2. I started putting my omelette on top of spinach (I like the crunch & I figure it counts as a salad for the day). If I remember, this omelette has some cheddar cheese (not low fat b/c I hate the way low fat cheddar tastes), red & orange peppers, salsa, fat free plain yogurt (instead of sour cream), and avocado. Breakfast of champions!

3. Turkey burger, green beans, sweet potato fries, strawberries.

4. Salmon (click HERE for the recipe), Quinoa, green beans, corn

Now if I could just curb my desire for sweets & sugar! I won't put pictures all the "crap" (for lack of a better word) that I've eaten recently...mostly because it hasn't been homemade!

Idolatry of Image

We've been doing a series at our weekly meetings about idolatry. Chris and I did a joint talk about the idol of image this past week. (You can click HERE to download any of our weekly meeting talks). I think God is helping me process through a lot of the deep deep sin issues in my life. I am thankful He doesn't throw everything at me at once, but that He continues to help me work towards total freedom in Christ.

Even sharing some of this with our students this past week was rather freeing. If I am totally honest with myself, the reason I often worry so much about how I look is because I do want to impress people and for people to think I'm pretty so they will like me more. Ha ha, for some reason when I say it out loud (or type it in this case) it sounds pretty ridiculous. It seems like the movie (can't think of the name) where the guy tells himself things like "people like you, you are a winner". I do want Christ to be glorified in me, but for that to happen I need to stop focusing so much on ME, ME, ME. It is moments like this I realize how much I need God's grace, mercy and forgiveness because so often I take Christ off the throne of my life and put all these other things in His place. All I can say is: I'm glad God's not done with me yet!

Family Photos

We are thinking of getting some real (as in we aren't taking them ourselves) family photos sometime in the near future...but until then we hold the camera out and hope for the best. We captured these after church yesterday.

The Ultimate Pumpkin Waffles Recipe

I've been having some rough nights with Rachel getting up over and over, so this morning after another rough night Chris let me sleep in! Since 9:45 am is brunch time I figured it was the perfect opportunity to make something with the Libby's can of pumpkin sitting in my cupboard. This is the recipe I found and our entire family loved the recipe! I don't have a belgum waffle maker, but it worked just fine in our regular waffle maker.

If you like pumpkin waffles, or want to try them I suggest clicking HERE!

YUMMY!

Let the cookies do the talking

I mentioned that our Fall Retreat is this weekend, well I got a little inspiration.

Every Tuesday I like to make cookies (or brownies, bread, muffins, etc.) to send with Chris to our Community Group. It's been hard letting go of being able to attend myself, so this is my way of feeling like I am still contributing something. Anyway, I saw these markers on another website (Bakerella's website) and wanted to try them out:

I bought them at Michael's and also decided to buy a big bin of cookie cutters. I figured since the bin of over 100 was less than $10, it didn't make sense to by just the single cookie cutter shape I wanted for $0.79. I'll use the others another time anyway. Here is the CAR cookie without frosting. I just used the basic sugar cookie cut-out in the Better Homes Cook Book.

I love the simple powdered sugar icing recipe. Notice I also made 1 dinosaur. You can guess who that's for! Yes, Logan always wants to try what I make. He's really into dinosaurs lately, so I'm thinking for his 3rd birthday coming up in November I might need to figure out how to make a very large dinosaur cake...that should be fun!

And....here's how the cookies turned out. A few things to note if you ever try these markers: make the icing very thin & let it set. A lot of the cookies looked messed up because anywhere the icing was thick, the markers would sink and make a blob. Needless to say the cookies taste fine, I mean I couldn't give the ugly ones to the students!

My guess is these would look great on fondant, and if you have amazing penmanship or art skills you could literally make a masterpiece. Although, I still think regular frosting probably looks better. However, here is a way that one of my favorite blogs use them and I think it looks pretty awesome. You can decide yourself:

Here is the picture of Bakerella's Candy Apples, quite expressive!

And here's how she made them: YUM

If you think about it, would you pray for our Fall Retreat this weekend? Some of my favorite memories as a student were at our retreats...there are times I wish I were still at OU! We still have room for people to sign up, so pray that more people will sign up, that all the details will come together, for safe travel, and that students will feel connected to one another, and that students will take a look at their lives and decide to really follow Christ whole-heartedly!

Autumn Food

Although it may not feel like Fall here in Tucson, it's almost October! Some of my favorite memories of Fall include the smell of wood burning in fireplaces, the red, orange, and yellow leaves, and the amazing sound of crunching leaves beneath my feet (one of my favorite things I must admit).

What else do I like? Fall food! Sure, you could eat these foods all year round, but I like to save them for the fall-winter months! I thought I'd share some of my favorite recipes with you!

ROASTED AUTUMN VEGETABLE SOUP:

This is a Weight Watchers recipe, but it is AMAZING (in my opinion). Clock on this LINK to go to their site for the recipe. I like it because each serving is 1 1/2 cups and only 2 points (translating for those of you not familiar with WW: low fat but lots of food & filling!). There is so much flavor. I think this recipe takes a lot of time, but is worth it. I take half of the soup and put it in the freezer for another week.

I like making grilled cheese with the soup, or garlic & tomato grilled cheese: slice a tomato & take the seeds out, when making the grilled cheese put a little cheese on each side of the bread with the tomato in the middle so it isn't soggy. Then sprinkle a little garlic powder on the bread when you flip it. YUM!

PUMPKIN BREAD:

I've realized that I love all things pumpkin (pie, muffins, ice cream), but I think one of my favorites is pumpkin bread. Last year I decided to make it myself since I realized I never had, and I used the recipe out of the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, and you can find the recipe on this LINK. I am surprised that on the site it was given 4 out of 5 stars, because I thought it was amazing. This one is defiantly NOT a WW recipe (3 cups of sugar, 4 eggs, 1 Cup oil to name a few of the ingredients).

I think one of the keys to this recipe is making sure to wrap it and store over night before cutting into it. Just to make sure the recipe wasn't trying to fake me out, I tried a small piece right out of the oven and then again in the morning after it sat all night...and it was a lot better after sitting. So, if you want to make it, make sure to give it the time it needs for all the flavors to marry! Also, I might try a new recipe soon so I'll let you know if it's better!

CRANBERRY PORK:

I got this recipe from my mom, if she had a blog then I could put her link here....but she doesn't. For this recipe I use 3 ingredients: pork tenderloin (I'm sure other kinds of pork will work, I just like using something without bones in it), cranberries (I use a can & I like it with whole cranberries in it), dry onion soup mix (one packet). Mix the cranberries & onion soup, then put it on top of the pork (I just put the pork in a small glass pan). I bake it at about 375 for about 30-45 minutes (but I check the pork packaging and follow their instructions for baking), and then use a meat thermometer to make sure it's done. Anyway, it's one of the easiest recipes and has lots of flavor.

The next time I make any of these I will take a picture and show you! Happy Autumn!

Next weekend is our Fall Retreat and we're heading to Prescott, Arizona! I'm excited because it looks like the highs will be in the 70's-80's and lows in the 40's!!!! I can wear sweaters! So at least for a weekend I will experience Fall like I always remember it!

In Need of a Makeover

I was never one to be into fashion. As a matter of fact, I took great pride in the fact that I was a "jeans, t-shirt, tennis shoes" type of girl. I remember the few (and I really mean "few", maybe a handful of times) in high school when I'd wear a skirt and people would comment on it...because I NEVER wore skirts.

I chose to go to college at Ohio University over Miami of Ohio partially because the campus seemed to fit my more relaxed sense of style (meaning I could roll out of bed and if need be, wear my pj’s and a baseball cap to class and I wouldn’t be too out of place). ***Just a note: my friends from OU are fashionable and always look super cute...hence why I always wanted to borrow YOUR clothes.

THEN...I moved to California. Davis was a nice first step for me, because it was a little more down to earth and I didn't feel too out of place (except when I got made fun of for owning a yellow rain coat or wearing hiking boots when I wasn’t hiking).

After we got married we moved to San Luis Obispo. I remember the first time we went to church and I looked around and thought, “I’m never going to fit in here, everyone is so pretty and fashionable.” Honestly all of my friends (and if you are one of my friends from SLO, I'm talking about YOU) were/are always looking so cute and trendy. While in SLO I started caring more about fashion, but didn’t know what to do about it. I don't have the same type of body as most of my friends (case in point: went to a surf shop and tried on the "long" shirts and they didn't exactly look long on me) so what they wore wouldn’t totally work for me. Plus, I worked at Clear Channel Radio and had to wear more semi-professional clothes.

I did find it slightly easier to be a little more fashion forward when I was pregnant, because maternity clothes are "in" (thanks to all the celebs that decided to make maternity so hot & for People magazine rubbing it in my face) right now and it's okay if it's bigger and fits snuggly around the belly (and it's the ONLY time I want to accent my belly).

Where does this leave me right now? IN NEED OF A MAKEOVER!

I’ve come up with a list of some of the REALITIES OF MY LIFE: I work with college students & as I get older, the students we work with remain 18-22 (give or take). I want to look trendy, but I don’t have the time or money to buy a lot of clothes so I need to figure out some classics that can be mixed with some trendy pieces. Since I've had 2 kids, my weight and body is still in "transition" (in other words, I hope to take more of this "baby" and "I'm having a baby so I'll indulge" weight off), so I need things that can fit now and fit as the weight comes off. I want to look cute, but I still have a high value on comfort.

I’ve decided I’m going to keep a “Fashion File” and when I see pictures online or in magazines of outfits I like, I am going to file them away. My big debate is whether or not I go shopping for a few new clothes now or wait until I lose some more weight (maybe this would be motivating?). Either way, I want to have a makeover and so the next time I go shopping I want to be a little more conscious of what I’m buying and looking for.

Don’t you like how I am using this blog as a diary, ha ha! I guess if you find cute outfits or ideas you can pass them on my way! Also, here’s a cute blog I found that shows modest outfits (also a priority, so please don’t send me halter top ideas or dresses that are really supposed to be shirts). http://www.sensiblystyled.com/