Today's Coffee: Tall, Dark and Handsome Roast

"Your way O God is holy. What god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders, you have made known your might among the peoples." Psalm 77:13-14

This has been our memory verse recently. These are truths that Thomas and I try to dwell on and ponder as we live our lives up here. There have been times that we have not trusted or had the faith that we should have had and this verse in particular is a great reminder of WHO our God actually is. While many believe that we might serve a God who is only seemingly angry and vengeful I remind myself that our God is HOLY. He is just and true and sovereign. He uses situations that seem awful to bring others to Him. Yes, we live in a broken world  - stained because of the sin  - but there is hope and salvation. Why? Because our God is great - like none other - offering redemption. He works wonders - saving people - and making His might known by not answering to man but by being holy and just and loving. These are the truths that I hold on to as He has given us a new home here on earth that is 1000 miles away from where we are now and still 500 miles away from our families. So, we trust in the Lord for all we need. 

We also are very blessed - I mean really, not much that we should complain about. And of course - Wilson! - is just so adorable.

Wilson has started sitting up. Even though this picture looks all cattywhompus - that's Wilson sitting up out of his bouncer trying to get to something else on the bed. :)

 

Here he is sitting up on the bed (if only for a moment) by himself!

He is standing up on the kitchen counter here and I'm only holding his hands. He's a strong boy for only 5 months old! But that face! Just look at that face! What a sweetie pie!

Just adorable!

And random: these are some headbands that I have made for our dear friend Miriam who turns 1 today! I've started crafting more and more and since these were made from old t-shirts it only cost me $1 (for cheap headbands from dollar store) and a little bit of hot glue for the flowers. This is something I've been enjoying a lot lately. I'm hoping this week to really put my sewing machine to the test as I make this really cute shirt with ribbon sleeves. I'll put pics up (depending on how it goes). 

So, here we all are - 20 days until we begin the move to Nashville. It will be so nice to be a little closer to family and I cannot wait to begin that chapter of our lives together! These 'cross-country' moves bring Thomas and I so much closer together - although I will admit I'm not looking forward to having AT LEAST 16.5 hours in a car with baby Wilson - as a 6 month old. He's a great traveler though - already been on 8 planes and traveled thousands of miles as Thomas and I interviewed for jobs in TN and SC. But the long car rides... sigh. 

Til next time! In Christ,

Julie

 

Today's Coffee: Tall, Dark and Handsome Roast

Continuing my desire to post more about our lives this is what has been going on lately:

Well, Wilson is now 5 months old and we were given the go ahead to start feeding him solids - so, being the daughter of the owner of the Brick Street Cafe - with their famous sweet potato pie - I only saw it fitting for sweet potato to be his first real food. So, this is what the sweet potato looked like after I put it through the baby food maker: (yum)

This picture is a little blurry but I thought that this totally captures my little boy! He's SO sweet and cute!

So, back to sweet potatoes, he didn't really like them. After every bite (trying to disguise it as rice cereal) he would make this slightly pitiful face and then not trust the spoon. After several attempts (and a few successes) we decided to try again in a few days. 

Wilson is also a champ at shaking toys now. It's so cute! He doesn't quite know how to shake them without wacking himself in the head sometimes... he'll learn. 

One of the foods that I am pretty much obsessed with for the past few months has been a typical Chicago-style hot dog. Thomas and I discovered that we love Sonic's sweet peach iced tea at the same time of discovering that they are selling different style hot dogs now. And Chicago is one of them. I have put a different pepper on ours this evening but here is a picture of dinner tonight:

There's basically nothing better in my mind right now. Look at all that amazingness. 

So, we also grew a hot pepper in our sad sad garden. We have been gone so many days this summer that we were quite surprised to find this little guy waiting for us this evening - and so yes, he did make it onto our dogs tonight. 

So, that's about it for right now. My baby has a mean case of the hiccups and I'm having a hankering for some cookies. Til next time!

In Christ's Love,

Julie

Today's Coffee: Breakfast Blend

Today's adventure was to make homemade oreos. You see, I have begun 'stumbling' on the internet and I find some of the most amazing recipes. Now that summer is here (and yes, it gets up to the 90s in Connecticut too!) I have been doing a lot of crafting and cooking/baking. My favorite craft site is:  

Craft Gawker. 

This site will post a little more than 20 different DIY crafts, photographs, door prizes and tutorials each day. I have their app on my ipod touch and have favorited over 100. One of the crafts that I have started and am continuing to work on in my spare time is this one:

T-Shirt Rug

She made hers with all one color but I took old t-shirts from Thomas and my closets and are making the rug with those - so it will be colorful!

Anyways, back to these oreos. The blog I found is:

Flour Child - Homemade Oreos

And these are what mine look like - be prepared to want some!

First I started with ... kinda a mess.

Rounded teaspoons onto a baking sheet.

I am not a very patient sifter. I loathe this kitchen tool. :)

Here are my baked oreo cookies!

Yummy! Icing!

Finished! Wooboy - are these bad boys GOOOOOD!.... Now, I need a tall glass of cold milk to go with it!

And a picture of my sweeties!

So, I hope you go and make them. Probably never again will I pay the outrageous amount for packaged oreos now that I can make some REAL GOOD ones!

In Christ's love,

Julie

Today's Coffee: Breakfast Blend

I'm going to be better at blogging. I'm going to be better at blogging. 

Let's see if that is actually true! We have so much going on in our lives and we are so bad about keeping up with some of our best friends - so this is one easy way that I can truly try to keep ya'll up to date. (Did you notice that "ya'll"?) Today has been full of trying to figure out health insurance, recycling old laptops and carseats. Not a lot of fun but things that need to be done. Also, signing the lease to our new home - that was fun. And getting a rental car set up for when we get our car fixed. If you didn't know, we were hit several weeks ago and even though there isn't a ton of damage - it still is going to take a lot of time because the whole left side of our car has dents and scrapes now.  

See? Not crazy damage but enough. The other lady's insurance is paying for it. 

Yesterday I made an amazing banana pudding - Paula Deen's recipe. Took some over to the Holst's house and after we came home, Thomas had one of his migraines and so I fed Wilson some rice cereal and I enjoyed another bowl of the pudding. Yum Yum. 

We have started practicing the accordion. Wow - what a complicated instrument!

So, Wilson is hungry - gotta go!

In Christ's Love,

The Russells

Today's Coffee: Breakfast Blend

In the Russell household things are a bit chaotic these days. And, I'm going to tell you why. As we have been praying and wondering what next year would hold for us - not sure if I would be teaching in Spartanburg or Thomas playing organ in Nashville- we finally decided that we would move to Nashville, TN. Thomas is now the organist at Covenant Presbyterian Church. The organ is the beautiful 3 manual Fisk Op. 134.

So, needless to say - it sounds amazing! The church is wonderful as well - the many people we met were super nice and we cannot wait to join and begin worshiping there. We are moving on August 19th. This is going to be a crazy day because I teach at the Morse Summer Music Academy at Yale until 1 pm on the 19th. Wonderful. 

Thomas went and found us a lovely duplex to live in - yes, I trust him to find us an amazing place to live even if I don't see it in person. 

Wilson is of course the cutest baby ever these days. Smiling and laughing up a storm is pretty normal now. 

 Here he is all dressed up for July 4th at Granny's house!

 My two sweet boys! Wilson and Daddy are dressed up for Wilson's baptism!

Wilson is almost 5 months old! This is crazy to think about. He enjoys standing up more than tummy time although we do put him on his tummy often. He has a saxophone playing bumblebee stuffed toy that he likes chewing on and we are fairly certain that his teeth are thinking about making an appearance soon. He has a sock monkey named Hank that kept him company in the carseat on the long drives back to CT after visiting family and friends in SC. Oh yes! And he has started sleeping through the night. If he eats around 9:30 or 10:00 pm with some rice cereal - wooboy - he won't wake us up until 6:30 am ish. ::sigh:: that's been awesome, except for the fact that I still wake up at 4 am. No fun there. 

Well, time to feed the little boy. 

Love in Christ,

The Russells