What happened to this month? Even though we got an extra day this month, it went by as fast as your news feed rolls on your phone.
Somehow I still managed to jot down through the month some things I’ve learned. Again today, I’m joining with Emily Freeman and writing What I Learned This Month.
Mexico has more museums than any other country. I learned that watching the new series of Amazing Race!
There’s 11 things the rest of the USA should thank NC for. I saw a few of my friends share this link on Facebook and had to check it out because I’ve been a North Carolinian most of my life. You might want to check this out too!
What it’s like when your dog eats a whole box of Valentine chocolate. On Valentine’s night, when our kids were at youth group, my husband took me to a cake shop in the city next door and when we all got back home later that evening, our son noticed his 16-count box of chocolates that had been left on his bed was empty! Well, none of us had eaten it so the only other culprit was our dog. It reminded me when I was in high school and our family dog ate at least one bag of Hershey Kisses and we almost lost him. So, we quickly got hydrogen peroxide down our dogs throat and it didn’t take long for him to get that chocolate back out. I won’t go into details of the Valentine gift he gave us on our kitchen floor, but we’re thankful they didn’t cause him any other symptoms except for a very hyper dog on a sugar high!
A tradition of Mardi Gras is to eat King cake. The local university where my husband works had a Mardi Gras meal on Mardi Gras of course. There was live jazz music, green and purple bead necklaces and hats, a chicken and rice meal, followed by King cake for dessert. I’d never heard of a King cake before and to me, it tasted like a doughnut with green and purple cake icing on it. When our son was eating his cake, he bit into a small plastic baby. Uhhh…you should have seen the expression on a teenage boy’s face when he pulled a baby out of his mouth. I had to look up the point of that and learned there’s supposed to be “a baby” hidden in the cake and the person who gets the slice with baby in it has to host the next party. Well, I don’t think we’ll be having a few hundred college students at our house next year but we might make the cake. Here’s the recipe if you want to try making it next year.
My mom is an amazing gardener. She makes their yard look like a beautiful art exhibit with the vibrant colors, shapes and depth. She subscribes to a monthly gardening newsletter and always forwards it to me. I try to take care of a few rose bushes and a few other plants and flowers and do some of the suggestions like sprinkling Epson salt around the base of the plants. But this month I learned that snow is a poor man’s fertilizer. Reports from Purdue University show that as snow falls from the atmosphere, it captures Nitrogen molecules that help enrich the soil, now also acts as insulation that protects plants, much like a layer of mulch. Snow can protect roots from deep-freezing.”
IF:Gathering 2016 – yet another amazing weekend where God was moving in the hearts of women around the world. I was blessed to help host IF:Alamance again this year. Some words spoken by David Platt, Angie Smith, Jo Saxton, Jennie Allen and Bianca Olthoff, just to name a few, really caught my attention that I’m still processing. You can read more of what I wrote about it in my previous post.
The name Mary means “rebellion”. While I was listening to Bianca Olthoff speak, she was talking about Mary and Martha from the Bible and mentioned that Mary means “rebellion”. Mary who followed Jesus and tried to live by his every word, didn’t appear to be rebellious to me. But even the nicest or most devoted people rebel against God because we all sin. I’m so grateful for God’s grace and how he still wants us to seek and follow Him.
There are different measuring cups for measuring liquid and dry things. While on a much overdue and a much fun girl’s weekend, we made Lunchroom Peanut Butter Bars that were out of this world. My friend who was making it said, said there wasn’t a liquid measuring cup in the kitchen but a dry one will do. What? I learned something new.
I also learned on our girl’s weekend that when you’re loosing your voice, it’s more harmful to whisper than to try to speak quietly. My friend told me whispering can put more strain on the vocal cords. When you whisper, you’re squeezing your vocal cords together more tightly than when you’re speaking normally, which is more traumatic to your voice especially when you’re fighting a sore throat or laryngitis. It was a bummer to have to fight a cold and loose my voice on our girls weekend, but it sure brought some laughter from the way I sounded. I’m so grateful for those dear friends. We’ve been together through our baby’s births, through the thick and thin, and now starting to send them off to college. We’ve met together at least once a week for 13 years – we’ve done life together. So when you loose your voice, they’re such good friends, they practically know what I’ll say without me even speaking the words out loud.
I still love to get up early at the beach and take pictures of sunrises.
So, that’s when I learned this past month. What about you? What’s something you learned lately? Feel free to share in the comments below.
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