It’s the end of March. Where did it go? Even though it seems to have gone by so quickly, I was still able to jot some things I learned down as it went along. They’re so random this month! So here I go. {Joining in today with Emily Freeman’s Let’s Share What We Learned.}
#1 The quickest way ever to shred chicken. Drum roll. In a mixer! A friend was telling me about something she made and casually mentioned she put the cooked chicken in the mixer and shredded it. What? That might be old school news but it was new to me. It has saved so much time when I’ve made dishes that call for shredded chicken.
#2 Wyld Life Many people have heard of Young Life, but have you heard about Wyld Life? Young Life (YL) is a very active ministry in the high school’s in our county. When at the fundraising banquet earlier this month, they announced the exciting news that God has been leading them to start Wyld Life – which is a ministry for middle school students. How does it work? Students at the local university give their time, energy and some crazy goofiness that the high school kids love as they introduce kids to Jesus or help them grow their faith. Several kids give their lives to Christ each year. It’s a great ministry! I’m excited to hear about YL reaching out to the craziest of crazy kids – ages 11-14 – especially since our daughter is in that age group. Thanks for leading Alamance YL!
#3 Sister Shubert’s rolls started an orphanage. Have you ever eaten one….or one hundred of these rolls? It’s almost impossible to eat just one at one sitting. When friends came over one evening, they brought a dessert using those rolls. I learned in our conversation that Patricia Barnes, founder of Sister Shubert, not only loved to learn to bake with her grandmother taught her, but she also loves Jesus. So much, she took the finances she gained from her bakery business and became “the driving force in setting up Sasha’s Home, a private facility where abandoned and orphaned children live in a home-like setting” in Ukraine and continues to support them. On my way to buy some more yeast roles!
#4 Bill Clinton only wrote 2 emails in office. Earlier this month, the story of Hillary Clinton using her personal email address for her government job was all over the news. In the middle of that story on our local news station, the reporter said that her husband, former president, Bill Clinton, only wrote two emails the eight years he served in office. Only two emails?! One was to John Glenn when he returned from his space expedition at age 77 in 1998, and the other was Christmas greetings to U.S. troops serving in the Adriactic. Clinton’s spokesman said he still doesn’t use email today.
#5 After a whale dies, it explodes. OK. I know that’s gross and why would I even share that? But my son always teaches me random yet interesting things. So, this is what he came home with this month and shared with us at the dinner table – yes a great conversation and video to watch over a meal. We learned that in a dead whale, gas buildup is a normal part of degradation of tissue. Pressure must be released – sometimes it deflates slowly from a hole in the mouth (or another hole in the carpus), and sometimes it explodes. If you want to watch this pretty gross fact, here it is.
#6 Evergreen trees puff smoke. Yep. They do. You can’t see it in the middle of this picture below, but that evergreen tree bowing low kept on puffing smoke in the woods at our friends’ home. Earlier this month, we were hanging out there and all of a sudden one of our friends stopped dead in her sentence and said, “What just happened? What was that smoke from? Did someone shoot a gun because it looked like smoke that comes out from a gun shot.” Well, it was a concern because her two sons were in those woods exploring. Soon we learned her boys were fine and no where near that tree and didn’t hear a gun shot or anything. We kept an eye on the tree and it happened again! So we ask each other jokingly with a laugh, “Do trees puff smoke or something?” Why not google and see? So, I googled that question and low and behold others have seen it too and here’s why.
#7 Word crack. Spin. “Where does Alexander the Great come from?” You have 10 seconds to guess from the 4 multiple choice answers! Our 11 year young daughter set me up on my phone to play this game with her. I must admit it’s pretty fun to play with her…and the rest of our fam. It’s trivia questions, and sometimes useless information, from entertainment to sports, history and my favorite, art. Yes, I can see where you’d get addicted to it. Look for the app!
#8 Only 14 brackets of the 1.2 million who filled out ESPN College Basketball Tournament Challenge made it to the Sweet 16. That’s wild! So many Cinderella and unexpected wins in 2015’s tournament. We’re big ACC basketball fans and March Madness is fun for our family because we fill out our personal brackets and then whoever wins at the end gets to pick out a restaurant of his/her choice for our family to go to for dinner. I won last year (whoo-hoo) and we went Japanese. I’m in dead last place this year though so I’m sure it won’t be Japanese.
#9 It’s hard to think of the answer to this question “What one word do you wish your friends would use to describe you.” Ever since I read that question while taking a survey, I’m still wrestling with my answer to that question. Maybe if I figure that out, I’ll write about it.
That’s some things I learned this past month. What about you? What’s something you’ve learned the past 30 days?