God is in the details of our lives

When we were driving back home at the end of July last summer, I called to order food to go, so we could pick it up and continue our journey. The thought, “Add an order of soup” popped into my head, I’m not sure why. It was hot, and a bit muggy, and eating soup in the car has been a disaster in the past. We picked up our food and climbed back into the car. As we were leaving the parking lot, it was rainy and cold, because of thunderstorms. A homeless man was sitting under a tree. The Spirit instructed me, “That is who the soup is for.” I had the kids quickly take him the soup, which he gratefully accepted. And I figuratively stand all amazed at the way the Holy Spirit can work in our hearts, when we allow Him to dwell there. This experience strengthened my knowledge that God is aware of each and every one of us, even the finite details of our lives, and He will allow us to be tools for Him.

Foster Kid

We are going to have some extra company at home for a while. Last night Jani's good friend, Rachel, called to say there had been a birth of quadruplets in their small town of Arivaca. She was worried because the mother was refusing to nurse the boys. She wondered if we could foster one of the kids until it was weaned. Jani was excited and I reluctantly agreed.

Our kids are super excited and agreed to do the night feedings and change his box. They've been dragging the poor newborn around everywhere since we came home. I don't know if you have the right to name foster kids but the kids have been calling him Pecan. Here are some pictures of our foster kid. If all goes well he'll go back to his mother in six weeks.

A Total Eclipse of the Hart Moon

We love Family Home Evening. For tonight's activity, we drew topological pictures of a lunar eclipse. Here is Mariah's version.

Out Smarting iTunes (Turning collections of mp3 into an Audiobook)

I love having an iPod. I hate iTunes. It seems like they've tried to make everything I want to do hard. They have tried to make their design clean and unintimidating which means that it is nearly impossible to doing anything other than the most obvious things.

The thing I want to do is download a collection of mp3 files that make up an audiobook and have my iPod see it as an audiobook (such as from audio.lds.org, the local library, or librivox). If you've never done this, there are several advantages to audiobooks over having the iPod think of the files as music. 1) The iPod keeps track of where you were in the file even if you've played other files in between. 2) On the Touch (likewise the iPhone, I'm assuming) there is a back 30 seconds button so you can remember what was going on. 3) And my favorite feature is the 2x play speed which speeds up the recording (it isn't really 2x but more like 1.5x).

Anyway, if you search the internet for how to do this, you will find lots of ways to do this. However, in this case TIMTOWTDI is bad because most of the ways of doing it involve multiple manual steps with third-party software and re-encoding the file. I finally found one that is only a few steps involving iTunes and no re-encoding. To my great irritation, it was a feature available in iTunes all along buried deep in the options of the files' metadata. (Why couldn't they just have a right-click option called "Treat this album as an audiobook"? )

I realize this is just a rant now but hopefully someone else won't waste all the time I've wasted.

Goat Cheese

Lately I purchased a gallon of raw goat milk. I have wanted to make cheese for years and with the help of my friend Rachel, we made goat cheese. Yum! I think the only thing it needed was a little more salt. I'm going to make again sometime, and I will definitely have to add it to the list of things I serve at our tradition Shepherd's supper that we have every Christmas Eve.

The girls are both throwing up, but I am blessed to have a washing machine and running water. They are just settled into the tub for the second time this morning, and now I have a couch and the carpet on the stairs to clean in addition to the spare oom bed. Hyrum, the wonderful baby that he is, fell asleep on the landing of the stairs after I set him down to catch Eden's vomit in my hands while Mariah brought me a bowl.

So, I'm off to work!

Plague of Frogs

My thanks go out to Arwen for the plague of the frogs that happened at our house on April Fools' Day 2010. That was the best ever April Fools' joke that ever happened to me. She also hid twelve frogs around the house strategically for the children to find. My favorite was the one attached to our shower head. I think it's still there!

The Plague of Frogs!

The Plague of Frogs!

Also featuring the Plague of Darkness and the Death of the Firstborn

Exodus 8:3

And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs:

into thine houseinto thy bedchamber

upon thy bed computer

into the house bathtub of thy servants sisterupon thy people

into thine ovens

into thy kneadingtroughs

Exodus 10:22

And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days:

Exodus 12:12

For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt.