1,000

Yep, that's how many miles I drove this weekend. . .good thing I got an oil change, though over-due, before I left! Here are a couple of random/fun experiences I had:
- getting my feet videotaped as I ran on a treadmill to see if I prorate/prominade/uh. . .I can't remember the right word. . .but it's basically checking to see whether your feet roll in, out, or stay upright when you run and then you have to get a certain shoe based on that. Really, I did all this just to hang out with a friend who was working at a running shoe store. . .but the info comes in handy as I prepare to run my first 5K with a bunch of our students in a few weeks!
- going to a highschool homecoming football game. . .ah, sometimes I feel like I'm just out of highschool but I was definitely reminded that this is not the case. Speaking of football, Go Bears! Ah - I'm loving college football more and more, especially when Cal does well!
- so enjoyed seeing dorm friends at Jenelle and Dan's wedding, such a great time. They served Mexican food, a great change of pace from the usual "wedding food". I love reconnecting with people. . .and watching old people's dance moves - ha!

- stayed the night with a college friend. . .and she gave me this GREAT set of dishes she didn't want, I still can't believe she doesn't want them - they're so cute, thanks Cari!

- I had a couple friends from church over for lunch and a prayer time this afternoon, we had falafel in pita bread, with humus and veggies. . .a very easy and fun meal - you can get the falafel at Costco, the pita bread at Trader Joe's.

- I zoomed in on the silverware with this last picture because I wanted to show you something I really treasure - I recently inherited my grandparents silver silverware and I love using it. Sadly the knife part of the set is missing. . .do I have any Dutch relatives reading this who might know where that is? :) My Oma passed away a year ago, so it's been a year since I've been to Holland, I am really itching to go again soon - I really love that country!

- but, if I was in Holland right now I wouldn't be enjoying this great weather. . .wish it could go on forever! Had dinner tonight at my old pastor's place in Alameda, it was such a sweet time with that family - we sat around the fire and roasted marshmellows, felt like we were camping in the middle of the city, loved it!
- ok, that's it for now, hope you enjoyed the randomness. . .the weekend consisted of so much more but that's all you get for now!

A great big slice of. . .

humble pie.

Whatever that really is I don't know - but that's definitely what the Lord has me eating right now. I am being humbled in so many ways, due both to my sin and the circumstances around me. This morning I am refreshed to remember that God gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34, and then quoted in James 4 and 1 Peter 5). Especially in terms of my sin, but even in terms of my circumstance, I do not deserve this grace that God lavishes on me - it certainly is an undeserved gift but I am sooooo thankful for it. Also, when I remember the incredible humility of my Savior then I am willing to endure as much humbling as is necessary for me to become more like Him.

In other news, God in answering prayers in unique ways. Met with a friend Monday morning to pray and told her I was wasting too much time on the internet (namely, facebook), trying to create a virtual community rather then pursuing real face-to-face communion with the Lord and others. Anyways, so she prayed for me and when I got home later in the day I found out that my internet is broken and it might take some time to get it repaired - so for now this is a nonissue and a sweet answer to prayer. Does make life a little more complicated (I am sitting at a coffee shop doing work) but also helps to me to be more efficient the times when I do have internet access. . .as well as more efficient the times that I don't have internet access. Like last night, I enjoyed being crafty as I hand-stamped some thank you cards and I did my dishes too.

It's a busy week and then off to a wedding in southern California this weekend, looking forward to seeing lots of friends there and on route as well. Thanks for reading my ramblings - hope you're enjoying the Lord and what He's up to in you and around you!

What a week

Ah, it's Friday and that feels good!

A little verbal processing with my mom helped me figure out why this week felt particularly crazy. . .last week included no preparation time for this week because I was gearing up for Fall Retreat. Then, Fall Retreat happened and I took the day off on Monday since I worked through the weekend. But, since I did this (which I don't regret!) Tues, Wed, and Thurs were a tad overwhelming because I needed to prep for everything last minute and I didn't feel like I was wearing any of the 15 hats I wear well. On top of that I spoke at our weekly meeting last night - which also takes a good deal of prep time that I didn't have/make time for til the day of. Ah - it was that kind of week.

BUT, here I sit - at a great (huge) bakery/deli called Specialties an hour from Berkeley. It's like Panera for those of you who are familiar. I just had a delicious chocolate chip cookie, still warm and I'm sipping on some iced tea. Doing some work here for a few hours (it's newsletter time - if you don't get it and want it let me know!) and then hanging out with a college friend for the evening, she's a teacher and I'm sure in need of some sweet relaxation as well - it'll be fun to do so together!

I've been wanting to share this verse with you for a while - I just LOVE how much Jesus packs into one very short parable:
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field" (Matthew 13:44).
In studying this I've found that the treasure can be interpreted 2 ways, both biblically sound. Some interpret the treasure in the field to be Christ, who is so valuable and worth surrendering all for. The "unsearchable riches" (Ephesians 3:8) of who He is as our treasure are unending. It has also been interpreted by some to mean that the field is the world, and when I stop and ask myself who gave up everything to buy a treasure the answer is Christ. He laid down His life because He sees me, and you, as His treasure. Oh how I treasure these truths - that God is my treasure and I am His. . .how I want to grow in my heart-level understanding and outworking of this daily!

Oh, and it feels like summer today - thank you Jesus. . .I guess I put those flannel sheets on my bed a tad too early!

Lastly, a very special treat - a picture! These are the upperclassmen girls, myself, Deb, Kate, and the newest addition to their family. . .Andrew! Have a great weekend!

Thankful?

Hum. It's easier for me to be thankful when the sun is shinning, figuratively and literally. So, I'm here to say that I'm thankful for rainboots, for not getting what I deserve (eternal punishment. . .and a parking ticket), and for God's provision - whether it makes me happy or not (rain fits in the not category)!

Ok - so I really do have a serious obsession with pumpkin right now. I'm afraid I am loosing the very few males readers I have by posting all these recipes. . .although if you tasted some of this stuff you may even brave the kitchen and try to make one of these goodies. . .maybe.

So, I've got some great pumpkin cookies cooling on my counter right now. This recipe comes from a college friend and has been passed on and made many times over the years:

Pumpkin Cookies (Bria)

Ingredients:

2 ½ c. all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

½ tsp. ground nutmeg

½ tsp. salt

1 ½ c. granulated sugar

½ c. butter, softened

1 c. pumpkin

1 large egg

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Grease baking sheets. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in medium bowl. Beat sugar and butter in large bowl until well blended. Beat in pumpkin, egg and vanilla extract until well blended. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Drop by rounded teaspoon onto prepared baking sheets. Bake for 15-18 min. or until edges are firm. Cool on baking sheets for 2 min. Remove to wire racks to cool completely. Drizzle with glaze.

Glaze:

Combine 2 c. sifted powdered sugar, 3 tbs. milk, 1 tbs. melted butter, 1 tbs. vanilla extract in a small bowl until smooth.

And. . .that's not all (obsessed I tell you!) - I also have pumpkin pudding in the oven. It's my first attempt but I know it's good because when I worked at the Children's Center (day care) at Cal Poly the kids would get this as a somewhat healthy dessert after a meal and I definitely did my fair share of "cup-bearing" to make sure it wasn't going to harm the kids. You gotta do what you gotta do to keep those kiddos alive. :) Here's the recipe they used:

1/2 cup milk (I used soy)

1 16 oz (how much is that anyways?) can pumpkin

1 egg

1/3 cup sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. ginger (didn't have)

Preheat oven to 350. In a mixing bowl combine all ingredients and mix on low for a minute or 2. Pour into a lightly greased 8x8 pan and bake for 25-35 minutes. . .until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Time to pull it out of the oven and frost those cookies. . .so thankful I have a bunch of upperclassmen ladies coming over for small group tonight, I love baking for them!

Thankful

Ah, it's that time of year again. . .where we start talking about what we're thankful for. . .well, let me start off by saying that I am thankful that at any moment of any day I have so much to be thankful for. Here are some things that come to mind this morning:

- God's unrelenting pursuit of me displayed in His incredible forgiveness and grace daily

- Fall Retreat was used by Jesus to grow my students and me so much (yay for studying Jonah!)

- Marianne's Ice Cream in Santa Cruz - "Heaven" (vanilla with peanut butter and brownie) was indeed heavenly

- camp fires and guitars and singing our hearts out for hours

- a healthy baby boy, Andrew Daniel, given to the Goodsons on Friday afternoon. . .getting to hold him as he slept yesterday

- sage green flannel sheets

- precious time of tea and prayer with a friend (who's an answered prayer!) this morning

- God's incredible protection over my family

- the thought of a dear friend coming to visit this weekend

- homemade pumpkin gnocchi (see recipe below!)

- sweet mail from a sweet friend. . .and from a child I sponsor in Peru (she's getting so big!)

- learning more and more, with eyes of faith, how completely and perfectly in control God is over all things

Ok - that's what comes to mind right now! Now, as for this amazingly healthy and oh-so easy and tasty recipe. . .basically I baked those pumpkin chocolate chip muffins again (the students loved them this weekend!) but had pumpkin puree left over so when I got home yesterday I decided to try out this recipe and I highly recommend it:

Pumpkin Gnocchi

1 1/4 cup pumpkin puree

1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (a just used a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg instead)

Boil a pot of water that has been salted somewhat generously (it'll add to the flavor). Mix together with your hands until a dough forms. Cut the dough into 5ths and roll out each 5th until it's long and thin (this could be so fun for kids to make!), cut it into bite size pieces and dump small batches into the boiling water. Boil for 3 minutes. Drain and serve with some butter and parmesan cheese (or it would be tasty with some pesto).

Ok - so I fully expected this to taste bad (low expectations huh? :)) but I thought it was still worth a try since I had to do something with that extra pumpkin. . .well, it actually tastes so awesome. The pumpkin is subtle and the whole wheat flour (I've been using Trader's "white whole wheat") gives it a great nutty flavor. Who knew that making gnocchi is so easy?

Off to do some cleaning (oh dear, this place is a disaster right now) and then lunch with my neighbor friend. Thankful for you and for how God's wants to work in and through you this week!

Fall Retreat

Haha, now I know what it takes to get you friends to comment on my blog. . .food! :) Funny, because I'm thinking about giving my blog a new title along those lines - still thinking, you'll know if it's going to happen. . .if it happens. :)

Just a quick prayer request before bed time. Our Fall Retreat for Cru at Cal is this weekend! The theme is "In Hot Pursuit" and our speaker (a pastor at a church in San Leandro) will be walking us through the book of Jonah. We'll be at the a conference center in the Santa Cruz mountains and 19 students are going.

Please pray:

- that the students will really experience Jesus this weekend, many (well, we all) are really in need of hearing from Him in encouraging and challenging ways.

- that, though the group is small, we will leave with a passion to live out our vision back at Cal, that we'd become more and more "a community who follows Jesus and takes the Gospel to the world".

- that this weekend would be fun. . and safe!

- wisdom, strength, and joy for me. . .I'm the only Cru staff that will be there (my teammates are hoping that their baby boy comes this weekend, he's about a week overdue at this point!) and I have many responsibilities, and not much time to pull it all together, trusting the the joy of the Lord will be my strength and that the Spirit will lead me!

Thanks so much. . .ah, this is such an interesting season of ministry - actually, also pray against discouragement, negative comparison to things I've experienced in the past, and lies that Satan wants me to believe about God, the weekend, our students, and myself. Ok - thanks!

Lastly, tip of the week - buy vanilla extract at Costco. . .you can get a big bottle of the real stuff for just under 6 bucks. . .whereas you might have to pay about the same price for a teeny tiny bottle at a regular grocery store! :)

Peanut Butter

Ok, I'm more into random and silly posts right now. . .though I am enjoying sweet depth with the Lord currently I'm just not sharing that here for some reason. Anyways, random and silly fact about me for the night is that I REALLY love a lot of things/people/God deeply, I am definitely a "feeler" for all you myers briggs fans. So one of the things that I really love is definitely peanut butter. I remember that we always had a big jar of Skippy Peanut Butter growing up and one of my favorite afterschool snacks was toasting white bread (which was a rare find in our house) and spreading peanut butter on it right afterward so that it melted a tad. Yum!

My love for this delicious spreadable substance has not waned over the years. My favorite candy is a reeses peanut butter cup. . .well, who am I kidding - let's make that plural, reeses peanut butter cupS, because I can never just have one, that's why sticking to the mini size is a good plan for me! :) One of my sweetest memories of college, literally and figuratively, was frequently checking the ice cream selection at the coffee shop in the student union building with a dear friend - and us getting giddy when they had our favorite Dryers Peanut Butter Cup flavor (peanut butter ice cream, with peanut butter swirled throughout and lots of super mini peanut butter cups), oh the simple pleasures!

Also, ideally I love having 3 types of peanut butter at my disposal at all times. One being a cheapo generic (nothing wrong with that!) brand for baking purposes. The other being an all-natural stir and store in the fridge kind for sandwiches and apple slices. And last, but not least, Calve brand peanut butter that can, sadly, only be purchased in Holland (at least I've never seen it in a specialty store here) - it is just perfect in flavor, not too sweet, and texture, somewhat grainy. . .in a good way. I have a jar of this utter goodness on hand right now, thanks to my mom's trip to Holland for my cousin's wedding this summer - I am savoring it oh so slowly. . .wondering when it is that I'll go to Holland again so that I can get another jar. . .

So there you have it - my love for peanut butter. . .do you have a food item you feel similarly about? I have many more if you can't come up with one: bananas, avocados, balsamic vinegar, steak, dark chocolate. . .this is the list that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends, some people started eating it not knowing what it was and they'll continue eating it forever just because this is the list that never ends. . .ok, you get the picture, good night!

Loot

Ok, since I said I would. . .here's what I purchased at the Alameda Antique and Vintage Fair today:

- a small, but tall (3-4 feet?), painted white wooden table. . .in my entrance way - aka the wall space to the left of the door. :) Great and decorative place to toss my keys. She wanted $28 I paid $23 and feel good about it, saw lots of other tables I liked but they were way out of my price range.

- a wooden basket to place shoes in next to my coat rack, originally used for apple picking and storing purposes. At some point I might try to stain the wood a darker brown. She wanted $9, I paid $7.

- a cute little while birdie. . .definitely don't need it but couldn't pass it up. It's perched in a black tray, along with a green candle, and my keys . . . on top of my table. She wanted $4, I paid $3.

Bartering is fun! :) Too bad they don't let me barter at Costco - made a trip out there today (I act like it's far away, nothing is far when you live in the city, maybe 10 min) and finally bought a camera to replace the one I broke in the Spring. Meaning there may finally be pictures on this blog again. Maybe.

Oh - and incase you are not sure if you trust the muffin recipe I put up yesterday, I'm telling you. . .the church folk devoured them, I will be making them again very soon - you should make them too!

Fall

The summer season will forever be my favorite. . .but I do enjoy aspects of the fall, probably because it just feels like an extension of summer in Cali. This is particularly true in Berkeley thanks to the "Indian Summer", whatever that really means. . .but what I do know is that because of this phenomena it is mostly warm in September and October and I'm a fan!

While watching a painful loss to USC (30-3) I baked a delicious batch of Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins. . .I'm going to type out the recipe because they are so moist and somewhat (other then the ridiculous amount of sugar) healthy as well as super easy (1 bowl, no mixer!) - I hope the gang at church tomorrow likes them as much as I do:

4 eggs

2 cups of sugar (see?)

1 1/2 cup applesauce (I used the unsweetened gravenstein kind from Trader Joes)

16 oz. pumpkin puree

*mix together and then add:

3 cups of flour (I used the white whole wheat flour, again from Trader Joes)

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

*once mixed, add:

2 cups chocolate chips

*spoon (I used my handy-dandy cookie dough scooper, love that thing!) into greased muffin tins and bake at 400 til they appear to be done (differs depending on size of tin - I prefer mini!).

I hope you make them soon! Ok, in other news - let's see, it was a pretty intense week of ministry. Lots of challenging conversations - thankful that as I walk with Jesus I can trust that He speaks through me, even when I don't know what to say or how to say it well. I do love students and it's a huge priviledge to get to show and speak grace and truth into their lives during these key years.

Went home for the night yesterday - dad's birthday! Several highlights - but the one I'm thinking about right now is going for a ride with my little big brother on the mule (in this case not an animal but a small tractor like golfcart thingy, haha - picture us on the animal though :)) to check out his irrigation set up. The sun was setting, the air was cool, and the scenery was incredibly refreshingly beautiful. Oh to live on a farm, will it ever be a part of my future?

Fall Retreat with the students is this coming weekend. Pray that more students sign up in the coming days. Also, I feel a little cold coming on - just drank some "emergenC", don't want to get sick especially with busy days ahead. Baby Goodson is due tomorrow - exciting!

Well, that's it for now. I'm going to work on a fun crochet project I just started and then going to bed early because a couple friends and I are checking out the Alameda Antique and Vintage Fair before church tomorrow - I'll let you know what I find. Hope you're having a lovely weekend!