Gravel Road Musings

WARNING: This post is full of idealisms and joy and love and perfection and gushy, mushy stuff.  It may or may not actually reflect true reality as felt in the next weeks and months!!!!!!!!!! INTRODUCING: Amber Hope Glick Born: February 20, 2015 Time: 10:51 AM Place: Hayward Area Memorial Hospital Weight: 7 lb 7 oz Length: 20.75 inches Features: Completely angelic Here she is at about 23 hours old: alert and attentive and taking life in.  Here she is 23 hours and 2 minutes old and is reciting back to us what we had just told her :) :) This is at 2.5 days old looking sweet and angelic.  The blue and white striped shirt you see was worn by her cousin who is almost 6.  This picture is all innocence in more ways than one because you really need to see the expression on the face of her cousin.  It was not innocence--it was gleaming with mischief and teasing as he played with her hat, putting it on his head and then on ...

by Peter Chin This book has all the makings of a horror story: failed church plant, broken in house, breast cancer, unexpected pregnancy, lost health insurance and so on. Peter is a pastor who moves his family to Washington D.C. because he feels God has called him to start a church plant. In the first year, all of the above happens.  On the day his wife is scheduled for her mastectomy, the Dr. discovers she is pregnant and contrary to what a lot would expect, the Dr. expects them to keep the child and not abort him.  They do keep the baby and he goes through the surgery and all the chemo and is born a beautiful healthy normal child.  The lost health insurance was a scam from the health insurance company once they realized Peter's wife had cancer, they tried to figure out a way to drop her off their plan by saying there had been a lapse in insurance and therefore her need existed prior to their current health coverage.  When they sent the proof that there had been...

365 Questions: 5 Years: 1, 825 Answers For several years now, I have been keeping, what in the old days would be called a diary. Today? I don't think we call it that, but that is what it is and I can't think right now what else it is called. If you do it online, there's a site called 280daily.com that you go to to talk about your day. I'm in my third year of this and it is so interesting to look back and see what you did the years before. So, when I saw this book available for review, it totally piqued my interest.  This takes the 5 year diary on a different journey.  There is a page for each day of the year and at the top of the page is a question. Each year on the same day you answer the same question, but the interesting thing will be--how will you answer it each year?  Will it be a different answer? The same answer? How will it reflect how you have changed from one year to the next? I'm thinking there will likely be room to record other significant deta...

photo credits to melskitchencafe.com OATMEAL CHOCOLATE CARAMEL BARS These are amazing!!!!!!!! No, I didn't take the picture, I'm not that good at food pictures and I was way too lazy and besides my pan of bars haven't reached this consistency yet. If you look at the recipe, it will tell you to let them cool completely before cutting so the caramel can set up.  Do yourself a favor and ignore that command.  As soon as you have put  these  bars in the oven and cleaned up just a bit, get out a knife and cut yourself a small piece because you simply can't wait any longer.  Than, after you have oohed and aahed the decadence, go put on the coffee pot, invite over a friend, spoon out a bigger piece because the knife really doesn't work that well with all the melty goodness and eat away. Just trust me, it's a good way to spend a Monday afternoon. I would talk about the other bars I made too, but they are still in the oven, so I haven't been able to tast...

By Sophie Hudson I just read A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet and Home is Where my People Are in the last week.  Both are by Sophie Hudson and both are worth your time reading if you like a little dramatization with your true stories.  My personal favorite would be A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet, but Home is Where my People are is also quite a good, interesting read. Sophie randomly chronicles stories from her life, adding in some Southern flair and definite exaggeration.  She shows her journey from being raised as a good Methodist church kid, going to college and stumbling on her spiritual journey for the next ten years or so until coming to a Baptist church as a married adult.  She was never a real rebel on her journey, just never really invested in the importance of including God in her day to day life.  She shares a bit of her love story and the reality of marriage and its struggles and how her and David had to work through the issues in their own liv...

I just looked at my last few posts and realized they have all been book reviews.  I thought I was updating a bit better than that, but oh well. I do love my free books though.  Currently I have two more books to read/finish reading and write a review about.  The last book was a children's book and approximately 45 minutes after the book was delivered to my door, I had posted a review and ordered my next book.  Now if only I could do them all that fast. The sun is shining brilliantly today.  It's so pretty.  There is a very light dusting of snow on everything and so it all shimmers and glitters. I'm thinking of writing a book called "The Four Month Labor", detailing random things, but mostly addressing the horrors of  months worth of Braxton Hicks.  Actually, I'm not sure if I should call them horrors or just life with Braxton Hicks, because as long as they did nothing, they were just mildly annoying. While spending large quantities of time...

By Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Illustrated by Nancy Tillman Obviously, I misread the description of this book when I ordered it for review purposes.  I was expecting a hard cover book with a nice story on the inside. Instead I got a hard board book that will be nice for toddlers.  This is a book about creation written for children.  I couldn't find an exact age on the book, but I would say from 6 months to 2 or 3 years.  I will be honest, I was a bit disappointed with the book when I initially got it out of the box, simply, I think, because it was different than what I was expecting. However, I was wanting some nice books like this for our baby to be able to look at at a young age.  This book is smallish, maybe 6x6, so I think it will be a nice book to take to church. The story is the seven days of Creation; very Biblical and solid and in child friendly simple language.  I think it accurately portrays the act of Creation.  The illustrations are oka...