Procrastination

This is how to not study for a final:

1. Paint your nails
2. Do push-ups (helps keep me awake)
3. Pack for Haiti
4. Pick up my room (which is already pretty clean)
5. Wrap my sister’s birthday presents
6. Text people
7. Fill up my water bottle
8. Go to the bathroom because I keep drink my water bottle
9. Calculate my grade
10. Scan notes for a classmate (okay, this one is actually important)
11. Write a to-do list (seems productive but actually does nothing)
12. Take a nap
13. Go get the mail
14. Practice the piano
15. Change into comfy pants
16. Make dinner
17. Do the dishes
18. Clean up the kitchen
19. Fold the sheets I was suppose to fold yesterday
20. Workout
21. Water the plants
22. Organize my backpack
23. Sharpen pencils for the test
24. Find fabric for Haiti
25. Ship back textbook

Twenty-five pointless things I did yesterday to keep from studying, but guess what? I am free! Done. Finished. Accomplished. And may I say it feels lovely! I feel like I am actually on summer holiday now. This is probably in part because I can now wear dresses and opened-toed shoes again since I will no longer be in a lab five days a week! I am glad I took the class, but I am even more relieved that it is out of the way. 

And how am I celebrating? With shots! ...well at the doctor's office. (Nursing humor?) I have to go and get one more shot for Haiti, and I am apparently behind on a couple of others too. But after that I am celebrating with my mom, we're going out to dinner and staying up late because I don't have to get up at seven tomorrow.

*Joy of the day: Gleefully emptying out my backpack, and putting it in my "to go to Haiti" pile!

Refashioned Salad

I love to make salads. I make some of the oddest salad concoctions, but they usually taste yummy! The only down side to salads is they only last a short period of time before they begin to wilt and get a little less appetizing.

 This concoction has: 

• lettuce
• carrots
• cabbage
• mandarin oranges
• cheese
• buffalo chicken
• sunflower seeds
• ginger vinaigrette 

My favorite thing to do with slightly aged salads is to put it in a wrap! I just warm the wrap a little bit, put the salad in, add a light bit of dressing, fold it up, and ta dahhh!

It is complimented well with some fruit and something crunchy to make a whole meal!

*Joy of the Day: Getting the key to my new house!

Jelly Biscuits

This recipe is a childhood favorite of mine! I love them because they are not intensely sweet like a cookie, but, like they're called, more of a biscuit with the sweetness in the jelly. Hope you enjoy!

Makes 18 Biscuits

•       2 cups flour
•       4 teaspoons baking powder
•       2 tablespoons sugar
•       ½ teaspoon salt
•       ½ cup shortening
•       ¾ cup milk
•       ½ cup jam/jelly (you don't actually have to measure this out, but can just spoon it into the center of the biscuits)

Sift together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt into mixing bowl. Add shortening and use a pastry cutter or fork to blend into a coarse meal. Add milk and blend with fork till the mixture becomes a soft dough ball. Prepare the rolling area with flour. Knead dough 12 times, and then roll dough out to ¼ inch thick. Use larger cookie cutter to cut circles, move half to cookie sheet about 1 inch apart.  Cut smaller circle in remaining circles (I like to make hearts!), put these rings on top of circles on cookie sheet. Put a teaspoon or so of jelly in the middle. Bake at 425 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

*Joy of the Day: Having a friend call me because she missed my voice!

No Bake Peanut Butter Cookies

  One of my favorite culinary combinations is peanut butter and chocolate. These cookies are pretty easy to make, need relatively few ingredients, and taste delicious!

•           2 cups sugar
•         ½ cup milk
•        ½ cup butter or margarine (1 stick)
•        1 teaspoon vanilla
•        1 cup peanut butter
•       3 cups dry oatmeal

Put sugar, milk and butter into saucepan and stir over medium heat. Bring to boil for one minute stirring constantly. Add the vanilla, peanut butter and oatmeal, and combine thoroughly. Let cool about 10 minutes then spoon onto wax paper. 

If you want to make the chocolate drizzle I melted about a 1/2 cup of chocolate chips in the microwave (make sure you watch them so they don't burn, burnt chocolate is a crime!). Then I spooned it into a little ziplock baggie and cut the tip off to imitate an icing bag!

*Joy of the day: Getting to work on a friend's t-shirt quilt this weekend, finally feels like summer!

Countdown

Let the countdown begin! In one month I will be in Haiti. And excited doesn't even begin to describe how I feel. While I have been consumed with my microbiology class, God hasn't let me forget that Haiti is coming. When I start to get lost in bacteria, Haiti just comes out of no where! It's been so humbling and so exciting to remember what God has in store for me and for the people of Haiti.

In class we were talking about the spread of malaria and typhoid, and off all the countries to pick as the example my professor picked Haiti. Friends have randomly been bringing up Haiti, not in relation to my trip but in their own lives. E-mails for organizations, featuring Haiti have been sprinkling my inbox. A friend went to Haiti this past spring, and hearing her stories has made me so excited. Our neighbors are very high up in the US relations with Haiti. All these little things are just constant reminders of what I have to look forward to!

I have been praying for the people of Haiti and our team that will be going down in July. I'm excited for all that God is going to teach me, for the blessing that He has given me that I am able to share with others, and for the opportunity to share His word!

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." -Acts 1:8

*Joy of the day: I finished my second test for micro and I am two weeks away from being done!

Sonflower Joy

This weekend was a true sip of joy! I got to gather with my small group from school (the Sonflowers) to celebrate the wedding of one of our amazing leaders. It was a weekend full of road trips, sleepovers, smiles and memories. This was one of those weekends that I will always look back on with such fondness!

Sky on the drive down after the storms

There is something about being confined in a car for hours on end that brings about deep conversation. We were able to catch up with one another; a lot can happen in four short weeks! And simply talk about things that were on our hearts, both big and small. Matthew 18:20 says that "wherever two or three come together in my name, there I am with them." And that verse wonderfully summed up our road trip!

The Sonflowers with the beautiful bride!

Tourists!

Our leader and her now husband, have always been such a wonderful example of what God intended when he created man and woman for marriage. And on Saturday you could see the joy that God has given them through the smiles that never left their faces.

*Joy of the day: Reflecting on these wonderful women that God placed in my life two years ago, and realizing how incredibly blessed I am!