"Leftover" Burritos and a late happy Thanksgiving!

Well, I got up the nerve to make some more tortillas this afternoon, and they actually turned out to be pretty good (I tried a new recipe :) and I went down on my time!!!  Instead of 3 hours, it only took me 30 minutes! I figured out the trick...don't use a wooden rolling pin to role them out.  Also, I figured that if I really wanted to learn how to make them, I'd have to fish around for different recipes, and then practice, practice, practice.
...yet another thing I found helpful this go around - don't make tortillas for Lunch (until you are good at it that is,) ...much better to make them in your free time when you're not starving :D
Anyways, I did make the tortillas for Lunch today and ended up eating at 2:30 (better than 3:00 I guess), but that was just because I was making a "leftover" burrito.

{picture from google}

For me, the basic components of a good burrito are:
Some kind of meat (I like chicken or hamburger the best)
Cheese
Onions
Beans and/or rice (if I have them, which I usually don't)
Some sort of sauce or salsa.
I haven't been able to find a good recipe for sauce online yet, so I'm in the process of coming up with one myself.  I'll post it if I can figure one out.  Otherwise, I just use salsa instead of sauce.
We usually don't have anything fancy in the fridge for most lunches, and eating a plain old ham 'n' cheese or PBnJ is almost a crime, so I decided to cram anything I could find into a tortilla to make a burrito.

We had turkey from last night's supper (I try to avoid turkey as much as I can, but this time it turned out ...not so bad... with LOTS of seasoning), so I heated some of that, onions, cilantro, taco seasoning and salsa in a skillet.
Then I spread some sour cream and more salsa on a large tortilla, put my turkey skillet stuff on top of that, and made a thick cheese sauce out of cheese, sour cream, butter and milk to pour over it all . . . . Wrapped my bundle of joy up and cooked it on a griddle until both sides were golden brown.  Um, um good stuffs!
...Really though, you can throw just about anything into a tortilla and it will come out delicious :)
Happy experimenting, and hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving this past week!

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I was just thinking about all of the things that I have to be thankful for -but mainly for grace.  Without the grace of Jesus Christ, where would I be right now?  what kinds of things would I be all caught up in that have absolutely no value in the end? ... I wonder ....
Because of his grace, I can fully understand what it is to be truly thankful for anything and everything that I've received.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!  {a bit late}

{Picture from google}

When I clicked "log in" to blogger, I had absolutely no idea what to write about, but I just knew that I had to write something....well, I still don't know what I'm going to write about, but I'm sure there are plenty of topics to choose from....say...Oh!  Did you know they are already playing Christmas music on the radio???  (I personally think that it is still too early...but, whatever) Just going into Walmart gives me a wave of nostalgia, but I keep pounding into my head, "wait until after Thanksgiving".... it's not working...

~

Ok...this picture might give some people nightmares for 6 months, but I've found that if you don't put at least one picture in your blog post, most people just skip over the whole post entirely, so...I thought this pict was enough to make people at least somewhat curious about clicking it  :D

{Don't worry, this isn't a real picture}

~

The other day, I was talking with a friend about her many speeches that she had to perform the next day, and she couldn't think of another word for "a whole bunch of something", so I interjected, "A retina of speeches?"...she just looked at me kind of weirdly and then started to laugh .....
Later that night (after much puzzling over), I sat up in bed and laughed at myself..."Plethora!" ....  I had meant to say, "you had a whole plethora of speeches", but instead I said, "you have a whole retina..." ...anyways... I tend to do that a lot more than I used to for some reason...

{ :D  } 

~

Resolution and Rebelution

Wow!  Its gettin more chilly every morning . . . I lOVE it!  :)  

Ok, I don't have enough time this morning to post anything creative, but I did want to share a "resolution" that I made this morning . . . I say "resolution", because I don't know how well it will fit in with this weather . . .  but . . . anyways...
Everybody knows how this goes... you have a whole bunch of clothes, but most of them stay in the bottom of your drawer, or on the last hanger in your closet all year round, so what I'm going to try to do, is wear everything that I own . . . ok, wait!  That sounds weird . . . Not in one chunk you understand, but over an extensive period of time until just about everything has been worn, and I can root out the clothes that I want to keep, and the ones that I don't.  The only thing is, now that I am pulling out my "Winter box", I'm finding that most of my warm stuff is probably hanging on a rack in Goodwill right now . . . I have a feeling that I am going to freeze in all of my short-sleeves as I'm going through the clothes . . . Its time to go shopping . . .

Another thing that I've been really inspired by lately, is the Rebelution: A teenage rebellion against low expectations . . . I don't have the time to dive in deep about this, but here is the website, please check it out.  Hopefully it will inspire you to DO HARD THINGS to impact the world, and use the lives that we were graciously given - wisely!

~Hannah

Do you want to know the story of my blogging life?  (you probably already know it)

Blog

Feel good that I just updated my blog

Wait a week.....or two.....or three....

Life

Blog about random things that have happened in that interval

etc..

Oh no, don't worry!  Nobody is getting jipped here!  My journal is just as random and jumbled up as my blog...I just can't seem to find a good way to tie everything into a nice, perfectly synchronized post.  It is so much easier to write in spurts and pictures!  That is why I am going to start to read  through a website that should inspire me to become more consistent in blogging. (I'll tell you the name of the website after I've browsed through it a bit more ;)

~ 

But it's just little things that are on my mind tonight, like:

~

Did you know that you can wash off speckles from a speckled egg???  No, I'm serious!  Those speckled eggs are all frauds!  They really don't have any spots at all underneath!!!

I hate it when my camera tells me that I've only got 5 pictures left, and then actually ends up taking about 10 more! . . . it's very misleading . . .

~

My rabbit had 8 babies and only 3 survived :( 

I came up with the very original name of Rigamortis for one of the babies, who seemed very stiff at the time. Sadly neither he, nor his brother, "Rig II" made it for very long.  I decided to stop naming them that after the second one died.   

{if you don't know what Rigamortis means, then here is the definition}...

{Bad picture, but it was raining that day, and my camera lied to me and said that I only had 1 picture left, so I only got this one shot of all 8 rabbits in the nest}

{pictures of the babies at 2 weeks, on Bloom}

~

This afternoon, I found out that if I don't want to eat another sandwich for lunch, and decide to make tortillas instead . . . . I'd be better off to just stick with the sandwich.  Those tortillas just about killed me!  I spent literally 2 hours trying to make those things, and for what?  Some irregularly shaped, square pieces of hard tack!!!  

Ben tried to "boost my spirits" by saying that they tasted really good, they just took way too long to make.   :)

~

I've realized that doing everything with excellence, even means to wash those extra dishes on the counter that I didn't see an hour ago when I started washing the massive pile up.  Although I feel like saying, "I've already done all of these dishes and enough is enough!", I found that it really feels good (besides its being the right thing to do :) to go the extra mile and get it all done.  

~

Recent stats have shown that Autumn is (hands-down) the best season of the year.

{no biased person was present when this statistic was made}

~

I feel better now.  I've done my good deed for the day.

I've come back to life in the blogging world and just graced it with some more ramblings...I'm sure it needed that... :)

~Hannah

Glad to be back

Hey Ya'll!

So glad to be back home, even though we did have a very nice (rainy) vacation at the beach.

Forgive the southern salutation . . . but if you hang out with wonderful southern extended family for a week, you are bound to pick up the lingo in some form or fashion :D  (I love it!  They are awesome ;)

I would have taken pictures . . . but . . . I accidentally left my other memory card at home with my smaller camera, so I was left with only 8 pictures to take (choose wisely doesn't even begin to describe my feelings about those 8 pictures) . . . in fact, I was so careful and selective about which pictures I should take, that I only took about 3.

I tend to do that though - whenever I have something that is precious to me, I like to save it up until just the right time . . . the only problem is, I can never find the exact right time, and opportunities are so often missed.

Huh .... that could be an awesome object lesson.

Instead of always looking for the perfect time (or when I feel like I know all of the right answers) to engage, challenge, or talk to someone about Christ, I should always be willing to get into that uncomfortable conversation . . . even if it is kind of awkward at the time.

Been a bit thoughtful this evening . . . can you tell???  :)

Have a good one everybody - especially now that school is starting back up.  I've signed up for College Plus this year, so we'll see how it goes.  Definitely promises to be a busy semester though :)

~Hannah

Pssst...thanks Lancaster fam for joining us on our vacation this past week!

Haiti 2012

I feel that I owe an apology to all of my patient relatives who have been anxiously awaiting this post.  Sorry guys . . . I know this is long over due.  

For those who don't know, (or haven't read my previous posts :) Dad took Caelen to Haiti on missions work for her "senior trip".  

Caelen will even admit that she wasn't really looking forward to going, but in the end, it turned out to be the best thing possible.  Now she is scrimping and saving up to go again.  Doing missions work can do that to you I guess :)

Caelen and Dad flew out of TN on the sixth of July (a Friday) and arrived back home on Saturday . . . just in time to eat homemade ice cream for Nate bud's birthday.  

As soon as they stepped out of the car back in Marion NC, they were absolutely bombarded and interrogated until we got the whole story out of them:  

In a brief . . . {very brief} . . . this is what they said:

After stepping off of the (tiny and very rickety) blue plane into the town of Jeremy, their team was pounced on by a whole bunch of Haitian people trying to sell their goods and be paid for helping them out with their luggage.  If your luggage was handled at all by one of these people, you had to pay them for their services.

Once they had finished all of the airport rigmarole, the team headed down the house where they were going to be staying all week . . . it was pretty nice from what I saw of the pictures.  :)

While they were in Haiti, the team did a whole lot of Vacation Bible School for the local kids and for one of the orphanages in Jeremy.  A really neat opportunity!  Caelen said that they watched "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" with the kids one night, and they all cheered and clapped whenever Aslan came onto the screen.  That is how they feel about God.

Dad was explaining that as soon as they arrived at the orphanage, each team member was "adopted" by the kids there.  Caelen had a posse of 6 kids following her around everywhere.  Jessica (age 12), Rosetania (12), Loveson (10), Josephe (10), Shilanchi (7), Elsia (5).

Dad had 4 kids in his posse: Island (13), Makeson (11), Edno (8), Sonson (7).
Apparently, most of them were very sweet and loving kids.  


Apart from some "Haitian Sensation" (a sickness that involves nausea, fever, fatigue, headache...and the like)
nobody got too sick, although you had to be extremely cautious about the water there.  You had to keep your eyes and mouth tightly shut during showers and couldn't even use the water for brushing your teeth.  


Here is a slideshow of some of the pictures that Caelen took while they were there. 

Sometimes I think that we can forget about the different countries that are in need, both physically and spiritually.  Sometimes we get so caught up in our own comfort, our own difficulties, and our own lives, that we forget to pray for those who don't even have half of what we have.  Sometimes, I think that we take a whole lot of things too much for granted . . . . Fresh water, clean homes, loving families, enough food to eat . . . you name it!
America needs to become more grateful.  I need to become more grateful.

Continue to keep Haiti in your prayers.  

A "Hodge-Podge" of Randoms

Have you ever done this? - Written a hodge-podge of things in your journal just to catch yourself up on everything that you've done in the last couple of days?? . . . I find myself doing it all the time!!

7.11.12 - (10:24 pm)

Caelen and Dad are in Haiti; Mom got back from CO on Monday, (today is Wednesday) and Nathan is turning 15 on Saturday.  

I finished "Bonhoeffer - Pastor, Martyr, Spy" on Tuesday, and checked out "The Count of Monte Cristo" from the library this evening. 

We ate stir fry for supper, and worked in the rain today.  

Ben has a cold, and I have been giving him warm water with 2 drops of Wintergreen, 2 drops of Eucalyptus Radiata, and 5 drops of Lemon Young Living Essential Oils to gargle to help soothe his throat.  It works like magic!!  :)

I made Homemade Ice Cream in 10 minutes yesterday, and it turned out to be DELICIOUS!!!

I got my mocha brown Lenovo IdeaPad laptop last week, and love it with all of my <3

Am memorizing 2 verses on Kindness for this week - 1 Thessalonians 5:15 & 2 Timothy 2:24.  {Why does memorizing things come so difficultly for me??}

It has been a regular rain forest here lately, and OH!!!  I forgot to mention!!  . . . I (finally) got my permit the other week!!!   YAY!!!

Yours ever, but not always so faithfully,

Hannah