Surprise snowfall

It was raining during the night, so I was stunned when I glanced outside while making the boys' breakfast and noticed WHITE STUFF on the ground!!! An hour later it looked like this!! This snow was supposed to miss us, so I'd paid no attention to the not-here-snow forecast. Ha. Ha. Ha. It was soooo pretty before it began to melt from the trees around noon. I took these photos around 8:30 am. 


Snowing in front 


Snowing in back and in the park behind and on the houses beyond that 


Very pretty snowy trees, ours and our neighbors (photo taken from our second floor) 


Our ornamental grasses turn blond after January freezes, and they're especially nice all snowy. 

Ready, set, ...

Yes, Christmas is now packed away, and I uncovered some sweet wintry art projects that Son1 made over the last several years, now displayed on the mantel until the end of February. Bobblehead moose, also discovered, are now tucked in a fun place in the dining area along with some Son1-made paper gingerbread boys and other such things. So sweet!

Flour is coming to room temp, counters are nearly clear, recipes are ready, ingredients doublechecked, and I'm going to bed shortly to get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow it'll be ready, set, teach-mix-teach-knead-teach-bake-teach-mix-eat. The kids' toys aren't picked up, though -- oh well.

Breadmaking with a crowd

How to teach 10-12 people to make bread in two hours? Here's my plan.

Clear the counters, I mean really clear the counters. Wash the top of the kitchen/dining table, too. Double-check the recipes and the ingredient quantities. Write out the triple-batch ingredient quantities so you don't have to think too hard in the moment. Make sure the flour is at room temperature. Have plenty of kitchen towels for floury hands that need to go help a kid or get something to drink. Set up two borrowed stand mixers as well as your own. Get a good night's sleep and eat a good breakfast.

First thing that morning, make up cinnamon roll dough and set it to rise. Put out ingredients at each stand mixer. When most everyone has arrived, give a quick intro to the idea of making yeast bread, then get started on the three batches of Cuban bread dough. When everyone has taken a look at the wet dough, the flour-adding step, and dough that's ready to knead, and then kneaded the dough, put it to rise in bowls and take a quick break to see to kids and drink more coffee, water, whatever.

Divide the dough into half-loaf portions and put everyone to work on shaping their own little loaf (at the counter and table, taking turns if necessary). Put them all in the oven to bake. Take another break.

Roll out the cinnamon roll dough, giving everyone a chance to roll out or simply handle the dough. Top with cinnamon mixture, then roll it up and offer turns at cutting the rolls. Put the pans of cinnamon rolls aside to rise.

When the Cuban bread is done, bake the cinnamon rolls. Give the Cuban bread a few minutes to cool, and then slice a loaf and hand out tastes.

Start a batch of pizza dough; note the different way to start the yeast, and the different texture of the dough. Put it aside to rise in a bowl.

Eat the cinnamon rolls, too!

If there's time, roll out the pizza dough and show how springy it is unless you let it rest. No time to bake and eat it, though. Make calzone or prebaked pizza crust after everyone leaves.

Send everyone home with a small loaf of Cuban bread, and recipes for Cuban bread, cinnamon rolls, and pizza dough.

Well, that's the plan, anyway. I only have two hours, and there will be lots of participants and lots of little kids. My house may end up quite flour-y, but it ought to smell really good!

Make way for the new

I'm really trying, I really am, to pack away Christmas. I NEED to clear the decks by bedtime Thursday; on Friday morning I'm going to host 11 people and their little kids, and teach the grownups to make homemade bread. I need the room!

The decorations are down, the cards and Christmas letters are neatly stacked for a last read-through, everything is off the tree but the lights, and the storage boxes are ready and waiting. It's just that... I packed so haphazardly last year and didn't have enough room for everything anyway that I used the old Easter box for the last of the Christmas stuff and then didn't have anywhere to put the Easter stuff, and... this time I'm determined to put away everything in a sensible way. But I need to get it done by *tomorrow*. At the same time as I prep for Friday morning's breadmaking lesson! I believe a good Thursday morning plan will be: make strong coffee, eat a good breakfast, and power into it.

After the holiday boxes are packed and stowed in the sunroom (until dear husband can put them in the attic this weekend), I'll seriously clear off my kitchen counters, get 1-2 bags of flour from the freezer, and find places for the two stand mixers I borrowed. At some point tomorrow the boys and I will edit their playroom toys for the slew of kids who'll be here, too.

Tough God questions from 9 year old

My just-turned-nine son, my oldest, has over the last couple of months provided some challenging "God" questions and moments for me, and I'm mulling over what I could do that might help him -- and me.

In those "in between" moments, in the car or at bedtime, he has on several occasions asked me how I can know God exists. Then he tells me that no one can prove that God exists. Yikes! I deal with this the best I can in the moment, and try to think of things that would help him face these questions from a faith perspective.

There's something that stricts me as comical about his God questions and statements as I struggle mightily to be open to his questions and trust the Spirit to lead him: these are the very same questions I struggled with as a physics/math/etc. high school and college student! It's hard to express how peculiar that is. Maybe it's just me :)

I wonder if he picked up this idea from school -- I afterschool him (pursue his/our interests and my goals in our own time) -- or from his extensive reading (current favorite: the Redwall series by Brian Jacques). I'll ask him where these ideas came from for him.

What ends up happening in the moment is that I listen to him and try to understand what he's saying, and I tell him that God cannot be proven or disproven -- that God simply Is, and is a mystery -- something you can't do experiments on to understand. (My goodness, how did we get into this?!?)

Last night I brought my (Episcopal) Book of Common Prayer to the dinner table and started reading aloud the catechism Q-and-As for family discussion; it went really well. He asked about the Greek and Roman gods, and dear husband, the boys, and I talked about some interesting things. I think we'll do more of that over the coming days and weeks.

To give him more faith language to think about in the midst of this, I also returned to singing the "Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth..." It's part of our bedtime song repertoire that's been built up over the three years since he didn't want spoken bedtime prayers anymore.

Any thoughts, suggestions, "been there"s?

More books being read

I'm reading fiction for my book group. It's time to start Memoirs of a Geisha, but during Son1's Thursday evening library program I picked up my requested copy of the next book, Angels and Demons (yes, by the author of "The Da Vinci Code") and started reading it. Not too bad, definitely a page turner. I'm also trying to finish this month's book, The Red Tent -- a refresher after reading it several years ago -- because the Red Tent discussion guide I found at the Union for Reform Judaism site was really, really interesting.

I am so glad I'm reading Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence (see sidebar); it has a lot of information and ideas about pretend violence and kids. It fits with what has always made sense to me - Jung, archetypes, fairy tales, kids being attracted to powerful images when they are stuck with little control over their lives. Very interesting to me, especially now that we are all enjoying our new video game system and finally *I* am playing games, both solo and with the family. I'm sure I'll blog on this whole experience; it's gotten me thinking a lot about parenting, media & kids, and unchallenged assumptions.

Back to fiction. A friend introduced me to the Thursday Next books, and I love them! I need to finish Lost in a Good Book so I can start the next book, heehee. I borrowed The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn from the library after reading a review of the next book by the same author; I have no idea if I'll like it, so we'll see.

The second annual science fair at the boys' elementary school is coming up soon, and Son1 is interested in doing something with bubbles and his Zome bubbleology kit. After we worked the library catalog a bit, he's now reading books about bubbles and I'm reading books about science fair projects. I helped judge last year's fair, but I never participated in a science fair as a kid so as a parent I'm trying to get a clue on the doing part!

Finally, last night I pulled this book off my shelf and decided it would be a good Lenten discipline to read it: Raising Faith-Filled Kids: Ordinary opportunities to nurture spirituality at home, by Tom McGrath. I've browsed through it many times and am really impressed. Now I think it's time to READ it.

The parable of the mustard seed

Another mom and I co-lead our Sunday school or church school Godly Play class. Our kids are prekindergarten and kindergarten age, so they turn 5 and 6 sometime during this school year. Godly Play is a Montessori-based approach to faith formation that I could go on and on about, but I just want to mention our current topic, which is parables.

This Sunday we don't meet because of the annual parish (business) meeting, but last Sunday I presented the parable of the mustard seed. The parable of the mustard seed is one of Jesus's answers to the question, "what is the kingdom of heaven?" He said the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that, when planted, grows and grows until it's big like a tree, and the birds of the air come and make their nests in it.

In Godly Play, parables are told with flat materials because parables are a different sort of thing from most of the other stories. So, the underlay is a big mustard yellow oval of felt, the seed sower is an ink drawing mounted on foam core (I think), the mustard bush is a many-branched green felt cutout that I unroll as it grows, and the birds of the air and their nests in the tree are little ink drawings mounted on foam core. The mustard seed is "so tiny that even looking very closely you wouldn't be able to see it," so we simply imagine it.

I love the parables presented Godly Play-style. There are so many aspects to be open to. This time the kids were really interested in placing the birds and the nests. One child wanted every bird to be in a nest. Another child wanted each nest to be in a certain place. Another child said one bird was dead. One aspect of Godly Play is to provide faith language so we (kids and all) can work with things that concern us, in the context of faith. I think the birds could be us, and that's my own thought. Who knows what the kids were each thinking. We ask wondering questions, but at this age sometimes they keep their thoughts to themselves.

After working with this parable for a few years, I wrote an article for my Web site about Sundays and family life, and found it really helpful to begin with this parable. Those are the kinds of wonderful, sideways, nonlinear connections that Godly Play nurtures, in my opinion.