My Parents

    We are knocking on the one year anniversary of when our family changed forever.
    As most of you know, I have many fond memories of growing up Amish.
    There's one thing though that I wish I could change about it all, and that is photos.
    I would love to have stacks of photos to see, instead of only the slightly out of focus images in my head. Somehow, I can't bring them to full clarity in my mind. Even as I relive memories, time has fogged up the faces and I can no longer see them clearly.
    I am thankful for the few photos I do have.
    The best one I have of my parents from three years ago, taken on the morning of my "baby" brother's wedding.

    With Mom no longer here with us, I cherish this picture, even if I can't see her face.
    

Currently

Reading ...  in the Bible I'm in the middle of Luke.  In other books I'm enjoying several different ones at the moment. 

Will the Circle be Unbroken by Sean Dietrich. I'm only at the very beginning of the book, but so far it's great and I have no doubt I will continue to love it. I don't remember when I first became aware of Sean Dietrich, but one of my friends shared something he wrote on Facebook and I looked at his public page and loved all the columns he wrote so I started following him. Last summer as we were going through my Mom's battle with cancer and her funeral etc, Sean was writing about his beloved mother-in-law as she was dying. He put thoughts and feeling into words that I was feeling, and everyday I'd hop onto Facebook to read his latest post. I still always take time to read everything he posts on Facebook. Because of that, when I discovered his book at the library I swooped it up and look forward to enjoying it from cover to cover.

I got some of my Mom's cookbooks. I'm loving looking through them and reading the little notes she jotted next to the recipes she tried. I still like Amish cookbooks even though I prefer pictures alongside the recipes instead of only in my imagination

Writing ... text messages, emails, letters, blog posts, and per Steven's request I've been working on the Aaron Yoder book. He read the Lily books and really wanted to hear things from Aaron's childhood and his point of view.  I've been having a lot of fun with it so far.

Watching ... the Spring Baking Championship. I enjoy watching the talented bakers and get inspired to keep learning new things. 

Listening ... to the birds singing in the trees around the house. There's a little house finch sitting on a branch right outside the kitchen window singing away so beautifully. You can listen to its song here.

Baking ... there's a fresh batch of sugar cookies on the kitchen table. Rosie Mae topped some of them with a pale pink icing and wants to package them up to gift to her friend who had a baby. I have my pizzelle maker out and want to make a batch of pizzelles later today. I'm wanting to try a new flavor, but haven't quite decided what that will be.

Cooking ... for supper tonight there will be stuffed peppers, salad, and then cookies for dessert.

Feeling ... happy and hopeful, and slightly guilty. The slightly guilty feeling is comeing from the fact that I never hit the publish button for the Y and Z posts in the A -Z April blogging challenge. They're still sitting in my drafts folder, but at this point I think I'll just leave them there and pull them out next April.

Disliking ... the potholes on one of the local roads. They're deep. There's an abundance of them. It's nearly impossible to avoid all of them without simply avoiding the road entirely.

Loving ... this gorgeous spring weather! Sunshine, green grass, flowers, baby calves, and everything spring entails. It's such a happy time of year!

Playing ... later today we'll be playing Menu Mash-up. It's a fun little game where you try to create tasty sounding dishes from the cards you drew. Steven got it from our game shelves this morning and the girls and I agreed to play it with him this afternoon.

Cleaning ... other than the daily dozen ... on the agenda for this week is to clean and organize our roll top desk. It's a task that has been getting pushed back for long enough.

X ~ eXcommunicate

     Knowing we would be excommunicated from the Amish church was not something we approached lightly when making the decision to leave.
    It has not been easy being cut off from family and friends.
    It has been humiliating, frustrating, irritating, and downright awful at times in the way we were treated, but not once did it make us feel like rejoining the Amish.
    As a matter of fact, it had quite the opposite affect on us. The more they shun, avoid, and treat us badly the less we ever want to be a part of that culture again.
    Do I miss the closeness of community? Yes.
    Do I miss all my growing up friends? Yes.
    Do I wish things were different. Yes.
    Am I happy that some Amish churches are no longer as strict about excommunication when someone leaves? Yes!!
    Another one of my brothers and his family recently left the Amish church. Their experience is quite different than ours was sixteen years ago. They have not been excommunicated. They can still freely visit their family, eat with them, etc. 
    Some other Amish communities will still shun them, but I'm so happy that their closest relationships remain intact. I'm so happy that they will never have that visit from the ministry to inform them that they are being handed over to Satan. I'm so happy that they won't have to experience the loss of everyone they loved.
    I am also happy that a few relationships I had thought were lost forever in my own life have been somewhat restored.
    I am happy that it seems as if there's a shift coming in some Amish churches in the way they use excommunication and shunning.

W ~ Wish Lists

    For some reason, I enjoy reading other people's wish lists, and being someone who enjoys creating lists, I also have a variety of wish lists floating around. I don't have expectations of ever getting them fulfilled, and I'm okay with that, but I still enjoy adding things to them.
    I have quite a collection of cookbooks, and an even bigger wish list of cookbooks. I have hopes of getting a few of them over time. 
    Bake from Scratch volumes two through six are at the top of that list. Rosie Mae got volume one for me, since she knew how much I loved them when I had borrowed them from the library. So with time I'm hoping to actually complete that set. 
    Another wish list contains kitchen tools and equipment. It's a long list. Basically if I know it exists, and I don't have it, it's on the list.
    My kitchen is tiny, so I'm not planning to actually get much of anything on the list, but it's still a fun dream.
    As a homeschool Mom, my curriculum and school supplies wish list is pretty extensive as well. I do hope to someday upgrade my printer, but otherwise most everything will remain firmly on the wish list.
    Art supplies could be on the homeschool wish list I suppose, but I have hopes of doing art related things long after all the children have graduated, so that list keeps growing as well.
    You would think as someone who admires minimalism from a distance my wish lists wouldn't be very long, but that isn't the case.
    Wish lists aren't going to buy lists though, so I keep enjoying them.
    

V ~ Ventriloquist

    There are times I am convinced my phone is a ventriloquist.
    The alert sounds that I received a text. 
    Though the phone is right next to me, it sounds as if the alert came from across the room.
    It happens every single time!
    Yesterday Steven and I went on a hike. I had my phone in my pocket when I received a text. It sounded as if it came from some distance to the right of me.
    I don't understand it.
    But it continues to happen. It's little talent is quite unhelpful if I'm trying to locate it