It is a ♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫ Hodgepodge

Hello, it is Wednesday and it is time for the Hodgepodge.

Joyce asks the questions.

We answer the questions.

Click here to join the fun! 

 1. What's changed in your life, home, or community since your last birthday?

 Homes for sale ... two of our neighbors have moved in the last four months. 

2. September is Classical Music Month. Do you like/listen to classical music? If so what's a favorite piece and/or who is a favorite composer? 

Yes, I love classical music. Yes, I listen daily to classical music.

My favorite piece .... The Four Seasons (Vivaldi)

My favorite composer .... John Williams.

3. Besides The Bible, what's a book that has positively changed your life, relationships, career, or perspective? How so? 

Beyond Boundaries

Dr. John Townsend

How do you know you’re ready to trust again … and what does it take to be ready? Painful relationships violate our trust, causing us to close our hearts. But to experience the freedom and love God designed us for, we eventually have to take another risk. In this breakthrough book, bestselling author Dr. John Townsend takes you beyond the pain of the past to discover how to re-enter a life of intimate relationships. Whether you’re trying to restore a current relationship or begin a new one, Townsend gives practical tools for establishing trust and finding the intimacy you long for. Beyond Boundaries will help you reinstate closeness with someone who broke your trust; discern when true change has occurred; reestablish appropriate connections in strained relationships; create a safe environment that helps you trust; and restore former relationships to a healthy dynamic. You can move past relational pain to trust again. Beyond Boundaries will show you how.

 

4. I read (here) these ten hobbies will make you smarter...play a musical instrument, read voraciously, meditate regularly, work out your brain (puzzles, sudoku, board games, etc), exercise often, learn a new language, write your feelings down (blog, journal, just write), travel to new places, cook different kinds of meals, participate in sports actively

Are any on this list your current hobbies? Which hobby on the list would you be most inclined to try? 

My current hobbies .... work puzzles, exercise often, blogging, cooking different meals.

I have been trying to learn a new language, I had to jump off the learning German bus during the garden season. Hope to hop back on in November.

5. What sports traditions does your family have? 

Cross Country Skiing ... Winter is coming .... this ones for Judy of Cranberry Morning.

Trap Shooting

 6. In a few words, weigh in on the current football/National Anthem brouhaha. Keep it family friendly please.

 SAD

 7. Where do you have loads of patience, and where do you most lack patience?

I have patience with my gardens.

I am lacking patience when my computer is slooooowwwww.

 
8. Insert your own random thought here. 

We made our first Apple Crisp of the Autumn season Sunday. Yummy!

Do you have a twist to the traditional Apple Crisp recipe?

 

Sweet Potato, Feta and Kale Muffins ~ Joy List Monday

Sweet Potato, Feta, Kale Muffins

2 whole sweet potatoes peeled and cubed

1 Tbsp. olive oil

2 whole eggs

1/3 cup melted butter

1/2 cup milk or substitute almond or soy

1 1/2 cups all - purpose flour

2 Tbsp. brown sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. fine sea salt

1/8 tsp. black pepper

1 1/2 cup of fresh chopped kale

3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese

Lightly coat sweet potatoes with olive oil and bake in 400 ° oven for 20 minutes or until tender.

Let potatoes cool completely before handling again (roughly 20 minutes)

Coat muffin tin with olive oil or cooking spray

In a large bowl, mix eggs, butter and milk.

Add flour, brow sugar, baking powder, salt and pepper until dry ingredients are moistened.

Stir in potatoes, kale and cheese.

Divide batter into muffin cups, about 3/4 full.

Bake muffins in 400° oven for 18 to 22 minutes.

Enjoy

Our family fell in love with the sweet taste to this packed with goodness muffin.

Joy List Monday

~ a weekly ritual ~

a reminder to stop and pay attention to the little beauties and graces that make life magical and to set aside time for gratitude each day.

♥  thankful for all of those who keep American safe .... thankful I can head out of my house and not feel afraid ... remembering all of those men and women who keep us safe everyday

 ♥ the taste of the first apple crisp of the autumn season

♥ snail mail .... received a fun card, letter and recipe in the mail from my cousin ... always fun to receive mail

♥ British literature ... excited how my boys are excited to read Beowulf

♥ soaking in the last of summer flowers, beautiful, bright zinnias

 

The Red Bandanna

As we remember today ....

 

The Red Bandanna

Book by Tom Rinaldi

 

 One Sunday morning before church, when Welles Crowther was a young boy, his father gave him a red handkerchief for his back pocket. Welles kept it with him that day, and just about every day to come; it became a fixture and his signature.

A standout athlete growing up in Upper Nyack, NY, Welles was also a volunteer at the local fire department, along with his father. He cherished the necessity and the camaraderie, the meaning of the role. Fresh from college, he took a Wall Street job on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, but the dream of becoming a firefighter with the FDNY remained.

When the Twin Towers fell, Welles’s parents had no idea what happened to him. In the unbearable days that followed, they came to accept that he would never come home. But the mystery of his final hours persisted. Eight months after the attacks, however, Welles’s mother read a news account from several survivors, badly hurt on the 78th floor of the South Tower, who said they and others had been led to safety by a stranger, carrying a woman on his back, down nearly twenty flights of stairs.  After leading them down, the young man turned around.  “I’m going back up,” was all he said.

The survivors didn’t know his name, but despite the smoke and panic, one of them remembered a single detail clearly: the man was wearing a red bandanna.

Tom Rinaldi’s The Red Bandanna is about a fearless choice, about a crucible of terror and the indomitable spirit to answer it. Examining one decision in the gravest situation, it celebrates the difference one life can make.