Crazy Kids

Yesterday afternoon I set up a tent that our neighbors in Houston gave us so the kids could play in it. They asked Daddy if they could sleep in it that night, and surprisingly he said yes. They were thrilled. The only thing is, Daddy wasn't about to sacrifice sleep squished in a very small tent with three kids, or risk waking up with a sore back. And I didn't want to get eaten by mountain lions or bears. So.... they were on their own, and they were totally cool with it. Sweetie did sleep all night at the door of their tent, earning much-needed brownie points from Daddy.

This morning they woke up at the crack of dawn and ran inside full of excitement - they loved sleeping in the tent. They even seemed to be best buddies all day because of their bonding time. During breakfast Owen asked if they could sleep in the tent again tonight but deeper into our woods - not inside Sweetie's fence - and I said no, they needed to be inside her fence. To which he responded, "But Mommy, how in the world are we supposed to get accustomed to the wild if we have to sleep inside her fence?"

So it's 8:52 right now, and I just went and checked on them and they're having a ball. But it is cold right now - 48.2 degrees to be exact - and it's supposed to get down to 32 tonight! So I may go out there soon and make them come in. None of them have much blubber to keep them warm.

Ice Cream

It's no secret to my closer friends that I have a great love for ice cream. I'm pretty much an ice cream snob - I'll only eat it if it's the best of the best and won't waste my time with the cheap stuff.

In Isle Mujeres one evening I was reading in bed and I was craving this homemade ice cream we had in town. Jimmy rode five miles on his bike to get me three scoops (chocolate, banana, and nutella) and then threw his bike in the back of a taxi and got a ride home so it wouldn't be melted when I got it. There was an ice cream place about a mile from our hotel, but he knew that that ice cream just wouldn't cut it. My man knows how to love me!

Anyway, back to the reason for my post. My kids love ice cream as well, but I like to make them healthier desserts (I'll die an early death, but they'll live a long, healthy life :) Yesterday me and the kids made vanilla ice cream that was sweetened with raw agave nectar, which has a very low glycemic index. We also used raw milk and raw cream, which is extremely healthy and doesn't make you fluffy. :)

So here it is. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 cup whole organic milk
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and seeds scraped
½ cup raw blue agave nectar
Pinch of sea salt
2 large free-range egg yolks
2 cups heavy organic cream

Have a large bowl of ice water ready. Place the milk in a small saucepan with the vanilla bean, vanilla seeds, agave nectar, and salt. Heat over low heat until the mixture is hot. Lightly beat the egg yolks in a bowl. Add ¼ cup of the hot milk and whisk. Pour the egg mixture into the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly until it starts to thicken, about 10 minutes.

Remove from the heat and place the saucepan in a bowl of ice water. Continue stirring to cool down the mixture. When the mixture is only slightly warm, stir in the cream. Remove the vanilla bean and discard. Cover and chill in the refrigerator until cold—several hours or overnight is best. Pour the mixture through a strainer into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Makes 1 quart.

* * *
p.s. We also used the old-fashioned type of ice cream maker where you use ice and salt instead of the newer versions where you put your ice cream mixture in a container that has been in the freezer overnight and then turn it on to churn in the frozen container. We've discovered those don't work as well - the ice cream isn't as thick when it's done.

Isle Mujeres

We're back from our 10th anniversary celebration. We had an amazing time, but we're sooooo glad to be home. We missed the children tremendously!

Here's a few pictures from our trip:

This is the view from our hotel lobby. The little hut is the hotel's restaurant where we dined a few times.

This was down the road from our hotel. They had snorkeling and zip lines. We snorkeled off our hotel's pier (cuz this place cost $38 to snorkel) and we saw a sting ray, octopus, sea urchin, and lots and lots of beautiful fish.

Jimmy wore me out on our trip. The first day there we got on bikes and rode all the way to the other end of the island and back - ten miles round trip. All the other gringos rented golf carts, but Jimmy likes free bikes. :) The second day we went kayaking (way too far from shore for my comfort level) and my arms were so tired, Jimmy had to row us home. The third day we went snorkeling, which seems fairly innocuous, but for some reason I was very tired after we were finished. Probably because he kept pointing out sea creatures that could hurt me and I would swim away fast.

Thankfully we did a lot of my favorite thing to do, READ!

We saw many of these ugly things. I will state for the record that I will never move anywhere that has any of these lurking around.

We ate lunch one afternoon in town and these two guys appeared and starting playing their drums African-style and singing in Spanish. They sung a few songs and then asked very politely if anyone could spare any tips for them. I thought they were fabulous and gave them five dollars.

This is what Jimmy thought of them. He wanted to pay them to stop playing...

Heading to dinner on our last evening on the island.

The following pictures show part of the reason that Jimmy and I have such a wonderful marriage together - the guy makes me laugh all the time. Not just your regular 'ol laugh, but "my belly aches" kind of laugh. It makes the chaos that comes with raising six small children so much more fun!

Boulder Girls' Weekend

This past weekend one of my very best friends, Andrea, came to visit me! We had a little Girls' Weekend from Friday to Sunday in Boulder and I had the most fabulous time. I'd say the highlight of the weekend was uninterrupted conversation with Andrea while dining on exquisite cuisine. Yum-o-la. Everything from some rock'n biscuits and gravy to a hummus wrap with fresh carrot/celery/lime/blue algae juice to my multiple visits to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.

A huge THANK YOU to our amazing husbands for letting us go! It was the first time Jimmy had all six children, and he even took them swimming at a local ranch with some families from our church! I was very impressed!
A few pics...

On our way to Boulder! Yahooooooo! (in my husband's 4x4 Dodge Ram 3/4 ton diesel truck... not the smoothest ride for such sophisticated girls like us... :\

Yum-o-la!

Look at that manicure!! Andrea found this place, and it was amazing. It had a big-screen TV, huge lounge chairs to relax in, and two huge jars of FREE plain and peanut M&Ms!! All to indulge while getting your nails done. Brilliant business idea, we both thought.

The biggest and best biscuit ever!

Ummm...

Why does my husband insist on keeping clothes that are literally 20 years old? I am a minimalist and I'm continually trying to have less "stuff." I cleaned out a basement closet today and put all the stuff I wanted to get rid of on a table for Jimmy to go through. (which, btw, my former self would have just thrown it all away immediately hoping Jimmy would never notice, but I'm more enlightened thanks to my good friends the Joneses, who taught me by example that I need to respect my husband's "stuff"....) Anyway, he wanted to keep this "perfectly good" LSU sweatshirt that he's had FOR TWENTY YEARS. Is it just me, or am I the only one who thinks it just doesn't fit him anymore?

Preach it!

Voddie Baucham is my ALL-TIME favorite pastor. He's an African-American pastor from Texas that has written a few great books, Family-Driven Faith being one of my favorites. I literally stomp my feet "in agreement" every time I hear him preach. He's absolutely amazing. He "talks the talk and walks the walk," and an extra bonus about him is he has adopted two children and most likely will adopt a few more. The percentage of African-Americans who adopt is quite small.

Anyway, he wrote this great post on his blog that I had to share.

Barack Obama: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Friday, April 18, 2008

Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion candidate ever to run for President. He could not even bring himself to vote for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act which would have protected children born in the process of an abortion. That’s right, Mr. Obama cannot even bring himself to support a plan that simply says to doctors, “If they slip past while you are trying to kill them, you have to let ‘em live.” With this vote, Obama was more pro-abortion than the radical abortion group NARAL.

I am absolutely amazed that at a time when Margaret Sanger’s Darwinian, Eugenics inspired dream of eliminating the poor, the lame, and the inferior races through targeted abortion is being propagated at record rates, black people still support the man who epitomizes her murderous philosophy. Black and hispanic women make up less than 13% of the population, but account for nearly half of all abortions. The overwhelming majority of Planned Parenthood’s abortion mills are located in minority neighborhoods. Abortion is absolutely racist. Yet most blacks have no problem supporting people like Mr. Obama who want to make sure that the killing doesn’t stop.

In his article, “Shepherds Leading the Sheep to Slaughter,” Rev. Clenard Childress notes:

“Here are the birth statistics for African-American babies in the City of Philadelphia just a couple a years ago: 10,880 born, 9,259 aborted. Nearly half or 46% of all babies in the City of Brotherly love were dismembered and brutally killed by means of abortion. Moreover, there are twenty-five other major urban cities in America that report having a higher abortion rate than live birth rate.”

This is absolutely astonishing! The only thing more astonishing is the fact that black clergymen in Philadelphia are supporting Mr. Obama. Then there is the consistent mantra from black supporters of America’s first bi-racial candidate... “I’m just happy to see a black man in this position.” Amazing! That’s like Hitler hiring a Jewish doctor (on his father’s side) to run the human experiments at Dachau and hearing the Jewish prisoners hail the fact that ‘one of their own’ has ascended to such great heights in the Nazi regime.

America is slaughtering children at a rate of about 3,600 per day. Unfortunately, a disproportionate number of those children look just like me. I was born to a single, teenaged black girl in South Central Los Angeles, CA in 1969. I shudder to think about the pressure my mother would have faced were she to find herself in that position in the current moral climate. Today people consistently make the argument that people in my mother’s position would do better to kill people like me before we’re born.

But what about cases of rape? Well, as the father of an adopted son whose biological mother was a rape victim, I say, he didn’t deserve to die either. I praise God his mother realized that he was an innocent party in a terrible tragedy. I am also honored to call him my son. Our second adopted son was born to a fourteen year-old middle school girl who also bucked the odds and gave her baby life.

So many people are more concerned about gas prices than they are about the greatest moral crisis of our day. I’m afraid we are going to get precisely the leadership we deserve. I was just in Munich, Germany where people are paying over $8.00 a gallon and still driving over 100 mph on the Autobahn. Ironically, gas doesn’t cost as much as bottled water, but we are more worried about paying a few bucks at the pump than we are about genocide right under our noses.

God help us! Or should I say, God Forgive Us!

VB

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