FAB SUNDAY STEALING

 

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

Since it's Labor Day weekend, we're going to keep this simple. We stole this from a blogger named Idzie, who called this the F.A.B. (film, audio, book) meme.

F.A.B.

F. Film: What movie or tv show are you watching? I am not watching, but want to watch the new show on Netflix, The Thursday Murder Club. I've read the book and I'm looking forward to seeing the movie (at some point in the future when I have nothing to do haha!). We are watching The Sinner, Justified-City Primeval, Breaking Bad, Leanne (Leanne Morgan's sitcom). We may skip season two of The Sinner because it involves a child and I am struggling. Each season is about one case and how it is solved.

A. Audio: What are you listening to? Lectures by Dr. Clara Gerhardt and by Dr. Celeste Hill. These women are my two professors this semester and I've been listening to their lectures. One day this week I did listen to a Christian radio station while driving to work - I think it is K-Love, but not entirely sure.

B. Book: What are you reading? For pleasure I'm reading The Oligarch's Daughter by Joseph Finder. For my Parenting Class I'm reading Parent-Child Relations: An Introduction to Parenting by Dr. Clara Gerhardt and Jerry Bigner. For my Professional Perspectives class I'm reading The Art of Work by Jeff Goins (LOVE LOVE this book!) and Pathways to Professionalism in Family Science by Dr. Celeste Hill. I think it is pretty cool that my professors are published authors and that we use their textbooks. Just in case you are wondering, my degree will be in Human Development and Family Science. I had to write and record a one minute elevator speech about Family Science on Friday explaining what it is and what it isn't. It was supposed to be 45-60 seconds. Mine was 75 seconds. I worked hard to make it shorter, but I finally gave up and submitted it. I feel sure that she will deduct some points for the length.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

Hodgepodge

 

I am joining up for the weekly hodgepodge where the questions are asked by Joyce at From This Side of the Pond.

1. When someone finds out what you do or where you're from, what's a question they always ask? 

Hmmm. I have no idea. I am from Alabama and people often have pre-conceived notions about our state due to historical events. Most people here are just like people everywhere. We consider ourselves friendly and welcoming. Regarding my job, I am on staff at a large UMC. Sometimes people want to know things that go on at a church! They might be surprised.

2. Did you participate in 'Greek Life' when you were in college, or have children who did? If so what was your experience like? Taking another tack...have you ever been to Greece? If not, is that a destination on your bucket list? 

My husband was a Beta Theta Pi at Auburn. He said it was like living in the old movie "Animal House." Our daughter was a Zeta at Auburn. I would go work behind the scenes during rush (recruitment) week and I always had a great time. Funny true story - I am a 67 year old college student and I did get an email about attending the Greek meeting on campus. I wonder what they would do if I showed up and signed up to participate!! 

We went to Greece in October 2024 and it was so beautiful!

Our first view of Santorini from the ship

3. Do you like Greek food? If so what's your favorite dish?  

I love Greek food and we have a wonderful Greek community and lots of Greek restaurants here in town. Taziki's started here in Birmingham and I love their Mediterranean salad with chick peas and I always add grilled shrimp. When we were in Greece I had the best gyro I've ever eaten. In June, our nephew married a girl whose parents came to America. She has made several wonderful Greek dishes from spanokopita to baklava.

4. What incredibly common thing have you never done? 

I have never worked in a restaurant or any type of food service establishment. 

5. What is a telltale sign that you're upset? 

I tend to yell (I'm embarrassed to admit that!) and then I shut down and sometimes I cry.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

The low temps this week (at night) are unbelievable. This is August in Alabama and it was 59 last night and is going down to 61 tonight. It is awesome!

Weekend Review

Thursday was Mark's birthday so I made an early reservation at Cafe Dupont. After I got off work, we drove through a torrential downpour to get there, but it was just barely raining downtown . . .until later!

Mark started his birthday celebration with "the best Old Fashioned" he has ever consumed. They use demerara sugar in their simple syrup.

Cafe Dupont sources as many food items as possible from local sources. Our server brought

out bread that was obviously made by a talented baker.

She then brought us an amuse bouche. It was half of a tiny heirloom tomato with goat cheese and a piece of lamb bacon on top. Yes - lamb bacon. It was tasty. Of course, there were also two sauces - one under the tomato and one drizzled on the plate. We ordered the cheese plate and I wish I had taken a picture. It was gorgeous -- cubes of many different cheeses with various drizzles of honey or sauce and fresh fruit prepared in different ways. Cafe Dupont serves one of the best 100 fried chicken dinners in the U.S. so Mark ordered fried chicken. I think it is funny for a fancy restaurant to serve fried chicken! I ordered the local vegetables. Both were delicious. Mark had beignets for dessert and sorghum ice cream. 

Mark said the Old Fashioned, the cheese plate, and the sorghum ice cream were the best!! Between courses we also had a palate cleanser. It was a tiny scoop of watermelon and another "summer flavor" (I can't remember!) sherbet.

I had a few things to do on Friday morning, but by 2:30 we were loaded into the car with fishing poles and bathing suits and we were headed to our friend's lake house for a mini vacation.

This is a funny "staged" photo. Our friend's lakehouse is in the town of our rival college team. Mark had told some of our young professionals where we were going and that he holds his breath all the way through town (joke). He put on his respirator mask so I could take his picture for our friends.

We spent the afternoon checking out our friend's new lake home and then watched a gorgeous sunset - first from the dock and then from their upstairs balcony.

Our friend had baked a carrot cake for Mark using Mark's mother's recipe. We first feasted on grilled chicken, grilled okra, and grilled corn on the cob. It was a perfect way to end the day.

We went for a long boat ride on Saturday morning and the morning could not have been more beautiful!!

I spent part of the day reading while seated in a very comfortable chair on that upper deck.

Another couple of friends showed up at lunch on Saturday and we ate grilled pork tenderloin sliders and salad and fresh fruit. We were laughing at the change in lake menus since we are no longer "young in body" only "young in heart." We ate mostly healthy foods throughout the weekend with only a few treats.

Everyone spent the afternoon talking and laughing. Some folks went for another boat ride. Mark was in charge of dinner. He caught fresh bream on Thursday at our farm lake. He fried fish for everyone. I don't normally eat fried food, but his is delicious! We provided tortillas and all of the fixin's for fish tacos. I made a black bean and corn salad/salsa as the side and everyone (but me) had a piece of carrot cake for dessert. Mark and Guy played indoor cornhole two different times and they were whooping and hollering like kids. Mark told me later that he enjoyed those two games more than anything. He said it felt so good to act like a kid for a little while. He played intramural horseshoes while at Auburn University and he said those skills came in very handy! We all watched the Saturday night sun as it set and it was beautiful. I think the sun set before we ate dinner.

After dinner, dessert, and sun (whatever order) our friends who had driven down for the day left to head home. The four of us remaining sat around and chatted for a few minutes and then we were all in bed by 10:00.

Y'all know that I work on Sundays but I had made arrangements to be off on Sunday morning. This was the only Sunday this year (besides the one in May when we were at a wedding out of state) where I didn't have to set the alarm clock for 5:00 a.m. It was glorious. We sat out on the deck for a while and then moved to the table for some breakfast. Mark and I headed home around 11:30 because I did have to be at a work meeting at 4:00.

It was a much needed respite - a time away filled with the fellowship and love of good friends.

 

Sunday Stealing

 

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

This week we once again turn to husband-and-wife bloggers, Jeff and Charli, who are getting our week started with a meme inspired by one they stole from Jennine.

Morning Meme

1) What do you typically have for breakfast? 

This weekend I was on vacation and on both Saturday and Sunday I had 1/2 of a homemade biscuit and a piece of chicken maple sausage. Today I splurged and had a small slice of bacon, too! Normally, I have cottage cheese and fruit or a couple of slices of turkey between two pieces of bread or three AmyLu chicken sausage links. I've been working on eating more lean protein in the morning.

2) What was your favorite breakfast cereal when you were a kid? 

I am sure it was anything with sugar on it! Grits are a hot breakfast cereal and we ate lots of those and grits are still yummy. Just FYI - we do NOT eat sugar on our grits. If you say you don't like grits, you've never eaten my cheese grits.

3) Orange juice, tomato juice or cranberry juice? 

May I have cranberry juice, please, with a shot of vodka haha! I DETEST tomato juice. I love fresh tomatoes. I like tomato sauce (pizza, spaghetti, lasagna). I HATE tomato juice.

4) What time is your alarm clock set for? 

My alarm rings at 5:02 a.m. on Sunday through Thursday mornings.

5) Do you have any tips for preventing stress and making the morning go more smoothly? Plan ahead. My mornings are more pleasant when I know what I'm taking in my lunch and when I have pre-ironed my clothes and have them hanging in the closet ready to throw on. I like to ride my stationary bike for 30 minutes each morning and then take a shower and wash my hair. I run into the kitchen and eat breakfast and throw my lunch together. I then run back to the bathroom and dry and straighten my hair and throw on a little make-up (I don't wear much make-up!). I usually throw in a load of laundry or empty the dishwasher from the night before in between some of those other "chores." My goal is to be in my car by 8:00. I have to be at work by 8:30. I do a lot of things in the morning because I hate having to walk in the door and start doing more "work."

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week. I look forward to reading everyone's answers!

It's Truly a Hodgepodge

I'm joining up with Joyce and friends for this week's hodgepodge. Thank you to Joyce for the questions each week!!

1. What's worth standing in line for? 

When our kids were younger, we stood in line for new releases of Beanie Babies. When our kids were in college, they stood in line to get into the stadium for football games. As an adult, I will stand in a line to see my granddaughters!! I will stand in line to get on an airplane to travel to fun locations! I've written about patience before -- I prayed for patience and the very next month . . .I found out I was pregnant with twins. God has such a sense of humor! Mark has VERY LITTLE patience. Just last night, our daughter sent the meme below to me and to our son, Glenn, and said, "What in the Mark Elliott is this?' That would definitely be Mark. He HATES standing in line.

2. Tell us about a favorite food related memory. 

I remember being at our grandparent's house and they would cut open a chilled watermelon and give us all a big piece. It was always so sweet and juicy! Another food related memory - it was a "thing" in the Elliott family that they bought a huge amount of Silver Queen Corn every summer. The family then gathered in their kitchen and we cut the corn from the cob and milked the cob and then froze the corn to be used for Sunday lunches throughout the year. We hated doing it at the time but it is actually a very fond memory now.

3. What are some things you find particularly peaceful or calming? 

If I need to calm down, I close my eyes and I imagine I'm at the beach. I think about how the sun feels beating down on my skin. I make myself "listen" for the waves and for the seabird calls. It usually works. I also do the breathing exercise where you breathe in for a certain number of seconds, hold for a certain number of seconds, exhale for a certain number of seconds. Both of those are tried and true for me. Now, if you were asking what things I like to do that are peaceful or calming -- sitting on a beach is one. Also, sitting on a pier on the lake or on a boat out on the lake at sunset -- yes! Depending on "why" I need to calm down, sometimes riding my stationary bike helps me calm down.

4. Is there something you do now that gets you just as excited as it did when you were a child? 

I could not think of an answer . . . and then I remembered . . .NEW SCHOOL SUPPLIES. I love new crayons and new pens and pencils and new notebooks!

5. To what degree are you in touch with friends from grade school? high school? college if you attended college? 

Let's see . . .I have lunch with two friends from church/youth group/high school (they are a year older) once or twice a year. When we are together, time slips away! I'm friends with quite a few people from elementary and high school -- on facebook! We don't socialize with anyone from my childhood or high school days. Most of our "people" now are friends we have together - either friends from church (the majority) or friends from the neighborhood.

6. Insert your own random thought here. I have mentioned that we are going on a river cruise in October from Amsterdam to Basel, Switzerland. We are almost to the point where we can choose our excursions. I'm beginning to get excited. Have any of you cruised on an AMAwaterways cruise? We've been checking out the weather in October and I think it might be cool on our trip -- maybe I need some new clothes! I've been following AMA on social media and yesterday someone asked about souvenirs. There were some great answers and the ones that really interested me were about the things people wished they had purchased and didn't. or the things they had purchased and wished they had purchased more.

A Full (and Fun!) Week in Review

I’m actually backing up to Wednesday because that’s when things really started rolling.

Party in the Lot

Our church hosted its annual Party in the Lot—a giant back-to-school bash. We filled the parking lot (and gym) with blow-ups, ponies, face painting, hair spray painting, a DJ and dance party, popcorn, pop-ice, and even a free hamburger/chicken finger meal. Everything is free, which means we usually draw close to 800 people from our church and the community. It’s one of the highlights of the year, and our Wednesday night ministries always kick off strong afterward.

This year I worked three shifts:

• First shift: Registration tent.

• Second shift: Popcorn booth (we stuffed what felt like a million bags beforehand—I took the picture, so of course I’m not in it).

• Third shift: Supervising a bounce house for the pre-K through first graders. Whew—those little ones have endless energy! No photos!

DJ Sillz kept the dance floor packed, and it wasn’t just kids—moms and grandmoms joined in too.

Thursday

Mark went to the farm, and I headed to work. Afterward I met three friends for dinner at SoHo Taco. Normally six of us meet, but one friend was out of town caring for her dad after surgery. Her husband joined, and since both Mark and our other friend’s spouse were away, we laughed that we’d probably start rumors showing up without them!

After dinner, we walked to the Homewood Theater for the opening show—a musical evening, kind of cabaret style. Mark doesn’t enjoy this type of performance, so it was just as well he stayed at the farm to keep working on his kitchen and bedroom at the farm. (I’m so proud of all he’s done there!)

Friday

Work again (not my usual day to be in the office) —Ministry Fair Sunday falls under my job description, so my co-worker and I decorated tables and prepped as much as possible.

That night, Mark and I went out with our neighbors to The Front Porch. The place was packed—we waited about 30 minutes for a table—but the food and conversation were worth it. Walking back to the car, the sky was absolutely stunning.

Saturday

Finally, a day at home! I think it drives Mark crazy when I want to stay in, but after running nonstop all week, it felt wonderful.

I baked two pans of brown sugar brownies for the ministry fair, made hummingbird food, cleaned house, and even booked a Thursday dinner reservation for Mark’s birthday. (Confession: I don’t love house cleaning!)

Dinner was fresh fish—Halibut for me, Salmon for Mark. Both were from his last Alaska trip, which made the meal even more special.

Sunday

Sunday mornings are always workdays for me. I filled balloons, added final touches to the gym, and helped host throughout the morning.

By Sunday night, I was exhausted. I propped my feet up more than once on Sunday afternoon.

What a whirlwind of a week!
What did you do this weekend?

2 X 4 Sunday Stealing

I am joining up with Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves! (Just FYI - I am never the one doing the stealing . . .I just steal from the other thieves!)

Dr. Medusa is an associate professor who stole this meme from her friend Clare. Since Clare no longer blogs, it's unknown whether she originated it or stole it. But that doesn't matter. What's important now is how you answer these questions.

The 2x4 Meme

TWO foods you can't stand

1. Salmon (especially salmon croquettes, but fresh salmon, too)

2. Beets

Just FYI - I also don't like liquorice.

If I were invited to dine in your home and you served those first two items, I would do my darndest to eat some of both. I would NEVER cook them for myself and I would NEVER order them from a menu.

FOUR foods you love

1. Ripe watermelon

2. Cheeseburgers

3. Mexican food

4. French fries

Those are not in order of my love for them. I also love lots of fresh veggies and other fruit and steak and halibut.

TWO places you never want to see again 

1. Inside a hospital (I know that wasn't where this question planned to go. Also, I am very fortunate to live in close proximity to one of the best hospitals in the world and we have great medical care available. I could live my life without ever going in a hospital again - for myself or even to visit. Of course, I know I probably will have to be inside a hospital again in my lifetime.

2. Of all the places we've traveled, I don't really have a desire to go back to Egypt -- EXCEPT to do a cruise down the Nile. Egypt is fascinating and I am so glad we visited last October. The museum was on my bucket list, as were the pyramids. Egypt is a very dirty place. Tourism is one of their biggest industries, yet you can't drink the water. After saying all of that, I probably would go back if the opportunity presented itself. I just went in a full circle, didn't I? haha!

Inside the pyramid

FOUR places you'd like to revisit

1. Italy - to tour the parts we didn't see

2. Greece - to see the parts we didn't see

3. Israel - always Israel - love it.

4. Ireland - we only toured the southern part - would love to visit the northern part. I would probably include the southern part again, too, because we truly loved it.

TWO musical artists who make you want to change the station 

1. Metallica

2. If Mark is in the car, the Beatles (he really does not like the Beatles - I don't know why)

FOUR musical artists you love to listen to

1. Maroon 5

2. The Beach Boys

3. The sound track from Wicked

4. If I'm at the beach - Jimmy Buffett

Now let me tell you that I don't listen to music that often anymore. We used to listen more often. My life is so busy and so loud that when I'm alone in the car or in the house, sometimes the quiet is what I prefer.

TWO moments you'd like to erase

1. I can't pinpoint the exact moment - but any moment where I've hurt someone

2. There are a few moments that I would like to erase - something that happened to me as a child, but talking about it on my blog isn't where I want to discuss it at this time.

I don't want to erase most moments - even the hard ones - because those moments have shaped me into the person I am today.

FOUR moments you'd like to relive

1. The birth of our twins - does that count as two moments? It was scary because they arrived six weeks early and my blood pressure dropped to 60 over 40 at one point. I had to have an emergency C-section, etc. The thing I remember is lying in the hospital bed or sitting on the sofa when we came home and while holding one of them, the love of God was so very real to me and I could feel his presence right there with us. Just FYI - we were so clueless hahaha!

2. Sometimes I would like to relive a few of my parenting moments. I would want to relive those moment and conversations with the knowledge and feelings that I have today.

3. Our wedding day (without the jitters and I would want to slow down and enjoy the day and the people more)

4. Our daughter's wedding day (so much fun) and our son's wedding day (a change in a few of my attitudes and I would like to approach the day with improved self-confidence)

Mark, Laura, Lisa

Lauren and Glenn

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.