New links

June isn't looking very promising as a month of many blog posts...oh well!  This weekend will be rather busy, with a family reunion and birthday party for Amos' grampa tomorrow, Amos' family visiting on Sunday, hurried packing and cleaning on Monday, and my flying out to Canada on Tuesday!

Here are some links, though...

Audiobook Sync
If your library has the Overdrive service, you can download two audiobooks for FREE every week during the summer.  Read the website carefully to find out how it works (it's pretty easy).  One of the books this week is a favorite, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein!  The other book is The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill.

YembiYembi
A really cool video about a couple who served with New Tribes Mission in Papua New Guinea.

A Modern Confession via Mike Gaston's blog
I thought this was really good.  Mike is the missions pastor at Grace Baptist, one of the churches in Santa Clarita.

17 Famous Literary Characters Almost Named Something Else via Mental Floss
Puny Pete.

Homemade Naan via Budget Bites
I made this naan with a few adjustments (subbed out some of the regular flour with 1/2 a cup of whole wheat flour and 1/3 of a cup of potato flakes, plus needs more salt).  It turned out really well; the potato flakes and the egg made it more pliable than other naan I've made.

So, you now have...something to listen to, something to watch, something to contemplate, something to laugh about, and something to eat!  Have a good weekend!

Off to camp!

My brothers and sisters are off to camp in just under two weeks, so you know what that means...

Packages in the mail!

The kids are very, very excited about camp.  They paid for half of camp themselves, and the other half was paid by a much-appreciated anonymous donor.

Last year, I sent a package to Brenda, and like every other camper in living memory, she had to sing "I'm a Little Teapot" with the rest of the package recipients. Gio, not having gone to camp yet, was confused about this.  He thought that the receiver had to sing on a stage all by their lonesome.  When we visited in March, he said, "Jennica, I don't want you to send me a package at camp."  I'm sending three presents in one box, but I'm tempted to write on the outside, "Gio wants to sing ALL by himself," haha!

Presents for the kids; Brenda's present will go in another box since she
got a Nalgene last year, plus she's in the HIGH SCHOOL camp!

Overholser

My blog is turning into a photo blog!  I do have one crazy story to share about our old church, but I'm waiting on confirmation of one critical detail.  How's that for a teaser?!

We have quite a few lakes and ponds and rivers and streams and such in Oklahoma.  We aren't exactly the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but we do have a lot of water.  Here are some pictures from Lake Overholser that I took over the past few weeks.  Click the pictures for a better view.

The river/drainage from the dam

Open the gates!

Overholser Dam at sunset

Amos took a picture of me...up to no good...

Sunset

Sunset, with a water tower off to the left

Overholser Dam

Beautiful

Cottonwoods, much?!

Overholser Dam

Some nice weeds

Chocolate and rain

Today's cooking adventure:
Boston Cream Poke Cake, using these directions but recipes from my Joy of Cooking cookbook

Now Amos and I are sitting on the porch, reading books, listening to the rain and thunder.

Odd

Here are some strange things about Oklahoma...

There are LOTS of drive-through restaurants.
Panera Bread, Subway, even donut shops!

A lot of men have long hair.

There are no helmet laws.
If you are riding a motorcycle, you have to wear some type of glasses or goggles, but you don't have to wear a helmet!

E-cigarette stores are on almost every street.
I don't know why, but e-cig stores and "vapor lounges" are very popular here.  There are also cigarette butts everywhere.

Lakes and ponds are ubiquitous.
I don't know where all the water comes from, but I like it!  I also like all the pondlife.

Center turn lanes/suicide lanes are rare.
The vast majority of streets here in OKC don't have a middle turn lane.  People just stop in the left lane and put on their turn signal.

No one runs when it is raining.
When it rains, there is no hurrying to the car, hurrying to the house, hurrying to the grocery store entrance; people just stroll along at their regular pace.

People spit in public.

People really like their rims.
There are suped-up cars everywhere, even Suburbans and old Lincolns!

There are no dog poop pick-up laws.
Dogs just go wherever their owners let them, and no one picks up after them.

Discarded mattresses and box springs are everywhere.
Twice a week people take their garbage out to the curb, and mattresses and box springs are always included.  I'm not sure if a sleep store had a huge sale or what!

Dolese

I discovered a park with a lake just a short way from our house, and I love it.
Check out the pictures.

Turtle!  My favorite park creature. :)

This looks like the perfect camping spot.

Weird, cool, knobby roots

A tiny turtle on the pipe and several tiny turtles in the water

Goose parents and three small fluffs

Memoria de Cinco de Mayo

I'm not a fan of Cinco de Mayo.  I'm not sure what is being celebrated, and I don't like mariachi bands; mariachi music sounds like Polish music, which, coincidentally, I don't like, either.  The only redeeming factor is the food.

For the past nine years, Cinco de Mayo has also conjured up a college memory from freshman year.  On certain days of the week, I would eat lunch with my friend Sherrie, fellow teacher ed major and later roommate at aptartment 29.  On this day, we were eating Mexican food in the caf, serenaded tortured by the sounds of a mariachi band.  The band had been hired for the Cinco de Mayo themed lunch, which was actually happening on Tres de Mayo (I think our school was trying to save money by having the band come on a different day).

Sherrie and I were talking about our P.E. for Teachers class or finals week or something like that, when our attention was arrested by Caleb*, an upperclassman.  He appeared next to me holding a glass vase with a Gerber daisy (decorations for the lunch), and as he looked at me he said, "I just wanted to let you know, the beauty of this flower is nothing compared to you."  Caleb set the vase and flower on the table, I said a very pinched thank you, and he walked back to his table.

Awk-ward.
Awkward.
So awkward.

Sherrie and I now had something new to talk about.  What did he mean?  Was he serious?  Was I supposed to take the flower with me?!

I was bothered by this interaction for several days.  I saw Caleb around campus, but he never said anything.  Once I saw him walking along, throwing a football with some friends, and I decided just to ask him what the Cinco de Mayo flower had been about.  He said that it was dare from his friends.

Okay, not as nice as a sincere compliment, but at least I didn't have to be paranoid any more, and I was very glad I hadn't taken the daisy with me!  I was glad that our paths rarely crossed after that.

------

I was a sophomore in Israel when Cinco de Mayo came around again. While there, I heard that one of the girls from my freshman wing was dating the same Caleb.  "Weird!  Remember what happened on Cinco de Mayo last year, when..." I told Michelle, who had also been on my wing that year and had heard the story.

Sara and Caleb have been happily married for several years now, and I am stuck with an awkward memory from when I was an eighteen-year-old freshman.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!  At least I have a funny story, even if I don't like the holiday. :)


(Yes, his name really was Caleb; if you do something dumb, you forfeit your name change, haha!)

A little bit of OKC

I've been exploring some of Oklahoma City, and here are a few pictures from poking around.  Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Catamarans, waiting for boating season at Lake Hefner

Redbud trees!  They were everywhere for our first few weeks.

Close up of the redbud trees

You can see the string of redbuds extending down the street

Tulips at the Will Rogers Horticultural
Gardens

More of the Will Rogers Horticultural Gardens

Irises are starting to bloom

One of my favorite parts of the gardens

Watery reflections under one of the bridges

A flowering tree

On Thursday I went on an adventure to a park just up the street from us.  I will post pictures after I go back and take some. :)

Bless You

Amos and I have been sneezing a lot, especially while in the bathroom.  I would find little fuzzes on the floor or in the bathtub, and I was afraid that we had mold growing somewhere (this is supposed to be the humid South, after all).  I remembered the other Jenica writing a post about a visit to Hong Kong in which chunks of mold flew out of the air conditioner in her rented room, and I was afraid!

I managed to get the cover off of the little vent in our bathroom, and I found the dust bunny production plant!
Think this might have been why we were sneezing?!  I sure hope so, because now it's all clean.

Click the pictures to see how bad it really was.

I took the fan apart to clean it.

Ewwwwwww.

Another view...

The hole where the fan belongs

Dirt from the fan

Dirt from the hole

Here's to better breathing and less sneezing!

Waste Not, Want Not

Our collection of 800+ books is packed away in boxes in the corner of our living room, but we haven't wasted any time finding new books to fill our now empty shelves!

Our findings from Friday and Sunday

On Friday I visited five different thrift stores within a few blocks (10th Street - 23rd Street) and bought six books for $9.00!

On Sunday I was looking through a OKC periodical and found an ad for a book sale at a local university.  Amos and I hopped in the car and headed out to the book sale held in the basement/storm shelter of the university's library.  We found eight books for $6.50!

Fourteen books for $15.50 in three days isn't too bad!

(In case you are wondering why one of the Mysterious Benedict books is in a bag...I was very excited to find this book but didn't realize it reeked like a chain smoker till Amos mentioned it; it is now undergoing fumigation.)

OKC

Well, we made it to Oklahoma City!  Some of you are probably still wondering why we are here.

The short answer is:
We moved here.

The long answer is:
Amos has wanted a new job for a while, so he contacted a friend that works for Voss Lighting, a Christian company that Amos' family has worked with and known about for many years.  Said friend got him in contact with an office manager in OKC, and in January, Amos flew out for an "interview" for the office manager position. Amos had a good time, and we decided we would go, if they wanted to hire Amos.  God had had lots of opportunities to close doors, and He seemed to keep opening them.

Voss only hires managers from within the company, so after the general manager looked around the other branches, trying to figure out where Amos would fit best, he decided to offer an inside sales position to Amos at the OKC branch.  Four weeks later, we arrived in Oklahoma City!


In between receiving the job offer and arriving in OKC, several things happened...

We met up with Doug and Mike, our pastor friends from Nebraska, at Stonefire
I went down to Brand Books in Glendale to use up the rest of my store credit ($20.00 is nothing to sniff at! I got two Freya Stark books.)
We gave our two weeks' notice at Alpha and Rio Norte
I gave my two weeks' notice to our pastor, Pastor Todd (he just about fell off his chair when we told him what we were doing, haha!)
I went to coffee with Danielle a few times
I attended my last Ladies' Informational Coffee, providing info on missions to ladies who are new to Crossroads
We went to dollar scoop night at Baskin Robbins with Josh and Grace; Josh flies down to SoCal every week to work at his music studio, and Grace came along to say goodbye
I finished up ALL of my missions stuff and handed it off to Randy, the guy who took my place as missions coordinator, at least temporarily
I said goodbye to Pinkie and gave her a very pink gift
We went to NorCal for an open house thrown by my parents; I got to see Lydia, Julia, and Elizabeth again (I hadn't seen them in a few years!)
Amos and I took Luke and Gio to frozen yogurt, then I took Brenda and Alexis back to frozen yogurt; it was really good to spend time with them
On the way back to SoCal, we surprised my cousin Magenta at school; she hadn't been able to come to the open house
We stopped for dinner at the Thomases' house in Lebec
Amos got a few teeth removed!  He healed up very quickly!
We watched "Frozen" and "Joe Versus the Volcano" with Luke and Danielle (Danielle warned us beforehand, "'Joe Versus the Volcano' is dumb." She was right, haha!)
Adrienne came over to help us eat our CPK gift card and Magnum ice cream bars
John, Peter, Tim, and Shaunna came over to help us pack some stuff and load our truck
We went to a SoCal open house thrown by our beloved small group leaders, Jeff and Denise
We said goodbye to all of our friends at Crossroads (the hardest part of this whole journey)
We went to In n' Out one last time
We stayed up too late cleaning our house and packing our last things, with lots of help from Luke and Danielle
We hitched up our tow dolly and car at Master's and said goodbye to our friend and former professor, Todd Bolen
We finally hit the road!

On the way to OKC, we stopped in Flagstaff and Albuquerque.  We spent one day at the Grand Canyon, which was wonderful.

We arrived in OKC on Thursday, moved in on Friday, and had our first visitors, Amos' sister Grace and brother Theodore, on Friday night!

Now Amos is off at his first day of work, and I have a few goals for today...

1. Do laundry
2. Arrange the bathroom
3. Find the library
4. Deliver Amos' passport and/or SS card to his work

And that is how...

we came to live in the South, y'all.

Hilarious

Amos and I are leaving SoCal for Oklahoma City in just ten days, and I'm not sure if our apartment is throwing a party or staging a rebellion.

Last week
New termite site discovered on our bedroom floor
Another occurrence of the on-going saga, "the kitchen sink is fine until the pipes unscrew themselves again and flood the cabinet"

Monday
Tiny grease ants in the almond flour and the shortening (I'm not sure why it took them this long to find the shortening)

Tuesday
A new termite hole found in the wall along the top of wainscoting

Wednesday
Tiny grease ants in the candy, in the homemade hot cocoa mix, and in the cookies I was saving, coffee chocolate chip cookies from India!

Thursday
Overflowing toilet tank and the resultant flooded floor (water gushed from under the linoleum when stepping near a seam)


Oh, my.  What will the little house do next!