Mash Up - Mother's Day Edition

* I'd like to start with a big ole high five to my hubby for an awesome Mother's Day yesterday. Last week he took K to the store and let her pick out a flower for me - a beautiful yellow mini rose bush that we planted in the front flower bed.  The only mini rose I've ever had was a pink one I got for my 18th  birthday. It's still living in the same flower bed. Then Sunday morning he got up with the kids - starting at 2:45am (because my kids have decided to be freaking nocturnal...) and let me sleep until nearly noon. Then I got an awesome gift - a set of 3 specialty lenses that fit my iPhone camera! What? Yup. I've played with the macro a little bit but can't wait to get outside and see what I can do with the wide angle and fisheye. Oh, and the best parts - he unloaded the dishwasher, provided me with food, and entertained my little ones. It's good to be me.

* Today's lunch time conversation with K -

Me: You want pasta or couscous?

 K: Couscous! No... RED BEANS!!!

Me: What???

 K: Red beans! Red beans!

Me: Really?? 

So yes, I made my kid red beans and rice for lunch today. Again. We had the same thing on Friday. Such a weird one.

*I made bread pudding with my mom on Saturday. I want to make more. On a related note, I've put on 20lbs since Luke was born.

* A little over a week ago we got the news that our former minister, Ross, had passed away. I was deeply saddened by the news. He was one of my favorite people on the planet. He was the one who helped me reconcile a God that I believed in with a church that I didn't trust. He was the reason I was baptized at age 28 at Galloway. He believed very strongly in the New Testament promises about loving your neighbor and being good people to the best of our abilities without judgment or scorn for others. This is a lesson too many Christians need to hear. I have friends who are atheists who act more like Christians than some Christians I know because they genuinely care more about other people than about punishing others for sins they think are bigger than their own. I wish my atheist friends could have heard Ross preach. I think they would have liked him. He had a way of reaching people that I've never seen before. The Sunday after he died a letter from his wife was read during the church service. She told us all that he had been battling severe depression since December and took his own life. I've had a post open on my desktop for a week wanting to say a dozen things about that, but I find that I can't. So instead I'm going to leave it at that and link up to an archive of posts I wrote that mentioned Ross.  And here's a quote from one of those posts that I've been dwelling on the past week:

The real meat of this sermon had to do with the presence of Evil, how it works in the Bible and how it works in our lives today. He talked about how if everything is perfect in your life, you're probably praying to the wrong god. If you're focused on God, you're probably attracting negative attention from Satan, who likes to create hardships for God's people. He told a story about how if you're already spiritually dead, Satan has no reason to attack you, and you can go on with your life thinking all is good because you have everything you want, not realizing you don't have everything you NEED.