On Wallin Pond

It was a busy week ending with yesterday - super busy day. It was all good, though: busy AND fun!

Because I had several things going on yesterday, culminating in feeding 22 people, I knew I had to develop a plan and work ahead. I like that kind of challenge, though, so I enjoyed the thinking, plotting and planning into making everything work out.

In September at one of our church staff meetings, Pastor Mark announced that he wanted us to get together more regularly as a staff and that each of us would take turns organizing and planning what we would do when it was our turn. Well, yesterday it was our turn. So we decided to take everyone on a hike, then come to our house afterwards for soup, bread, salad and cookies. Are you beginning to see why I needed to plan ahead? If I'm hiking, how am I going to get the dinner ready?

So on Thursday after work, I made 4 batches of cookies: 3 of snickerdoodles and 1 of oatmeal-toffee bits. Andy helped me with rolling the snickerdoodles in the sugar/cinnamon. That brought back happy memories of my girls helping with that step in the cookie making.

On top of that, Andy announced to me on Wednesday: "I have a meeting on Thursday night...and by the way, it's at our house!" My first reaction was: "Oh, no. I have to be in the kitchen all night getting ready for Saturday, and I won't be able to be a good hostess." Well, it ended up working out fine. There were only 2 other people, besides Andy, at the meeting, and I was able to serve them fresh cookies right out of the oven. So everyone was happy!

On Friday after work, I made rolls. I had an appointment at 7:00 pm, so had to give explicit instructions to Andy to take the rolls out of the oven at just the right time. He did great and they turned out perfect.

On Saturday, there was a Ladies' Coffee Connection scheduled that I really wanted to go to. These are such a good vehicle for getting together with other women in an informal, casual setting that is so refreshing to me. Being with other believing women with a give and take interaction really gives me a spiritual boost. I was there from 9:00 - 11:00 am, then on to a little last minute shopping and home.

The soup I made was minestrone, the recipe of which I got from the internet. It was a huge hit, so if you want to try it, click here: Olive Garden's Minestrone Soup. I decided that maybe I wouldn't have enough rolls, since the recipe only made 27 and there were 22 people coming. So I also made cornmeal muffins. I got the soup made, then put it on the back burner on low, told Mom the stove was on and I was leaving, then out the door we went.

We all met at the church to drive in vans to our hike - the same one Andy & I tried out on Tuesday: The Dot & Brooks Evert Memorial Trail. The snow was gone, but there was still lots of ice on the water. Of the 22 people, 5 of them were kids. They had a ball and it was fun watching their exuberance and energy.It was pretty cold, but exhilarating. Then back to our house for hot soup. We had the dining room set up with 3 tables. Everyone fit and it was really fun to all be together. One little boy told me he didn't like the soup. (I didn't blame him, I probably wouldn't have liked it either when I was 7.) But another boy had 5 bowls of it.With that many people, there were a lot of dishes to do up. I have a thing about eating off plastic and paper, and I did have enough "real" dishes for both the soup and the salad. One of the guys cleared the table and started rinsing all the dishes and silverware. It made quite a stack on the kitchen counter. I got one load of dishes in the dishwasher, then I had to go to church.

A new person was scheduled to do the slides for Sunday morning, and I am the one in charge of that, so I had to be there to train her. When I got home at 8:30, I was able to fit all the rest of the dishes in the dishwasher and finish cleaning up the kitchen.

It was a great day, spent with God's people and out in God's world. We are so blessed.