childhood

It has been with great joy that I have been reacquainted with one of my old loves "Sim City". I used to spend hours on this game growing up, and built (and destroyed) countless cities. We got Sim City 4 this past Christmas and have already bankrupted one city and have begun mass trading with Matt's new city.

Some of the highlights of this newer version of Sim City are that Robots can attack your city, you can build just about any world wide landmark, and you can actually drive around your city. I'm glad I will now have something to occupy my time when Matt is gone. Although it's already occupying much of my time now.

Favorite Christmas Memory

Playing along with one of my many aunts up in Idaho to try and convince my younger brother and sister that a red airplane light making it's way across the sky late at night was Santa and his sleigh. I'm not sure if they ever bought it.

Puppy Chow Correction

So in talking to my mom tonight, I realized I should have clarified the type of Chex used in the recipie. I had put Chex mix and really you're supposed to use Chex cereal. For whatever reason...I think I call them both the same thing in my mind!

My apologies to any who tried it with Chex mix! Although it probably tastes just as good...but in a different way.

Eye goop

Nothing says Merry Christmas more than sharing the joy of pink eye with your co-workers. Monday Matt and I woke up with pink eye (serves us right for hanging around kids) and three days later we have managed to take out at least 2 other co-workers.

Merry Christmas!

Matt's New Hobby

After giving up Rock Climbing (b/c there are no really good faces to go rappelling off of here) I think I am going to try this on for size. Anyone want to go? (It's called wingsuit flying or jumping.)

How to Handle Money

I stumbled upon this at servingbread.net and thought it was pretty funny. Enjoy!

From the mouths of Babes

Last night as I babysat for two of the cutest kids at our church and I had the fun job of trying to get both to go to bed. Upon putting the 4 year old back in bed for the 3rd time that night, he very seriously informed me "you know, sometimes its hard for me to keep my eyes closed the whole night." How true is that!

10 minutes later though he was out and I don't think he opened his eyes the rest of the night.

What Would Jesus Buy

So there's a new movie coming out called "What Would Jesus Buy". After watching the preview, I can't decide to laugh or cry, cheer or moan, hide in shame or promote this movie. But I do think it's a funny topic to make the big screen and I'm very tempted to try and see this if I can convince Matt to go.

Warning: it looks very Michael Mooreish and doesn't necessarily but evangelicalism in a great light. But it looks like some of the underling truths might be very relevant for today's consumer world.

You can see the preview here.

Recapturing Advent

There is a fun article up on the Christianity Today website talking about Advent and ways to recapture the meaning of it. That coupled with several recent sermons on Advent has had me reconsidering what I even think about Advent. In all the sermons and article it surprised me how each touched on the idea of "waiting". I'm not sure if I've ever fully thought about the connection that Advent has with waiting. The Israelites were waiting for their king. The king has come, yet we have been left to wait for his return. In a society of instant gratification, do we even know how to wait anymore? And if waiting is something that we have lost, how do we recapture the idea of waiting? Specifically for Jesus to return?

To read the CT article, click here. There's some great ideas in it.

Puppy Chow Recipie

Since a number of you have asked (and I was rude to not include the recipe), here's how you make puppy chow. I guess I want to keep hording it to myself!

1 box of Chex Cereal(I used the corn Chex type)
1 bag of Chocolate Chips
1 1/4 cup of peanut butter
1/2 cup of butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
about 2-3 cups powder sugar

Pour all the Chex mix into a large bowl. In a separate microwavable bowl, heat the chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter for about 40 seconds. Remove and stir in vanilla. Microwave again for about another minute or until everything is melted. Stir to make sure everything is mixed. While still hot, pour over the Chex mix and stir together until everything is coated. This can almost be a 2-3 person process. Find a plastic bag or container that can be sealed and place half the Chex mix in it with about 1 cup of powder sugar. Shake until the Chex mix is coated. There should be a significant layer of powder sugar over each Chex mix. If you don't put enough powder sugar in, the Chex mix sticks to each other, so if it looks to brown or like it's clumping, put in more powder sugar. Do the same with the other half. Enjoy.

In all honesty, you can't go to wrong with this recipe since it's pretty much all sugar.

Puppy Chow

One of my more distinctive Christmas memories involves coveting and thievery.

Somewhere around 6th grade, my grandma made the most wonderful concoction ever created. It was chex mix that was mixed with chocolate, peanut butter and powder sugar. She only made it one or two years and let us take a zip lock bag of the left overs home with us. Somehow between her house and ours, I managed to siphon off a majority of this chocolate peanut buttery goodness into my own plastic bag which I then promptly hid under my bed so no one else could eat it. For weeks I would pull it out the bag only to let myself eat 5-10 pieces a day. I think I made it to at least the end of February.

Grandma never made it again and ever since then I've longed to find out what this amazing concoction was. I asked her once years later for the recipe and she only gave me a blank look not remembering what it was that she made. I considered it a lost cause.

A few weeks ago however at bible study, someone brought in a whole container of this same treat. I was so excited! I come to find that it is the simplest recipe to make and that most everyone in the world has both eaten it and made it. So "Puppy Chow" has now become a Christmas main stay in the Kirk apartment world.

I Spy

InterVarsity's 2006-2007 Annual Report just came out and many of Matt's photo's were used in it. Specifically the front cover, page 3, 4, 6, 9 and 10 of the pdf version. Can you figure out which ones?

It was pretty cool for me to see Matt's photo's in this. It makes it feel like he's a real photographer or something like that. I guess he is!

If you haven't gotten the annual report, you can download a pdf copy here.

digging a hole

Ok, so after 27 years of living on this planet. I've finally had the privilege of shoveling snow. I've decided I can do with out it.

This morning we awoke to several neighbors trying to get up our apartment complexs' driveway (which hadn't been plowed yet). With a thick layer of ice covered by 5 inches of fresh snow...it wasn't working to well. So Matt and I bundled up and joined several others to dig/chip out paths for the cars. We finally got everyone out, but I think we were all ready to call it a day. Even if it was only 9 in the morning.

More snow is on the way!

Responsibility

There was an interesting piece on the NewsHour tonight highlighting Iraqi refugee's and the countries that have chosen to harbor them. The report (which you can read the transcript or listen to here) looked at specifically Sweden who has chosen to take on thousands of refugees and specifically those requesting asylum due to direct threats on their life.

The most intriguing part to me was a comment by one of the mayors in Sweden:

"MAYOR ILMAR REEPALU, City of Malmo: Sweden didn't take part in the Iraq invasion. If you look upon the second quarter this year, 4,500 of the Iraqis came to Sweden and were accepted here; 2,500 went to Greece; 400 get to Spain; and 180 to United States, 180. That's half the number that we accepted in Malmo in the same time. How come?"

Now granted there wasn't a US response given in the report nor any commentary on the significance positively or negatively of these facts, but it has made me ponder the role we should have in any country in which we choose to get involved and pursue active political change leading to displacement and death threats towards innocent civilians. A part of me has to believe that we as a country do shoulder some if not a lot of responsibility.

New goal in life

A few weeks ago it was decided that we would be housing one of Twentyonehundred's newest interns for a few months. This time the intern happens to be from Norway (it's north east of England if you're like me and forgot where that is). With this being our second out of the country guest, we've decided we're going to see how many people from different countries we can house before we die. I'm thinking probably we can get about 75% of the countries represented. Matt thinks 50%.

So far we're off to a good start! Canada and Norway down!

I should be interesting to learn more about Norway. My only reference to anything about that country is a Scandinavian cooking show I sometime watch hosted by Claus, and that cheesy credit card commercial with the father and son who are going to look for their roots in Norway (at least I think it's Norway) and find out their Scottish instead. Or something like that. I think I have a lot to learn.