Exciting Purchase

Zach and I have been living in a home of hand-me-down furniture for our entire marriage. Don't get me wrong--we are very thankful for all of it, as the alternative would have been sitting/eating/sleeping on the floor for the last five years. But still, you get to a point where you would really like to have some things that you picked out yourself. Having moved into our own home, we are definitely at that point.

Tonight we finally ordered a new dining room table, which we have been talking about for months. We've had our eyes on one from Crate & Barrel for quite a while, but after taping out the dimensions on our dining room floor we just weren't sure it was wide enough. But while we were in Los Angeles we took advantage of the opportunity to see it in person one more time and we decided that it was the right table for us. (What a blessing--Zach and I have very similar taste in furniture.) It is on backorder and probably won't arrive until late November, so we have to be patient for just a little longer, but by Christmas (and hopefully Thanksgiving) we will be eating at our beautiful new table!

If you want to see the table, go to crateandbarrel.com and search "Kipling." We bought the extension dining table and matching chairs. Hopefully in the future we'll be able to afford the hutch as well.

Los Angeles

Zach and I have returned from our long weekend in Los Angeles and it was a great trip. I hardly know where to start!

I think the most exciting part of the trip, at least for me, was telling all our friends there that I AM PREGNANT! I know most of my blog readers know that by now, but it is fun to finally put it in print on the blog. For the record, I am about twelve weeks along, due April 30.

Saturday afternoon I met my friend Melina for lunch. She was a fellow sixth grade math teacher at Le Conte. Melina caught me up on all the news from school. I don't miss teaching at all but I do miss the wonderful people I taught with. Besides the pleasure of her company, I really enjoyed my meal at California Pizza Kitchen! We just don't have a lot of dining options in Indiana, you know?

We had dinner with our friends Daniel and Aimee on Saturday night, along with their sons. It was just like no time had passed--they are wonderful friends and I miss seeing them as often as we could in LA. Zach and I got to meet the newest member of their family, Jonathan, who was born about a month after we moved. Zach got some Daddy-to-be practice holding him--aren't they both so cute?


Sunday morning we went to Grace Community Church. It was wonderful to see so many friends in one place and hear two powerful sermons. In true John MacArthur fashion, we heard Part 4 of a many-part sermon on the Second Coming of Christ!

Sunday night we went to dinner at an Armenian restaurant with our friend Noah. Again, an ethnic cuisine choice that we probably don't have within 50 miles of Indiana. As Noah promised, they had truly amazing hummus. I wish I had a picture of the enormous piles of meat we were served. So tasty!

Monday was a big day. Zach left very early to go to USC for his doctoral exams. He returned a few hours later with a big smile on his face. Just call him Dr. Collins now! As he repeated often throughout the day, this means no more studying and no more tests. For the first time in 21 years, he is not a student!

Monday afternoon I headed back up to Aimee's house in Santa Clarita. I thought I was just going to have lunch with a few friends. Here is what I found:


Between the time she found out I was pregnant Saturday night and Monday morning, Aimee planned a baby shower for me! Nine of my closest friends were able to come on short notice. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the love and generosity these women poured out on me. I have benefited so much already from their wisdom as mothers and it is comforting to know that they will be there for me in the future as I learn to be a mom.

Monday night was Zach's concert with Southwest Chamber Music. He played Kraft's Encounters II "beautifully,"according to both me and the music reviewer from the LA times! (Read the review online here.) The rest of the concert was not exactly my favorite kind of music (strange, contemporary percussion stuff)--Zach's piece was the most "normal" and if you've heard it you know that's really saying something! Zach recorded the piece Tuesday morning. He felt like the recording session went very well and we look forward to hearing the edited version, although it won't be released until next fall.

So that's our trip to LA, in slightly more than a nutshell. I wish we could go back every three months but I know it will probably be a while, especially with Baby Collins on the way. But everyone is welcome in Indiana anytime!

Back to LA!

Some of you already know this, but Zach and I are leaving this afternoon for four days in Los Angeles. Zach is taking his DMA oral exams Monday morning, performing with Southwest Chamber Music on Monday night, and recording with the same group Tuesday morning. I am just going to have fun! We are really looking forward to seeing old friends, attending Grace Community church, and enjoying the SoCal climate once again. Expect some updates and pics in the next few days.

Busy Morning

My friend Liz invited me over this morning to help her watch a crowd of kids. She normally watches two one-year-olds, her own son and another little girl. Today she was also watching two sisters who are three and one, so she thought another pair of hands might be useful. I had a fun day playing with all the kids but am a little worn out now. My days are usually so much quieter than this!

Sweet Sounds of the Tuba

Zach gave a recital Tuesday evening. It was both his last recital as a doctoral student and his first recital as an IUP faculty member. To our great surprise, at least 150 people attended, including lots of students. (Granted, music students are required to attend a certain number of performances, but it was still nice that they chose his.) Zach played wonderfully, and really impressed his freshmen tuba/euphonium students, who up until now had not had a chance to hear just how good he is. I am so proud to be married to this talented man!

The Hoodlebug Brass Quintet (the IUP brass faculty) played with Zach during several pieces.

Yummy Recipe

If you had asked me about my favorite food when I was nine or ten years old, I would have said cornbread. Seriously. Not pizza, ice cream, or chocolate, but cornbread. For years the only cornbread I made myself came from a Jiffy box, but in the past few years I've tried to find a homemade recipe I really like. Not so easy, I found. One was moist to the point of seeming soggy, another was not sweet enough. (I like sweet cornbread.) I think the recipe I tried yesterday will be a keeper, though, so I wanted to share it. It's moist enough to avoid excess crumbs and sweet enough to taste great even without butter. Best of all, this is a Cooking Light recipe so you can eat them guilt-free. Enjoy!

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup plain lowfat yogurt
1/4 cup butter, melted
3 tablespoons fat-free milk
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine flour, sugar, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Make a well in the center of the mixture. Combine yogurt, melted butter, milk, and egg in a small bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture, stirring just until moist.

Place 12 paper muffin cup liners in muffin cups . Divide the batter evenly among cups. Bake for 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

I feel a bit bad that I haven't been posting much lately, but honestly--life just hasn't been that interesting! Zach has been super busy for months preparing for his DMA exams, so we just haven't done much as a couple. But the end is in sight at last! Zach will be taking his written exams this Friday and Sunday and then life will slow down a bit. I am so excited for him to be done!

Waiting

I know a lot of you already read the Girl Talk blog, but if you don't you should at least check out today's post about waiting. I reflected on how true it is that waiting is about who we become while we wait rather than what we get at the end of the wait. How much less would I appreciate the art of homemaking if I had not worked for five years? How much less patient would I be now if I had been able to have children three years ago when I began to desire a family? God's timing is truly perfect.

Book Suggestions?

My sweet sister gave me a Borders gift card for my recent birthday. (Most of you know that I LOVE to read. Megan does too--we share book suggestions from time to time.) The gift card is probably enough to buy two, maybe even three books if I get some good deals. Anybody have any suggestions about how to spend it? I'm especially interested in hearing about any must-read parenting books I should get to while I still have the luxury of lots and lots of reading time. But I'm open to any and all suggestions.

Our new "neighbors"

A family of cats has taken up residence in our backyard recently. We don't know if they belong to anyone. We had noticed the mother wander around our backyard ever so often weeks ago, but just a few days ago we realized that the kittens were living under our hot tub. The reason we realized this: we found one of them dead on the stone path next to the hot tub and saw little eyes peeking out at us when we went to investigate. (I got the depressing task of maneuvering the poor dead kitty into a plastic bag and taking it to the Humane Society.) The remaining kittens are really cute but we hope they don't stick around forever. As many of you know, I am allergic to cats. How ironic that they would choose our backyard as their home! At least these neighbors don't have loud parties in the middle of the night.

Mama cat did not take her eyes off me for a second when I crept outside to take this picture. I didn't dare get any closer!

Thankfulness

This weekend I started rereading Out to Canaan, the 4th book in Jan Karon's Mitford series. (I highly recommend this series. The characters are wonderful and God is glorified on every page.) Anyway, the book included a quote from Patrick Henry Reardon that really stopped me in my tracks.

Suppose for a moment that God began taking from us the many things for which we have failed to give thanks. Which of our limbs and faculties would be left? Would I still have my hands and my mind? And what about loved ones? If God were to take from me all those persons and things for which I have not given thanks, who or what would be left of me?

How often I fail to give thanks! If I am honest, I realize that most days nothing would be left of me, my loved ones, or my possessions if thankfulness were required for keeping them. And there is so much to be thankful for: my Savior, my husband, a job that Zach loves and allows me to stay home, a solid roof above my head, eyes to see the beauty God created in Pennsylvania, friends who know the Lord and encourage me in my faith...the list goes on and on. Even my frustration with looking for a church turned to thankfulness as I pondered these thoughts. I'm thankful to live in a country where I am free to choose a place in which to worship God.

Oh, the patience of our God who continues to bless us in innumerable ways even when we give no thanks! May we consistently pray as we're instructed in Philippians 4:6 "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God."

"Cops" The Indiana Episode

The house next door to us is a rental, home to four male IUP students. Like so many college students, they like to party. Loudly. In the middle of the night. Their first party was the weekend before classes started. They were outside on their back porch until about 4 AM. It kept us up for a while but we didn't do anything about it; we decided to wait and see if it became a regular occurrence.

So last night we came home from watching the TCU/Texas game with some friends (so sad) and a party was in full swing on their back porch. I decided to give them til midnight and then I was going to call the police. (Online research had told us that Indiana has a 24 hour a day noise ordinance which they were definitely breaking.) But we were saved the trouble when the police showed up around 11:30. Apparently they could hear the party from their car a block away! Most of the kids ran into the house and tried to hide from the police, so there was a lot of yelling on the part of the police and threatening to get the landlord to open the door. Eventually the kids came out and dispersed, and the kids who live in the house got a big lecture from the police. Not surprisingly, there seemed to be a lot of minors in attendance at this party and everyone had been drinking.

So this is life in a college town, I guess. I was very reassured by what I saw last night, knowing that the police take disruptive/underage partying seriously. I won't hesitate to call next time if it turns out our neighbors didn't learn their lesson.

It's hot dog night in Indiana!

IUP football season began today with a home game against Cheyney. (Cheyney, like IUP, is a school in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.) We only stayed until halftime but when we left IUP was up 42 to 7. Because they scored more than 30 points, it's hot dog night in Indiana! That means that if you take a reserved seat ticket stub to any area Sheetz (a popular convenience store around here) you'll get a free hot dog. Too bad, Zach and I got in with our I-cards instead of tickets so no hot dogs for us. But the game was fun to watch and we enjoyed cheering on our new home team. Go Crimson Hawks!

The new Crimson Hawk mascot was "hatched" today.

The Hawks in action

IUP's marching band

Funny Story

Now that September is here, Zach has been spending more time than ever preparing for his doctoral exams. Fortunately, IUP's music library has a lot of helpful resources. Zach was there tonight checking out a big stack of books. The girl at the desk made small talk. The conversation went something like this.

Girl: "Wow, what are all these for?"

Zach: "I'm studying for my doctorate."

Girl: "Oh, what are you getting your doctorate in?"

Zach: "Tuba performance."

Girl: "So, how do you like the new tuba professor here?"

This is not the first time Zach has been mistaken for a student--he gets asked at least a few times a week as we meet new people in town. I guess looking young is a good thing, right?

Psalm 16

Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in You.
I said to the Lord, "You are my Lord; I have no good besides you."
As for the saints who are in the earth, They are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight.
The sorrows of those who have bartered for another god will be multiplied; I shall not pour out their drink offerings of blood, Nor will I take their names upon my lips.
The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You support my lot.
The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.
I will bless the Lord who has counseled me; Indeed, my mind instructs me in the night.
I have set the Lord continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will dwell securely.
For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.
You will make known to me the path of life; In your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.

I have been dealing with some anxiety lately. I know in my head that God is sovereign but it is so hard to live out that knowledge sometimes. My heart wants to feel like I'm in control when really, I'm not. The truths of this psalm have been very comforting to me: I have no good but God. (verse 2) God supports my lot. (verse 5) God is at my right hand and I will not be shaken. (verse 8) Only in God's presence can I find fullness of joy. (verse 11) How wonderful to know God who causes all things to work together for my good!