Rock & Worship Road Show

I come to you from the land of learning to hear again. :)

Why, you ask? Well this past Saturday night, I worked:
The Roadshow came to Fort Wayne, and six of us headed to the Coliseum to represent the station, behind this table, which was located, as you can see, IN the arena.

(That's Miss Sheryl back there. She's one of my lunch buddies. Well. And just a buddy in general.)

Anyway. So this concert was a fun new experience for me, because it gave me a chance to deviate from the Gaithers. I tend to stick with what I know. My work pals warned me this concert might be cause to wear earplugs. I said Nahhh I'll be fine. The table's at the back...no biggie. They raised knowing eyebrows and said, Okay, Bekah!

So I showed up in my work gear (extra layers because under the floor was ice for the hockey team) and my new haircut (flattened by the wind).

And I learned that being at the back doesn't mean you don't need earplugs! It was one of those concerts where to say I'm going for popcorn; do you want anything?? meant screaming it in the ear of the person next to you. Kinda fun! I mean really. How often do you get to scream at a co-worker and not get in trouble? :)

The Rock & Worship Roadshow featured a bunch of artists; the concert lasted almost four hours. Tons of youth groups and college students came - because it was a great deal. Ten bucks (plus a love offering) for four hours of music.

This was one of the first groups to sing: Group 1 Crew. I'd never heard of them before, but they were good. (Plus I really liked their hair! I wanted to get some root lifter like that. See photo above for a reminder of why I need it.) I read on Twitter yesterday that one of the artists in this group (Blanca - she's the one with reddish hair behind the guy) lost her dad during this concert. Very sad! :( Next up: Rush of Fools. Like how I started taking pictures of the screen so I could remember the names of the groups?? :) Then... Hawk Nelson. This whole empty area in front of my camera eventually filled up with teens who wanted room to move around. :)

Matt Maher took the stage. I noticed we have the same hair color. (Or we did when the day began. 2 1/2 hours and a handful of money later, mine was transformed away from this look.)

Jars of Clay was the next to the last group. Here they are - and the trusty camera man who blocked my view most of the night. :)

Since it was hard to see the stage from where I stood, I enjoyed watching the crowd in between bouts of yelling in Jim's and Sheryl's ears. Even though this wasn't "my music," (wow, I'm sounding SO old before my time), it was amazing to watch these teens get into it. They were jumping and waving their hands and singing along and screaming and having a GREAT time. Even the clumps of parents who begrudgingly attended started unfolding their arms and getting into it as the night went along.

The last music set was done by Mercy Me. I really do love their music.

Here is a recording of one of the songs from the night (like from the actual concert...they had it posted on their site).


And this is my friend Jim - one of the morning guys. Hilarious guy and good friend. He was rockin' out. (And was kind enough to hold still for a picture.)

It was a very fun evening. Got to meet some sweet people and hang out with my work buds. (They're so great.) They were kind enough to let me go a few minutes early so I could beat the traffic and get home before it got too late. I really appreciated that. Thanks, guys, for a fun night!

It's the Weekly Recap!

WE DID IT!!!!!! HAPPY END OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS!!!!!!!

And now on to our regularly scheduled programming.

* Last Sunday was Pancakes with the Princess day with Faith, Hannah, and Kaylah. I got to see them twice in one week! Lunch was so good!
Then I spent the rest of the day at home - finally hauling out my winter clothes. Sigh of sadness. I had to admit defeat...winter is coming, no matter how much I wish it wouldn't.

* Monday I cohosted with Lynne...we did a show called "Advice for My Younger Self." People called in and emailed in their advice...I loved hearing their ideas! We even had some guests in the peanut gallery that day - my mom and her friend, Rowena, stopped by on their way to go shopping. Mom seemed to really like seeing what I do every day. Then that night, in honor of Halloween, I went over to Chris and Trudy's house for dinner (as you saw), Halloween shows, and the Halloween pizza and fabulous donut buffet. I seriously have to remember that for a party!
* Tuesday was a new month and a new picture!

And Tuesday evening...I got to meet up with my Pray 21 teen again. She wanted us to go to this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, so we went and it was fun! The total inhabitants were the two of us...and two old women. HA!!

* Wednesday evening I planned to stay home and read...but then the phone rang...and it was my friends Bill and Kristin...who invited me to join them at Ivanhoes! I'd just had dinner but I'm never too full for extra calcium!!! That's an orange freeze shake (a mini one). Figured it also should count as a fruit. :) It tasted just like a creamsicle. YUM.

* Thursday night I got to have dinner with my friend Rachel and her two kids. (I promise I do more than eat!) It was so great to spend that time with her because my heart had gotten a bit overwhelmed that day...and I needed the comfort and laughs they provided. This was my favorite moment...isn't it precious?
* Friday night I went shopping. I needed a new shirt for work (long sleeved t-shirt to go under a work t-shirt...to winterize it, you know). While in the store...I found a CRAZY good deal on pea coats. I've long wanted a pea coat and I've not had a new winter coat (that was worth much) since college. And I knew I would never find that good a price on a coat I liked that much - until coat weather was over. So I'm now the proud owner of a pea coat! It's pretty cute!

* Saturday was B.U.S.Y. I started with a hair overhaul. Cut and color.

Please note that this look is after walking in the wind for a while AND six hours of work. It was a little more together earlier in the day! I also got to try YOYO's for the first time (Yogurt On Your Own) - and I worked the Rock & Worship Road Show in Ft. Wayne. A great day indeed!

Books I'm Reading: Check this out: FINISHED Home to Harmony! Really enjoyed his writing style. Julie loaned me that book and told me his writing voice reminded her a lot of mine, and I can see why she said that! Read more in One Thousand Gifts, Jesus Calling, and Pray 21.

Favorite God Moment of the Whole Week: We had a guest this week who shared his testimony on the air and it really touched me. The things he said were not the sorts of things that fit into the "nice neat Christian box" and it was a much needed reminder to me that God uses broken vessels for His glory!

Update on Last Week's Goals: Didn't have as much time to read as I'd hoped, but thanks to a 2 1/2 hour hair appointment yesterday, I was able to finish a book!!

Goals for the Coming Week: Finish Pray 21 with Kaitlynn. Our schedules prevent us from talking every day but we have just a few days left and I'd love to be able to complete it this week!

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles (Sandi Patty)

I was SO EXCITED when we booked Sandi Patty to be on our show. I've been a HUGE fan of hers since I was little. I loved singing her songs (in the privacy of my room) but now that she's written a cookbook, we actually have something in common!! Lynne and I made two of her recipes to use in a live on-air taste test, and this is one of them. They got rave reviews among the work crowd...in fact, one of them even requested this for her birthday treat!

It's a perfect fall comfort food - a good twist on other pumpkin recipes. Soft and bready, it goes great with a hot cup of coffee. We have a few weeks of fall left...so put this one on your "to-make" list.

PS - enjoy the fancy pants pictures. These are the ones we took for the station Facebook page and they're way better than my usual pics!

The Recipe
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3-4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 egg
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside. Cream butter and brown and white sugar in a large bowl. Beat pumpkin, egg, and vanilla into creamed butter and sugar, and mix until creamy. With a wooden spoon, mix the dry ingredients into the wet just until blended.

Refrigerate dough for at least 30 minutes (not necessary, but the chilled dough will make rolling the cookies much easier). Mix cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl. Roll tablespoons of dough in the cinnamon sugar mixture and place on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake 15-20 minutes. Cool on wire racks.
You might want to have a little extra cinnamon and sugar on hand from what the recipe called for - and if you REALLY like the pumpkin spice taste...make sure you have a good amount of that on hand too.

Mix together the dry ingredients (minus the cinnamon and sugars) with a whisk.
Put the softened butter (melt it if you didn't get it out in time to soften it), brown sugar, and white sugar in a mixing bowl.

Mix until it's well blended.

Add the pumpkin, vanilla, and egg. If you have a big can of pumpkin, you can freeze the rest to use later.

Mix that up - the batter will be pretty wet.

Then add the dry ingredients. You'll need to refrigerate the dough for at least a half hour to make it manageable to work with. (I chilled mine even longer than that, and still, the dough was very wet.

I found that the amounts of cinnamon and sugar listed weren't enough to cover the whole amount of cookies. I think I redid it three or four times. It depends on how much coating you like on your cookies. (Doris from work made this recipe too and she added pumpkin pie spice to this as well. She said it gave it extra pumpkin flavor.)

This dough will be very wet and sticky to work with. Once you get it rolled in the cinnamon/sugar, it's much easier to handle.

Make sure you grease the pans so your cookies don't stick!

Warm, soft cookies....YUM.

Totally worth the mess. These are SO GOOD.

Halloween Fun

I always said if I lived in a cute little subdivision, I'd get into the whole passing out candy to trick or treaters thing...but until then, it's usually a low key holiday for me.

This year, I got a dinner invite! Well sure!!! Love dinner and love friends! Why not mix them? :) Chris and Trudy invited me over for pizza, Halloween cartoon movies (Charlie Brown, Garfield, Monsters and Aliens...you get the idea), and - well - an amazing dessert. More on that later. We had Papa Murphy's Halloween inspired pizza. :)
I tried to keep the kids entertained. Um. Yeah. So here's what happens when a 9 year old, a 33 year old who is really nothing more than an overgrown 9 year old, and a camera phone get together:

Hey Aunt Bekah! It looks like I'm picking your nose! Yes. Maturity abounds on all sides.

And not to be outdone by his big sister....

This later resulted in him calling to me, "Hey Aunt Bekah! Can I see that one picture? The one where I'm picking your nose?" Two parents gave me a very strange look at that point.

Here's what I love about these kids. They are rockin' snugglers.

I watched him take his very first breath and I love it that we're still buds. (He even said to me, as I was swapping backrubs with his sister, "You NEVER have time for me anymore." WHAT!? Not true. Get over here and sit with me!)

She popped my back 3 times. I told her she was hired.

Watched her take her first breaths too. Impossible that she's got permanent teeth now.

Okay. Dessert. They don't get into the whole candy thing. (At first I found that sad, indeed.) Then they broke out the donut BUFFET.

Trudy made the donuts from canned biscuit dough! (Shut up!!) Then we got to frost them with a choice of five different kinds of frosting...and then there were nuts and coconut and sprinkles and chocolate chips and...and...and. WOW. Love.

I didn't get any pictures with James because he was in his seat the whole night. But I have to tell you. This kid LOVES his food. It's a whole body experience for him. Up the nose. Down the shirt. In the hair. Licking the plate thoroughly.

And that's my kiddo. (Well, not MINE. But I was there when HE was born too so I claim him as pretty close to mine.)

And that was my Halloween! Much better than sitting home thinking about subdivison trick or treaters!

Pancakes with the Princess: October

October got away from me!! All of the sudden...we were at the end of the month and I hadn't made any pancakes!

So I invited Faith, Hannah, and Kaylah to come over Sunday after lunch...and they said yes! It was a *tad* bit cold in my house (because I'm too cheap to have yet turned on the heat), so they started their visit by snuggling up to the fire. :)
Lunch was sorta fallish this time. Of course...pancakes. And grapes. And for dessert, pretzels with Hershey Kisses melted into them and candy corn on top. And....

...in honor of Halloween...little mummy sausages. I saw the idea on a blog. They're like pigs in blankets, but you cut up the crescent rolls into strips and wrap the hot dogs (breakfast sausages for us) like mummies! They cleaned them OUT!!!

Kaylah informed me AFTER lunch that she didn't like pancakes. (I know that isn't true but it was true on Sunday!)

Hannah ate every bite of her pancakes but decided she ONLY liked the sausages - not the "buns" as she called them.

Faith and I liked all of it. :)

After lunch, the girls played in the backyard, looking for "special rocks" (wish they would have looked for special leaves and put them in bags while they were at it!!). And then Hannah proceeded to read my Roman numeral clock to me. She was sprawled out on the floor and just started yelling "XII,I,II,III,IIII,V...." and it took us a while to figure out what she was doing. Kinda cracked us up.

Such a fun day! Only two more months of pancakes - and it's a whole year of Pancakes with the Princess DONE!!

Fall Break Field Trip!

I mentioned this in the recap, but I had work visitors last week! I don't get those too often because I work too far away from all the people I know! But Faith asked if she could bring her kiddos by to see me, because they're intrigued by radio stations.

They came up the day of the Kitchen Caboodle show, so apparently they'd listened to me on the air that morning before they came to see me. Hannah told me I don't sound the same as I do in real life. (SEE?? That's what I say too!! Smart kid, that Hannah.)

This cracked me up: when they were walking into the building, they ran into one of my co-workers, who asked if she could help them. Faith said they were friends of mine coming to see me and she responded, "Oh yes, that makes sense that you're Bekah's friend - I see you brought your camera." My reputation as the Bekahrazzi precedes me!

They picked a good day to show up - we had cookies from the show! So everyone got a pumpkin snickerdoodle, and then I took them on a tour of the building so they could meet my work friends and see what I see every day!

Hannah tried her hand at cohosting Mid-Morning. She's one up on me...I've never even sat in Lynne's chair!
Kayla - hosting with cookies. Now that is the way to host a show, my friends.

They went into one of the studios and Ron showed them how radio works. Hannah wanted to know how they get the song into the computer.

Then he recorded them telling a little bit about themselves! Future broadcaster extraordinaire, Miss Hannah!!!

And not to be outdone - also a future broadcaster...Miss Kaylah! (When asked what grade she was in, she said two grade. We explained that was unlikely since that would put her above her older sister, and she informed us that "two grade" means she stays at home. We stand corrected.)

They came to see my digs - and I gave them some WBCL stuff to take home with them. They were pretty excited about that!

And once again- Faith and I were asked if we were sisters. We still got it!!! (We explained that we've also been told we're one and the same PERSON. Clarification: we're really not.)

And now they have a picture by the sign too! Who knows...maybe one day it will come full circle like my kid-picture by the sign did!

I think they had fun - and I loved having them! It was a good little day!

SSMT: Verse 19

This verse isn't foreign to me, but it's one I need to absorb right now.

And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. - Philippians 4:19

Waiting on my house to sell has been a test of my patience. (And by "has been," I mean "still is.") The drive still isn't bad (although one day I may have to do a blog post on the common courtesy of allowing motorists onto the interstate...but I digress...). Then I see weather reports like the one in Colorado...or the one on the east coast...and I think God! Are we about to have a whole winter of that? Please don't ask me to commute in that kind of weather!

Mom asked me the other day what happened to her organized, planning ahead girl. With a hint of weariness in my voice, I said, "She commutes now." It shouldn't be that big a deal, but that extra two hours in each day really does catch up with me more than I expect, and I continue to live feeling a bit in limbo. Not complaining. Just stating facts.

To me, selling my house so I can move closer to work feels like a need. And yet I tell myself that every day I still have a two hour drive...is a day that God has felt I'm able to do that. When I truly need to move, He will let me move.

Same thing goes for the whole husband adventure. On the days that reek of loneliness, or the days when I'm grumbling my way through yard work alone...you get the idea...I say God, I need this person in my life! And yet I know that every day I live without him is a day I truly don't "need" him.

Here's what I love about this verse. That word "meet" doesn't just mean "adequately solve." It means a full supply. Completed. Filled up. Fully satisfied.

When God sells this house, He isn't just going to scrape it off the market into the hands of some random person and then deposit me in some manageable home a little farther north. He is going to fully write this story. He's going to bring along the best buyer and find me the best home. Because He meets needs.

When God brings Mr. Missing to me, He's not going to throw together Lonely, Party of One and Desperate, Party of One and say Hey, you two. I'm sick of your whining. Get married. He's going to fully satisfy my desires and dreams in ways that will blow my mind.

Because that's God.