Tuesday Tales: Celebrating 161 Months

 

Saturday was our 161th monthiversary, and I loved how our day turned out. I had such grand hopes of spending the entire day with Ryan, and all those grand hopes turned into reality.

                This is our fourth spring in this house, and one thing I learned (the hard way) the first year is that this county does not mess around when it comes to flower purchases. We live in the heart of Amish country, so in this area you buy your flowers at a greenhouse, not a box store. And you better get yourself to that greenhouse early or you’ll just have to make do with what everyone else left behind. And they don’t leave behind too much.

                So we went to two greenhouses – one for our flowers/plants and another for veggies! My favorite part of the morning was being at the first greenhouse before everyone else showed up. It was quiet, peaceful, beautiful, and so fragrant.

                We were able to find all our plants between the two greenhouses – including a zucchini called Spineless Perfection. I told Ryan it was a plant named for me! (Ha!)

                We came home, ate a little bit, dressed up, and headed to church to work a funeral. Ryan ran the sound board, so I sat in the sound booth with him.

                After the funeral, we changed again and headed out for grocery shopping and a dinner date! We decided to try a restaurant we’ve never been to before, and…it didn’t turn out quite like we hoped.

                It probably didn’t help that we didn’t know/remember dinner and the Kentucky Derby happened simultaneously, so there was a whole party happening inside the restaurant. The hosts tried to seat us in the middle of said party, and we never would have been able to hear a thing in our own conversation, so Ryan asked if we could be seated in a different area. They found us a different table…but the rest of the night followed suit. The food was okay but not amazing. They mopped the floors all around us while we ate, so our food had a slight bleach taste and smell.

                It made for a funny story for the scrapbook, and I don’t think we’ll be back to that restaurant. We did stop at our favorite local ice cream place on the way home for a little treat.

                The day was long and full, but we got to spend it together – and not in a hospital! Win win!

Menu Monday: Nourishing Body and Soul

 

Good morning! Hope you had a great weekend. We sure enjoyed ours! Today I’m bringing you a glimpse of what we enjoyed to eat this past week. We had some winners in the mix, so perhaps this will give you some inspiration!

Monday: Tacos with Black Beans

What We Loved: I’ve made this taco recipe for years and we still love it. I make my own homemade seasoning, and we really like the blend of seasonings. I’m not really a refried bean lover, but I found this recipe for black beans and thought it sounded like something I might be able to handle, because it had some added flavor. I tried it, and while I don’t think it will ever be something I crave, I did like it. Ryan loves beans and was very happy to have it in the mix. I’d make it again for sure.

Tuesday: Leftover Heavily Modified Pan Bagnat (Use Chicken)

What We Loved: As I shared last week, I changed up this recipe A LOT. I used chicken instead of tuna, took out the anchovies and capers and in the end, it probably can’t even be called the same recipe. But it did make for a nice batch of leftovers, and on this busy day, I was happy about that!

Wednesday: Cheesy Potatoes for the GriefShare Dinner

What We Loved: I forgot to get a picture of the actual food, but here is a picture of the recipe card I used. This hangs in our kitchen and is in Ryan’s mom’s handwriting. It was a dish she made often for gatherings, and it seemed fitting to share it with his GriefShare group for their final night’s meeting and dinner.

Thursday: Leftover Fajitas

What We Loved: Free food?? We had ordered in fajitas at church for staff meeting and had some left over. The church needed to clear the refrigerator ahead of two back-to-back funeral dinners, so the leftovers came home with me! Ryan has heard me rave about the monthly fajita lunches, and he got to enjoy some with me this night!

Friday: Chicken Club Lettuce Wrap

What We Loved: This is a nice sandwich-kind of meal without the carbs of bread! I bought the pre-cooked bacon to make it easier to warm up in our busy week, and this was a tasty meal for us. Ryan told me he really liked it, so I think we’ll be enjoying this more often!

Saturday: Date Night at Shandy’s

Our Thoughts: We went out for our monthiversary and tried a new-to-us restaurant called Shandy’s. I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow when I tell you about our date night, but here was our food! Ryan got a buffalo chicken wrap and fries. I got street tacos with grilled chicken, but they were HUGE, so I only ate half and brought the rest home. (And Ryan ate most of the chips.) It wasn’t our most favorite ever, but the food was good – and made good leftovers.

Sunday: Chicken Club Lettuce Wrap

What I Loved: I loved not cooking on a Sunday! This leftover meal made a great assembly for a Sunday evening after a hard nap! I added some sliced red peppers with it. Ryan had chips and salsa!

Sunday Scrapbook: Moments from the Week

 

Jonathan invited me to share a series of messages if I wanted, so I am doing a five-week series broken up over time. I’m doing three weeks right now, and last Sunday was the second week – focused on prayer. I learned so much about prayers of the Bible as I prepared!

Monday night I was supposed to have a meeting at church, so Ryan and Jonathan scheduled a training meeting so Ryan could learn how to run the sound board. My meeting was canceled, but I went anyway to work in my office while the training adventures continued!

I finished handwriting the book of Matthew last week! This was so significant to me. When I started the project on January 1, I really wasn’t sure if I would follow through with it, but I did! Now I’m moving forward with the book of Mark, but it was really beautiful to complete Matthew!

Ryan’s job description adjustment means he will be in a new (to him) office. They’ve added some furniture and I got to visit him and see what it looks like so far. I am SO EXCITED to get it all decorated for him and see how it looks!

The weather has been a little bit for the birds this week, but the sunrises and sunsets have been so pretty. I’ve been thankful for that…as I pull out sweaters and coats again.

Friday afternoon I had the chance to meet up with a friend for coffee and a long, long talk. I haven’t seen her in person for a couple of years, so we had a lot of catching up to do. I was thankful for it. (Not quite as thankful that my coffee cup lid failed, and I ended up wearing hot coffee, but the conversation was worth it!)

Yesterday was our monthiversary, and I look forward to telling you all about it. There really is much to tell. But can I just say (in summary) that spending a whole day with Ryan was the best. We did have to work a few hours at the church, but even then we were able to be together. We had some great stories and laughs along the way. Come back this week for some stories!

Saturday Suggestions: Inspirations for Your Weekend

 

                Today is our monthiversary, and I am so excited to get to spend the entire day with Ryan. The last three months have been filled with tending to my parents or working, so I heavily protected this day for us! Super excited for it. I’ll tell you more about it next week. For today…here are some reading adventures for you!

Anybody like cookies?? Oh…just me? Just kidding! I know you love some cookies. I love Karli’s blog and recipes. I’ve made some of her cookies before, and they are so tasty. (Especially her copycat recipes…so good!!!) Anyway, she wrote this troubleshooting guide that has some great advice if your cookies aren’t all that you hoped they would be, in taste or aesthetics. She knows her stuff and shares great tips!

Oh how I love Janette Oke. Do you know that she is now NINETY-ONE?? I am sure I knew it at some point, but I didn’t remember that she was in her 40s before she wrote her first novel, and then she went on to write 70 more after that. If that doesn’t give a writer-girl hope, I don’t know what does. Anyway, Bethany House, which published her novels, shared this story about her life and career, and I adored reading it. If you love Janette, read up!

Ryan and I love playing ambient coffee shop/lakeside view channels from YouTube on our TVs. They make great background noise and show pretty pictures without sucking us into a show. 😊 But if you want more of an art piece instead, Heidi has a roundup of  YouTube options that give you vintage art…free!

I found this article pretty fascinating. It chronicles a study done by a graduate and professor at my alma mater (Indiana Wesleyan). They conducted a study to see what would happen if students abstained or deeply limited their time on social media. Their approach was interesting, as were their findings. Worth a read!

Savannah’s article about a “closet calendar” is fascinating. Ryan and I have a pretty small closet (we share a reach-in closet) so it forces us to be selective about the amount of clothing we keep. That has been really good for us, actually. But sometimes our clothes do get smashed in there and we spend a lot of time crunch-ironing against the clock in the mornings. This idea helps not just planning ahead with what to wear, but also helps get everything ironed and ready to go when it’s TIME to go. I like it.

I think I’ve written before about my fascination with dollhouses. It’s one of those “maybe in retirement” projects I think would be fun to do. Meanwhile, this piece about a “room tour” of dollhouse rooms was so much fun. Each room is really just a box, but the designs are amazing. So much talent to do this!

Friday Fun: April Randoms

                At the end of 2025, Callie wrote this post as a structured roundup to the year. I loved it so much that I earmarked it to revisit at the end of THIS year, but I actually decided to use it as a springboard for a monthly recap. I wrote posts for each month of the first quarter of 2026, and now I’m back again for April!

Best Personal Adventure: I loved my first attempt at making Challah bread with fresh milled flour! In all the busyness of Holy Week, taking time for creativity and quietness the day before Easter was just what I needed. And the bread was really good – and pretty! I would love for this personal adventure to turn into a tradition, but I guess we will have to wait and see if that happens.

Best Adventure Together: Once again, this month wasn’t our friend in being able to get away for fun dates. But we did manage to work together to totally clean out my parents’ apartment, and I celebrate that we were able to knock it out in 30 days. It was hard work, rough timing with Easter and other things, but we teamed up and did it!

Best Milestone: My favorite milestone this month was Ryan’s birthday! I always love an excuse to celebrate him! I remember so vividly all the years I prayed for a husband to celebrate, and I don’t ever want to lose the wonder of that answer to prayer!

Best Faith Grower: Since January 1, I’ve been writing the Gospel of Matthew by hand, and this month I finished it! I learned so much as I slowly wrote each passage, and the end of this month brought about all the passages about Holy Week. Since I had just lived and studied that week, it was extra special. Now I’m handwriting Mark!

Best Lesson Learned: I scheduled a creative/writing retreat for myself this month, but I didn’t want to leave home – both because I really detest being apart from Ryan, and I didn’t want to pay for lodging somewhere. But I learned that if you don’t leave, your chances of actually retreating successfully are slim…or none. My plans were foiled and the retreating never happened. Lesson learned. Retreats must be much more heavily protected.

Best Purchase: My Easter gift from Ryan was a new set of dishes, and we liked them so much we bought a second set so we have service for eight. I love them. They are white with blue rims, so they look very lake-y! I read online that photographing food on white dishes is better than on color-saturated dishes, and I am indeed finding that to be true!

Best Habit Created: At the beginning of the year, I took a challenge from Nourish Move Love to do 10 push ups every day for the whole year. I’ve always modified my push ups by doing them on my knees, but starting in April, I decided to do them from my toes. It’s kind of like starting over…and my form certainly needs much improvement. But I did the push ups from my toes every single day this month, and I am proud of that.

(It's adorable that you think there would be a photo of that!)

Best New Recipe: I think the Challah recipe might have been my favorite new find this month. (I returned to a lot of tried-and-true favorites throughout the month, but this was my favorite NEW recipe.)

Best Tradition: I think we might have created a new one this year. I loved our charcuterie board Easter lunch and would love to keep that going in future years. It was simple and filling – and so pretty. I’m so glad I happened upon the idea on Pinterest!

Best Little Luxury: The day we had our groceries delivered was such a fancy day. We’ve never done that before, and we won’t make a habit of it, but it sure was a privilege the day it happened. Isn’t it funny what ends up feeling fancy? (Lexi thought so too.)

Best Date: My favorite date came the night before Ryan’s birthday. We’d gone out to eat at Cracker Barrel with his family, and we ended up impulsively stopping by Ivanhoe’s on the way home. I feel like life lately has not lent itself to impulsive dates (or dates at all, honestly), and this was just so much fun. Plus, it was the perfect night for an ice cream stop! Ivanhoe’s was packed, so we got ours to go, but it was still fun! 

Best Answer to Prayer: My best answer to prayer this month is one I am holding close to my heart. It isn’t something I feel is mine to share publicly, but I had asked God for great clarity, and He provided it!