Menu Monday: Nourishing Body and Soul

 

                I had so much fun sharing a recipe with you last week that I thought I’d do it again this week. I have a funny story about this one, but I’ll tell you after I give you the recipe.

Sloppy Joe Bowls

1 Pound Ground Turkey
1 Bell Pepper, Diced
½ Onion, Diced
¾ Cup Organic or Low-Sugar Ketchup
1 Tablespoon Lime Juice
1 Tablespoon Chili Powder
2 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
1 teaspoon Seasoned Salt
1 Bag Frozen Sweet Potatoes
1 Bag Coleslaw Mix
½ Cup Avocado Mayo
1 Teaspoon Seasoned Salt
2 teaspoons White Vinegar
4 Dill Pickle Spears

Brown the ground turkey and add diced onion and bell pepper. Cook until vegetables are softened. Add ketchup, lime juice, chili powder, brown sugar, and seasoned salt, and simmer for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, steam the bag of sweet potatoes. (Cut one minute from suggested cook time.) Also meanwhile, put coleslaw mix in a medium bowl ad add mayo, seasoned salt, and white vinegar. Cut dill pickle spears into small pieces. When ready to serve, put ¼ of the meat mixture, ¼ sweet potatoes, ¼ coleslaw mix, and ¼ dill pickles in bowls and enjoy.

                One of the things I love to do each day is pack Ryan’s lunch and write him a little love note. I work hard to make sure he has great lunches, but one day last week, I did not have time for proper. I threw in some leftovers along with the remainder of a full bag of chips (in said bag) and the remainder of a box of cookies (in said box). After lunch, he sent me this picture and said his work buddies had gotten the biggest kick out of his full containers of cookies and chips. Womp womp. Later in the week, I sent these sloppy joe bowl leftovers and told him to make sure he relayed the properly packed lunch. 😊

*The bulk of the sloppy joe recipe is my mom’s. I’ve made a few alterations, including adding the bell pepper, and I choose to use stevia brown sugar in place of regular. (You could also use honey.)

*I like the frozen sweet potatoes because they steam in five minutes and I don’t have to chop anything. That’s a win for me!

*The coleslaw recipe is one I found a couple of years ago, and I really like it. It’s not too drippy with dressing, and it’s fast and easy to make.

*We buy fresh dill pickles at Aldi and like their flavor. You could use any kind of pickle you prefer.

Sunday Scrapbook: Moments from the Week

 

A new month is here. And the time changed. That’s a whole lot for the first day of a new week, isn’t it? October was so long and hard, and I feel like I’m limping into a new month.

                How about we just look at the last week, ok??

                Last Sunday was my official return to duty, post-bereavement days. I gave the message at church, and that afternoon, Ryan and I took a bike ride! It was a PERFECT day outside. Just stunning.

                Lexi had a grooming appointment Monday, so I took advantage of the quiet house to sit outside to work! I would love to sit outside with her to work, but she takes personal offense to each person/car/animal that dares show its face toward our property, so it isn’t very relaxing to do this. So I enjoyed my day outside!

                We took Mom on a walk to enjoy some fall leaves. Well. I pushed her in a wheelchair, and Ryan was in charge of Lexi. We all had a great time and saw lots of colorful trees!

                I don’t know who left it, but someone blessed me with a Pastor Appreciation snack basket on my desk this week! That was so kind!

                Swiss Village hosted a trick-or-treating night for the community, so I went to sit with Mom to hand out candy. I ended up assisting her and another resident, and we all had the best time together. They had over 1000 people come through in less than 2 hours. (It was hot in there!!!)

                Friday was the official Halloween party for Swiss Village, so Ryan reprised his role as Mr. Clean and did a great job with his costume! Even Lexi approved.

                Friday night into yesterday, we had our godson over to stay. We did many things in an almost-24-hour period, including baking bread, playing games, building castles, reading books, watching cartoons, and going for walks! And now I need a NAP!

Saturday Suggestions: Inspirations for Your Weekend

 

                A quick reminder as we jump into this week’s suggestions, though unfortunately this one is not a suggestion. It’s happening. Time change weekend!! Remember that tomorrow morning or you might end up with an interesting church experience!

Since November begins tomorrow, you may not be thinking about planning bike outings – at least in the Midwest. But I am hanging onto this one for next year, because it looks so fun! A bike trail in Ohio that covers 78 miles – all paved!! And if biking isn’t your thing, maybe you’d rather do this tour of used bookstores in Michigan. (Doesn’t it look GLORIOUS??)

Oh how we need a good laugh now and then, don’t we? Leave it to the Babylon Bee to come through for us! (Should you happen to be unfamiliar with the Bee…it’s satire. Please read it as such!) Anyway. This one made me laugh out loud ALL the way through. Songnals for the win!

As you know, Ryan and I love thrifting, and we decorate our home with many such treasures and finds. It’s true that it can be quite tempting to just buy everything at the thrift store if it’s a good deal catches my eye, but that’s not practical. (And it sort of defeats the purpose of thrifting.) Andrea wrote a great post on how to be intentional about your home décor thrifting. If you need some guidance, check it out!

One of the very first messages I ever shared at our church was about the importance of hiding God’s Word in our hearts, because we never know when we might need to rely on Scripture and not have access to a Bible for one reason or another. I used the example of missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham who were taken into captivity 25 years ago and had no access to a Bible except what they’d memorized. For a whole year, the only Bible they had was what they scribbled down on scrap paper. Elizabeth shares a similar story here that is worth the read and the good reminder!

This was a fun post Audrey created! She writes about how the same pieces of clothing can look very different if you accessorize differently! My only sadness in the post is that she did not actually model the four versions of the outfit. (She just did a vision board of each outfit with accessories.) But it makes me wonder how many more outfits I could create if I tried this!

For Dad’s final hours, I wanted to play piano hymns for him, and I landed on this playlist on YouTube. We played this for almost all of the last 48 hours, starting it over every time it cycled out. It’s a good list if you need some calming background music!

Friday Fun: October 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 have written posts with this theme each month so far this year, and I’m back again to share October’s.

Best Personal Adventure: I finished handwriting the book of Luke! I am on a quest to write all four Gospels by hand this year, so now I’m on to the last one! Luke was the longest book, so I feel like I was in it forever (because I was!). It was an accomplishment to cross that finish line!

Best Adventure Together: We started teaching an elective Sunday School class on marriage! Our church offers elective classes a handful of times each year, and this year Ryan suggested we teach one on marriage, so I wrote it, and we are teaching it together. Our first Sunday was supposed to be Dad’s birthday, but we ended up being with him that day, in his final hours, so we started a week later. We’ll continue this class through the end of November and are so excited about it!

Best Milestone: This one is easy! We celebrated the 14^th anniversary of our engagement! It is still one of my favorite days and is/was one of the easiest and best yeses I’ve ever said. We celebrated this year with a lunch at the burger restaurant I’d wanted to introduce Ryan to, and he loved it as much as I thought he would!

Best Faith Grower: Feeling upheld by the prayers and tangible kindnesses of God’s people taught me in new ways that God does the unexplainable. This is what we are focusing on in our Acts study this fall, and MAN. I am seeing it unfold in real time! I have no way to explain how I was able to minister, give Dad’s funeral message, or offer the message at our church two days later aside from the peace that passes understanding. And that was a faith boost for sure.

Best Lesson Learned: I think this one is really a lesson reminded…but PLAN AHEAD!!! I had worked really hard on Dad’s funeral service and obituary and picture file, and I was so glad I had done all of that because it made the days after his death less logistically stressful for me. I had also worked hard to write the curriculum for our elective class and two sermons, and I was so glad I had done THAT, so all I had to do was deliver them, not construct them, in the days after his passing.

Best Purchase:  These belts! I have had them on my wish list for several years but never made the purchase. I got them right before Dad’s visitation to wear one with my dress. (The thee-pack offers black, brown, and white.) Then I used it with my denim dress for family pictures and just love how well it accessorizes. Another thing I love is that when I add it, I make pocket-less dresses potential outfits for speaking at church. I have to wear a mic, so when I don’t have a pocket or a belt…that dress is out.

Best Habit Created: This month was about survival, not habit creation. Nothing new under the sun in our household this month.

Best New Recipe: The pot roast I shared on Sunday was my favorite thing I made this month. The food was good, but I think it was the nostalgia of eating a “fancy” Sunday lunch that took it up another notch!

Best Tradition: We had our annual pictures taken this month! We had the most perfect night for it, which is always a gamble, since we book our appointment so many months in advance. We learned that our beloved photographer is retiring, so we are sad about that, but we have so enjoyed all the many memories we’ve made along the way with her!

Best Little Luxury:  I mentioned a while back that we thought about getting faux mums for outside. Choosing the ones we wanted about undid us. We looked at dozens of versions online and could not find any that felt right. Then we saw some in Hobby Lobby that we liked (as far as the look) but we didn’t care for the color. Ryan looked at their website and found the color we wanted, so we decided to give them a try. We have loved them! They’re made for the outside, so we have great hope that the intensity of the color will last!

Best Date:  I loved our monthiversary date to the apple orchard. We had perfect weather, the food was good, the music was fun, and it was just good for us to get away for an evening. This was in the thick of my dad’s last days, and we didn’t get away too much! This was good for us.

Best Answer to Prayer: It may seem strange, but I celebrate that my Dad received total and complete healing in Heaven and is no longer struggling on this earth. The last month, especially, of his life, was so hard to watch every single day. The loss of strength and ability, the increased pain and weakness. I hated it for him. I knew he was ready to go and it was an answer to prayer that he completed his race here. Also answers to payer? He lived to the scheduled move with my mom…and he lived to his 94^th birthday…and I made it through officiating his funeral! So many answers in that one story.

Throwback Thursday: Annual Photo Shoot Memories

 

Ryan and I received our gallery back from this year’s annual photo shoot. This has become one of our favorite traditions, and it all started back in 2012, when we had our engagement photos taken – just a couple of weeks after Ryan proposed. His mom took the photos for us – over the course of two evenings. The first night we went to the park in Marion, and the second night she took pictures at the log cabin in the woods. This was one of my favorite pictures, which we used for the newspaper engagement announcements! (Remember those?)

As we approached our first anniversary, we asked Nita to take pictures for us again so we could make a Christmas card. We went out to the cabin and enjoyed a fun photo shoot that yielded this card! I don’t think I ever posted pictures of the full photo shoot, but that might also have been because the whole things was cobbled together – as were many of our first year traditions.

By the following year, we had pulled our act together and went “on location” (ha!) to do a photo shoot. Nita took the pictures again, and this was the year we noticed how hard it was for her to breathe as we trekked around for pictures. We went to Huntington and ended up with some great poses. This is one of my favorites because it makes me laugh. 

So in 2015, we did a photo shoot at home in Marion. We chose the location so Nita wouldn’t have to walk so far, and that was a success. What we didn’t know was that by the next year, we wouldn’t live in Marion anymore, so I treasure that we have these pictures from our house. This one was taken out in our pierogi (pergola) and makes me laugh. 

We had many changes in life by 2016. I was blonde, for one thing! 😊 We lived in Kokomo, and Nita was struggling harder than ever to breathe, so we didn’t feel like we could ask her to do our pictures. My parents’ neighbors had just posted their annual photos, and I loved them, so I asked who took them. She was a college student at Ball State, and she had time to take our pictures for us – if we could travel to Muncie! So we did and had a beautiful location at Minnetrista. She took SO MANY pictures, and this is still one of my favorites.

But college students graduate, so we were in trouble by 2017. I started asking local friends who took their pictures, and that is how we ended up with our beloved Barb! She had some locations near Kokomo where she loved to take pictures, so we had these taken just ahead of our fifth anniversary. This is still one of my favorites EVER taken of us, and Ryan had it turned into wall art for our room.

In 2018, we had pictures scheduled with Barb, and the day we were supposed to meet with her, the forecast was AWFUL. I took a chance asking if she had any other days, and she could get us in one day sooner…which ended up being the last day any pretty leaves were on any trees. I LOVED this gorgeous red tree in the park and am so glad we have a picture with it!! (This was also a day after Ryan’s mom’s brain surgery.)

I had found a fun Christmas card theme for our 2019 photos, so we had some pictures taken in a coffee shop and some in the park. I loved them all, but this is one of the most unique poses we’ve had, and I still love it! 

And then came 2020. Ohhhh the pandemic year. We moved away from Kokomo, landed in Grabill, didn’t have a photographer, and I ate all my feelings! We ended up asking the wife of one of our coworkers to take some pictures for us. She was a hobby photographer and did a great job, but I did not love how I looked or my outfit! So I don’t think I ever posted most of the pictures, but the card did turn out kind of cool. I loved this bridge! 

The next year I fared a little better in self-confidence. We were still at WillowBridge, but we had made friends with one of the counselors at work who liked to take pictures, and she took them for us that year. We had them done on two different nights because it started raining on us the first night! We had so much fun with her, and consequently, we got some great pictures!

By 2022, we lived in Bluffton, had a dog, and needed someone to take our pictures! I learned about Andrew through my sweet friend, Shari, and he met us at our house to take pictures of us with Lexi! Our neighbors tagged along to try to get her to smile, which did work, and then we did some recreation pictures of our engagement poses, since it was 10 years past our engagement! We had so much fun! This is not a picture that features Lexi or a recreated photo, but it is one of my favorites. 

In 2023, we had moved to the lake, farther from Andrew, but closer to Barb, so she reprised her role as our photographer. We had a GORGEOUS night for pictures and had fun exploring trails near home together! 

She came back in 2024, and we did some of our photos on the boat! She said it was the first time she’d ever done a boat session! I loved these so much. Again – the most gorgeous night. It was perfect.

Last year we did a home session again – and I loved it. Lexi had fun with it too. 

And soon…this year’s photo shoot! Here’s a sneak peek…

Wednesday in the Word: Restoration

 

Sometimes the best reminders are right there in familiar verses, and we miss them, because we can’t get past the familiar.

                That’s what happened to me this week. I was reading a Facebook post, of all things, and the writing style was almost like a mini blog post. The writer talked about a season of her life when she felt depleted and she happened upon Psalm 23. She talked about the familiarity of the chapter, but how the line “He makes me lie down…” reminded her of what God wanted to do for her. I decided to go back and read the familiar words, myself, and the line that leapt out to me was “He restores my soul.”

                That’s the part I need right now.

                And I needed the reminder that restoration is HIS work in me, not my own work on myself.

                I need the restoration of confidence, where I’ve believed too many lies about who I am. I need the restoration of strength where I’ve worn myself out with striving. I need the restoration of peace, where anxiety has taken over.

                The words were right there. I know them by heart. But I hadn’t remembered them, and I hadn’t been praying them. Now I am.

                Maybe a restored soul isn’t the thing you need most right now. Maybe it’s not even anything in the entirety of Psalm 23! But I wonder if there is something meaningful hiding in plain sight in a Scripture you know? Look back over some of the ones you know the best. What do you need that’s right there in one of them?

Tuesday Tales: Date Night

 

Last Friday evening, we had a fun date night! I saw that our friend, Brent, was going to be in concert right here in our area, so we decided to go hear him!

                First, we tried out the new Culver’s that just opened on the south side of Fort Wayne. We love Culver’s, but most of our regular shopping areas don’t have one. I happened to notice this one under construction a few weeks ago, but this is the first time we’ve been!

                Shared a Mixer. 😊

                And then we went to the little church where Brent was in concert! We love his music, and whether he plays the ones we know or new ones he’s written that we haven’t heard yet, we love them all so much. This time he played a Norwegian hymn that was just beautiful. I’m going to need him to record that.

                Sam made an appearance too, and I told Ryan later that I think he loves Sam as much as the little kids do. (Ryan said I wasn’t wrong.)

                Brent was highly in demand after the concert, but he took some time to chat with us and to get a picture. Because have we even really been to a Brent concert if we haven’t gotten our picture with him??

                I think I went to my first concert of his about 22 years ago, and I love it that I get to go with Ryan now!

                (And then we went grocery shopping…because have we even gone on a date if we haven’t also gotten groceries?)