I’m not sure what they liked about this book. The speeding cars? The active, all-dog cast of characters? The simple text? But I know what I liked: it was a deceptive simplicity. Underneath the easy-reader vocabulary, Go, Dog, Go! is a romance and a comedy, with plenty of scope for dramatic voices.

One picture shows a darkened room, a whole row of sleeping critters, and a bright-eyed little dog who is clearly dealing with insomnia. As the big sister, I knew that little boys don’t always go to sleep when we want them to. So this passage was deliciously ironic: “Now it is night. Night is not a time for play. It is time for sleep. The dogs go to sleep. They will sleep all night.” (I could only hope certain little boys were getting the point, as well).

Even more fun is the running relationship between a girl and boy dog who keep meeting and greeting each other throughout the book. “Hello!” the girl dog says brightly. “Do you like my hat?” But the boy dog doesn’t, and she flounces off — only to greet him just as enthusiastically the next time.  As the story progresses, the hats get bigger and bolder and more packed with personality. Fortunately, the ending of the book is everything it ought to be: they ride off into the sunset together.

And no, that’s not a spoiler at all. As long as you add at least one small person, this book is good for at least half a hundred delightful readings.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

With that, I’d like to announce our winner of the day planner, chosen at random from the participants and those who linked to the carnival:

Katrina Marie at Living For Jesus!

I loved reading Katrina’s day post, being the work she does in a pregnancy center has always been a dream of mine.

Congrats, Katrina! Please email us to claim your prize, being I can’t find an email address for you on your website. If we don’t hear from our winner by Friday, November 6, we’ll choose a secondary winner.

Thank you all so much sharing your lives with us!

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

This is you.

This is the Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. And by your participation in our A Peek Into Your Day blog carnival, you have demonstrated the beauty and complexity of the very special community we have here, not to mention the limitless creativity of God in allotting such unique places in life for each of us.

I had so much fun watching the posts come in on Wednesday—I told my husband that it was like watching lights flare and glow over a dark grid. It reminded me of the way I felt that first time I stumbled across the YLCF website so many years ago and how my heart thrilled at the knowledge of all of these precious girls and ladies out there that simply loved Jesus and wanted to live for Him to the best of their ability in a fallen world.

My eyes have burned with tears many times these past few days as I’ve read of your hope, your joy, your love for God and for those He has placed in your lives. It has been one of the most encouraging things that I can remember in quite some time simply to click through these blogs and revel in, not only the diversity, but the one single unifying factor that ties them all together into a beautiful whole: Jesus Christ.

Because, for all the differences in your individual lives and callings, one thing remained a constant. Almost every blog had a descriptive box on the right-hand side proclaiming the author to be a lover of God, a servant of Christ, an aspiring disciple. And almost every entry started out something like this:

I got up and met with the Lord. I sought Him in prayer. I went to His Word and I tried to take something away from it into my day. I tried to remember Him and what I believe and what it’s all about…

Do you girls have any idea how exciting that is? How precious it must be to the Lord? I don’t know about you, but the very thought of so many women all over the world (and the carnival, I know, is only a small slice of the whole of this precious community) getting up every day and trying to figure out how to live for God and what pleases Him and how to lend action and breath to love for Him—it gives me hope for this generation! And it makes me realize afresh just how much more brightly the Light shines against the darkness.

So, thank you all for participating, and for being so real. Thank you for loving our Jesus and for being bold to proclaim it. Thank you for shining like stars in the midst of a crooked and depraved generation. What a lovely, twinkling display it must be to the Father of Lights!

And to our own dear Ashleigh—for organizing and pulling off this blog carnival. We know and appreciate the work that you put into this, and I’m sure that all of YLCF will join me in saying thank you.

Thank you, all, for being you, the faces of YLCF. We love you, girls.

p.s. If you haven’t yet linked in to the A Peek Into Your Day carnival, it’s not too late! Links may be submitted through Sunday, November 1, 2009. The winner of the drawing will be announced Monday, November 2.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

The past year or two has seen a shift in focus here at YLCF, as one after another of our board and team members have married. We’ve enjoyed some wonderful posts from our sisters in their single years, and the response has indicated to us that such posts are reaching a deep need. But many, if not the majority, of our posts have reflected our individual stages. For many of us, that means we’re writing about our wonderful and beautiful marriages.

We understand–having all been there ourselves!–that it can be discouraging for an unmarried young woman to read post after post about married life. Our intention has been to share our hearts, as well as give our beloved friends a vision and a goal; to remind them that a fulfilling, Christ-centered marriage and the joy of children is something worth waiting for. But a few “little birds” have told us that it can be a bit much for a heart striving to be content. While we do believe it important to set one’s own boundaries in one’s spiritual journey (for example, if reading love stories causes discontentment or pain, we’d suggest not clicking on the Courtship Stories page for a new story every day!) and we certainly won’t ever stop writing from our perspective of wives and mothers, we would like to incorporate a bit more from the single years.

We’re not necessarily asking for posts about singleness (though they are certainly appreciated and needed). We’d like to know what you are doing with your single years. We’d like to catch a glimpse of your heart. We recently talked about making our lives count for Christ, no matter our marital status, and we’d like to hear more about how you are accomplishing that. If you are single, if you have wisdom to share… share it.

Along the same lines, we’d all love–LOVE–to hear from women who are in the next phase of life, past the first years of marriage or raising toddlers. The women who have a few more years of wisdom in their hearts and can offer a perspective most of us on the Team can’t pretend to grasp. We do understand, however, that time for such writing may be a slightly more limited!

This post isn’t borne out of desperation or a lack of posts or writers, but simply because we love interaction with all the ladies of YLCF. After all, the “F” in our name is for “fellowship” because it’s what we love most. Keeping in mind our Values and Writing Guidelines, get those fingers flying and let us hear from you!

As another means of promoting the fellowship and interaction (Gretchen already gave a little teaser to this) we’re going to ask for yet more participation from our dear readers. You’ve all had a chance to be privy to a day in each of the Team members’ lives–my own, the final installment, is coming on Friday–and now we’d like to get a peek into a day in your lives.

Next Wednesday, October 28, we’re going to host the “A Peek Into YOUR Day” blog carnival, right here at YLCF. This means you will have a chance to post about a real, normal day in your life on your own blog and then link to it here, giving all the readers of YLCF a chance to visit you and your day. The emphasis here is on being real. We don’t want idealized versions of what you wish your life were like, or what might fit a mold, but the real, day-to-day workings of your world. Whatever season you are in, whatever your life is like, we’d like to hear about it. If it isn’t real… don’t post it.

To participate, pick a day this next week to chronicle and come back next Wednesday ready to link up. My little nosy self is already excited! If you’d like to spread the word, grab this blog button and put it in your sidebar, tweet it, Facebook it, or post about it:

Copy this code:

<a href="http://ylcf.org" target="_blank"><img src="http://ylcf.org/uploaded_images/peek-into-your-day.jpg" border="0" alt="YLCF Blog Carnival"></a>

Every participant will be entered in the giveaway for this little 16-month day planner–along with a pretty pen, not shown, being that I still have to… obtain it. I don’t know about you, but I always fall hard and fast for anything with blue and brown! Along with adding your link to the carnival on Wednesday, comment and tell us if you add the button to your sidebar, tweet or write a blog post about the carnival before Wednesday for additional chances to win.

Official YLCF Giveaway Entry Rules:

• To enter the drawing, please participate in the carnival or leave a comment on this post with the link to the place you’ve “talked” about the carnival.
• Don’t forget to include your name and email address in the space provided on the comment form (your email address will not be published, but we need a way to contact you if you win!).
• This drawing open to readers with U.S. mailing addresses only, please.
• YLCF Team Members, their families, and recent YLCF giveaway winners ineligible for entry.
• Drawing ends Sunday, November 1, 2009.
• Winner(s) will be chosen randomly and notified by email Monday, November 2, 2009.

We can’t wait to hear from you!

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

To back up this statement, I have lots of empirical evidence: two whole trips filled with sunshiny, calm, lazy hours that ooze by like warm honey, while the rest of the busy, demanding world just ceases to exist (temporarily, of course).

Despite being nothing like the two previous trips, my latest sailing adventure did not disappoint. After our last month of nearly solid rainy days, it looked like a perfect day. The projected cloud banks held off, and we had plenty of sunshine. But the promised 2-4 foot waves, well, they proved to be 6-8 foot swells. I was reminded of horseback riding: the best way to deal with large motions from the beastie on which you are riding is just to relax, and go with the flow.

And hang on for dear life. There was, after all, just a hint of danger in the fun. I’m not likely to become addicted to adrenaline rushes anytime soon, but I began to have a faint idea why people bungee jump and otherwise rashly risk life and limb for the sheer fun of it. Only a very faint idea, mind you.

The real foe in this adventure was much more prosaic than being carried off by the waves. Some fought it with determined snacking; some with pills; some succumbed and were reduced to limp-limbed, green-lipped masses of misery. I’d already done seasick in the hold on calm days. Now I discovered worriedly queasy in the cockpit, and pretty-near-fine, playing figurehead up near the prow. I asked myself why I was so special that I was going to miss out on losing my breakfast like my poor shipmates in the rear. But succumb I did not.

Life is so unfair.

But not even life as a figurehead was all smooth sailing. While I enjoyed the sun-sparkles on the water, stray sea-birds scudding just over the surface, the occasional curling white-cap, and the rolling ride up and down those tallish swells…I was also enrolled in an unofficial water-fight with the Atlantic Ocean. No question about who was winning. Every fifteen minutes or so — just about the time I was starting to feel not-so-drippy, another stray wavelet would redrench my skirt, or more rarely, smack me right in the face. Fortunately, I was armed. With an enormous yellow slicker that functioned more like my own personal tent, solidly blocking out all but the most determined wind and spray.

Also thoroughly banished for those few salty hours: the busy, demanding world. I arrived home windblown, salt-encrusted, close kin to a tomato…and still in love with sailing.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

I laughed.

I was beyond exhausted, more than glowing from the humidity I was unused to, and not feeling in the least bit cute.

“No,” I had to answer Fairlight honestly.  Sometimes, if you caught me at just the right moment, with just the perfect cute maternity top on, I explained, I might feel cute.  But more often than not, I was tired, hot, and feeling as though my clothes did not fit right (but when it’s the third outfit of the morning, if it at least goes on, one finally has to give up).

I’m seven months pregnant with our second little one now.  In between pregnancies I spent all my time looking at those cute pregnant ladies and feeling those maternal longings to have a little one growing there beneath my heart again.  Nowadays I again look at those pregnant ladies and feel an instant bond—the waddle, the exhausted but glowing look we all share.

But when my sister-in-law Megan asked, “Do you still like being pregnant?” my answer was a resounding yes.  As precious as it is to hold a nursing babe in your arms, there’s nothing quite like the constant tapping of baby feet inside your belly.  Ruth Ann wasn’t very many months old before I was already missing having my baby always with me, right there inside me.  My answer to Megan was easy: I love being pregnant.  Even if I don’t often feel like a cute pregnant lady.

The problem is, I don’t think being pregnant is any excuse for being more frumpy than usual.  Even if comfy is a valid necessity.  It seems to me a husband will soon be less inclined to want more children if he considers the fact that he will once again have to look at a fat, frumpy wife for nine months or more!  There may not be much I can do about the fat part (though I can do my best to keep the fat in all the right “pregnant” places!), but I can work on dressing as cute as possible just for him (and the other people like Fairlight and my non-pregnant self who think pregnant ladies look cuter than they feel!).  Not to mention getting as much rest as I can so I don’t always look as exhausted as I feel!

This second time around, my maternity wardrobe has continued to slowly expand (no pun intended!).  There seems to be slightly more selection out there this time around.  But even Wal-mart seems to have bought into the notion that fewer women are having babies these days and thus only about half a rack of maternity clothes is necessary.  Not that I’ve bought maternity clothes at Wal-mart.  But I’ve been close to that desperate.  J.C. Penney has seemed to have the nicest selection, quality, and the best sales on new maternity clothes.  But I did just finally find a few shirts at Motherhood Maternity with a style and price I liked (and why did it take me so long to discover their “tummy sleeve”?—it keeps my pants up and makes sure everything “meets in the middle”!).

Truth be told, as usual, GoodWill has been my favorite maternity store of choice.  It’s just taken an awfully long time to gather maternity clothes that fit me—and that I like to wear!  There seemed to be a trend there for a while of making maternity shirts as short as regular shirts, just wider.  Now they are longer, but just as tight as every other teen girl’s shirt—showing off every extra curve that pregnancy gives one!  But it’s finally dawned on me that it would be the rare store I could walk into, even with unlimited resources, and find an entire regular wardrobe in one day.  So how did I expect to collect a “specialty” wardrobe of maternity clothes so quickly?  It’s only taken 18 months (and those few shirts I bought in between pregnancies—shh, don’t tell!) to collect the repertoire I have now.  Especially since, not being very pregnant in the summertime with Ruth, I’ve discovered this time around that some of those maternity shirts I found at GoodWill that first summer were not long enough to cover a seven month baby belly!

So take heart, first-time expectant moms.  You will spend most of the next nine months trying on at least three outfits each day and complaining that nothing fits like it did last week. You most likely won’t feel like you have any selection in your maternity wardrobe until you’ve shopped through at least the second or third pregnancy.  But being a happily expectant mom—who everyone else thinks is so cute—more than makes up for the lack of outfits to choose from.  And never forget that it doesn’t matter what we look like to the rest of the world—our husband’s eyes, our husband’s taste in maternity clothes is all that matters.  After all, I am his beauty—the woman he chose to be the mother of his children.  And I never want to make him regret that for a single moment.

Oh, and that part about being barefoot and pregnant?  Not recommended.  All that extra tummy weighs heavy on the feet.  It’s a much happier thing to be pregnant with Birkenstocks on your feet!

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

Colonial Williamsburg, though, is something special. I could never get tired of it, I don’t think.  A lot went on her during the forming of our Country.  We stepped back into the year 1774, and life in some parts of the town, carried on as it did, except of course for the multitudes of visitors, who like us, had come to learn and experience and enjoy the old town and the past it presented.

My brother got chosen to be on the jury of the old court cases, we wandered through gardens, admiring the tidy rows and discovering plants we’d never seen growing before (Okra for one!)  and laughed at a random scarecrow who wore a straw sunbonnet and a dress.?

We got to watch the “Militia” march, and listen to the Fife and Drum Concert. When we went into the post office, I wished I had a letter to mail, but I’d left them all in the van and decided I’d just have to remember next time.

We went through so many little shops, and  I even got to play a little on one of the harpsichords that they make there.  I didn’t make it out of the town, either, without one of those beautiful straw bonnets, complete with bows and ribbons and a ‘hat pin’ that they sell there. Mom and Dad kindly paid part- for an early birthday present, and I carried it in my hand and guarded it the entire rest of the two and a half weeks we were driving around the states.

I even convinced my brother to buy a three cornered hat, and my sister, who thought the hats were quite silly, decided to buy a fife instead. It was a day that will long be etched into my mind, a happy day of new memories, mixed with a deepened love of our history, and this land that I am blessed to live in- for it’s heritage, if nothing else.

As we walked down the streets, I couldn’t help but think of those who had gone before- George Washington walked these streets, as did Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Peyton Randolph, and even Marquis de Lafayette and George Wythe.

But perhaps it was Patrick Henry, “re-living” through one of the re-enactors, who stood up and gave a speech that made all the many volumes of books I’d read on Patrick’s life and manners come to life before me, that captured my attention the most that first day. I think I could have stayed for hours to listen to the most ‘alive’ history lesson I’d ever had.

But all things come to an end, and when I left it was reluctantly indeed, for there was so much more I wanted to know, so much more to experience and so much more to see. Who knows if I shall ever have a chance to return just one more time, though I dream of it often.  I’d go back in a flash if I ever could!  I’m thankful, so thankful for the two happy days that I was blessed to spend wandering the streets of such a beautiful place, and to catch a little vision of what the lives of those great men, and those every day people of our past was like. It made my heart feel some sort of kinship with the past- for though our lives today are so very different from theirs in many ways, there are those ties of commonality, of hopes and dreams, of heartache and joy that every human being shares, and I will not forget my glimpse into their lives- both the “good” and the “bad” who made our history what it is.

Yet-if time should last, some 200 years from now, what would those who come after us see? I doubt they’d read -or even write- volumes on any one of our lives, unlike those who lived and worked in Williamsburg, but as Mr. Franklin said, just in case, perhaps we’d better be careful:

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing.” –Benjamin Franklin

Pretty good advice this, don’t you think? Not for the sake of being remembered alone, for I don’t know that any of those great men particularly thought that 200 and some years from now we’d still be reading and remembering them as we do, they simply lived and struggled for what they believed and understood to be right and best for their country, and for their families. So we should live, and write and work – not for our own honor but to honor Him who gives us life, and no matter what should happen, or who should look at what we’ve left behind, or who should read what we have written hereafter, they will find a life well lived and words worth reading after all.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

The smallest and biggest members of the farm…

Poetry and tea under a star-filled sky…

Feeding the lambs

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

Lanier and I are finally taking time from barn chores and tea parties to say hello! The past week has been truly delightful. Instead of attempting to describe how cathartic their menagerie of babies has been for me, I decided to share pictures. Every day plenty of time is spent cuddling with three painfully adorable kittens, playing with the dogs and cats, trying to charm the Gulf Coast lambs, and being charmed by the Nubian goats. And of course we are constantly talking–about writing, C.S. Lewis, books, poetry, and all things literary. Talking about God, life, relationships, and everything under the sun. On day eight of my visit we have yet to run out of things to discuss and I doubt we ever will.
For me, these idyllic days in the beautiful South have served as a special gift of grace. I’ve felt God’s loving touch on my heart as I have enjoyed His creation and fellowshipped with His people.

I will write and share more when I return home, if we do not get around to it before then. For now, I will leave you with a passage I read this morning in Isaiah 46:

I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
calling a bird of prey from the east,
the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
I have purposed, and I will do it.

Captions: Top left – Lanier with an armful of kittens. Their names are Aloysius, Balliol, and Giles. Can anyone guess what or who they are named after? Top right - Natalie holding Hermia, one of the six lambs. Bottom center – Lanier had the idea to wear gardenias in our hair to church on Sunday! One person thought we were sisters.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

Lisa’s way with words gave me a fun perspective on the get-together–I thought you would enjoy reading it also. And I do believe I’ve discovered the perfect way to keep people from putting me or my world on a pedestal–all they have to do is come over to our house.

“They’re not from a different planet, Mama.”
– North and South, the BBC adaptation

The YLCF retreat was a fellowship of like-minded ladies. We all knew that going in, I think. Our differences struck me, though. Ranging from Colorado natives to a teacher from New York, and the Midwest towns and cities in between, there was plenty to compare. A few of the ladies attending (including Natalie – remember that, girls?) even lived in Japan for a while. So we enjoyed discovering how the same values applied in different lives, different families, at different places and to different interests. Some of us are writers. Some love to clean houses. Students, teachers, wives, mothers, sisters were there. There were seamstresses and dancers and photographers. I know we each came away encouraged and refreshed. God is at work so creatively in so many lives and locations. He is awesome.

I have to report that the YLCF gathering was most unexpectedly, but actually quite reasonably, quiet. Fifteen or so ladies variously occupied shared quiet conversations about lives, families, and God’s lessons for the year. For a while it felt like twenty questions or the game where a character’s name is on your back and you run around asking questions of everyone until you figure out who you are. By Friday evening, between some sort of synchronized driving by which we left Natalie’s gracious home in a caravan and arrived at the Christian bookstore independently and from different directions, and the frigid parking lot just outside the base, we hit our stride.

For me it was fascinating to observe the humanity of our online friends. Natalie is a real human being with everyday strengths and weaknesses. She is a transparent writer, and I appreciate when she shares her struggles and triumphs, her reflective journal entries. Seeing her in action was different, though. Her dogs bark at strangers. She looks different moving: laughing, walking, thinking – than in pictures.

Maybe you had to be there, but we all dissolved into laughter when Natalie was reasoning with the security guard at the gate of the Air Force base to let all of us girls stuffed into three cars onto base. I think he liked us, because he was very cooperative. But each car wasn’t really communicating with the others, so we were trying to guess what would happen next, what was going on – reading lips and hand gestures and then proceeding with trial and error.

Gretchen was mentioned often. We peppered Natalie with questions about the origins of YLCF, and how she and Gretchen met. I was most surprised to hear that they’ve only been in each other’s physical presence five or six times. Yet what friends they are to each other!

The weekend was about ladies fair, traipsing through bitter cold and token snow cover. Our experiment with blooming tea was successful. Our trips to the thrift store were totally girly. And most of us more or less stayed up in one little hotel room watching the four hour miniseries, North and South.

Saturday, my friend and I chased the sun home to Colorado, not ready to surrender the day and its memories. Even that night, at midnight finally home in Colorado, the pearly glow reflected off the day-old layer of snow welcoming me from my back yard. It was the after-glow, the still illuminating remnant of the light of a lovely day.

For he satisfieth the longing soul

and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.

- Psalms 107:9

- by Lisa (pictured above, on right)

Photos by Clara

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

The girls arrived at my home that morning and we went to eat lunch at a little sandwich shop. While we were there Gretchen called, not realizing it was The Day for the get-together; she passed on hellos to all. We shivered and slipped across the parking lot to a thrift store full of books….and from there on to another shop where finds ranged from childhood favorite books to shoes.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

Our tentative schedule includes lunch on Friday, a visit to a huge Christian bookstore, a few hours “thrifting”, tea time and fellowship at the Klein home, making homemade pizza for Friday dinner, time to watch a “girly” movie, time for devotions and sharing…and more. I am so excited.

Two weeks from today….

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

We’ve got the whole thing down to a science now, but the first couple of years we had a few troubles. For example, we didn’t have a recipe for the traditional saffron rolls for breakfast. “Well, kringla is Swedish,” I told my sisters. “We’ll just make that.” Another problem was the initial reactions of the sleepy family when awakened by white-robed apparitions, with candles that cast wavering shadows on the wall. Some of the younger boys, wide-eyed, told Mom about the angels that came into their rooms, while the adults’ thoughts ran on themes of “The Ghost of Christmas Past.”

Since our family consistently forgot the date of the holiday, it was easy to keep the whole thing under wraps and let it be a surprise. Most years, they didn’t know anything was afoot until we woke them early in the morning.

Most years. Until the year we girls forgot about St. Lucia’s Day. We remembered at 8:30 pm on December 12.

“Oh, girls!” my sister Katie gasped. “Tomorrow is St. Lucia’s Day, and we haven’t done a thing to get ready!”

Betsy was undaunted. “Oh, we can still do it. We’re really fast. Let’s go make the kringla.”

Our younger brothers were already in bed, so we didn’t have to worry about them seeing us baking. We closed the kitchen door and kept an eagle eye out for anyone prowling around. Betsy, who has a reputation for being very fast indeed in the kitchen, started the kringla, while Katie and I made other preparations. What we didn’t know was that Betsy simply put water and butter in a pan, turned the stove eye on high, and scurried off to do something else.

It was only a matter of minutes before we heard the sizzle. Katie and I turned around just as Betsy returned to the kitchen, and we all rushed to the stove, where the butter and water were busily boiling over, sending plumes of blue smoke into the air. Betsy jerked the pan off the stove and put it in the sink, while Katie and I grabbed dishtowels and waved them at the smoke, which by now was curling along the ceiling and heading toward the door.

“We’ve got to stop this smoke,” Katie giggled, although we were nearly frantic. Right outside the kitchen door was a smoke alarm. And right down the basement stairs from the smoke alarm was half of our rural volunteer fire department, having a Bible study under Dad’s direction. We were sure that the smoke alarm would go off and they’d all come rushing up to see what in the world was going on. They are all our neighbors – we’d never live it down!

Thankfully we were able to direct the smoke away from the door and avoid that embarrassing situation. With the kringla safely baking in the oven, we turned our attention to other details, such as our costumes. Tradition dictates that the girls wear wreaths of evergreen branches and candles in their hair (although with a firefighter dad, we opted to carry our candles in our hands!). Of course, it was too cold, dark, and scary to go outside for branches by now. Always resourceful, we cut “just a few” off the back of the Christmas tree, hoping they wouldn’t be missed.

We headed back to the kitchen with our booty, closing the door quickly to keep the delicious smell of baking kringla from escaping. That smell would probably bring the firefighters upstairs about as effectively as smoke would! Besides, wasn’t the meeting about over by now?

Yes, it was. Suddenly the kitchen door was pushed open by Dad, followed by half a dozen men. With shrieks of, “Don’t come in here!” we girls pushed it shut again.

“Hey, what’s going on? Can’t I come into my own kitchen?” Dad queried. “We’re just bringing our cups and plates in for you. What’s the matter?”

We were too hysterical to be coherent, but managed to tell him that one of the firefighters could bring in the dishes – our good friend Tim, who has a couple of crazy sisters himself. He just shook his head in bewilderment as we tried to explain what had happened. “Okay,” he finally said, shrugging.

Amazingly enough, the breakfast turned out beautifully. The kringla was perfect, the table was lovely, and the evergreen wreaths, while rather prickly, were silent as to their origins. It was once again a complete surprise to the rest of the family.

It was the last time to be a surprise.

- by Jeannie Castleberry
Photo by Sarah Plett

©2010 Young Ladies Christian Fellowship. All Rights Reserved.

Take buying yeast. I went shopping with Mamma the other day, and that’s what she needed. I don’t know the word in Hebrew, so I decided to just comb the store for it. That didn’t work, so I finally worked up enough courage to approach a guy stocking the produce section. “Excuse me, do you speak English?”

He didn’t, but indicated willingness to work with me. So I continued in Hebrew, twenty-questions style: “It’s something for bread.”

“Flour?” he asked.

“No.”

“Shmarim?”

“I don’t know.” He was walking purposefully across the store while I kept giving him clues. “It’s like pickles…no! I mean leaven!” (It’s not so crazy in Hebrew, because chamutzim and chametz are related to ’sour’ and sound alike!) We soon reached the refrigerated case, where he pulled out a cake of…. yeast. Yes! Shmarim it was. (And no, I still don’t know the word: I had to look it up in the dictionary. Maybe I should take it with me when I go shopping).

Maybe, but it might not be half as much fun!

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