Butterscotch Rice Krispy Treats

I made these tonight.

They are delicious!

Something has come over me and I have been a dessert making maniac for the past week.
Last weekend I tried my hand at No Bake Cookies - they tasted delightful, but were rather squishy. I'm going to try to make them again this weekend for Easter. I want to make them look like little birds nests by putting spring M&Ms in them :)

So here's what I did:
6 cups of Rice Krispy cereal
4 (ish) cups of mini marshmallows
3 Tbs of butter
About 1 cup of butterscotch chips

Melt the marshmallows, butter, and butterscotch all together and then add the cereal.
To make it all even more delightful...I covered them with chocolate fudge icing :)

Yum.

Bear

Our neighbors have this dog. His name is Bear, apparently, according to our other neighbor. Bear is a gigantic dog, his name suits him very well. He's a big ole chocolate lab. He's pretty. But he's also pretty loud. And annoying. Bear barks when he sees a squirrel, so you can imagine that he barks a lot when he sees people...even his neighbors.

I came home today for Easter weekend, and Bear started barking at me. I felt the need to blog about it. Also, I call him the Beastly Bear, not just Bear, because he's HUGE!

That is all :)

Storms of Life

I don't like storms. Really, really, REALLY don't like storms. And it stormed last night. It stormed real real bad.

Okay, so where am I going with this?

Well, last night I slowly started getting over my fear of storms! The literal storms (the ones with big thunder claps and lots of lightning) and the storms that rage within you and tear you down. At Encounter last night we talked about having the Fruits of the Spirit, being part of the vine, dwelling in Jesus and Him dwelling in you, you get the picture. The last scripture we read was Galatians 5:13-24. This tells of how we live when the Spirit is not within is and then how live when we have the Spirit. Me being the over-analyzer I am, kind of, momentarily panicked. I was thinking, "Oh, well I have Jesus in my life, I'm trying to make sure I keep Him first in my life and follow the plan He has for me...so why do I sometimes struggle with some of the things mentioned in the first part of that scripture? Oh no..." Well in the middle of this panic, our power went out because a ginormous storm was heading our way. Thunder. Lightning. Lots and lots of lightning. I'm afraid of the dark too. So when our power went out, I started breathing a little heavier, got a little sweaty, and thought, "Oh no...we're going to wind up in Oz!" Okay, not literally, but the whole storm part just freaked me out.

So, I text my wise Aunt Yoda. I go to her for so many questions and advice about life and she is wonderful. She is certainly an angel sent to me by God. I do not know what I would do without her. Through half an hour of texting back and forth, she reassures me that 1) I am human and will ALWAYS be tempted and struggle with sin from time to time, 2) Jesus was tempted, 3) God allows temptations into our lives to show us our weaknesses in order for us to learn control and self discipline, and 4) I'm not doomed! :)

It's great to realize and remember that God loves me no matter what. It's so incredibly comforting. I really have no idea where I would be without Him, His guidance, His help, or His love. I don't want to know where I would be.

Our power stayed out, the storm raged on for a while, I made a short playlist on my iPod of some of my favorite songs, and I actually sat in our living room and watched the storm! I wasn't totally freaked out by being in the dark or all of the lightning and the chaos going on outside. This then transfered to calming the storm that had started to well up inside of me. Something just came over me and I realized that storms aren't so scary after all...well okay they are, but they are such a beautiful display of God's power!

Life's tough. Challenges and trials and temptations of every shape and size come our way - but God always gives us a way out and will not tempt us beyond what we can bear. Thank goodness!

So once again, I feel as though this is just a bunch of rambling on and on and made no sense what-so-ever to anyone reading this...that kind of is the theme of this blog of mine...kind of the theme of my life! I do a lot of word vomiting, and I am okay with that.

My Mom's Birthday

Today is my mom's birthday! Yay! Happy birthday to her. I forgot her card at school though :( Fail on my part. Tonight her man (Tony) and I are taking her to dinner. But what she doesn't know is that her sister, brother in law, and mom are meeting us there. My mom hates surprises, hates being the center of attention, so if we told anyone that it was her birthday at this restaurant and they sang to her, I'd be dead meat...Tony'd be dead meat...and my mom would probably just die of embarassment. She's not big on birthdays. But I'm hoping my sneaky little plan goes well. I love my mom. I've said it before and I'll say it again - she is my best friend!

Blessings

Just to warn you, this is going to be a long-winded, possibly slightly rambling post...I've got a lot to say! This week has kinda been one of those weeks...I am sick (again...4th time in the past 5 months). I haven't had much of a voice since about Tuesday - I kind of sound like a raspy old lady with a very stuffy nose today, but earlier this week oooh buddy it was bad. So I just got over a cold/sinus infection/who knows a few weeks ago, and all of this hit me again and to say the least I was not a very happy camper when it did. I haven't gotten a lot of sleep (which will make one very cranky indeed) this week because when I try to go to sleep I generally start coughing a lot (God love my poor roommate who has to put up with it all). Ok, I really am going somewhere with this, just bear with me for a minute. About Wednesday night/Thursday morning, I got really really discouraged and just down in the dumps, primarily since I've been so sick this winter. I've been to the doctor 4 times, taken 3 different rounds of antibiotics, had some tests done...nothing. It gets better for a few weeks and then seems to come back. Perhaps it's just I have really crappy allergies this year. I don't know, I'm not a doctor, I don't pretend to know what the heck is really going on. I'm taking all the fun over the counter meds now and slowly slowly getting better. Okay, here's where this story has a point. While I've been all down in the dumps this week, God has spoken to me very loudly through some of my favorite people in my life. The same people he generally uses to speak to me through. First was Kasee. She told me a story yesterday about someone she heard about who has cancer and is just totally using the opportunity to completely glorify God. She was telling me this story yesterday and I said, "It's stories like that and people like that that just really inspire me!" Didn't think too much of it until today on my way home. I was in a BAD mood today, I admit it. Just totally grumpy because I'm sick, tired, frustrated about this that and the other. Now hold this thought and I'll come back to it in a minute! Next was Zach. He was "Mr. I'm Going to Tell You EXACTLY What You DO NOT Want to Hear" today (and he knows it because I told him so, haha). I saw him before I left campus to head home and I was telling him about this conference that I had to go to today and how it all frustrated me and yada yada...and I said, "I'm just in a bad mood today!" and the poor guy (who probably just wanted to run in the other direction because I'm not fun to be around when I'm in a bad mood) just looked at me. So I drove him over to his apartment and we were chatting before I took off and he started telling me all the reasons I have to be happy: I can walk, talk, function on my own, I have a good life, God loves me, I have lots of people in my life who care a lot about me, and on and on and on. I was attempting to argue with him because I just felt like arguing with him a little bit, but he kept Jesus Juking me! So I finally gave up the arguing and agreed that yes I have many many many MANY reasons to be happy and stop being grumpy. Third thing was on my way home. I was listening to the radio and flipping through the stations and got to Klove and "Blessings" was on...talk about a huge God moment. I often tell Kasee that God will start out speaking to us in a soft whisper and if He needs to He will eventually bring out his baseball bat (my Aunt Yoda tells me that quite frequently). Well I took that as a baseball bat moment. I've heard the song a few times before and it brought me to tears the first time I listened to it. Well it did again today. Specifically these few parts... We pray for wisdom Your voice to hear And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love As if every promise from Your Word is not enough All the while You hear each desperate plea And long that we'd have faith to believe 'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops What if Your healing comes through tears What if a thousand sleepless nights Are what it takes to know You're near And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise I realize I may not be making any sense what-so-ever to anyone else...but it makes sense to me. No this cold/allergies gone wild is not a great trial in my life by any means, that's not what I'm saying. Connecting everything to what Kasee and Zach and this song have said to me though, I got that if people with cancer choose to glorify God even in their position, all of the great things in my life far outweigh the bad, and things are not always going to go the way I want (from Zach, like I said, not what I wanted to hear, but what I needed to hear which is more important) - then there is no reason for me to continue in this pity party, be a giant raincloud, Debby Downer, Negative Nancy, whatever name you'd like to call me. And I appologize to all of you who I may have brought down this week. I'm so blessed and lucky to have the family and friends that I have, and all of the encouragement they constantly bring me! And I'll throw in another song that I heard on the way home that fits my life perfectly - "This Is the Stuff." Today, the "stuff" was all the great people in my life who told me what I did not want to hear, but exactly what I needed to hear. So thanks to you all!

Monkey Suit

I went to my first ever Teacher Recruitment Fair today. It was intimidating. Then, thanks to my best friend Kasee Michelle, I realized all of those people there were once in my shoes and knew just how scared I was that I am graduating in a year and will be for serious looking for a job then. I got to the fair later than I wish I could have - most of the people/schools I wanted to talk to had already left. I did get four copies of my resume out there. More than I had out there before. I was rather a mess. I was dropping stuff and my hair was getting in my way and I was stumbling and fumbling and ah, I'm glad it is over with. I call this post "Monkey Suit" because I saw my roommate after I left the fair this afternoon, and told her that I didn't get to talk to very many people and I felt like I wore my monkey suit (my fancy smancy business suit) all day for, well not a lot. I officially love dress pants though. I've kept them on all day. Quite comfy. 23 days left until I get to go home for summer! That's all folks.