Whoa! Someone can't wait to join the Red Hat Society, t'would appear!

Kate Middleton, look to your laurels, hon.  Margaret's hot on your heels.

.....of England's Prince William proposing to his long-time sweet babboo, Kate Middleton; she is surely an attractive lass, as shown in this photo of her at the ceremony where "Wills" (as his late mother fondly referred to him) received his commission as an officer in the English army:

Isn't she cute?  I think she's cute.

But though she looks as if she'd do the English proud as their Duchess of Wales and future queen, there is THIS photo of her at a wedding:

What. Is. THAT?  Looks like she's got the hindquarters of a rooster perched on her head.  She actually looked at herself in a mirror and thought "Oh, yes!  That's the look I want to project!" 

Not much shakin' the last couple of days.

We've had the pleasure of having Viktor over; he spent the night last night and he and Dmitry are presently back in the latter's room, chortling over something or other.  Also yesterday evening Don and I went to have a delicious, festive, holiday dinner at his brother, Richard's, retirement center (or whatever they're called these days!  Senior living?).  Beef tenderloin on puff pastry with bearnaise sauce,  cheese-and-bacon mashed potatoes, red velvet cake....yum!

Only odd thing was, the chef dumped a fistful of some sort of leaves in the middle of the plate, right on top of the sautéed green beans and carrots, which were themselves sitting atop the mashed potatoes.  Very nouvelle cuisinish.  Virtually everyone carefully scraped the greenery off to one side as best they could.  That's the only thing I wish the chef had omitted.

Speaking of Viktor, his time at Eagle Academy is coming to an end.  He's really doing quite well, so his parents are transferring him to Western Hills High next month, since it has sports programs, etc. that Eagle obviously doesn't have.  Viktor says he'll mostly miss being able to speak Russian with Dmitry every day. 

Next week Bethie and Brianna will come to spend the night with us on Wednesday night, then on Thursday afternoon I'll take the two of them plus Meredith off for a Christmas Shopping Extravaganza.    This way they can choose presents for their parents without the latter being any the wiser.  My grandmother used to take us downtown for this and I really enjoyed it, so thought I'd continue it with my grandchildren and nieces and nephews (once Cole is old enough).  At some point....maybe a week from today?....those three plus Margaret and Benjamin will come over for decorating faux gingerbread houses (it's the decorating part that's fun), etc.  Still planning the activities for that time.  At two years old I am afraid darling Bryson is still a bit young for it, but next year should see him join us.

Wish Charles would email me!  Has anyone heard from him recently?

I do love spiffy new recipes.  

It's Beef Bourguignon and is over in the "Cookbook" links section.  Very easy...very tasty.

Now I've put this one up, it's twin....Beer Stew...really ought to be posted as well.  Been making that for years.  Actually, it's pretty much the same except one uses beer in lieu of wine.  Still, I'll try to remember to make a page of it.

I'm working on getting Christmas cards in the mail. 

Did I get stamps the last couple of times I was at the post office? 

Nooooooo. Not me.  Heavens.  That'd be way too easy. 

No, I assumed I had sufficient stamps for the number of cards I'm mailing, but I was wrong.  Oh, so wrong.  Wronger'n wrong.  So twice today I went to the Arlington Heights' branch of the post office, only to be met both times with a line out the door, mostly consisting of grim-faced people with their arms full of packages to be mailed.  Tried to buy stamps from the machine but it's a pickypants and will apparently only accept pristine, newly-printed bills, having no truck with the sorry affairs I tried to feed it.

Maybe if I hit the post office early in the morning?

And To Those Whom It Might Concern, be prepared....I used both printed return address labels AND ugly, white mailing labels, so yeah, when a card shows up  it's gonna look mass-mailed, but it wasn't.  Anyway, each and every card is HAND SIGNED by me.  So there.  That ought to count for something, surely. 

Two new entries to "The Cookbook" link area have been added.....Fudge Pie and Taco Soup.

The soup recipe has been published here before, of course, but I thought it'd be handy to have it readily accessible.  The pie recipe hasn't but it's darn good.  My brother emailed me last night he's modified it using Splenda for the sweetner, fake eggs, and used semisweet chocolate.  Here's what's weird....he says that by using semisweet chocolate instead of unsweetened he lowered the fat content. 

Said it was good...in fact, his wife preferred it to the traditional way of making it...but it's not exactly the same.

Point being this is as flexible a recipe as taco soup.  Sub part of the white sugar with brown sugar!  Toss in some Kahlua!  Chuck in some chocolate chunks!  It's your pie, America!  Enjoy! 

...is this kick-in-the-gut post from Dan Phillips:

...and you were going to do this, when?

by Dan Phillips

Take a look at this for a moment:

Big long line. Can't tell where it starts, and it just goes on, to the right. Oh, and a little bitty red dot on the left.

A verse I used to try to impress on my two older children, in homeschooling, was Ecclesiastes 9:10 —

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might,
for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

My
intent was to discourage slack, inattentive, halfhearted work, and to
encourage them to give their all to what they were doing. They'd not
get their childhood again, they'd not get a chance to lay the
foundations again. Now was the moment to act, and to act heartily.

Our lives are like that line. We're all going to exist forever; and we who have been saved by Christ are going to live
forever. This little bit we're having now, this 20, 40, 60, or 80
years, is like that little red blip off to the left. It's a passing
nothing. It starts, it's over.

But there are unique qualities to this life, there are onlies about this life.

In all eternity, in the thousands and millions of years that stretch on ahead of us, this is the only opportunity we'll have to walk by faith. Now we love Him and rejoice, though we don't see Him (1 Peter 1:8). Then we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2), shall see His face (Revelation 22:4).

Specifically, this is the only
chance we'll have to honor our father and mother, to love our wives, to
respect and subordinate ourselves to our husbands, to raise our
children in Christ, to tell unbelievers of Jesus, to love our enemies.

This is the only chance we shall have to suffer for Christ, to accept suffering in faith, and rejoice in trial. It is the only opportunity to be humbled by our own personal thorns in the flesh, and know the grace and power of Christ in them.

Only now do we live in a time of warfare, strife, constant battle.

• We constantly battle — or are supposed to be battling — with our flesh and remaining corruption (Romans 7:14-25; 1 Peter 2:11)
• We wrestle with principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:11ff.)
• We contend with those who forsake the law (Proverbs 28:4)
• We know danger from false brothers (2 Corinthians 11:26)
• Insofar as we walk with the Lord, we live in a world that hates us (1 John 3:13)

This life is a battlefield. As far as we know, it is the only battlefield we shall ever experience. Therefore, it is the only
opportunity we shall ever have to fight for the Lord, to do battle for
Him, to overcome for Him, to score victories for Him, to win any
trophies for the Crown.

So if we're going to do this, we need to do it now. Soon, all we shall have from this life is a once-in-eternity record. That, and a great many regrets, I wager.

Do
you honestly imagine that there is any chance you'll regret trusting
the Word too much? That you'll regret believing in God too heartily?
That you'll regret giving too much of yourself to Him, in His service?
That you'll regret having mortified the flesh too much, having walked
in the Spirit too much? That you'll regret having been too godly of a
husband, wife, parent, child, churchman, citizen? That you'll wish
you'd indulged your fleshly passions more, loved the world more,
pursued your private agenda more, absorbed yourself in the world's
passing distractions more? That you'll wish you'd gotten more things, better things, and given less of your time and energies to the Word and the Lord?

I
have wondered this often as I've seen believers going on and on in
patterns of sin, laziness, stubborn disbelief and disobedience. Do they
ever think thus? Do they ever think of the passing transience of this
life (James 4:14)? Do they ever think of eternity, of the perspective of God, to say nothing of His judgment?

You've
been in a pattern of fleshly indulgence in your marriage. You know what
God calls you to, but you just won't do it. When were you going to
start? Do you imagine that this is some sort of dress rehearsal, and real
life, life that counts, will start... when? When were you going to
start putting on the Lord Jesus, and making no provision for the flesh?
When were you going to start putting to death the practices of the
body? When?

You're a young adult about to leave home, but you've never learned to honor — honor! — your father and mother. Were you going to be born into some other household, and practice your Christian faith there? When?

And what to parents? My dear wife discovered a poem once called Babies Don't Keep. Forget that it brings tears to her eyes, she's a great mother — it brings tears to my eyes! I can't say it better.

You're
in a church where you're hearing the Word, but you're doing nothing
with it. You're not involved, not serving, not growing, not giving;
indulging in self-absorbed fascinations. When were you going to start
doing all those "one anothers"? In the Millennium? After?

You've heard the couplet; you're about to hear it again.

Only one life, 'twill soon be past
Only what's done for Christ will last.

This
is a thought that haunts me, as I try to project myself forward,
looking back at what is my present. The time God has given you and me
to walk by faith and not by sight is now. In fact, that is the only time.

What should we be doing, that we aren't?

---

Amen, and amen!

The Christmas trees are festooning ('festoon'...I love that word!) the Sea-Tac airport once again, according to CNN.com.  Between having received the rabbi's assurance he won't file a lawsuit this year, anyway, the feedback from the public, and with Christmas trees defiantly displayed by various airline employees at their check-in counters, the airport's maintenance folk drug the airport's trees back out and put 'em up again.

Much as I loathe exercise in all its forms, and don't particularly want to chat while doing it, I cannot deny I occasionally overhear an interesting tidbit of information from one of the other women.

This time the subject was an article in the S-T awhile back called "Toxic Trade-off", and the speaker was the photographer for it (last September she'd had a big ol' photo spread in the Sunday edition, as she'd been in New York City photographing the grand opening of the Lonesome Dove restaurant).  She said one of the people interviewed (and I'm blanking on who it was) said that contrary to popular opinion, tap water is far healthier than the pricey bottled stuff, as the bottled stuff isn't subject to the same tests and standards as is municipal water.  When she squawked about the taste of tap water, the man shrugged and advised her to get a Britta filter.

Still, isn't that something?  According to that man, we're much better off drinking tap water, most likely.  (Depending upon the reliability of your municipal water, of course.)