She LUBs Muffins, I LUB Public Speaking!

Well it's been a long time since I've made something like this, and I'll tell ya why:

These are banana-oatmeal-chocolate chip muffins, and I haven't been able to make anything with banana in it for years. Natalie used to freak out because she hated the smell of banana-anything baking. I know, she's so weird! But she has an uber-sensitive sense of smell. It's getting less uber, I think, which is good.

 

When she was younger, she used to cry if we passed a dead skunk, it would acost her senses so much. Another time, she said, "I smell french fries!" while we were driving, and about a 4 blocks later we went by In-n-Out. She can smell smoke like noone else.

 

Anyway, we had these nasty, over ripe bananas laying around and I was in the mood for muffins, so I gave it a shot. And not only did I NOT offend Natalie, she ate them like crazy and asked for more! Yay for being able to bake with banana again!

 

This is what I did at work the other day:

Don't worry, I DO appreciate how awesome my job is! The teacher was impressed with my track-laying skills and I told her it was because I come from a long line of railroaders: my dad, both my grandpas and at least 3 of my uncles. So it must be in my blood, right?

 

I also made this at work:

I should have set the arrows better before taking the picture, but you get the idea! The kids love it. At circle the other day we had this freak snow flurry happen and our little girl looked outside and said, "Look it's wintertime!" and she got up and changed the arrow from cloudy to snowy.

 

Speaking of weather, it's been ridiculously cold. 21 degrees this morning. That's flippin' cold for around here and it's been like that for weeks now. Sheesh! I'm a spoiled California girl. I like my mild winters!

 

So the other day I come home and there is this awesome mushroom cloud-looking cloud. It's right in the sun, so I tried to take a picture of it while blocking the sun with the post on my porch.

Then the sky got all black and angry...

And then there was this freak corn-snow storm. It wasn't hail. Just big balls of snow. Weird. And it's not supposed to snow where I live now, so I did not approve.

And finally, I had to get up and give a talk in church on Sunday. I was assigned to do 15 minutes on chapters 8,9, and 10 in Matthew. That's where Jesus performs all the miracles, so it was pretty easy to get into it.

 

But it is never easy to get into public speaking. I can handle it now at least, but would prefer to never have to do it. Ever.

 

I thought of a little girl that was in our class a couple years ago who had the best attitude about everything. She always had a smile and even if she was eating something she didn't like, or doing something she didn't like, she would say, "I lub it!" And you could tell she didn't love it at all!

 

Well, I did my best to channel her and her attitude and apply it to getting up in front of everyone...I may not have liked it, but I LUBBED it!

 

Oh, and I wore my survival bracelet that Cam made for me, just as an extra precaution to make sure I would come through the experience ok. What I was going to do with 15 feet of military-grade paracord during a talk, I don't know, but at least I felt comforted knowing it was there if I needed it!