Then I Thought of Home

Someone asked if I had a good homemade cream of mushroom soup recipe and it just so happens that I do. We all really like this. Lucas really likes it. It's one of his favorites. This is the kind of soup that needs a sandwich to go along with it. Or at least around here anyway the soup alone isn't a heavy filling soup, it's warm and comforting but not heavy. Okay this is what you need. 1 large onion, chopped 2 garlic cloves, minced 1/4 cup buter 1 lb. fresh mushrooms, chopped or sliced 2 cups heavy whipping cream 2 cups beef broth 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp pepper Saute onion and garlic in butter over med heat until tender. Reduce heat to low add the mushrooms. Cook 8 to 10 minutes until tender. Stirring occasionally. Transfer to pot and add the cream, broth, salt and pepper.  Cook and stir over low heat until heated through. Garnish with grated parmesan cheese and parsley if desired. I usually double this recipe.

I listened to Joyce Meyer and she got me to thinking. Well actually I got to thinking a couple of years ago but Joyce reminded me. Two years ago when they told me they thought I had cancer and not just cancer but a lot of cancer . Well that got me to thinking. You know how when people  have something happen in life it  makes them consider life and how they are living? Often they  say something like, I want to concentrate on family more. Or they might say I want to stop and smell the roses. They could even say they realize things don't matter people do. Well with me it was the opposite. I've always been a little things person. I've always enjoyed and noticed the small things in life. Family was always first with me. Not because I had it figured out, I never knew to even figure. God just did that for me. I guess you could say seeing the little things and enjoying and being content was like a gift God gave me.  I didn't even think about it. ...

All of you have been so good to me. You have prayed and encouraged. You have sent cards and messages and flowers and food and gifts. So I wanted to give you an update on whats going on. As you know two years ago they found a mass in my abdomen. It turned out to be retroperitoneal fibrosis. It's rare. Not many people have it and so they don't know a lot about it. I had to have a scan back in the early spring, the first of March I think anyway at that time we found out the mass had grown five times bigger. That scared the doctors as they felt sure it had transformed into a cancer. So we had to have more scans more tests and wait. Then thankfully this month I had another biopsy. We went to the dr. yesterday and he said the drs at U of L could not tell what it was so once again they sent the tissue sample to the Mayo Clinic. Good news, wonderful news, it has not transformed. It is not cancer. It is still the retroperitoneal fibrosis. Bad news is it is ...

People are funny. Everyone loves an underdog until he isn't under anymore. If a person makes bad choices and ends up in a place in life they would rather not be they want to forget the choice but others don't forget it. When the person is struggling often times people bring up the bad choices they made but the person is trying to move past the bad choice. If someone makes good choices and ends up better in life people want to forget the wise choices but the person doesn't forget it. Remember the show Extreme Makeover? They would find a family that was down and out and they would go in and give them basically a new home. A wonderful home. Friends, neighbors and whole communities jumped on board to help. When the house was finished they all celebrated. But what happened in a few months? What happened over time? Some of those people who had been so excited started to think differently. They thought back to when that family didn't have anything. ...

I've posted about this before but my reading this morning brought it back to my mind. It's about the word, sure. Sure is a wonderful word. If we ask someone to do something and they respond by saying, "Sure" it makes us feel good. It makes us feel like they really want to help us or do what we ask. It sounds a lot better than, "Well I guess" or "if I have to" or " I guess I could". We all know that but somehow we give those other answers more than we probably realize. This blog post is about the word sure and our husbands. I want you and me as well to make it a habit to say sure every time we can. Mark loves Chinese, before that he loved Mexican. When he gets on a certain food he wants to eat it every time we go out. He will call me and say, hey get ready when I get home we will go up to the chinese.  I'm thinking, oh no not again. Sometimes I say that. Why do I say that? Why don...

These are rich cookies. Even a professional cookie eater like me can only eat one but oh the enjoyment of eating just that one. Heidi made them for our Mother's Day picnic. They are called the Ultimate Bar Cookie and they are the ultimate. We don't cut them in bars. We like to take a round biscuit cutter and cut them out in circles. I don't know why we do that, I guess we just like the way it looks. Granted they sometimes want to fall apart but oh are they good. You can save all the little crumbs and extra pieces  you have left after cutting them out and sprinkle them on ice cream for a topping or you can save them for when you have had a hard day and need some coffee and something sweet. Give them a try, this doesn't make a lot but since they are soooo rich you don't need a lot. 2 cups all- purpose flour 1/2 cup packed brown sugar 1/2 cup real butter, softened 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts One 3 1/2 -ounce jar macadamia nuts, coarsely chopp...

Names are important. We spend a lot of time picking out our children's names. When we marry, our husbands give us their name.  It's not just our names that are important but the name of everything. Every known thing has a name. Trees, paper, medicine, tv shows, hotels, games, and on and on. Every thing has a name even things like, worry, depression, hopelessness, financial stress. cancer, tumors, resentment, hurt feelings, laziness, sickness, learning disabilities, jealousy, anxiety. You could say, you name it and it has a name. Just a few days ago Mark and I had some distressing news. It felt like more distressing news on top of the distressing news we were already working through. We were sitting in the drive thru at McDonalds going over how it all seemed to much. If Mark hadn't had the steering wheel and if I wasn't digging through my purse we would have been wringing our hands. Then it hit us. What are we doing? We are too old to be actin...