Le Monde des Maillots

Is it just me, or is it remarkably close to impossible to find a bathing suit these days?  What’s a girl to do if she wants a modest suit with which to swim in public?  I really have nothing else to say, just letting you know what’s on my mind grapes.  

I was amused to find THIS…which I guess isn’t too far from this…except, of course, in purpose of thought.  I suppose I should be thankful we don’t live in the Victorian era.

Or should I? 

(p.s. - yes, I am thankful we don’t live in the Victorian era. i like toothpaste and indoor plumbing waaaay too much to forego the current age for said Victorian one.)

We made a new friend!

Can you see him?

Maybe if you look a little closer.

I found him yesterday morning as I watered our tomatoes in their newly dug subterranean trenches!  He was hiding under the murky water and never did fully show himself.  But as soon as I realized what he was, I promptly yelled (maybe I should say hollered since we’re country folk now) for gene to bring the camera out.

Don’t you love him? I’m pretty excited about him for two reasons: first, he’s very cute and seemed to want to see me as much as I wanted to see him.  He didn’t try to escape or run away or anything, in fact he just moved toward me when I moved to get a better look.  Second, frogs and toads are supposed to be good for your garden because they eat up the bugs and pests.  So here’s to our new found friend - let’s hope he stays a while!

I wonder what his name should be…?

Look who’s talking

…quite a bit!  We’re watching our little sweetie niece for about 24 hours and BOY is she a crack-up!  Her parents have clearly been working on pleases and thank-yous, because we’ve been getting a lot of them.  Love it.

Worthy Cause

I want to take a break from my usual sarcasm to talk about something much more solemn, and to ask you to pray with me for some specific people.

Because our good friends Babe and Jonathan serve full-time with Campus Crusade for Christ, we get regular newsletters from the organization updating us on ministry needs and prayer requests.  This morning I opened up a piece of mail that really affected my heart - a Crusade staff member serving in Columbia was recently murdered.  Killed for the cause of Christ.

I think it’s hard for us as Americans to imagine ourselves in a situation where we might be risking our earthly life for the name of Jesus, but in reality it’s happening all over the world every day.  And I don’t know about you, but I sometimes have a tendency to feel guilty upon hearing of martyrdom because I’m not doing this kind of work for Jesus every day, but I don’t believe that’s what the Lord wants for us.  The Lord has already placed each of us where he wants us.  If He wanted us to be born in the third world among the persecuted church, He could have made that happen.  If He wants to call us to go and minister with them now, He could do that too.  But for most of us He has called us to right where we are.  Just because it’s not physically dangerous doesn’t mean it’s not an important calling.  But neither should the news of martyrdom  leave us unaffected.  What I DO think is this: it’s a call to action for me, personally, whenever I hear about people dying for the sake of the gospel.

It’s a call to love others in the name of Jesus Christ.
It’s a call to preach the gospel and serve right now, right where I’m at.
It’s a call to die to myself each and every day and live for Christ instead.
It’s a call to throw off pettiness and immaturity.
It’s a call to ‘consider it all joy’ when I run into trials, however big or small. 
It’s a call to pray, with growing intensity, for the persecuted church at large.

So, while I work on doing all of these in my own life, I wanted to ask if you would join me in that last one today.  Right now, even.  One of the affected Crusade staff members said this in the newsletter:

“The pressure is from all sides, [so please] hold hands with us, join us in prayers. Pray for peace and safety for our children, and unity in mind and spirit for all our staff.”

The Lord is so gracious is allowing us to participate in His work simply through prayer.  And as for the martyred staff member from Columbia, the Bible says that the man who perseveres under trial will get a crown of life.  I can’t wait to meet him and all the others when I get to heaven.  

Would you join me in praying for these servants today?

Alumni Game

See?  I wasn’t making it up.  The FPU women’s soccer Alumni Game was an actual event, and I was there.  But do you see how there’s only 12 of us?

That would explain the flared nostrils above (you love it).  I was SO tired.  The whole time.  With only one sub, every lung on that field was virtually on fire - or at least mine were.  It’s a gooooood thing we only played three 25-minute periods instead of the regulation two 45-minute halves.  Blerg, that would have been a nightmare!

All in all it was a great game.  We loved having the newest alumni on the team with us and we only lost like 5 to 1.  Not too shabby for some old ladies.  Now, with that said, here are some highlights:

Here’s Jamie and me on the field…looks like we should probably bring some sort of headbands next time.

Since geno was doing all the picture taking, most of the pictures are of me or of our good friends the Belmonts (Fellow alumni Jamie, her husband, Casey, and their little guy, Braden), so that would explain the shortage of actual game footage.  And as long as we’re spilling our guts here, the TRUTH is that I spent most of the game on the ground.  I guess this is what happens when you’ve lost all skill from years without practicing and are really really tired.  I would deny it because it’s kind of embarrassing, but unfortunately there is plenty of picture documentation:

I mean, I wish I could say that those three pictures were it…but there were many more.  SO many more - like about 20 more.  Seriously, I’m laughing right now as I type this because it’s true.  So let’s just laugh it up together.

Here’s Jamie and Casey and the Petersons between periods (Jamie, there was such a funny picture of you that I wanted to put in here SO bad, but I didn’t because I knew you’d hate it.  You are so lucky.):

And here’s Braden, our number one fan (isn’t he darling?):

Well, that about sums it up.  Here’s to hoping I’m in better shape (or just plain incapacitated, better to ride the pine with) next year.  Special shout out to geno for being the world’s greatest fan and husband, and to my parents for making the trek and then taking us out for dinner afterward.

Bonus laughter picture:

I don’t usually intend to mock real pain

Something happened recently that made for a very sad day in Pensiero household.  I know it can’t truly be classified as any sort of genuine hardship or tragedy, but where would we be without sarcastic exaggeration?  Nowhere I want to go, that’s for sure.

You see, our town is such a funny little town that the Baskin Robbins willingly declares Tuesday nights “dollar scoop night”.  Other towns’ Baskin Robbins refuse to do it because they lose money, but ours moves ahead with gusto.  They will literally sell you regular ice cream for a much lower-than-usual price, assumably to get more people in the door.  But that’s where they didn’t see us coming.  (Or did they?  I guess we DID go…)

Whatever - I could banter on ad nauseum with description and detail, but the point is this: it has all come to an abrupt and bitter end.  For months - nay, over a year - we have been attending taco tuesdays at Amigo’s (a whole other post) and then we’d make our way to dollar scoop night and we’d have a whole fun date for 6 dollars.  For serious!  We’ve loved it.  But when we went a few weeks ago we were confronted by a sign that said something like this:

dollar scoop night is a waste, it’s never going to happen again, by the way we hate you

THIS IS THE LAST DOLLAR SCOOP NIGHT

Just like that.  We asked the teenaged ice cream scooper if it was real or if it was all a horrible dream.  She looked at us funny and said “yeah…”

Now what are we supposed to do on Tuesday nights?  I mean, we have our special tacos, but I’ll be darned if we’ll be paying full (fair) price for delicious ice cream ever again on a Tuesday.  We have our pride.

More farm style

I think the figs and their tree are so cute!

We literally have hundreds and hundreds of grape clusters ripening at our house.  If you are a grape lover, please plan to come to our house this fall to fill your trunk.

Ok and here’s a fun thing - about a week ago we needed to harvest our very first carrot to see if they were ready or if they needed a little more bake time.  And by bake time I mean in-ground time.  It was so exciting because we planted them as tiny, tiny seeds!  Here’s the event in sequence:

As you can see they will need a tiny bit more time in the ground.  But we ate it anyway because it was the fruit of our labor.  And because carrots are good when they’re small.  And it was TASTY!

P.S. does anyone else think my hand looks like it’s a part of a carnival exhibit in that last shot?

La-la-la-la-laaaaaaa!

Check out our new piano!!  Gene and I were recently blessed beyond belief to have been given this piano.  A couple from our church was selling it so we decided to go take a look.  They weren’t asking very much for it, and we figured that we probably wouldn’t get very many opportunities to purchase a gently used piano for so little money.  We’ve long wanted to have a piano in our house for a variety of reasons: (1) we love them; (2) we love music; (3) we’d love to learn to play better; (4) we’d love for any future pensiero children to have the opportunity to learn; (5) as someone who grew up with a piano, I’ve ALWAYS had a strange, strong desire to have one in my own adult household.  (As my Aunt Kristi says, and my mom would probably agree, “every family should have one”.)

Soooo, after asking my mom (an accomplished pianist and music teacher) what to look for, we went to check it out.  We had already discussed that if it was even half-way decent, we’d buy it just so we could have one.  Well low and behold we LOVED it.  Loved the look, loved the color, loved the condition.  We told our friend that we would take it and she said “ok then it’s yours for free”.  !!!!  For free.  When we pressed her, she said that if we would use it and enjoy it, we could just take it.  Amazing!  So thanks to our brother-in-law and our friend Zach who helped us move it, we are fully enjoying our dear little lady.  Seriously, we’re swooning over it.

The Lord is so good to us!

Transcontinentality

Ever since school got out for the summer I’ve had so much more time for blogging.  Oh, you’ve noticed?  Me too.

Remember this post?  And this one?  Well, good friends, it seems that blogging is not the only thing that I’ve been doing for the past 2 days since school got out.  I have also been running.  

I love running.  I am now at mile 79.5 on my trip across America, which lands me squarely in “1.48 mi. to Mechanicsville, Virginia”.  Which isn’t a town at all, is it.  But I am “there”, none the less and I love it!

Only…lots…more miles to go until I get to the West Coast.  I’ll be sure to let you know when I get there.

Green Acres

You know, I’ve really begun to adore living life on a farm.  (No, we don’t really live on a farm, but that’s what we affectionately call our house.)  Here are some highlights - I think you’ll see what I mean.  Rollover the pictures to see what they are.

I hope they brightened your day!