“We do not live in a praying age. We live in an age of hustle and bustle, of man’s efforts and man’s determination, of man’s confidence in himself and in his own power to achieve things, an age of human organization, and human machinery, and human push, and human scheming, and human achievement; which in the things of God means no real achievement at all. What we need is not so much some new organization, some new wheel, but the Spirit of the living creature in the wheels we already possess.”
Dr. Reuben A. Torrey, The Power of Prayer
Matthew has been watching me make coffee very carefully and learning a bit more about coffee making than I thought.
Without me telling him a thing, he knows to get the portafilter, put it under the coffee hopper and pull the trigger for the grounds to drop into the portafilter. Press the grounds down with a tamper and put the portafilter back up to the espresso machine. Pull the level for water to go through the coffee. He knows that the steam wand is for the milk pitcher. Of course, he does all this with the power to the machines off, but someday he’ll be making us coffee in the morning! And I wouldn’t be surprised if his first job is at Starbucks. See all the photos in the Lombardi Spot galleries
Here’s the recipe that I love. Basically, use 100% whole wheat bread. Make sure the first ingredient is “whole wheat”, not “enriched wheat” because enriched wheat is a wheat flour made up of usually only a small portion of whole wheat. Then, find some peanut butter that uses nothing but roasted peanuts and salt. The best tasting peanut butters use Valencia peanuts, but anything with just peanuts will do. We keep ours refrigerated after opening, not only because the label says so, but it also helps keep the raw peanut oil from separating from the peanuts.
We always toast the bread, it helps not only make the peanut butter softer and smoother by warming it up, but it helps make the whole wheat bread a little crunchier and easier to eat. As soon as the toaster pops the bread out, grab it and put some of the peanut butter on there. Let it sit for a minute so that the peanut butter warms up and is easy to spread. While it’s sitting, I usually grab a banana and if I have any, some strawberries. Slice them up into very small pieces that can mix together in the sandwich. Now, I’ll either use strawberry jelly or honey to sweeten the sandwich more. If I didn’t use fresh strawberries, I’ll use strawberry jelly. If I did use fresh strawberries, then I’ll sweeten with honey. Don’t be shy, use plenty of both peanut butter, and jelly or honey. We go through probably a jar or peanut butter and jelly every few weeks.
That’s it. Now just eat and enjoy. It’s especially good with morning coffee!
For some reason she was a little sick and had watery eyes for a couple days. She seemed a little sad too. It was breaking our heart to see her in this way. Thankfully, it quickly passed.
Claire is just starting to spend a little time every now and then in her little play center. She doesn’t really grab for much. She sorta just sits in there, leaning to the side and looking around. I think she like the upright position because she’ll happily stay there looking around without much fuss.
The girl in the background is Annie, she’s actually the previous owner of this contraption. It was graciously donated to Claire by her mother and father, Jill and Brian, who visited on this evening for chili and cornbread. We concluded this evening with Matthew’s busted and bloody mouth incident and lots of John Deere tractor videos. Brian happened to be a big tractor fan, so it was some good boyish fun. Sorry no photos of Matthew bloody mouth, we were too busy trying to wash his mouth out to see if his tooth was broken off or just a broken lip. He just cut his lip.
If you don’t see any embedded video below. 
