Quote Friday

We're packing up and heading to Kansas City this weekend to visit my sister and brother-in-law and their precious girls. I'll post about it after the weekend.

This is a quote I am chewing on right now:

"...remember that in Christian marriage, husband and wife are more than lovers. They are brother and sister in Christ."

-Gary Thomas in Sacred Marriage 

This is profoundly encouraging and challenging at the same time.

Chew on that and happy Friday!

To always learning how to be a good spouse,
Tera

Almost Vegan Cupcakes

Every Wednesday Ryan and I get together with three other couples. In the Spring we did a marriage study, but this summer we're just hanging out. One of the couples just recently became vegans and I wanted to make something that they could eat. I (naturally) started searching pinterest for some ideas. I found a great recipe using yellow cake mix and applesauce and was sold. I figured there were no eggs so it was vegan, right? Wrong.  Apparently there is milk product in cake mix. What the heck!? Unfortunately I found this out after the cupcakes were already out of the oven. Milk is the last ingredient on the cake mix. Anyways, here's the recipe for the almost vegan cupcakes I made. 

Yellow cake mix, applesauce, and frosting for the top!

I put the frosting in a ziplock, closed the bag and tied a rubber band around. Then, I snipped a hole at the point to make the frosting look purdy.

 

 Recipe:

Ingredients:

 I 18.25 oz package of Yellow Cake Mix 

1 cup of applesauce (I used original flavor, but you can try cinnamon or unsweetened)
1 cup of water

 Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the cake mix and the applesauce. Whisk thoroughly and line a cupcake pan with liners. Bake for 20-25 minutes, checking the texture of the cupcakes. 

MAKES 12 SERVINGS
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Vegan  or not, they were delicious! Do yourself a favor and make them! They are only a little over 170 calories each, too! Our vegan friends ended up bringing a non-vegan treat to share. Oh how accommodating we are! The cupcakes were fluffy and if I didn't tell you there was applesauce in them you would have never known!

Quote Friday

"One of the best wedding gifts God gave you was a full-length mirror called your spouse. Had there been a card attached, it would have said, "Here's to helping you discover what you're really like!"

-Gary and Betsy Ricucci in Sacred Marriage 

 

To wedding gifts and galore,
Tera

The Greatest Challenge

Marriage requires a radical commitment to love our spouses as they are, while longing for them to become what they are not yet. Every marriage moves either toward enhancing one another's glory or toward degrading each other.

-Dan Allender and Temper Longman III

If you treat a man as he is, he will stay as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become the bigger and better man.

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Marriage is such a gift. Sometimes you like it, and sometimes you pretend that you do. Sometimes you don't know what to do with it and sometimes it is the most wonderful thing you could have ever imagined, and you feel completely in awe with gratitude of how wonderful that person who gave you that gift. Today... I feel irritable. I wish I could say that I am completely infatuated with my husband, but sometimes I wake up in a bad mood and seem to think of every possible wrong thing he did that morning instead of dwelling in the good things he continually does.

I just started re-reading (I think I read it at least) Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas and it is humbling. At the core of me, there is no good. I am utterly selfish, prideful, and arrogant. I think I know the best way to do things and that my husband is "wrong" for the way he does things. We've been married for over a year now so you'd think I'd understand by no, but no, I don't.

My prayer today is that the Lord cleanses my thoughts and increases my love for Him so that I can love Ryan better.

I want Ryan to see the beauty in the gift and not the lets pretend that I like this today aspect of it.

Never giving up,

Tera

One day I'll have a real baby

This is normal, right?

Lately I've become obsessed with the dog park in town. When you don't have babies yet, your dog becomes your baby. You become so obsessed that you start making bow-ties and wishing it was more than a furry pet. Not only is the dog park only a few blocks away, but it it is such a fun thing for Kai and I. I've been getting off work around 4pm (which has been amazing) and then we go straight to the dog park when I come home.

So fast I can hardly capture him playing

Worn out. Playing with his best friend, Finn.

The thing I've found funny is conversation at a dog park. Everyone there has a common ground: a dog. No matter if it is a great dane, a pomeranian, or a poodle, there is something to talk about. I've left several evenings without knowing any people's names, but knowing all the dog's names. That's weird isn't it? But maybe normal for a dog park. Conversation becomes "oh, where did you get that collar?" "you made that?" to "how often do you feed your dog?" Are we really those crazy people that treat their dogs like babies?

I try to convince Ryan myself that Kai feels loved and that he was a shelter dog and deserves this love. I lavish all the love I can on this furry pet and I never thought I had the capacity to love an animal to this extent. I blame not having a real human baby to love. (yet).

One day I'll have a human to love on but for now I have a dog that I will love as much as I can.

Best furry buds.

Until then I'm that crazy dog lover,
-Tera