Weekending

Linking up with Holly and Sarah for Hello Monday:

Friday, we stayed in save a short walk after a dinner of homemade pizza- if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Pepperoni and zucchini for the win...

Saturday morning, I got some food items ready to take to church. Our church was hosting a women's service event and brunch. For the brunch, we were encouraged to bring an item to share. The theme of the items that I brought was using up garden zucchini. I made zucchini cheese bites and zucchini bread.

For the cheese bites, I used this recipe. It's so easy and I didn't deviate from the recipe at all. For the dip, I combined some cream cheese, sour cream, mayonnaise and small number of dried herbs. 

I used my mom's zucchini bread recipe and adapted a recipe online I found for cinnamon butter. I combined a stick of room temperature butter, some honey, sugar and cinnamon. The butter paired well with the bread. 

The event at church was great! I met my friend Nicole there; we worked in pairs on a project for a homeless shelter in Lebanon called Family Promise of Warren County. I didn't get my phone out the entire time so no pictures, but it was a really good event, and I met some women I had never met before from church.  I also saw a woman whom I used to see three days a week when both of our oldest kids were in the same preschool class and were in the same activities. Our middle kids were the same age, and they used to play together all the time- such a blast from the past.  When I got home, Donnie was just heading out to help a friend with a home project. 

In the evening, we went to a nearby movie theater to watch the Reagan movie starring Dennis Quaid. I thought it was pretty good- it wasn’t riveting with action or anything but it was well done. It was not a hit piece on Reagan (which I already knew since the critics didn’t like it but almost everyone who went to see it liked it) which was a good thing…Dennis Quaid did a good job but I was not crazy about how he manipulated his mouth to try to look more like Reagan. Despite that, Quaid and the story line conveyed that Reagan was a good man and a great president. I enjoyed seeing Jon Voight (though the Russian accent was somewhat else)- he’s well into his 80’s and has not given into Hollywood political groupthink. 

In the movie, Reagan gave a speech that referenced CS Lewis in Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters. It was a fairly long quote and I wanted to read it for myself after the movie. CS Lewis was a former atheist turned Christian in the early 20th century. His best known books are the ones in the Chronicles of Narnia series but his oeuvre contains much more than these books. One such book is The Screwtape Letters. Its eponymous character is a senior demon(!) writing letters to his nephew Wormwood, a younger demon who is charged with guiding a man on earth, who’s recently become a Christian, away from his faith and “the Enemy” (God). It is a wild premise! I read the book quite a few years ago.  Sunday morning, I did a google search of CS Lewis quotes in The Screwtape Letters to try to find the quote that was in the Reagan movie. I didn’t find it but I was reminded of some of the thought provoking quotes from the book. Here are a few:

“Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defense against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see.”

“A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all- and more amusing.”

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.¨

“There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”

So many good, though provoking quotes in that oddest of premises book!

Speaking of the devil (literally) and his desire to keep us from following the Lord fervently, unfortunately, we didn’t make it to church. The devil didn’t make us do it though- the reason that we didn't go is that Alyssa was coming home briefly before leaving town to go to a concert in Tennessee. Avery’s dad picked Alyssa and Avery up from campus, drove them to our town and then Avery’s brother took the girls to TN for the concert. So we got to see Alyssa for a short while. The timing of her arrival was just really bad for church- it precluded us from going to either service, unfortunately. We were able to watch our church service as it posted online. Not as good as attending but at least we got to hear the message.

I turned some tomatoes into sauce...

Forgot to take a picture of the end product. Well, it’s not exactly a mystery what marinara sauce looks like!

We went to Sam’s Club for a few items and for lunch (we are not even fancy like Applebee’s 🤭) and then came home to relax for the rest of the day. 

There was a slight possibility of rain in the afternoon and it happened!! For the first time in weeks, it rained. Not just the rain was appreciated but the overcastness of the afternoon was, too. It’s been hot and sunny for weeks (Saturday the temperature got up to 92). There is more rain in the forecast for this week.