Music is music, no matter the genre… instruments… or message, and every once in a long while an album comes around that changes everything you had previously thought or known. Highly regarded as one of the most influential Contemporary Christian music albums, Jars of Clay’s 1995 self-titled album broke through the stereotypical boundaries of ‘church music’ and, along with DC Talk’s Jesus Freak and Steven Curtis Chapman’s The Great Adventure, paved the way for CCM as its known today. What started off as just a ‘class project’ for a group of four college seniors became sixty-five platinum minutes that captured a music-loving generation of believers. Looped drums, acoustic guitars, and strings served as the backdrop for this musical poetry. Every van ride, church camp, or youth event in the 90s was playing this album on heavy-rotation, and most of us grown-up ‘church kids’ still stop and sing-a-long whenever we dust it off and give it a spin. So if this is one of your favorites, take a minute and relive the first time you heard “Worlds Apart”, and if you’ve never heard this “God rock” before, give the music a chance. It just might surprise you.

Liquid: “This is the one thing. The one thing that I know.”

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Sinking: “Treading water I keep from sinking. I’m not one for reaching.”

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Love Song For A Savior: “I want to fall in love with You.”

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Like A Child: “They say that love can heal the broken. They say that hope can make you see.”

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It’s hard to go through this life without being christened with a nickname or two. We all have them whether they’re an abbreviated version of our name, an inside joke, or a reminder of some childhood action. Over the years, I have picked up quite a few including Bunky, Bootsiboo, Lolo, and Jukebox. (Yeah, those are just the nice ones.) However, one of my favorite nicknames is the one that makes the least amount of sense. Strange, I know, but let me explain.

Back in the day when I was in college and heavily involved with the BSM (Baptist Student Ministy), one of my closest friends was the caretaker of the building. JLo and JaRule were constantly on the music charts and you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing one of their songs or their duet, “I’m Real”. Now neither of us were huge fans of either artist but somewhere along the way we started referring to each other as JaRule and JLo. Honestly, for the life of me, I have no idea why. The kicker was that he was JLo and I was JaRule…odd, but true.

Many of my favorite BSM memories involve JLo. From seeing Tony Bennett with a bunch of retired tourists, to late night sledding trips, to the pranks that we pulled on others and each other (the stink bate in Hero’s new car, hanging clown faces in JLo’s room, and my car being put up on blocks), our light-hearted antics helped us survive the stressful ups and downs of our college careers. Even though his job as an officer/engineer in the Air Force has kept him moving from place to place for the past five years, we talk on the phone when we can and see each other when we happen to be in the same town.

For the past few months JLo has been in “Iraqistan” (as he calls it) on his second Middle East tour, and we haven’t had much of a chance to communicate. Christmas cards, a random email, and IM conversations only happen once in a blue moon when you’re thousands of miles away in the land of sand. So I was quite surprised when he popped on to gchat a few weeks ago and had a few minutes to catch up while he was waiting for a flight back to better populated areas. We talked about friends who’d gotten married, who was still as psycho as ever, and all the babies who’d been born since he’d been away. We reminisced about old times and made plans to hang out when he was in town this summer for his brother’s high school graduation as we said goodbye.

Like so many of my friends who have deployed to the Middle East, it always feels like forever since I’ve heard from them and know for sure that they are still safe and sound. So when JLo emailed me earlier this week to say that he had left the desert and was finally home on American soil, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. To celebrate his return, I did what I know best… baked him cookies to mail with a few pounds of Late For The Train coffee beans. Simply put, it’s just nice to have him home.

From left to right: Huston, Me, Zac, Anna, JLo

Took this picture while I waited to pick Jeff up at Skyharbor Airport from his Europe trip.  Just loved it.

I think I have a stalker. Actually, I’m 99.9% sure I have a stalker. Most people might be freaked out to know that they have a neighbor who watches for them to come home from work or wherever they’ve been each day and knows what car they drive and exactly where they live. Surprisingly enough though, I’m not that concerned because I have these gut feeling that my stalker is harmless. It might be the fact that she’s still under 3.5 feet tall or isn’t yet four years old that makes her seem more like a friendly shadow and less like a cloud of doom. There’s just something heartwarming about a lil munchkin who waits for me to come home, so she can come over and jam out to Paramore or create ‘toddler art’. So as I pulled up and parked yesterday after escaping work early, I had to smile as she screamed my name and came running over to check out what I was carrying in my bags. When I told her I was making cookies, she looked up at me with those huge brown eyes giving their best puppy dog expression and asked if she could help. There was no way I could say no.

It had been a month since I’d had time to spend time in the kitchen for fun, and I was looking forward to a marathon baking session. As always, I was not planning to make a dozen or so cookies and be done. Nope, I was counting on making at least 150 cookies to deliver to a friend’s workplace for their birthday today, neighbors including my helper’s family, a box of goodies I needed to mail to a friend, and my twenty-eight student workers for our staff meetings the next two nights. After insisting that we both put our aprons on before we began, my personal baking helper and I started to gather the needed ingredients for cookies. I had considered tackling a more extravagant cookie recipe like Dreamsicle cookies or Snickerdoodles but decided that there really was nothing better than simple, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and I had just the recipe. I’m not sure about you but when I think of the perfect chocolate chip cookie I think about soft, chewy cookies that are more likely to melt in your mouth than break your teeth. This recipe creates the most amazing, perfect cookies that will have people asking if you bought them from a bakery or the store. My only recommendation to you if you do decide to trust me and try this recipe is don’t enlist a three year-old to be your sous chef. They might look adorable in your apron, but they really just want to spend the whole time tasting the dough.

Fluffy, Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ingredients:

• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 cups unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 small boxes of instant vanilla pudding mix
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 18 oz. mini semisweet chocolate chips

Fluffy, Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookie Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and allow butter to soften.

2) In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Beat in the instant pudding mix until blended. Stir in the eggs and vanilla.

3) Sift together the flour and baking soda. Slowly, add flour mixture into creamed mixture until well-mixed. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips.

4) Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. (I use my small cookie scoop for cookie uniformity.)

5) Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Edges should be golden brown.

6 ) Once you remove the cookie sheets from the oven, bang the sheet on a hard surface causing the cookies to deflate. This will remove all of the air from the cookies and all them to stay soft longer. Place on cooling rack until firm enough to stack in air-tight container. This should make between 80-100 cookies depending on size.

Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs: Set to drop on May 13th, this much anticipated follow-up to Plans and Transatlanticism is three years in the making, and honestly, I can’t wait. In an effort to tease their fans, they have released the album’s first single, “I Will Possess Your Heart” on the radio and their myspace page . For many DCFC fans, this single and ‘new sound’ might be a bit weird and psychedelic, but I love what I’ve heard so far. It’s their unique musical sound and willingness to expand and explore the boundaries of their art that has always drawn me to them. Unlike other bands who struggle to pull off their studio sound live, DCFC appear to make it easy, and I can’t wait to see them again in June. Also, how can you not love a band with such an awesome name?!?! Exactly.

Juno: Tomorrow’s Tax Day, and despite the doom and gloom that means for so many, there is one bright spot… Juno comes out on DVD. Oh, how I loved this movie and its characters. This isn’t your average teenager gets pregnant and ponders what to do after-school special. No, this new version of a worn-out tale is smart and human without the typical preaching and pontificating. A lovable heroine, quirky dialogue, Dwight from The Office, and a hamburger phone are the simple components that create this feel-good movie. If you like/loved Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine, this movie might be right up your alley. Plus, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… Michael Cera is my geek-crush, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

First hot pink pedicure of 2008. Let the sandal-wearing, sun-burned days of springtime begin!

Unexpectedly, I found out yesterday that I needed to work this morning from 8 am – Noon and cover the help desk for one of my student workers. Like most Saturday mornings, I had a huge list of things that HAD to be done. Hoping that the phones would be slow and I’d have some free time, I did what my mother would and I packed up my projects bringing them with me to the office. I must have looked pretty silly with baby clothes, tissue paper, and curling ribbon spread all over the workstation in our 24×7 computer lab while I did phone tech support, but hey, you do what you gotta do!

Since it’s so much easier to do everyone’s gift at once I put together a gift basket for one of the my student workers new baby, River, and the baby shower I had this afternoon for Laura Jane, daughter of one of the others CaresTeams in Flagstaff. All the necessities for baby bath-time and the cutest baby clothes filled each of these adorable, woven baskets. Their shower gifts turned out so cute I had to share… If you can’t tell, I love babies… buying baby clothes… themed gifts… and curling ribbon. I hope the mommies like them because I’m sure the babies will.

Mr. River Willis’ basket

Miss Laura Jane’s basket

This seriously might be one of the cutest lil girls ever. Thanks to Clare for introducing us to these videos.

Too much candy from Capucha on Vimeo.

In the summer of 2004, I was in my pre-iPod era and spent a huge portion of my work day listening to Yahoo’s Launchcast music service. Not only did I use Yahoo’s service, but I paid for the Plus plan which meant I could skip songs I didn’t like. So in theory the program would learn my musical taste and recommend new songs to me. Somewhere in those hit or miss recommendations, a simple song from an unknown singer/song-writer became one of my favorites. Keri Noble’s “Falling” became that song I looked forward to hearing each day and would skip through other loved songs to increase my chance of hearing. Finally, after at least a month of wearing out the skip button, I found her cd Fearless on Amazon and bought it. I really wasn’t expecting much from someone’s whose one song was featured solely by Yahoo, but I gave her a chance and listened to her album from beginning to end. Since that day Fearless has been one of my staple cds and now holds a coveted place on three of my iPods.

With her gorgeous yet simple piano melodies and the ability to lyrically be emotionally bare, many of Keri’s songs are almost too real. “I had a dream about you last night… I dreamed that you dead” is not your typical opening line but its this honesty that draws me in. It doesn’t hurt that her voice is flawless. Sadly enough, Keri has never made it big here in the states but does have a loyal following overseas. Personally, I think she was just before her time and before the masses were ready for similar acts such as Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson. So while I hope you’ll take the time to listen to her whole album, make sure at least to listen to “Talk To Me”. “If No One Will Listen”. “About Me”. and my favorite “Falling” and maybe we can revive a little American love for Keri.

Look At Me: “And when you dream, when you wake up, is it me you want to see?“

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Talk To Me: “It always seems to be that I let the good things pass by. Because I let my fear stop me (but not this time)“

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Piece Of My Heart: “But you’ve left your memories to linger, new memories to start“

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Since I began as a CaresTeam, we have scheduled at least one large free food gathering per month for our apartment complex. From summer pool-side BBQs to Thanksgiving dinners, I’ve learned in the past four years to cook for a crowd on a small budget in a tiny kitchen. One of my favorite monthly events we host is Taco Tuesday/Thursday. Growing up in ‘North Mexico’, my standard of good Mexican food is pretty high, so I must warn you this is not the most authentic taco recipe ever. However, to their benefit, they take very little effort and taste amazing. Plus, if you’re into cooking once or twice a week for the rest of the week, you can make as little or much as you need of this recipe and reuse the leftover meat for countless dishes.

Spicy Chicken Taco Meat:
The morning before you plan on serving the tacos, place the chicken cut of your choice in a crockpot. I prefer to use boneless, skinless chicken breasts when I can find them on-sale, but have used skinless, split-breasts (removing the bones before I served the meat) and boneless chicken thighs, too. Over the chicken,
I pour the miraculous El Pato sauce in a ratio of one small can to 2-3 lbs of chicken. (El Pato is a hot tomato sauce made with fresh chiles, tomatoes, onions, cilantro and garlic. I use it for everything!) Just remember, the more
El Pato… the spicier the chicken. Whether to cook the chicken on high or low depends on the size of your crockpot, amount of chicken you’re cooking, and time you have to cook it. Usually, I place the chicken in on low for 6-8 hours or high for 4-5 hours. Make sure to keep the lid on and add water if needed to keep the mixture from drying out. The chicken should literally shred itself as it cooks. Click To Continue Reading…

From lunch today. Apparently, these fortunes are made specifically for adding “in bed”.

I swear I bet I watch this once a week… at least.

Dear Diary… what a week! (Oh, Michael Scott…) But, seriously, it’s 2pm, and I’m already exhausted from the events of my day. This Sunday morning began super early when I woke up to have coffee with a friend from high school/college who was just in town for the day before deploying to Iraq. After mochas and catching up, I headed home with just enough time to get ready to leave for church. Part of the way through my Sunday Best preparation, one of my two favorite neighbor girls knocked on the door and asked me if I’d seen her lil sister (my other favorite). I hadn’t so she skipped away and said she’d come back and bake cookies with me after church. Not thinking it was a huge deal I went back to getting ready only to have their dad knock on my door a few minutes later. Within the span of mere moments, the situation had escalated from casual “Is Mya here?” to a worried “Mya’s missing, and I can’t find her.” I grabbed my keys, phone and shoes and started looking with him.

For the next 45 minutes I knocked on every door in our complex where there were kids, and he searched for her throughout the rest of the grounds. We had kids on bikes riding along the streets, and as each minute passed, I grew more and more afraid of where this three-year old could have possible disappeared to. After looking in every possible place, the dad called the 911 as I kept searching. By this time, we were frantic, and more than a few tears had escaped. Just as we saw the first officer pull up and head over to speak to us, her curly-haired head peaked up over the railing as she yelled at me, “Hey, Lohra, we’re watching a movie.” I can’t even explain the sense of relief that washed over me as she skipped down and hopped in my arms. I yelled to her dad that we had found her and watched as his 6’4 frame sunk to the ground exhausted and in tears. The next few moments flew by as I carried her to her distraught father and delivered the news her mom that she had been found. Apparently, before the mom had left to go grocery shopping Mya had said that she was going over to another neighbor’s house to watch a movie, and when we had called and knocked on that neighbor’s door, they couldn’t hear anything from the back room over the television.

Realizing their dad needed some time to compose himself and deal with the police, I rounded up the kids and headed to my apartment to feed them lunch. After lemonade and Mac & Cheese, I put the movie Freaky Friday on as Mya curled up in my lap as if nothing had ever happened. Eventually, my hands stopped shaking and heart slowed down, and we all settled into a relieved lull. Halfway through the movie, she sat up, turned around, put both of her hands on the side of my face and whispered to me, “Ya know, Lohra… I was just watching a movie. You didn’t have to get so scared.” Then, she gave me a huge hug and kiss on the cheek before settling back down. It took everything within me to not tear up again just at thinking about not having her smiles and hugs all the time.

My parents lost Zac on multiple occassions when he was younger due to his need to run and be free at all times, and I remember the feeling of being the older sister wondering and worrying where he was. As much as I love him and would give anything for him, that feeling was nothing like that feeling of losing a child as an adult, and while I know that’s part of parenting and having kids, I can’t help but wonder if I’m ready for it…

Man, I loved this song back in the day… still do.