About the middle of this last week, the final year of my 20’s made its grand debut. While I did refrain from frantically checking for grey hairs, I must admit feeling a little shell shocked. In only another 360 odd days, I’d be completing my third decade! Not exactly ancient but certainly no longer a spring chick.

My grandpa used to always drive over for our birthdays. He’d ask the same thing every year. “Sooo, Peno…..how does it feel to be 10?” And because I’m exciting like that, I’d reply, “um, the same as being 9?” I figure that’s probably the best approach here as the law of life keeps marching on. Forget the numbers. It’s all the same.

It’s wonderful, really, to just be alive; to have another year to serve the Lord and my family, to have another chance to grow and learn and evolve. I was actually born blue. Transposition of the great arteries. By all accounts, I probably shouldn’t be here. Every year of life is nothing short of a God-performed miracle and I don’t take that divine gift lightly.

As a commemoration to this most recent yearly occasion, here are 9 of my current favorites for your enjoyment (and to get to know me better!):

1. Favorite Recent Reads:

O Jerusalem by Larry Collins. Never has a book so filled me with so many contradictory emotions. How, I ask, could the land that flowed with milk and honey be found under yet another famine inducing, brutal siege? So enlightening, so grieving, so victorious.

Christ in Isaiah by F.B Meyer. There is a depth to Meyer’s style that betokens another Enoch. I feel humbled, exhorted and encouraged on every single page. Highly, highly recommend.

2. Favorite part of homeschooling:

Only four weeks left people. August was an awful looong time ago.

3. Favorite cooking method:

Open the fridge and produce. This girl doesn’t believe in meal plans or shopping lists or meal prep or hardly even recipes. I thrive on the adrenaline rush of having to eat in an hour and having no clue what to make. There is a profound creational satisfaction in sitting down to a delicious meal produced by an Amelia Bedelia esq pinch of this and pinch of that.

4. Favorite Quote:

Careless seems the great Avenger: history’s pages but record; one death-grapple in the darkness ‘twixt old systems and the Word. Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own. -James Lowell

5. Favorite Outfit:

Tent like dresses that prevent any undue discomfort to my burgeoning midsection. Herein lies the grand blessing of stay at home orders. I do expect this favorite to be changing shortly.

6. Favorite Place on Earth:

Our front porch at home in Campeche. Those ocean breezes and sweeping jungle views, kids and dogs playing, monkeys dangling from the branches, vibrant blooms…there’s nothing like it.

7. Favorite Hot Beverage:

As an adult, I probably shouldn’t admit that it’s hot chocolate. With mini marshmallows. But it is. Especially by a fire in the U.P (Northern Michigan for all you non midwesterners) but that hasn’t happened for like 12 years so we’re a little overdue.

8. Favorite thing to do before going to sleep:

Watching something hilarious (like, I can no longer breathe and the tears are coming) with David. Reader’s Digest, you were right. Laughter really is the best medicine.

9. Favorite Pastime:

Blogging, of course! Getting to share with you. Thanks for reading along and being a blessing to our family.