New Adventures, Ready or Not

Well, I just returned from an evening church service, part of a series about strong families, child-training, and etc. About the time the pastor sharing the devotional was speaking on the importance of details in strong families, Anina started getting extremely restless and disinterested in sitting in a church service. I got up to take her out and she ripped my veiling completely off, to the full enjoyment of the five or so rows of people behind us. So that is actually my very latest new adventure I’ve had since turning 40.

The list of new things I chose continues below from last week.

List of 40 new things to do to celebrate turning 40:

16 of 40:  Ask someone twice my age what it was like when they were my age.

I called Marnell’s mom with this question. She also had a baby when she was my age, although she had five older children too. The boys helped her with canning, gardening, loading the dishwasher and mopping.

She said she remembers one of the toys they had at that time was the little “popcorn popper” toy.

She said she wasn’t sure if having a baby when she was forty made her feel older or younger. It kept them in the younger crowd of others with babies. This is relatable. Perhaps the more things change, the more they stay the same!

17 of 40:  Try a new food combination.

The suggestion was tomato on homemade bread with strawberry jam, so that’s what I tried. I’m not a huge tomato fan, but I was surprised that this combination made the tomato almost invisible. It was fun to eat bread with jam and get a vegetable for free!

18 of 40: Making 40 cupcakes to pass out to 40 people.

I’ve passed out cupcakes on my birthday before, but I don’t think I ever made them myself. Also, I never had to give so many away. Ha. It was fun, though!

19 of 40: Eat pupusas.

After passing out a lot of cupcakes the day of my birthday, Marnell and I went to a local restaurant (suggested by Susan!) and devoured pupusas. The Pupuseria y Restaurante El Slavador is off the side of an international bakery at 3418 South Main Street, Elkhart.

I did not know much about pupusas and I don’t believe I ever had one before. I was delighted to make the acquaintance of these thick corn tortillas stuffed with savory filling, originating from El Salvador. Delicious!

20 of 40: Watch the sunset from an unusual location or roof. (I think I combined several ideas here.)

After eating pupusas, Marnell and I went geocaching unsuccessfully. (Clearly we need to do it again.) We ended the evening on the roof patio of the tallest building in Elkhart, sipping root beer as we watched the sunset.

21 of 40: Take a picnic to a park we’ve never been to.

This was a great activity for the 4^th of July after I had worked two nights in a row! The paper plates with gold edging I received for my birthday made a lovely addition to our spread.

22 of 40: Read a Bible passage for 40 days.

I chose a short passage since I have other Bible reading I am doing right now as well.

II Samuel 22:26-31. “With the merciful you show yourself merciful; with the blameless man you show yourself blameless…” etc. I didn’t put a lot of thought into which passage I picked. Instead, I wanted to feel the effect of reading that passage for 40 days. I’ve been really enjoying it and am thinking of doing this again with a different passage when the 40 days are up. Thanks Louisa for the idea even though what I’m doing is probably a miniature version of what you were thinking.

Still loving all the new things! Obviously, I’d better add “train daughter to sit in evening church services” to the list.