Life on the Vine

Whether Tom and I will be able to start construction on the house this year seems in doubt.  The last two months we've been investigating some different financing options.  Tom called banks and visited two.  I checked books out of the library - Idiot's Guide to Building Your Home, Building Your Own Home for Dummies, etc.  Reading up on the sections that discussed construction loans and financing.  We went and spoke to a mortgage broker, which helped me get a better handle on what we're endeavoring to do. Here's the truth.  We have many things that aren't in our favor.  First, we want to build in a rural area, on a piece of property that is off a dirt road, a portion of which is not county maintained.  Second, there aren't any comparable houses in our immediate vicinity, which can, and probably will, impact the appraisal.  Third, we're having to pay for a lot of things that probably wouldn't be a factor if we were in an urban area.  Lik...

Are you searching for something unique and special to do for Mom this Mother's Day?  Gospel for Asia has set a goal of getting 250 children sponsored through their Bridge of Hope centers before Mother's Day.   Maybe you'd like to help them reach that goal. This Mother's Day you could sponsor a child in your Mom's honor, giving her something she can treasure throughout the year but also helping a mother halfway around the world who is facing difficulties and challenges very different from our own.     Sponsoring a child through Gospel for Asia helps not only the child but also the family.  Meet Gayana, widowed at twenty, she was left to care for her young son, Vikranta.  She had no job and no way to provide for her family.  Her in-laws no longer welcomed her in their home and her own parents were too elderly to help.  She moved in with a sister and became so distressed that she stopped eating and sank into a deep depression. ...

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of my girlfriends, for her New Years Resolution, set a goal of cooking one recipe out of every cookbook she owns during 2013.  She apparently has quite the collection.  I thought it was a fun idea and contemplated taking on the resolution for my own.  I even took a photo of my cookbook shelf just in case I decided to take on the challenge and blog about it.  I figured I'd need to cook about six new things a month in order to get through my nearly 70 cookbooks.  I'm far from that goal but I have been trying some new stuff.  Just in the last few weeks I've cooked three new things out of two of my newly acquired Rachel Ray cookbooks from our local used bookstore.  You may be able to tell from the photo that I own several, about 10!  Without fail, Rachel Ray's recipes always take me more than the 30 minutes advertised, usually because of how long it takes me to prep everything; however, her recipes and her ...

Spring has arrived in the southern Arizona desert.  Spring arrived quickly in an unexpected burst of blossoms on the two trees in our front yard.  I think one is an ornamental cherry tree but I'm not sure about the other.  Tom thinks it might be a peach tree.  One of our three (!) rose bushes is blooming and there are more roses every day.  This is accompanied by poppies in my father-in-law's yard and a green quilt of leaves on the usually spiky, barren spines of the ocotillo, one of my favorite cacti. While Tom and I have visited Arizona almost every year since we've known each other, visiting during all four seasons.  These visits were a long weekend here and a couple weeks there.  Never have I experienced a full cycle of the seasons.  And, since this is also our first Spring in our temp house, I'm pleasantly surprised by trees that blossom and rose bushes too.  I wonder if I had mistaken resigned myself to no blossoming trees with this...

I'm a bit behind on my March Gospel for Asia blog.  Seeing as how the day after tomorrow is the first day of April I figured I'd better get busy. Recently the GFA staff has started sending out a couple different ideas for blog topics.  One of the options this month is to write a book review/blog about one of K.P. Yohannan's early books, The Road to Reality.  I love telling you about free resources and an electronic version of the book is available for free download by clicking here . Keeping things honest, I didn't read the book this month but I actually read it two years ago.  My copy is marked with several passages underlined and highlighted so it was easy for me to scan back through the book, re-reading the themes and passages that resonated with me.  I'll tell you that I found the book very blunt and striking in its discussion of modern Western Christianity.  Yohannan, who was born and raised in India, doesn't pull any punches and he is able to lo...

Life continues in the Dalrymple household and we are doing really well.  It seems that Tom and I are both facing furlough with the implementation of sequestration.  Honestly we both have a real peace about it.  I think the way DoD is talking about dealing with it is fair -- one furlough day a week for 22 weeks.  I think it would be WAY too painful to face 22 straight days of furlough.  I've been joking with Tom that we need to consider diversifying with both of us working for the federal government, could get painful. I think the thing we are most concerned about is how this will impact us getting a loan to build the new house.  Stay tune on that.  We are still awaiting approved plans from Pima County so we haven't been able to go to the bank yet.  The hold up is some additional civil engineering reviews we needed to get done because we are considered a hillside development. All the fuzzy kids are doing well.  Having a puppy in the house ...

Tomorrow is President's Day and just a couple weeks ago free pancakes were given away by IHOP for National Pancake Day.  You might be surprised to learn what other foods have their own day or month.  There is National Cream Puff Day (Jan. 2).  February is supposedly National Macadamia Nut Month (who knew!?!?).  National Potato Chip Day is in March, 14th to be exact.  Soft Pretzels get a whole month, April.  Just in time for baseball season.  Pigs-in-a-Blanket are celebrated April 24 and National Fudge Day is June 16 -- now that's a day I could get behind.  The month of September has been made the month of chicken, honey, mushrooms, papaya, potato, and rice.  An interesting combo.  I'm sure an Iron Chef could make something pretty tasty out of those ingredients. My birthday is supposedly National Cheese Pizza Day...Tom would probably think that is fitting as I'm a bit of a cheeser.  Everything you could think of seems to have a Nat...