Joe and Laurie

Feast Days!!!!!!

It's that time of year, again, for the Koen family to celebrate December with feasts.  Each child secretly prepares a feast for the rest of family. As you know or, as you'll learn, they pt a lot of creativity in preparing and plotting and planning for this special opportunity to amaze their brothers and sisters. I love how excited they are to be generous in their thoughtfulness towards their family. They would never choose a food that they knew someone didn't care for.  They are amazingly knowledgeable about each others' likes and dislikes.  It's a true feast.  Complete with decorations, food food and more food, gifts, rowdy laughter and lots of thankfulness.  Nothing like having someone serve you to make you realize how blessed you are to have people who love you and care about you. 

Joe and Laurie...

Joe is our oldest son and Laurie is his sweet wife. I don't think they're very much alike.  But they are both very unique so I guess that makes sense.  Joe is serious with a sharp wit. In a good way.  He's very quiet.  Not shy, he just doesn't get rowdy.  Ever.  He's the epitome of "calm cool and collected."  If you ever see him in a panic... you'd never know it.  He's the top dog around here and nobody messes with him. And yet, he's very gentle. He's generous and kind. He likes to smile. He's a joy to be around. Laurie is sunny.  She's easily amused in a charming way.  Yes, she's charming.  She has a very southern accent, but she doesn't think she has an accent. She likes big hugs. She has a strong bond with words- ones she reads, ones she writes and ones she speaks.  She's caring.  She's game for anything.  For all her girlie ways, nobody messes with her, either.  It might be her association with Joe, but I suspect it has something more to do with her. She really is a joy to be around.

Epic Feast

Their feast was EPIC.  That was the theme.  An epic feast. After all of the years that we have been having feasts, it's hard to believe one would be more epic than another... but this one certainly lived up to its name.  The table was left suspiciously clear.  No table cloth or twinkly lights.  No china or silverware.  But then, the epic feast started to arrive.  First there was the "wienie bag."  Everyone got a wienie bag.  First, if you felt you needed to use the wienie bag, you had to put on the pink tiara provided.  The bags held a big plastic serving spoon, a baby bib, and a tiny little cup.  Bear with me. The drinks arrived in personalized two liters.  Each person had their own 2-liter of their favorite pop.  No cups... do you need a cup?  Then put on the pink tiara and retrieve the tiny cup from the bag. A sissy cup because you can't bring yourself to swig from a 2-liter bottle.  Then there was the appetizers.  Laurie had never made yeast bread before and now she made the hugest bread sticks you've ever seen- they were bread logs. They were wonderful.  We were all impressed.  Queso- a crock pot of queso.  (There's an unusual habit of people in East Central Indiana.  They eat queso- a traditional Mexican cheese sauce- with their pizza. Weird, huh?  But we are in the Midwest and we put cheese an everything.) Got some queso on your fingers?  Well, put on that pink tiara and get yourself a bib 'cause only babies need a napkin. So the main course was epic pizza.  There were two epic pizzas.  Each involved  5 pizzas, with smaller pizzas in between the pizzas, and pizza rolls in between the pizzas and queso and bacon and sausage and more cheese and one had sauteed veggies in it.  They must have weighed 20lbs, each!  Baked til steaming hot and epic.  Phil was in awe and John was speechless. I think they were intimidated.  Cutting into it had everyone rolling with laughter.  It was just so over the top!  One slice was like ten!  Need a fork for your pizza?  Yep, put on the pink tiara and use that big serving spork.  There were a lot of tiaras worn around that table.  And it was very tasty.  Boy, did we have leftovers...  no one has complained.  Dessert was epic.  She had made chocolate eclair cake in my roaster that holds a 30 pound turkey. She had to remove two shelves in my frig just to get it to fit.  It was delicious. The gifts for their guests were these nifty flashlights- who couldn't use a flashlight? It was an epically epic feast.

Bill read from James 4.  "To the man who knows the right thing to do and does it not, to him it is sin."  We know that verse.  But in the context, there's a lot of discussion about arrogance and selfishness.  Those are two big things that keep us from doing the right thing.  The thing we know we should do but don't because we don't want to or we don't think we should have to.