Phil...

This is my nephew, Phil- 21yo. He has been living here in Indiana for almost three years.  My older brother's youngest son.  Are you amazed that he's lasted this long?  I am.  You see, every household does things differently.  It's easy to take it for granted that everybody does things the same way you do.  Then you drop a 19 year old boy in the mix... There's a lot of adjusting and he has done wonderfully.  He's developing into quite the young man.  He has his own flooring company.  He says pets are his job security. He likes wood working, and working on his van. He's basically thoughtful- he is a 21 year old man, after all, so we can't set the bar too high.  I don't think he likes sports, particularly. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how to describe him. He likes "Good Mythical Morning" and "The Red Green" show.  He gets really, really loud when he plays video games.  His favorite pastime is eating meat. A lot of meat. He does anything I ask of him and he's just an easy guy to love.


Phil's feast...

The older kids take care of their own feasts.  I might stir a pot for them here and there, but basically, they do all of the heavy lifting- including buying the groceries for their feast.  His theme was a cowboy ranch.  Bill was the rancher and I was the wife.  The kids were all cow pokes.  (Phil has been struggling with a cold- he's from Arizona and I'm thinking he doesn't have the same germs out there.  His poor lungs turn to soup whenever he gets sick. To prevent the spread of germs, we had an outlaw fixin' the vittles.  Phil tied a bandanna around his face.)  His appetizers were chunks of jerky and these cookie things that were shaped like cigars.  Apparently cow pokes smoke a lot of cigars.  He fixed two pot roasts- one venison and one beef.  This was our opportunity to compare the beef with the venison and figure out which one we liked beast.  It was unanimous. The venison had the best flavor, and the beef had the best texture.  But given the choice they'd all go with the venison.  Country kids, I guess.    Lots of potatoes, carrots and onions.  Baked beans cooked with bacon in a huge iron skillet. Cowboy bread(No knead bread that's cooked in a dutch oven.  Jacob's favorite.) Sweet tea for his beverage.  He fixed banana cream pies for dessert- that boy loves banana cream pie.  Our gifts were these really cool bandannas in a variety of colors so everyone had their own color. Came in handy as napkins, but Eva and Bekah immediately put them in their hair.  It was a wonderful feast- just homey and warm.

Bill reviewed the scriptures in the new testament that tell us to flee.  Some things you fight and some things you run away from.  Either way, there's a battle to be won.

 Eva...

This is Eva and she'll be 19 in a month and a half.  What a girl!  She's a real nurturer.  She takes care of her nieces and she takes care of an older gentleman from church.  And she talks to them the same.  No baby talk or patronizing.  She puts her whole heart into things- whether it's the dishes or her Bible study.  (Some people may not know this about Eva, but she had epilepsy for years and now she is symptom free, but it's put it's mark on her.  I'll never forget that first EEG.  The technician turned the lights down for Eva to go to sleep- she had no problem with that- she was exhausted from the seizures.  As soon as Eva fell asleep, the technician frowned at the screen, raised her hands to her lips and said, "Poor girl." Her eyes started to tear up and she went straight to the phone and connected to the Dr. directly and said he needed to see her, today.  After years of medication, Eva is physically healthy.  But when you have seizures almost every minute of every day, you forget what you just heard or were doing directly before and directly after each seizure.  So there were a lot of gaps for her.  To this day, she gets a little panicky if she doesn't understand your directions right away.  After she calms down and we go over it again, she does the job with confidence.)  She's sweet and thoughtful.  She loves to give gifts- mostly things she has made herself.  She's truly kind. Every one loves her. She's easy to love.


Eva's Feast...

Eva is an artist.  Everything she does and sees is in comparison to something artistic.  So her feast had an "Art" theme.  As her gifts for her guests, she had painted the covers of little notebooks- different for each personality.  Her table was set with multi-colored lights. And lots of bottles of paint and markers and colored pencils.  She placed a couple white paper place mats at each seat for people to draw on.  She had drinks in every color scattered around her table.  She asked if maybe it was too much clutter- no it was perfectly "Eva."  Amid her art supplies, she had a build your own fruit salad thing going on. With the cold weather, everyone loved the fresh fruit. (She did use canned peaches- no way was I paying $1.50 for a hard peach.)  The fruit bowls were topped with a vanilla creme and brown sugar.  When she took the fruit bowls away she replaced them with bowls of fillings for tacos.  She made the soft taco shells herself and did a stellar job.  I know what I won't have to do the next time I make tacos! See?  She's capable. Everyone loved building their own tacos. For dessert she had crepes- chocolate, strawberry, or apple pie. Those were a huge hit.  The guys decided we should make a tradition of crepes every  Sunday evening after church. We had such a good time.  At the end of the meal, she gave us about 3 minutes to draw out our favorite part of the feast.  All the girls and Abe drew pictures of Eva.  Tim drew a fruit salad, but Phil and John drew crepes. John figured he needed to make his different from Phil's, so he added airplane wings and wrote "Go Places" on his paper. I'm not sure where the airplane idea came from.  That's John.  Joe judged the drawings and he choose John's.  The prize was a hat- it couldn't have gone to a more appreciative recipient- he loves hats.

Bill read 1 Tim 6:1-12. Be on guard against the love of money and worldliness. We are to flee from those things as men of God and pursue godliness and righteous things.

Her colorful palette

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 put 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. 

This year, we've had to postpone our feasting to the month of January.  Bill and I work with an online gift shop and December is crazy busy. We wanted to be able to take our time and really waller in the fun and festivities of our feast days activities. Plus, we figure January needs a major boost in it's holiday appeal- no offense to Martin Luther King, Jr. So here we go!

Tim:  This is our nephew, Timothy. He's my older brother's son.  Tim is 24 and a big man. He's over 6' and is just big to boot. His grandfather calls him "the gentle giant."  And he is very gentle.  It's difficult to describe him as he's very quiet and not the easiest guy to get to know. (A little back story: he came to live here in May of this past year.  His brother, Phil, also lives here.  They work together in Phil's flooring business. They're from Arizona, but they're good sports about the cold weather.)  Tim likes to work.  Video games. Cook. He is one of those unusual guys who doesn't waste time trying to prove he's a man- he just is.  He has a funny way about him- he rarely answers questions- especially if he doesn't want to.  When asked, "What did you do, today?" and he spent the day playing video games, he doesn't want to be judged.  So he just keeps doing what he's doing and ignores the question all together.  While you stand there wondering if he's going to answer.  Nope, I guess not. If you don't expect a big conversation, he's very easy to spend time with. He's easy to love.

Curry House.  That was his theme for his feast.  I asked him if he had every been to a curry house, and he said no, but his sister had made curry for them a couple times.  He'd like to have a curry house, someday.  That's Tim.  I don't usually help the older guys with their feasts- much.  I'll stir for them while they work on something else.  Maybe make a suggestion or two.  But that's the sum of what I do. He had spent the day making these luminary wrappers for candles. Each one had a different letter for the words CURRY HOUSE. He lined them up across the table.  Added to the twinkle lights we already have in the room, the light was really very warm. He wasn't sure how much to make for 10 people.  The recipe he got off a manga website was for 4 people... so he made enough for 20, just to be safe.  No one minds leftovers around here. Now, believe it or not, I have a lot of big pots and bowls. He used every single one of them! The kitchen was like something from a movie- you know, the ones where they have every surface stacked high with messy pots and pans and the chef is at the oven cooking a masterpiece.  Once Tim added the curry to the pan, everyone in the house knew what he was up to in the kitchen.

He invited his guests in and they were suitably impressed with his table settings.  He had brought in a small table(a sewing machine cabinet- I don't know where that came from;-) into the dining room and sat the rice and chicken curry on it for people to help themselves. Eva and Bekah especially love curry and often ask for it for their birthday meal.  There were no complaints.  Apparently that Manga site knew what they were talking about. So we ate and ate.  It was funny- the meal was just like Tim.  There was no appetizer.  No side dishes.  No dessert.  No beverage- aside the iced tea I made at the last minute.  He said he figured everyone would get full on the curry.  And we did. 

Bill read Colossians 1: 24-29.  Christ is in us but we are also in Christ.