German Russian Goodness

Our family made a trip to Eureka on Sunday and I picked up a few comfort foods while we were there.



Landen (my good German boy) always wants me to pick up a snack pack of kuchen, which happens to be the Official South Dakota State Dessert, when we visit. Last week I mentioned that we Germans like our dough. Well, we like cream and sugar with our dough sometimes, too. Landen, Teresa, and I appreciate this delicacy. David and Nathan aren’t sold on it.

One treat we all agree on are the homemade noodles from Hosmer—a very small town not too far from Eureka.   

To make this week even better, our neighbor surprised our family with a big bowl of knepfla soup yesterday!  Knepfla is, you guessed it, pieces of dough.  It was delicious and was a little taste from my home territory!

There’s just nothing like comfort foods from home!

Gooey Stuff

Oobleck is back and it has a new name at our house—Gooey Stuff.  You can find the recipe HERE.

I really prefer this project outside on the picnic table, but I’ve been letting Teresa play with it at the kitchen table almost every day this week. One batch, with her Little People animals and people, will keep her occupied for at least a couple hours.


The texture is the crazy part. Even though it pours like a liquid, it will be dry to the touch. If it dries too much before you are done playing with it, just add a bit more water.

I let Teresa choose which food coloring colors to add and her favorite part is watching the colors swirl together at the beginning. She even made an exciting discovery. Yellow and blue make green! She also thinks it tastes good, although I don’t know how it possibly could!

Gooey stuff is inexpensive to make, fun to play with, and wipes or sweeps right up.

Put corn starch on your next shopping list and have fun!

NCL Sines

Landen started his own home based company over Christmas vacation—NCL Sines. It is named for the three boys who are allowed in their boys’ club, Nathan, cousin Carter, and Landen.

He spent most of one day down in their room designing signs, gift cards and coupons for his upcoming sale (99% off!), and running his business.

He even sold a few signs to his grandparents and decorated our doors for free!

It’s good to have connections with a talented sign maker.

Climbing and Swimming

As a proud logophile (that is, lover of words—thanks, Google for that info), I can’t believe this quote by Albert Einstein escaped me until now.




“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”



When we got married, I went from a small town girl to a farm wife just 70 miles from where I grew up. Some days I may as well have become a rice farmer’s wife and moved halfway around the world for how different the two worlds can be. Where I come from, farming is different, people think differently, and many of the older generation even talk differently as they are fluent in conversational German.

Our delicacies are based around dough and carbs (our ancestors had to feed hungry families on a diet consisting of mostly flour and eggs), and foods many other people wouldn’t touch, like sauerkraut, borsht, and pickled watermelon.

Here—yes, so close to that hometown of mine—things are very different. So is my home environment. I am not complaining. I do love the man I married, what we do and where we live.

My fins have strengthened a bit over the years and I have made it a little way up the trunk. But, it is still not my natural environment. It can be very easy to judge myself solely on my ability to climb. And then I can start to feel pretty stupid.

Maneuvering the loader bucket on a tractor is not second nature. The gestation of a cow is not in my brain’s storehouse of trivia. The inner workings of running a business as big as a farm operation are completely beyond my intellect.

When my children are acting up and I am completely overwhelmed and I can’t even escape to the bathroom for a minute and I completely forget that I once was intelligent enough to earn a college degree, I start to long for that pond I once swam in.

So, I have to find little puddles of water to swim in when I can. I’m not sure what I am a genius in, but I do have a few talents that I can feel pretty good about. I know my way around the kitchen pretty well (Landen didn’t even know cookies could come from the store until he was 3 years old), I am pretty creative and crafty around the house, and I love to write. I am still not sure where this writing thing is going to go, but someday it will have some direction!

That will be my resolution for this year. I will find places to swim when I can, and when I do find myself resembling a fish out of water, I will try not to let it make me feel stupid.

We all have our places of genius.

Sometimes we just forget.

What are yours?

Wow. Beautiful. Amazing. Grace.

Wow. Beautiful. Amazing. Grace.

As yesterday came to a close, those words kept swirling inside of me. Today I still feel as though I am overflowing with love. A day, a blessing, so beautiful could only come from God Himself.


Yesterday Rachel Olivia Melius received the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

Due to time constraints in the morning, we planned the baptism as its own ceremony yesterday afternoon. This was the first time we had baptized outside of mass, so we were expecting a short ceremony, as it would be during mass.

It was so much more than we expected. Father Christopher provided our family with a loving, personalized, and deliberate ceremony. That, coupled with the miracle that was taking place in our daughter’s life, completely overwhelmed our hearts.

It was one of those moments in life that was really too beautiful for this earth.

There are several details I always want to remember about Rachel’s baptism:

Many wonderful friends and family in attendance to pray and celebrate with us

Teresa starting an impromptu round of applause after Fr. Christopher closed his homily and said that Rachel Olivia would soon be baptized.

Nathan with his nose right up to the font as Father prayed over the water.

Landen assisting with the oils and getting a taste of altar serving. (He is proud to say that he has been trained for that.) :o)

Rachel completely wide eyed as she was blessed and baptized.

All of our children taking an active part, really understanding what was happening, and wanting to know more about their own baptisms.

Coming home to a house full of loved ones, great conversation, food, and laughter

How can one really sum up such an awesome day?

 Godparents Eddie & Rachel, Fr. Christopher, Godparents Deb & Doug

Melius family (except for Uncle John)

Joachim family

Wow. Beautiful. Amazing. Grace.