Dear Wheaton, I'm sorry.

Today was Breakaway Ministry and CSC chapel. Having sat through a chapeltizement or two in my college career, I recognized what I saw, and I wanted to apologize for it. Ministries that get to run a chapel service during the school year often see it as a marketing opportunity to recruit students to serve with them. I can promise you that this was not our desire when we set out to design this worship service. Our desire was not only to make it an enjoyable experience for students to sit through, but more than that, to see God glorified together as a student body.

I can honestly say that we tried to do "something different" and to avoid the chapeltizement formula the best we could, but doors were closed to us. It seemed as though we were pigeon-holed into having your typical "here's our ministry. here's how cool we and and the good things we do. here's why you should join." I actually heard the words "come to the OCO to find out more" at least 3 times, which is true - the OCO is where you can find information about these ministries we're representing - but it all just felt so typical.

I feel like we let the campus down to an extent, and all I can say is that I'm sorry, and we tried.

Panna Cotta

Last summer I was out to dinner at a restaurant in Tualatin while visiting family in Oregon, and I had a dessert unlike any I'd ever had. It came to me in a wine glass and it was this yogurty-custurdy-creamy amazingness topped with berries. I devoured it. It was like a sundae in which you try to get a little bit of the topping with each bite of the ice cream, and I was so busy focusing on the berry to cream ratio for each bite that when I looked up, all the sudden my glass was empty. In case you have ever wondered, wine glasses are hard to lick clean. Unfortunately, although this was a radical dessert moment for me, my life went on and as time passed, sweet wineglass yummies were forgotten.

Until we went back for the holidays this year. We drove past the restaurant (Hayden's Lakefront Grill) and it all came flooding back to me. We didn't get a chance to stop there and eat the desert during our very busy escapade through the Pacific Northwest, but it was on my mind when our plane touched down in Chicago. I immediately called Hayden's in Oregon and asked what the heck it was that I had eaten so many months ago, and why I am forever changed. They told me that the dessert was:

Panna Cotta

The plastic cup does not do it justice.

(cue angelic singing) Immediately I found a recipe for this fabulous Italian cooked cream dessert, and whipped up a batch. It turned out exactly like my divine dining experience, and the only hard part of the recipe was waiting for it to set for 4 hours (I took some bites at 3). Here is panna cotta done easy courtesy of Giada de Laurentiis (also, I used frozen berries):

1 cup whole milk
1 tablespoon unflavored powdered gelatin
3 cups whipping cream
1/3 cup honey
1 tablespoon sugar
Pinch salt
2 cups assorted fresh berries

Place the milk in a small bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin over. Let stand for 3 to 5 minutes to soften the gelatin. Pour milk mixture into a heavy saucepan and stir over medium heat just until the gelatin dissolves but the milk does not boil, about 5 minutes. Add the cream, honey, sugar, and salt. Stir until the sugar dissolves, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove from the heat. Pour into 6 wine glasses so that they are 1/2 full. Cool slightly. Refrigerate until set, at least 4 hours.

Spoon the berries atop the panna cotta and serve.

My everything hurts.

Dan and I took a kinesiology class on cross-country skiing over the weekend. We left Friday up to northern Wisconsin and stayed until Monday (we got back at midnight last night). We skied more than 5 hours each day for Saturday-Monday. Our professor was an incredibly intense life-long athlete, and we were out on the trails every moment possible, you know, except when we had to EAT and SLEEP, neither of which did we do often enough. Saturday's high was -4 [read: ridiculously painfully face-numbingly cold] yet we skied on. My aches and pains are as follows:
-sore upper arms
- stiff calf muscles
-bruised knees
-sore inner-thigh
-bruised bottom
-stiff neck and shoulders
-dry and flaking face skin

Yet, WE SURVIVED! And we are one credit closer to graduating for it. We also got to be at the beautiful Honeyrock campus for a weekend, as well as hang out with and become better friends with some pretty cool people - even if we all got a little grumpy at times. Overall I am so glad to be home and sleeping in something I don't have to zip up!

Every new beginning...

...comes from some other beginning's end. And here we are at the end of what seems like it just began: college.

This felt like a good time to start blogging. Graduation is in less than 4 months, and the friends we have come to see as family will soon be scattered across the country. Not to mention that our family already is spread across the country. So, this is where we'll be writing about the antics of this guy and this girl as they go out into the real world, together!