Our Morbid Little Easter Stories

Most of our Easter decorations are sweetly springtime–porcelain, paper, glass and alabaster eggs, pastel candles, and baskets of brightly colored saltwater taffy.

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Cards from friends and children’s crafts decorate our shelves.

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It’s an overall happy little set up, and if we have celebrated Easter with you before, there is something here now to remind us of those happy moments.

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But then, amid the candles and candy, I found these little scenes of wooden animals–bunnies and chicks and such–illustrating one-sentence stories, written by the middle child in this family. We update their stories regularly, so if you have a suggestion, feel free to offer it.

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Peter and Louis admit it: they’re better as friends than they are as lovers.

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Cameron and Camryn love their little baby bunny but also wonder: Are we really cut out for parenthood? And, since we’re bunnies, are we cut out for parenthood 100 more times?

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Were they good friends, or did they just like gossiping about the same people?

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Uncle Ed watches the twins for the first time. His enthusiasm is sweet but doesn’t replace competency.

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“A prophet is never appreciated in his hometown,” complains Bernard. “I think it’s more personal than that,” suggests Thomas. “It’s possible that people just don’t like you.”

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“But Birdie is our friend!” protests Amanda. “And so he would want us to make this hard decision,” counters Eleanor on this, their eight day adrift at sea.

 

Listening Hearts: Day 100

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Today’s question:

What is your favorite thing about your religion? If you don’t have a religion, what is one thing you like about someone else’s religion?

Listening Hearts: Day 99

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Today’s question:

Would you rather have a dozen siblings or be an only child?

Listening Hearts: Day 98

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Today’s question:

What’s your favorite raw vegetable?

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Listening Hearts: Day 97

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Today’s question:

What is one thing you like to do on a rainy day?

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Popcorn Time: Gochujang Caramel Corn

Regular readers of this blog know that we love popcorn in just about every form–including spicy caramel corn! Tonight, we imagined Korean fried chicken as popcorn by making use of gochujang paste, a slightly sweet and spicy paste made from chili peppers, fermented soybeans, barley, and glutinous rice. You can find it in the Asian aisle of the supermarket.

Ingredients:

  • 12 c. popped popcorn
  • 1 bag of Kraft caramels, unwrapped
  • 3 Tbs butter
  • 1/4 c. gochujang powder
  • 1/8 c. soy sauce

Directions:

  • Heat oven to 300 degrees. Grease roasting pan or 9x 13 pan.
  • Melt caramels and butter over low heat; add gochujang paste and soy sauce, stirring until smooth.
  • Pour caramel sauce over popcorn. Stir until coated.
  • Bake for 10 minutes, then stir, and bake 10 minutes further.
  • Turn out onto greased wax paper, breaking up any big clumps. Allow to cool completely before eating.

 

 

 

Popcorn Time! Gochujang Popcorn

Regular readers of this blog know that we love popcorn in just about every form. Tonight’s recipe was inspired by the fact that I was also making Brussel sprout kimchi and had just opened a new container of gochujang, a spicy paste of fermented soy beans, glutinous rice (the kind for making sticky rice), barley malt, and chili peppers.

Ingredients & Directions

Pop 1/3 c. of popcorn.

Whisk together 2 Tbs melted butter, 2 tsp gochujang paste, 1 tsp sesame oil, 1 tsp light corn syrup. Pour over popcorn.

Add a light dusting of salt mixed with red cayenne pepper to taste.

Prayers during a Pandemic: For Those Grieving

Our family is taking time daily to pray about the current global health crisis. Our prayers will likely reference the Christian tradition, but we’ve written with an ecumenical and agnostic audience in mind.

If you’d like us to pray for you, let us know. If you’d like us to write a prayer for you or for a concern you have and share it here, just ask. You don’t have to share your name if you don’t want to, and we won’t share it or any other identifying details about you here or elsewhere.

Today we pray for people experiencing grief. We know that COVID-19 is not the only tragedy people are living with right now. Even as a global pandemic rages, we are affected by other disasters, struggle through other crises, and grieve other losses.

Today we pray for people who are grieving losses of every kind.

We pray for those we don’t know and for those we do, including [names of people who are grieving]. We name their griefs in recognition of their suffering. [Name the tragedies, crises, and personal afflictions we know our loved ones carry now or that we carry.]

We pray for those suffering grief that they prepared for and grief that came unannounced. We pray for those living with grief that they cannot envision ending, that they do not know how to survive, and that is reshaping their life in ways unimaginable. We pray for those whose hearts feel like lead, whose bodies are exhausted but cannot rest, and whose minds cannot make sense of the tragedies they are facing.

We  hope for them rest, comfort, and companionship. We hope for them friends to hold their grief. We hope for them all they need, every moment of every day.

We are thankful for the depth of love that grief reminds us we are capable of.

At Eternity's Gate - WikipediaAbove, Van Gogh’s At Eternity’s Gate.
 

Listening Hearts: Day 96

Our family has been working on a new daily practice: listening. Active, reflective, engaged listening that says to the other person. My desire is to understand you as you are, not to correct you or improve you or educate you.

To that end, we’ve been writing questions to help us get to know each other better. Some of these questions are serious; many are silly. Sometimes we laugh at things that are meant to be serious, and sometimes our silliness leads us into serious places. Our goal is to publish one each day on our blog. We hope you find them useful, either as prompts to think about yourself or as questions you bring to the car ride or the dinner table. They’re written by all of us, and you’ll see the diversity of our thoughts and interest in them, so in the questions themselves, you’ll get to know us a little better too.

Subscribe to our blog (or follow our Twitter account @familyfoxhole) to have them appear in your inbox or Twitter feed daily.

Today’s question:

What was the last compliment you gave someone?