The most amazing Creamy Chicken Enchiladas ever!

The Wisley's are in Florida for the next 8 days. We arrived last Friday after 2 1/2 days in the car we finally made it to our destination on Anna Maria Island just south of Tampa Bay. We are staying at a condo called Beside Still Waters just a block off the beach.  The best thing about this trip beside the sun and beach is our free stay.  "How did you get a free stay right off the beach?"  I knew you would ask! Well this four condo building is free for people working in the ministry. Lucky for us, we serve in the ministry at Rainbow Christian Camp.  So, if any of you out there work in the ministry and want a free place to find rest by yourself or with your family this is a great place to do it. All you have to do is put in an request 6 months in advance of the dates you want and they will let you know if it is available on those dates.
My parents, along with my sisters and future brother-in-law are in the condo next to us. My dad is a pastor so he was able to request a free stay as well. It has been a lovely time, especially since Joe and I can sneak away with the help of 5 babysitters in the condo next door.
Jake had his first swim in a big bathtub (the pool) yesterday. He really liked having his feet in the water, but once his whole body was in he promptly let us know he was not a huge fan of the slightly chilly water.  It was a little windy yesterday which could have been part of the problem.
Okay now to tell you about my mom's amazing Enchiladas. I usually don't care for this Mexican meal but now that I have tasted my mom's I want to share this tasty and easy recipe with you.

Creamy Chicken Enchiladas
1 Tbsp butter
1 med onion, chopped
1 chopped red pepper
1 can chopped green chiles
2 diced jalepenos
8oz of cream cheese cut up and softened
3 1/2 cups of chopped and cooked chicken breast
8 - 8 in tortillas
8 oz monterary jack cheese, shredded
1-2 cups of whipping cream

melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat; add oniona dn red pepper and jalepenos and saute for 5 min. Add green chiles; saute 1 min. Stir in cream cheese and chicken; cook stirring constantly until cream cheese melts.
Spoon 2-3 Tbsp of mixture down center of torillas. Roll them up and place in lightly greased baking dish. Sprinkle with cheese and drizzle the whipping cream all over! Bake at 350 for 45 min uncovered. 
Serve with salsa, guacamole and sour cream.  Yum! Soooooo good!

Let me know if you like them.
Hope all of you up north aren't getting hit with too much rain.  

Nobody is Perfect, Right?

So I have been doing a lot of praying here lately. When I say, a lot, I mean, A LOT!  Before I became a mom life was far different as it is for me now, of course. I thought I had this whole parenting thing figured out. I spent a lot of time babysitting for families since I was 13. I was a full time nanny for a 6 month old, 10 month old, 2 year old twin girls, and a four year old boy all at the same time when I was 18-19. I have spent a lot of time being around kids and for what it's worth, getting a descent amount of experience being a part-time parent. I watched one of the kids walk for the first time, even before his parents did. I taught him sign language because I was tired of hearing the whining. I put them down for naps, read them books, bathed them, sang to them, played hide and go seek with them, kissed their boo-boo's, fed them, took them to the park and the pool. It was a very exhausting job but my most favorite job of all!  I must admit, I was a good babysitter. People trusted me with their little ones. I don't know why, but I am glad they did and it made me feel good to know that parents liked me, even better, the kids loved me! Now that I am a parent, that changes my whole perspective on what being a parent is all about. I've been humbled since having Jake. I don't have this parenting thing all figured out!
I am an observer. I like to watch people and I've had a lot of time watching my friends parent their children. (You know you have done the same thing so I am not afraid to admit it).  I may have raised an eyebrow a few times when a kid throws a fit because they refuse to listen, but you will be doing the same thing when my kids throws a fit and I don't know what to do about it! I now realize how imperfect we all are as parents, as well as our kids. I have been humbled, realizing that all of us parents make mistakes. We all have imperfections in our parenting techniques. We probably all start out in our pre-parent stage thinking we know exactly what we want out of our kids, what rules we will have in the home, how we will discipline, what behavior we will never put up with, etc.  Boy was I incredible wrong! How ignorant and arrogant I was!
So now I am praying for God's wisdom in parenting. How does God parent us and want us to parent our little ones. I am being challenged in my journey as a first time mom already.  I feel sorry for Jake since he is the first born and I will make plenty of mistakes on him. I hope he will forgive me when I mess up. It won't be too much longer when Jake will be pushing the limits and testing his mommy and daddy's will. Hopefully he will be the one bending his will to us and not the other way around. Will I ever have this figured out?  Wait, don't tell me, cause I am afraid I won't like the answer.
This is completely off subject but we have four rabbits that live behind our house and I have been watching them run back and forth in the back yard carrying dried grass in their mouths to our back porch. They must be making a nice warm bed for an expected liter coming soon. Bummer! More rabbits to deal with.  Anyone want to cute little bunny for a pet? Or maybe I could wait until there are enough of them and make a fur coat out of them! Or, I could start a rabbit farm and make rabbit stew!  So many possibilities.

Picture updates

 

My sister Heather and Jake about a month ago in North Carolina!

 

Jake in his new favorite thing!

 

My sister Kim

Jake in his new Flat Cap

Eating Maximus's lip.

 My Dad

My Mom

Maximus loves to lay on Jake and Jake loves Maximus

Dreams: Jaguars, Zombies, and Flying

Night dreams are one of the most peculiar things in life to me. You never know when you are going to have one and you never know what it is going to be about and/or why you have the dreams you have in the first place. The one thing I have noticed about dreams is that something, someone, or some incident in my life at the present time almost always makes it's way in my dream.

Last night was one of those nights for me. I could blame it on the Chinese food I had for dinner but that is not always the case for me. My dream started out at my place of college education.  I was actually flying all over campus, not in a plane, but was flying like Super Man, but without the cape.  As I was in the air I noticed a couple of friends who played on the football team, Milano and Adrian.  Milano called up to me and asked me to walk with them. Well, I hadn't practiced my landing skills very well because I fell fast enough to the ground that I got some pretty intense butterflies in my stomach. As I walked with them Milano mentioned something about some other guy who told him he wouldn't kiss me before the other guy got the chance too.  Weird, I know, but hey, I can't control what I dream about.  Next we were in a house that Joe and I lived in and a home inspector showed up to inspect the safety of the house. He ended up telling us that the house needed to be torn down because it wasn't safe enough to live in since it wouldn't withhold a Hurricane!  Ha Ha!  When was the last time a hurricane went tearing through central IN?  At the end of that dream some people from camp came over and we all ate some sort of Pineapple dessert  that was cooked inside the peel of the pineapple. It was yummy!
My next dream was about my two sisters and I dancing to broadway songs on an icy sidewalk outside of a really big building.  I ended up falling and breaking my phone.  All three of us sat off to the side of a very wide sidewalk while people walked by.  Completely out of anyone's path a kid walked up to us and told us that we were in the way and needed to move.  I cursed under my breath as we moved to a bench to continue fixing my phone.  All of a sudden the dream changed scenes.  I was in an older glorified dorm room with furniture. My sister-in-law Denise was with me and we were eating lunch. We dirtied a lot of the kitchen's dishes so I started to wash them.  Denise made a pile of dishes to wash. Included in that pile was about 25 ziplock bags that she wanted me to wash. Now, at my house, I wash and reuse these bags so this isn't unusual for me, but in my dream I thought Denise was crazy. I told her I wasn't going to wash her ziplocks. She got mad and pulled monkey bread out of the oven and asked me what we were going to put the bread in if I wasn't going to wash the bags.
Next scene I am in a big field with several trees all around me and being chased by a big elephant!  He charges me over and over again, hitting me a couple of times but without doing any real damage. I try to escape him, but he is too fast for me so I decide to hide behind trees and see if he will lose interest and leave me alone.  All of a sudden my sister is approaching a huge leopard and attempting to tame him.  Without knowing the results of my sister's leopard taming skills we move onto taking a nap in a dorm room but constantly being interrupted by a black Jaguar who has been trying to claw his way through the door. Too tired to put up with this jaguars crap I bravely walk out of the room, charge the jag and hold his mouth shut with my hands as he tries to bite me. My next move is to bang his head up against the wall to knock him out so I can get some sleep.  I end up beating his head over and over until he goes limp, crushing his skull and killing him!
On Sunday night I had dreams about Zombies chasing me, and that was after watching the movie Zombie Land with some friends.  A slightly gory movie, but pretty funny. I'm not usually a fan of zombie movies but this one was worth watching.
Well, there you have it.  What kind of weird dreams have you had lately?

Shopping for Jeans is not fun anymore

I went shopping today with a friend at a cute little boutique of gently used clothes in Gas City.  I was in the market for a new pair of jeans since I am still wearing my maternity jeans. That hurts to admit because I thought I would have been back in my pre-preggo clothes by now!  Ugh! I walked into the boutique wearing confidence on my sleeve and went straight for the size 6 rack thinking that I could probably squeeze into a wide leg pair of 6's.  On my way to the fitting room I grabbed a couple of size 8 jeans off the rack just in case.  Well, that "just in case" came a lot faster then I wanted it to when I couldn't even pull the 6's up over my child bearing hips!  I wanted to scream out loud! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!  "Are you kidding me." I thought to myself. I knew deep down that they wouldn't fit, fit, but I figured I would be able to get them over my hips.  "Okay, moving on."  Now to try a slightly bigger size. "Hey at least I am not in the double digits!" I again thought to myself.  Being a small boned, short and petite girl I think being under a size ten is very reasonable. I took a deep breath and without hesitation put my right leg into the pant and then the left. With a little jump and a tug I was able to slide them over my hips! "Yes!" Now to get them zipped up and buttoned. Success! Sort of. They were zipped and buttoned, but as far as the comfort of the fit, they are so-so. At least it will help motivate me to lose a couple more pounds so that I didn't waste my money on them.  I would have never spent full price for them since they came from The Gap so at least I only paid 1/4 of what they would have been new.  How depressing! I used to like shopping for clothes. Oh well! Jake was worth it.

Scrambled Part Two

My weekend turned out pretty great considering that I only slept for an hour on Friday night. Sunday night was wonderful! My little boy decided to go 11 hours before getting up to eat! That was a great Valentine's Day present from him.  I hope he keeps this up!
I brought up my thoughts about living a life God calls us to live to my wonderful husband Joe on Saturday night. I love talking to him about where I am in my walk with Christ and all the questions I have about the Bible. I respect his thoughts and he always has a lot of good advice and is able to help me sort through my scrambled thoughts.  We both ended up feeling like we really wanted to pursue this mystery of what it looks like for us to live a Holy life in our day in age.
The following lyrics are a song called Help Me Believe by Nicole Nordeman. I love her lyrics and this song describes a lot of what I am feeling at this point in my spiritual walk.

Take me back to the time
When I was maybe eight or nine
And I believed
when Jesus walked on waters blue
and If he helped me I could to
If I believed
Before rational analysis and systematic thinking
Robbed me of a sweet simplicity
When wonders and when mysteries
Were far less often silly dreams
and Childhood fantasies
CHORUS:
Help me believe
'cause I don't want to miss any miracles
Maybe i'd see
Much better by closing my eyes
and I would shed this grown up skin I'm in
To touch an Angels wing
And I would be free
Help me believe
When mustard seeds made mountians move
A burning bush that spoke for you
was good enough
when manna fell from heavens high
Just because you told the sky to open up
Am I to wise to recognize that everything uncertain
is certainly a possibility
When logic fails my reasoning
and science crushes underneath
The weight of all that is unseen
CHORUS
When someone elses education
plays upon my reservation
I'm the first to cave
I'm the first to bleed
If I abandoned all that seeks
To make my faith informed and chic
Could you?
would you?
show your self to me? 

It's almost like the world I live in has desensitized itself to what it means to live with Christ. Our focus is all wrong. We live for ourselves and no one else. We don't rely on God anymore because we don't need him.  Well, we really do need God, it just seems to be easy to forget that we need him in modern day, especially with all the money this country has!  It seems to be that the less we have the more we rely on God. It brought me to think of as many people I know that I admire and look up too for the way they live their life and who I would go to for advice.  I could only think of 2, maybe 3 people who I truly look up too.  Wow! Then I began to think about me and the kind of person I want to be know as after I die.  
"oh Melissa was a nice person"
"Melissa was a good mom and wife"
Boy would that be depressing or what!  I sure hope I can start to figure out what this holy way of living is supposed to look like for my life. What do I need to get rid of in my life that distracts me from God. Probably TV for a start. I am addicted to so many shows.  Food is another one of those distractions. Maybe I should fast?  You wouldn't think food could distract you from God but why does the Bible talk so much about fasting if it's not an important spiritual discipline. We sure have plenty food in this country. Not very many starving people around here, and yet people are dying across the world from starvation and we continue to waste our money away on sports, movies, electronics, cars, big houses(gotta keep up with the Jones').  I could go on but I don't need to because you could name a few in your own minds. Why are those things such a necessity? They aren't coming with us when we die!  I know it is important to have a reliable and safe car when you have a family, and such, but I can't think of very many things that I couldn't live without.
So I am still seeking answers to what a holy life looks like. It's not about how often I read my Bible, or pray, or go to church. It's a good thing God is the only one that knows my heart. No one can judge me, and if they do, it isn't going to make a difference as to whether I go to heaven or not.  I just hope that I can grow and mature into the woman of integrity that God intended for me to be, that's all.  I only want to God to find favor with me like he did with those in the bible.  God still performs miracles. He heals, protects, provides, and comforts. We just may not see it as much because we aren't looking or don't believe he will.
Mark 9:23 Everything is possible for him who believes."
"I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!"

Scrambled Thoughts

So it is currently 4:39am and I can't seem to sleep. We watched the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics until 11pm and decided we had been bored for long enough and it was time to go to bed. I feed Jake one last time and headed to bed, hopefully until 6am when Jake would wake up to eat.  I am not sure why I am awake right now feeling like I could run a mini marathon. It could be the fact that I drank two cups of cafinated coffee around 9pm and sugared up on birthday cake and ice cream for Joe's mom's birthday dinner. Or it could be the Lord trying to get my attention about something. So, at my failed attempt to try fall asleep for the past 5 hours I gave up and spent sometime praying and asking him to speak.  Maybe I shouldn't be on the computer after asking him that, but sometimes it just helps me relax when I can write out everything that goes on in my mind when I feel restless.  Right before I got out of bed feeling defeated by my inability to fall asleep, the verses that talk about Jesus staying up all night to pray popped into my head so I thought I should just get up and go with it. My prayer life has always seemed to be one of the hardest spiritual disciplines for me to perfect. I have always felt like a prayer failure instead of a prayer warrior. This year one of my goals was to read the Bible through twice this year.  Here is a thought that some of you may have thought of before that I have never thought of so tell me what you think.  Of all the stories in the Bible about people who followed God in the Old and New Testament, God appeared, in some form or another, to them and told them what to do when, where, how, and not necessarily why.  If they did what they were asked to do by God they were fully blessed by him and so were their descendants. If they didn't do what God asked they were destroyed, well at least before Christ died on the cross(Pause: I am really struggling with how to explain my thoughts so bare with me. Hence the title of this blog cause I might be all over the place). If you follow Christ, think about the way you live as a follower today.  Go ahead, take a moment and think, how do you follow Christ compared to the way people did in the Bible.  I am not trying to make you feel guilty or less of a person at all or try to tell you how righteous of a person I am, cause I am far from where I want to be. I am just really beginning to search my heart and where I am in my walk with Christ. It has been really easy for me to say that I follow Christ, go to church, tithe, and a "GOOD" person. Is that all I have to do to be a Christ follower?  I'm sure it isn't and that is why I am looking at the way I live my life and compare it to all the prophets, apostles, and leadersGod appeared to in the Bible.  Now those guys, and girls had a real relationship with Christ. The other day during one of my daily Bible readings I paused to think about how cool it had to have been for all those that God had appeared to or heard God speak too and work through.  Take Moses for example.  He was a nobody until God showed up to him in a bush and told him he was going to use him to save the Israelites. Woa God! You want to use a nobody to lead thousand of people out of the land of slavery? Crazy! What did Moses do? He led them out after God showed the big bad Egyptians that God wasn't going to let them win. Sure they had to wander through the desert for 40 years before they arrived at the land flowing with milk and honey but all the ways God provided for them along the way and not to mention the ways he protected them from harm is just so cool to me. Those that decided they weren't going to listen to God were killed by the people that followed God because God told them to finish them.  How neat for those people to get to see the pillar of fire and smoke lead them through the desert! Or how about walking on the floor of the Red Sea with two huge walls of water on either side of you?  So many other stories like that and here I am reading them thinking about how cool it would be if being a follower today was like it was in the Bible.  Then I thought, "well why can't it be?" How silly of me to think that God isn't, won't, can't work in us today like he did then. Maybe he doesn't because we won't let him, or don't believe that he can, or will use us like he used Abraham, Joseph, Noah, Esther, Paul and all his disciples etc.(Hold that thought. Need to go feed Jake. Back in a moment)  This Holy and Righteous life that men and women in the Bible were called to follow must have been pretty stinking important to God and is still just as important to him today. Now I know there were just as many wicked people in the world then as there are today, but how often to you hear stories in this present time that were similar to stories you read from the Bible.  For me, it isn't very often that I physically see God's hand at work. Sure I can tell you of some cool things that has happened in my life that I am 100% certain it was God's hand at work, but it just doesn't compare to what I am reading.  The questions I have started to ask myself in the last few weeks is, "how do I measure up to the men and women of faith in the Bible?"  What does living a righteous and holy life actually look like? God asks us to seek him and we will know him. What does it mean to seek him? What does true faith feel like?  I feel the church today has lost it's touch with the way God has called us to live.  What was it about people in the Bible that made God speak out loud too, or randomly appear too? I know I would pee my pants if God showed up out of no where in my living room! Maybe I am thinking too much? Or maybe I am asking the right questions for me and only me? Am I the only one who feels this way, or asks these questions? Another thing I noticed in the OT was the long number of years that people lived back then. Was it because they were stronger in their faith and God wanted them to stick around longer so he could use them to help people?  Sounds like a dumb question after I read it, but I have always been told that no question is a dumb one.
Well it is now 6:10am and I think I have done all the thinking I can handle right now.  thanks for listening and letting me spill my thoughts on you.  Now for me to try and sleep a little before Jake wakes up for the day!  I am predicting my Saturday isn't going to be as relaxing as I want it to be.  Especially since we have a nephew's birthday party to attend today.  Oh boy!  Happy weekend readers and Happy Valentines Day!