lemon meringue pies

I love lemon desserts. They're so fresh and tart and yummy. Two weeks ago, my mom and I were on a kick for lemon meringue pie. We had frozen store-bought crusts in the freezer, so the hard part was taken care of. All I needed to do was to make the lemon curd-like filling and the merengue. We got the recipe from America's Test Kitchen (it's free to sign up...the only drawback is the multitudinous emails you receive...I still highly recommend membership! All of the recipes that they have aired on television are free!) and it turned out great. It took me all day to make, however. Okay, maybe "all day" is an overstatement. A full 2 1/2-3 hours, though. But boy, was it worth it! Here's some proof:

I made a double batch in order to have two pies. =D

I meant to take more pictures after we sliced the pie, but that didn't end up happening. Oh well. It was yummy! You'll just have to take my word for it, or drop by and let me know ahead of time. I'd love to make one and share it with you!

New van!

Yep! We bought a new van a few days ago. I can't write much now, but it is a 2004 Toyota Sienna(SP?). It is so nice to have a car! It is a very pretty, sort of brownish-gray--I'll try to post pictures later. Thanks for praying!

It's not over yet...

Last week, we went to Cambridge to stay with some friends to escape the chaos of our ceilings being ripped out. The girls and I stayed until Saturday when my dad picked us up. My mom and Keith stayed until Thursday afternoon, and then Keith stayed with some other friends until Saturday night while my mom stayed home. Well, shortly after my Dad returned from picking Keith up, he was surrounded by three of his daughters all talking at once (that often happens in our family) trying to tell him that someone had crashed into our car. Yes. Our beautiful mini-van. She has gone, after nearly one year of faithful service, to the big lot of pavement up in the sky. We will miss her.
What happened was that a lady had left her van running, unlocked, while she went into her work building. Some guy stole the van, and the lady called the police. Anyway, the officers started following him (he was going way over the speed limit, which is not the smartest thing to do in Minnesota in the winter) and I guess he lost control. He came through our yard, hit our tree, went out of the yard, pushed (crashed) our car across the street, skidded, and hit our poor baby again. He totaled her.
One of my first reactions was gratefulness that my dad and brother were inside the house and safe. Had they been two minutes later, they could easily have been seriously hurt or killed. God spared them. It was not their time to go.
Please pray that we can find a new car quickly. Also that my dad will not be stressed out in trying to do so. The Lord has sustained him so far, and he has succeeded in maintaining a cheerful attitude throughout all this hardship by God's grace. Thanks.

A pipe that bursts...

So, I've been pretty sick for the last 10 days or so, and when I woke up this morning I was even worse than yesterday. When I came out of my room, I saw that there were a whole lot of towels strewn over our hallway and in our bathroom. Thinking that something was wrong, I called downstairs to ask if the bathroom was usable. My parents told me to come downstairs, so I did. When I got down, I soon realized that something bad had happened, but I didn't realize how bad until much later. The floors were all wet and there were many big buckets scattered across the living room and dining room. I asked my parents what had happened, and they replied that an important pipe had broken early this morning and that, well, our house had basically been flooded. My brain wasn't functioning properly, so it didn't seem like that big of a deal to me. Well, later we found out that the damage was pretty severe. My dad took our rug to be cleaned (It was soaked through with dirty water--not sewage water, just dirty water) and the man at the cleaning place urged my dad to call in some professionals. He did, and they are here right now, trying to dry the place out. The final outcome is something like this: Our basement is full of stuff, and now all that stuff is soaking wet, so we need to deal with that. Our floors are hardwood, and because they got so wet, my mom said that they will probably need to be replaced (because wet wood bends out of shape). Our ceilings also need to be replaced. I keep going back to the fact that God is sovereign over everything, and that this is the best thing for us somehow. Your prayers for me and my family would be greatly appreciated. Well, Happy New Year! =p

results of the exam, and rocky the fish

Guess what! I got 73/70 on my biology exam! I was freaking out about it and studied like crazy, but I guess it paid off. Mrs. Kelly, my teacher, was very kind and gave us the chance to earn up to 5 points of extra credit if we typed up the answers to the study guide. I missed 2 questions, but because of the extra credit, I still got more than 100%! I was so excited, and as my reward to myself (not really, I just made that up as a kind of excuse =) ) I bought a beautiful male Betta fish! And, yep, you guessed it, I named him Rocky. It was between 3 other names too, though, and those were Sam (after Sam in Lord of the Rings), Jack (after Jack Kelly in Newsies), and Victor (after Victor in The Terminal). And of coarse, I named him Rocky after Rocky Balboa. =D

New truck and exams...

So, yeah. My mom and dad bought a new truck yesterday! Well, new to us, it's a 2005 model. I don't know the maker (If that's what you call them), but it's black and has 4 doors. It seats 5 people, so we are pretty excited for that. The title of this is "New truck and exams". I've already talked about the new truck, but as for the exams part...well...I'm nervous. It's only one exam really, but it's a big one. For Biology. It is the end of the semester exam, and it's going to take, like, an hour or a little more. Okay, call me completely home-schooled (I don't mind, I love being home-schooled!!! =)) but the only really important test I've ever taken are the Iowa Basics tests that we take once a year. Yeah. Now you know why I'm so nervous. Well, I'm going to study really hard and do the best I can. That's all I can do, isn't it?

play-doh in biology class

Yes, today in biology, we made models of the processes of transcription and translation out of play-doh. It was quite amusing. I hadn't played with that stuff for a long time. It was fun. We had to roll long strips of it into these thin, long logs. Yeah, so, I guess I'm going to go now, bye