Last night, with my in laws in town for a little visit, we decided to enjoy some of the fun social activities Grinnell has to offer during the summer.  We checked this out once last year, but we’ve been waiting for this particular week for a while – Thursday Music in the Park!  This week, they featured a bluegrass band, bagpipes, and a couple of other random musicians.  It was a blast!

The cowboy hat made an appearance.

I made up some cheese spread and a fruit salad, and we brought some chips and salsa, veggies and hummus, plus some other goodies and had a little picnic right there during the show.  My father-in-law made a smashing impression with his very hip-to-fit cowboy hat.  I giggled a little bit inside, but he pulls it off well.

We ran into our friends Anthony and Rachel and finally met their adorable new puppy!

Our cute new friend, Theo

Don’t you just want to snuggle right up to him?

The bagpipers rocked.  We actually know the guy in charge, he was our former neighbor.  He was blessed to have us as neighbors, because we love celtic music!  He would often pipe outside in his yard or in his living room and we could hear it.  The first time was pretty hilarious, but we grew to love  it.

Turlach Ur makes their grand entrance

I love the kilts and socks! So cool.

A portion of the group had at one point been part of a bagpiping group in San Diego, so they all knew the same competition piece.  They played it force and it was amazing!  The best part was the young guy on the right – he’s probably eleven or so – he totally kept up with everyone else!

A good time was had by all

Hi everyone!  I just wanted to update you on something very exciting.  At least it’s exciting for me.

I’ve had a webpage for a couple of years that was on a server owned by Apple.  It was great, but expensive and ultimately, probably not worth the cost.  However, it seemed like a great way to share photos, stories, and my e-newsletters with friends, family and donors.  Not wanting to abandon my website, I renewed the domain name (domain names are cheap, you should get one!) but my webpage has been “down” since probably June because I had no server to host.

(que royal trumpets) Da da da DAH – along comes wonderful hubby who happens to be very web-savvy, AND has his own server.  Yippeeeeee!  Full control at my fingertips, and no more risking google snooping in my email or hosting pictures in the far off lands of Picasa or Flicker.  

So now, I’m pleased to present, at long last, my new ministry webpage.  For all of you freaking out, no, I’m not abandoning this blog.  I greatly enjoy posting recipes, thoughts, reflections, photos, funny stories.  This new page is I guess the “business” side of my life, if you care to think of it that way.  On occasion, I may link over to posts on my ministry web page and you can head over there if you’re interested.  At the moment, there is VERY little there as I’m working on getting it up to speed, but please check it out!

There’s two ways to get there, and you should bookmark it or add it to your RSS feed/blogroll:

www.ivjennifer.com  (the domain address, which actually just forwards you along to the URL below)

or http://jen.weinman.cc

If you’re wondering about the title, transformed.renewed.changed – that is part of the core vision statement of InterVarsity, the national organization I work with as a campus minister.  I’ll share more about that in the future!

This is a slightly old picture, which you can see by the quality, but it gives you a good sense of one of the main parts of Grinnell College campus.  One of the key architectural features at Grinnell are loggias.  What’s a loggia?  Basically, it’s an outdoor hallway.  One side is connected along a building, it has a covered roof, and the other side is open to the outside.  There are three groups of dorms that are each connected by these loggias.  They’re pretty nifty, huh?  Just wanted to explain what that was about. 

So, one of things I love about Grinnell is the loggias!  They are fun to walk under, through, around.  My favorite one is on North campus in this picture.  East campus is also pretty cool, south campus is more enclosed so it’s kinda annoying if you have a bike.  Sometimes students have parties on top of the loggias by going out through their second floor windows.  Neat, huh?

A unique Grinnell feature, and one of my favorite things about Grinnel

Farm fresh vegetables

I’ve decided to attempt a list of things I love about Grinnell so far.  I’m not sure if it will be easier or hard to come up with things for my list, but it should be fun either way.  Maybe I’ll do a Top 10 Things That Bug Me list too…..we’ll save that for later though.  Right now, it’s all positive!  I’ll pick one thing to add to my top ten list for each post, in no real particular order.  At the end you can help me rank them!  Here it goes!

#1 Grinnell Farmer’s Market

After missing it the first few times, DH and I finally found ourselves at the local farmer’s market this past Saturday.  It wasn’t very large, probably only 6 different farms represented, and most of them offering the same selection of tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic,  zucchini, and green beans.  Some had zucchini bread, one couple had eggplants (all organic!), and one woman had kale, chard, and a few other greens.  A few folks had homemade jams and candles as well.  The freshness abounded – the vegetables looked amazing!  I snapped a picture when I got home of our goodies – a large bunch of chard, one GIGANTIC yellow squash (only 50 cents!), a large organic red pepper (a bit pricey at $2), fresh green beans, a few tomatoes, and fresh garlic.  I think all in all, we spent around $5 on all those vegetables, most of that going for the yummy looking pepper which is much better quality than the sad ones at the local supermarket.  I was beaming as Jerod and I walked back with our locally grown vegetables – what fun to be able to cook fresh foods that you bought directly from the grower!!

The farmer’s market is  Thursday afternoons from 3-6, and Saturday mornings from 10-12.  This particular Saturday it was a bit sparse because of the holiday weekend, and because many other towns (and one’s much bigger than Grinnell) have competing farmer’s markets on Saturdays.  So apparently Thursday is the day to go.  I can’t wait to go later this week and see what I can find!

I plan to make kung pao chicken with the pepper and garlic, saute the chard with some olive oil and garlic and serve with risotto, and Jerod is cooking up the beans in an Indian dish tonight.  Zucchini will probably end up in some bread and a stir fry, and the tomatoes will be for lunch.  Yum Yum!