So it’s that time of year for us – our annual Freedom Fest Party where we invite our family and friends over to our house for an afternoon into the night of food and fun, while the airshow and fireworks happen behind our house at the Goshen Municipal Airport.

This year NO ONE in our family is coming!

• No Mom & Dad Morningstar – they’re in Costa Rica on a missions trip right now.
• No Luke & Gretchen – they have a band gig that day.
• No Danette & Chad – they have previous plans with family.
• and no Mom & Dad O’Toole – well, they live in Florida, and didn’t make it up to Indiana this year.

But we expect a good turnout of friends, new and old. As always, we will be supplying the Guamanian ribs (Uncle Joe’s recipe, yummy!!!), rice and Hawaiian-style not Amish-style potato salad, while everyone else brings the rest of the food. We’ll also put up our kiddy pool for any of our younger friends whose parents will let them wade and splash around in it.
Although there’s a lot of work to do before the party, like cleaning the house, setting up the volleyball net, and preparing the ribs, we look forward to this event just because we love our friends (and family who aren’t joining us) and we love to hang out.
I promise to post pics after Saturday!

We celebrated Jon’s 30th birthday earlier this month. I’m only finding time now to blog about it though. Partly because I wanted to wait until his very cool birthday present arrived. Partly because I’m SO busy getting ready for Mozambique (well, getting everything else ready so I can leave for Mozambique is more accurate).
Normally I don’t give Jon birthday or Christmas presents. He prefers that I don’t. Even though he knows very well that gift-giving is one of my strongest love languages. But this year I wanted to give him something special and something he has really wanted, but would never buy.
My original idea was a new digital camera, since ours is several years old and he’s talked about getting a new one for awhile now. The problem is that he is very particular about specs. I couldn’t just get any camera, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember all the important points of the one he wanted. You would think with all my attention to details, I would have remembered the exact brand and model of the camera my dear husband wanted. Not so much. I guess that really wasn’t the gift I wanted to give him on his special day.
So instead, I decided to present him with his very own Vitamix. What in the world is a Vitamix and why would I give one to Jon? Well, a Vitamix is an amazing kitchen appliance that mostly acts as a blender, but is so much cooler than that. Jon is a lover of smoothies and shakes. If we’re anywhere near a Jamba Juice, he has to have something from there. My love of coconut mochas is nowhere close to his adoration of a really good smoothie.
One of our friends has the Vitamix 5000 that he purchased in December and since then, our friends in lifeSOURCE has been the beneficiary of many nutritious, as well as inventive, drinks. Jon helped him pick it out and find a good deal, so every time we used it, Jon would extol the virtues and coolness of the Vitamix. Not that I needed convincing, but he loved to talk about it.
Anyway, once I decided what I wanted to give him, I had to decide which one to buy. There are several options and I didn’t want to get the wrong one. There’s the home versions of the 5000 and the Super 5000 (an extra container for dry uses); there’s the commerical line for the food service industry; and then there’s the Professional Series for home cooks who want to have the best to be like gourmet chefs.
Since I hadn’t chosen the model on time for his birthday, we gave Jon the brochure espouting the wonders and benefits of the Vitamix. Later on, Jon & I talked about which model to get and he said he didn’t care as long as it was like Mitch’s. So off to the internet I went in search of a great deal on the Vitamix. These babies are expensive! So I wanted to try to bring down the cost if possible.
My search lasted several days. Our choices narrowed down to the Vitamix 5000 with a black base directly from Vitamix or the Professional Series from cooking.com. Although initial pricing made the Professional Series more costly at first glance, buying it direct from Vitamix ended up being more money with tax and shipping. I searched endlessly for deals, coupon codes and discounts to use at cooking.com and found one that would bring down the cost of the Vitamix by 15%. On top of that, I used Mr. Rebates, an online rebates-based subscription to buy online from numerous e-tailers and earned an extra 8% off just by shopping at cooking.com. So in the end, I ended up saving almost $120!!!
By purchasing it through cooking.com, I was able to get the one I really wanted – the Ruby Red model and not pay more money for the cool color! I don’t know why I wanted red, since nothing else in my kitchen is red. But if this amazing appliance was going to be the star of my kitchen, I wanted it to stand out! And it does!
We have had our Vitamix less than a week, and we have used it at least twice a day for ourselves and even more when we’ve had company over. We even made creamy potato soup in it – and it was perfectly hot straight from the container to our bowls! How many blenders can make cold smoothies and piping hot soup? That’s how wonderful the Vitamix is!!!
How can a person love a kitchen appliance? Especially one that most people call “an expesive blender”? I can’t explain it really. There’s so much to this little, but oh so powerful machine. and we will enjoy using it for our own health for many many years.
And it’s a great way to impress our friends!