Safe From The Past

Thanks to Litfuse Publicity Group for providing this book in exchange for my review. I was not required to write a positive review.

This was such an inspiring book! I could completely relate to how hard she had to work to stay in school and survive. The part that was completely alien to me is not having the supportive family to lean on through it all. It is just amazing to me all that she did, lived through and how she came through it all. It is a beautiful, moving story. The book is short and simply written. It is quite an easy read but worth it. There is just something so special about sharing another person's story, literally being able to walk a mile in their shoes. I highly recommend this book.

About Safe From the Past:

A kidnapping, the divorce of her parents, the loss of her father, temporary abandonment and extreme poverty are just some of the issues the author dealt with as a young child. 

Her mother finally tells her she must go to college so she can break out of this cycle of poverty and hopelessness. But how can she when she has no money and absolutely no confidence or self esteem? 

Read this true story to discover what hope, faith and determination can do to change a life.

A truly inspiring, deeply personal tale of perseverance in the face of unimaginable hardships, Safe from the Past makes clear the restorative power of an education.

Told in an open, honest voice with the deepest sincerity, the author's life story serves as a rousing inspiration to those with the desire to create a better life than the one they are currently living.

No matter how helpless you feel, everyone has the power to shape their own life.

Link to buy the book: http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Past-Story-Faith-Determination/dp/1933651849/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310054112&sr=sprightly-20 

About the Patricia Miller Mauro:

Patricia worked in New York City's financial district for thirteen years in the field of securities operations. At that time, she went on to obtain an MBA from New York University. She and her husband moved to Dallas, TX in 2001 where they are raising their two children.
 

During her time in NY, Patricia wrote an article entitled "A Tribute To My Mother" which was published in "The Recovery Journal" in 1999. Her book is a continuation of that tribute and serves to spread the message to those in similar situations that good news is on its way to children considering a higher education but who are afraid to dream. For more information please visit, www.patriciamaurobooks.com.  

Blog Tour Schedule: See what other are saying here. 

About the Giveaway! There is a $30 Amazon.com giveaway.

To enter all you have to do is send a tweet (using #litfuse) about Safe From the Past or share about it on Facebook!

If you tweet we'll capture your entry when you use @litfuse. If you share it on Facebook or your blog, just email us and let us know (info@litfusegroup.com). Easy. (All Litfuse bloggers who post a review are automatically entered and do NOT need to email us.)

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TWEET THIS:  Safe From the Past by Patricia Mauro - inspiring tale of perseverance in the face of unimaginable hardships. http://ow.ly/5FQHA#litfuse

FACEBOOK THIS: Don’t miss Patricia Mauro’s Safe From the Past  - inspiring, deeply personal tale of perseverance in the face of unimaginable hardships. http://ow.ly/5FQHA. Told in an open, honest voice with the deepest sincerity, the author's life story serves as a rousing inspiration to those with the desire to create a better life than the one they are currently living.

Mugabe and the White African

One family’s stand for Justice – catch the story on PBS 7/26!

I'll be blogging about the book Mugabe and the White African later this month, but I wanted to let you know that Point of View will air the documentary Mugabe and the White African on Tuesday, July 26th. The film tells the story of Mike Campbell and his family of three generations of Zimbabwean farmers as they attempt to keep their farm under Mugabe's "land reform." Watch the trailer for the documentary below and visit the PBS Point of View website for your local listing. http://www.pbs.org/pov/tvschedule/

The book Mugabe and the White African (Lion Books, distributed by Kregel Publications, July 15, 2011, ISBN: 978-0-7459-5546-9, $14.95) written by Mike Campbell's son-in-law Ben Freeth provides more detail regarding the family's struggles and court battles.The book chronicles the deeply moving and life-threatening struggle of a Christian family from Zimbabwe to protect their legally owned farmland, to protect the lives and livelihoods of all those working on the farm, and to live to see justice.

Freeth lays bare a beautiful but lawless land fouled by fear. A 'Clockwork Orange' state where racism, greed, and violence are ultimately humbled by almost unimaginable courage. Richly described, bravely chronicled, and utterly compelling. 

-Mike Thomson, Radio Foreign Affairs Correspondent, BBC

Ben Freeth has an extraordinary story to tell. Like that of many white farmers, his family's land was "reclaimed" for redistribution by Mugabe's government. But Ben's family fought back. Appealing to international law, they instigated a suit against Mugabe's government in the SADC, the Southern African equivalent of NATO. The case was deferred time and again while Mugabe's men pulled strings. But after Freeth and his parents-in-law were abducted and beaten within inches of death in 2008, the SADC deemed any further delay to be an obstruction of justice. The case was heard, and was successful on all counts. But the story doesn't end there. In 2009 the family farm was burned to the ground. The fight for justice in Zimbabwe is far from over--this book is for anyone who wants to see into the heart of one of today's hardest places and how human dignity flourishes even in the most adverse circumstances. 

 Read an Excerpt (PDF)

Read  the Press Release

4th of July Fun

The 4th of July holds so many memories and emotions for me. I remember wonderful times growing up at my great grandparent's lake place. The whole family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, great great aunts and uncles, cousins-1st, 2nd, etc, etc) would gather for a picnic. We'd swim in the lake, eat food and head in to Lake Bemidji for the fireworks. 

Fast forward to "adulthood." Recent college grad. Going to the Americana Festival in downtown Centerville, OH. Young married, enjoying the festivities in downtown Dayton. Meeting up with friends for the fireworks. 

After my years of working at the base, I am always reminded of those I know who are serving our country. I spend some time praying for those I know who are in harms way or will be. I feel so honored to know them and to have worked beside them. I am also grateful for those in my family who have served or are serving. 

Then there's the year I skipped. The year we got married. While on our honeymoon, our nephew Micah went home to be with the Lord. For those of you well versed in grief, you know how it goes. Some years/days are better than others. This year it hit me a little harder. I think it is because I feel farther away this year than I have in years past (though my sister informs me I am about 20 or so miles closer to her now than I was in OH). For a little more insight on Micah and my sister's family feel free to check out these posts on her blog. God has done some amazing things in the years since but sometimes the grief sneaks back up on me. 

I worked this year and was glad to. The holiday pay is nice but it was nice to come home tired and not think too much about it or missing my family. The Lord provided some wonderful friends for the girls and Ralph to spend the afternoon with. After work, Ralph picked me up and I was able to join in the festivities. The girls did really well with the noise of the fireworks given the time of night and their general exhaustion. However, they still didn't last long so we went inside with a couple other kiddos and watched Toy Story 2. Hope you all had a wonderful day and made some good memories this year. 

What We've Been Eating

 We are loving the summer flavors! We have been grilling out tons. Eating salads by the gallon. This Sweet Fruit Salsa with Baked Cinnamon Chips has become a new staple. The cinnamon chips also make a fantastic Strawberries & Chocolate Nachos. This dessert may appear wonderfully decadent (it is) and involved (it is not). Such a simple dessert with huge flavor and great presentation.  Then for the 4th of July Ralph made the awesome Brownie 'n Berries Dessert Pizza (pictured in the collage above). Except ours was not Gluten Free. He used BHG's fudgy brownie recipe. It was so good, people, so good. 

I also whipped up some of this Berry Poppy Seed Vinaigrette to go on the beautiful lettuces we have been getting from our CSA. As you can tell, I've had quite a few strawberries to use. The girls and I picked up a flat of them Edmonds Farmers Market.

This led me to remember that we used to make a strawberry soup all the time with OJ and heavy whipping cream but I have no idea what has come of that recipe. I found this recipe for Strawberry White Wine Soup. Ralph was out, the girls asleep and I was looking for something "girly" to make myself for dinner. This fit the bill.

Have I overwhelmed you with recipes to try yet? Let me leave you with two more, not sweet, recipes. I promise we eat more than sweets around here. It's just that the sweet food is so much more fun than the other food!

Head on over to www.101cookbooks.com and check out her Hummus with Green Goo (that I mentioned in my previous post). Then head over to my friend Jill's blog and check out her pita bread recipe. It was so easy and very yummy. The best part is Jill is always honest about what does and does not work for her so you don't have to feel bad if things don't quite work for you either! The hummus and pita bread go great together.

What yummy summer flavors have you been enjoying?

Cooking with the Helms

Have I ever explained to you all what cooking at our house is like? I have a classic example for you. We wanted to head to the splash park. I wanted something healthy and lite for lunch to take with us. I had been planning to make this Hummus with Green Goo sometime. So, I decided, this was the time!

Splash Park was hopping!

I started breakfast, oatmeal, and cooking the chickpeas. I found out that we had a ton of coffee left from the day before, so we made iced coffee for breakfast. I served the girls and Ralph their oatmeal. I discovered that I had forgotten to put tahini and parsley on Ralph's grocery list last week. I didn't even know what tahini was. I learned early on in the life the art of substitution in cooking. I learned this from my mother as I was constantly asking to make things that we never had the ingredients for. Mom would just say, "Use xyz instead," and I would. Most of the time it turned out great. I decided to Google tahini and found that it was toasted sesame seeds pureed with sesame oil. I whipped up a quick batch of that. Now on to the parsley problem. I could used dried. Then I remembered we had this lettuce from our CSA that sort of resembled parsley so I used that. I made the green goo (that is just so fun to say!). Sat down to eat my oatmeal now that Ralph and the girls were done.

Fun in the sun!

Did I mention that I was working around several days of dishes? The sun has been shining here and we have been so busy chasing it that we have completely neglected the house! After I finished my breakfast, I finished up the hummus. I threw everything into a cooler bag. Ralph threw some Naan from Costco onto the grill while I rounded up the girls. We wrapped up the Naan, added a bowl of strawberries and every body's water bottles into the bag. We walked away from the dishes and went to play in the water.

Enjoying yummy Naan and Hummus with Green Goo

That, my friends, is cooking at our house. Multiple substitutions and Googling necessary. Dirty dishes. Breakfast gone cold from multitasking. However, the hummus was excellent! The "Green Goo," awesome! It totally made the hummus. I don't even like hummus. I thought maybe if I made it that it would help. It seems it did!

LOVE this face!

Now, if any of you have a hankering to clean a crusty, scary house or tackle a yard that will soon hide my children from view, come on over! I promise good eats will appear out of the mayhem and mess. We will then close the door on the dishes, eat out on our gorgeous deck and laugh and visit until long after the sun goes down (which is pretty late in this neck of the woods).

A Near Death Experience

Love Seattle on a sunny day (really any day)!

I mentioned this on Facebook the other day but I thought it deserved it's own blog post.

From our day at The Children's Museum, Seattle

Our day started out innocently enough. The girls woke us up around their usual time, somewhere between 8-9 am. Ralph headed straight out to the grocery store to pick up milk and coffee, two morning necessities.

She loved the slide.

I proceeded to change the girls' diapers. Zita went first, while Nugget played. One of their combined favorite games is to play with the bedroom door. This may be one of my least favorite games. So, of course, Nugget was playing with the door while I changed Zita's VERY STINKY diaper. Occasionally, despite regular stripping, their cloth diapers will emit a terrible ammonia smell in the morning on top of the other stinkiness that often occurs. I apologize if this is all TMI. Well, this was one of those mornings where both of their diapers reeked of ammonia and poo.

Such a sweetie.

After Zita was destinkified, it was Nugget's turn. While I was changing Nugget and answering her litany of early morning questions, Zita started playing with the door. She takes great pride in being able to shut the door. I was hoping to get the morning off to a happy start so I was ignoring the door playing as I can move into irritation mode quite early in the morning (seriously WHY do they find that so fun but I find it extremely annoying?!). Add that to the fact that we are not morning people, Nugget's litany of morning questions usually tax my brain to it's pre-coffee limit.

She loves being beautiful!

Well, Nugget was destinkified, but the room was quite toxic at that point due to Zita having closed the door all the way. The window was open as I was hoping to wash the room with the fragance with the cool, early (for us) morning scent. I wasn't really noticing any change. I picked up the girls, grabbed the door handle and realized it was locked. Bummer. I reached up to grab the bobby pin we store in there for just such an occasion but found it missing!

A budding artist.

Now I'm getting concerned. We're running out of fresh air, making thinking quite difficult. My husband was at the grocery store. We were home alone and trapped. I had my phone so I called Ralph. He has just gotten to the grocery store and offered to come rescue us. I thought that would be silly for him to come home empty handed just to leave again so I declined the rescue. I was regretting that within seconds and began searching for something to open the door. I found one of those diaper safety pins. I wasn't sure it would work. Thankfully, it did. We were free. Not a minute too soon, I was gagging and coughing. While Nugget kept repeating, "What's wrong, Mommy?" Ufdah. Coffee needed ASAP.

Our hero and would-be rescuer