Prayerful Thursday Rundown

Happy Thursday, friends. Thanks for your continued readership of Don’t Blink. Without any unnecessary delay, let’s jump into this week’s Rundown…

Praying For… – I always say that students who attend St. Mary School come home with some of the best crafts. Recently, Sloan made a figure that resembled her and attached a heart that contained the names of people (and…umm…things) that she is praying for. Her list included Jesus, Sid, myself, and…Muffin? Yep, that would be my parents’ cat. Sloan loves felines, especially the one belonging to her grandma and papa and felt the need to pray for it.

Sloan brought this home from school the other day.

We Remember – Speaking of people we pray for, a man named Dr. Robert Cina is always in our nightly prayers. He was the surgeon who performed corrective Pyloric Stenosis surgery on Sloan four years ago today. For those who don’t know, Pyloric Stenosis is a very rare condition in infants in which food is blocked from entering the small intestine, causing constant projectile vomiting and dangerous dehydration. Sid and I didn’t talk to anyone about the experience for a year after it happened but these days we are much more open about it. We promote Pyloric Stenosis awareness and try to support those parents and babies going through what we did. To commemorate the four year anniversary, I made this TikTok video.

During Sloan’s bout with Pyloric Stenosis and for over a year afterwards, we kept it between immediate family. Sidney and I are so thankful for the support of our parents. This photo shows our moms and dads with Sloan at MUSC.

Riverfront Park – We took advantage of the absolute gorgeous day last Saturday and met Miranda and her kids at Riverfront Park for a day of fun. We broke in the newly opened playground, admired the Spokane Falls, rode the carousel, and fed the garbage goat. Sloan and Beau absolutely loved it…and the adults did too.

It was a pefect day at Riverfront Park last Saturday.

Eating Outside – Spokane is pretty much the “Eating Outside Capital of the United States.” Pleasant temperatures and low humidity make it a great place eat dinner outside during the late spring/summer/early fall months. In fact, taking it outside for breakfast works too. This past weekend we were able to enjoy brunch and dinner out on our back deck as we ate waffles in the morning and then tried out our new grill in the evening. With a view like we have, there is plenty of incentive to eating outdoors.

It was nice to get an early start on “eating outside” season this past weekend. We ate waffles for brunch on Sunday.

National Jelly Bean Day – There is a day for everything, right? Today is National Jelly Bean Day and just like there is a day for everything, there is seemingly a Don’t Blink blog post for everything too. Back in 2017, I ranked my top 5 favorite Jelly Belly flavors. I won’t reveal my entire list in tonight’s post (you have to go here to read it) but buttered popcorn and Dr. Pepper are both on the list. If the subject of jelly beans seems redundant to you, I did write about sweeTARTS jelly beans just a couple weeks ago.

I wrote about my favorite Jelly Belly flavors four years ago.

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It is going to be tough to top last weekend but we will try. Have a great evening and we will catch up next week. Don’t Blink.

My Favorite Jelly Belly Flavors

The BeanBoozled Jelly Belly game is all the craze right now, but you won’t find me playing it. I want to keep all my memories of Jelly Belly on the positive and delicious side. When I was little, there was an annual long road trip we would take for one of my sister’s gymnastics meets. About halfway between Spokane and the meet location was a convenient store that sold Jelly Bellys. It didn’t matter that my parents were dragging me away to a gymnastics competition several hours away from home because I got to throw some gourmet jelly beans into a bag at this random truck stop.

I refuse to play BeanBoozled and taint my love for Jelly Belly.

As the years went on, it started to become common for Jelly Belly dispensers to pop up in grocery stores. Heck, there was even a Jelly Belly dispenser on “Supermarket Sweep.” So although the novelty did die down a bit, I still enjoyed the flavorful experience of Jelly Belly.

So, this leads me to something all of you probably predicted…my favorite Jelly Belly flavors. I give you my top five favorite flavors:

5. Cotton Candy – What a fun flavor. Not too off the mark of what actual cotton candy tastes like, the Jelly Belly version is light and tasty. It is also a great bean to load up on to give your bag a bright aesthetic touch.

4. Pear – Like another jelly bean on this list, the pear flavor tastes exactly as advertised. As someone who counts the pear as one of his favorite fruits, this is a good thing. Sweet and flavorful, I could pop a few of these consecutively before the sugar got to my head.

3. Toasted Marshmallow – Although it doesn’t taste like it just came off the camp fire, I always enjoyed the marshmallow flavor. It just has a pleasant taste and could almost pass for a breath freshener if you didn’t have a stick of gum or mouthwash handy. Definitely one of the tastier flavors, this particular bean is calm enough that you can snack on several of them without transitioning to another flavor.

2. Dr. Pepper – I am convinced that you could round up a bag of Jelly Belly Dr. Pepper beans, smash it with a hammer, and then pour the contents into a glass and drink it. Although not advertised as containing actual Dr. Pepper (like the A&W hard candy I wrote about), the bean tastes just like it. I remember fighting with my siblings over the Dr. Pepper beans when we would have a variety pack. However, I never tried to throw that big of a fit because there was always the possibility that the bean I thought was the Dr. Pepper flavor could turn out to be the yucky chocolate flavor.

1. Buttered Popcorn – Unlike the Dr. Pepper flavor, the buttered popcorn Jelly Belly tastes nothing like buttered popcorn. However, the taste is so unique and so smooth that I would always fill my bag with a disproportionate amount of them. You could smell the buttered popcorn bean long before it got within inches of your mouth. Not overpowering but distinctive, I still love a buttered popcorn Jelly Belly.

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When Sloan gets to be a kid, I am sure Jelly Bellys will be to her what candy cigarettes were to me. I just got to make sure to keep her away from BeanBoozled. Don’t Blink.