Celebrate!

I did a happy dance when this banner came in the mail last week. Isn't it the cutest? I ordered it from Marla Taviano's sister, Bethany, who was raising money to buy a goat to provide for a family living in poverty in a third-world country. Isn't that so cool?

Look at this cute Happy Birthday banner she made (and her cute kitchen!).



I love how Bethany found a way to use her abilities to help those in need. I love how I was able to help someone in need too, by buying something cute and fun for my family. I may not have the talent to make fun and beautiful things that I can sell to help others, but shopping? That I can do. :)

(But, I would love to make some more of these to help us celebrate different occasions. Like birthdays. Valentine's Day. Even just summer or fall. I just love them!)

Scenes from our Season.

* The Tuesday before Christmas, the Mister set his alarm for 2:00 a.m. and we dragged the kids out of bed to make sure they didn't miss a once-in-400-years event:



This is what a full lunar eclipse looks like. Isn't it awesome? :)



Haha - just kidding. It actually looked more like this from our vantage point, but my camera just doesn't have enough umption to take a picture all the way to the moon. :)




* A Christmas tradition that we love (below) is Candlelight Christmas. (Sorry the picture's so dark....it was, after all, by candlelight.)



We spend the evening in relative darkness, preparing dinner by candlelight, eating by candlelight, and then reading scriptures (by candlelight) that remind us that Jesus is the LIGHT! (some examples: John 1:5,9; John 3:19; John 8:12b; 1 John 1:5b and 1:7a) Afterwards we make hot chocolate to go, then drive around looking at Christmas lights. Oh, how I love this tradition. The kids mostly just love eating by candlelight and then fighting over who gets to blow out the candles, but I'm hoping at least at little TRUTH is sinking into their hearts. God says His Word will not return void! :)


* Decorating glass bead ornaments.






* More scenes from our season....


Guess who got a lump of coal?






* And the gingerbread house kit? Is still in the box.



Maybe next year.

Searching for treasure.

I've been wanting to do geocaching forever, and I thought Christmas would be the perfect opportunity for us to get in on the action. So for Christmas I bought myself The Mister a Ge0mate Jr. geocaching GPS. We took it out for a little test drive Saturday after all the ruckus of Christmas had died down a little.

We had so! much! fun! The Ge0mate Jr. comes pre-loaded with 250,000 geocache sites. You just turn it on, wait for it to pick up your location, and it will show you the 20 sites closest to where you are. It shows you with an arrow the general direction to the site from where you are, and the distance in miles or feet. (Or you can do it the real geocaching way - something to do with latitude and longitude coordinates, blah blah blah. We preferred doing it the cheater easy way.)



The first site we tried to find ended up being in an RV park, right in someone's backyard. Um, I think we'll pass on that one. So we moved on to choice #2, which turned out to be on the campus of a local university. Much better. Here's the gang on the hunt.



We searched....



....and searched....



....and look!



We found it!




This one didn't have anything in it other than a log. Who knew you're supposed to have a geocaching code name? We had to come up with one on the spot. Oh, the pressure!

We were so excited to find our first geocache that of course we had to look for another one. On to #3! We found the spot, got out of the truck, and started digging through weeds and stickers.



We searched and searched, and even got to a place where little GM Jr. said "Zero feet" to the cache, but alas, we never found it. We wondered if for some reason it had been moved. Anyway, it was getting dark by that time so we decided to head back home.

We had a blast doing our first geocaching! We can't wait to go treasure hunting again. There's a chance we may be taking a quick trip to Oklahoma this weekend...how cool would that be to go geocaching in another state? :)

What a fun way to spend time with your family. Have you ever been geocaching? Do you do it the "real" way, or the cheater way? What's the most fun cache you've ever found? Anyone?

Of friends and cake.

Sunday afternoon we received a last-minute invitation to have dinner at a friend's house. I love that! Last minute invitations are the best - truly. Something about it just speaks of true friendship to me. Sort of like my friend who says she feels loved when people just drop by unannounced. Now....if you're my true friend, please don't do that, but do invite me to dinner at the last minute. :)

The only problem with inviting me at the last minute is...um...well...what will I bring? I tend to live life more like Old Mother Hubbard (whose cupboard was bare) than a Boy Scout (who's always prepared), mostly just because I try to avoid going to the grocery store as long as humanly possible, until we have nothing left in the house to eat other than saltines and ketchup. And we all know I'm not gonna breeze into the kitchen and whip up something wonderful from scratch. Oh, how I was hoping for the salad assignment!

Fortunately for me the invitation was to "bring whatever you want", and I just happened to have the ingredients for the cake I had meant to take to Friday's PTA party, but hadn't had time to make. Unfortunately for me, I was making the cake from memory (note to self: what were you thinking? you know better than to try try to cook without a recipe.) and didn't even think about the part of the instructions that say to "cool completely" before applying the whipped topping.

Unfortunately for me, when we removed the cover from the cake the cool whip and the heath bar bits had completely melted, and looked like a big nasty mess. Fortunately for me, melted, gooey, nasty-looking chocolate heath cake still tastes delicious!

And so, in the spirit of Christmas, I would love to share - from memory - my gooey, chocolate, heath bar, cooling-optional cake recipe with you.



1 boxed chocolate cake mix
1 regular size can sweetened condensed milk (Not evaporated milk. That distinction is probably easy for you, but I always have to stop and think twice about it.)
1 - 8 oz tub Cool Whip
1 bag Heath bar bits or almond toffee bits

Bake cake according to package directions. While it's still warm, poke it full of holes using the handle of a wooden spoon. Lots and lots and LOTS of holes. Fill the holes with sweetened condensed milk. You should have as much milk as possible in the holes, and little left to pour on top. Then let the cake COOL COMPLETELY (or not) before covering with Cool Whip. {There is a version of this recipe that adds a layer of chocolate syrup on top of the condensed milk. I've never tried that, and really can't imagine adding it. This cake is reeallly sweet as it is.} Sprinkle the top with heath bar or toffee bits. Yum.

12 Days of Christmas

In my last post I mentioned that our friends the Mosses have a Christmas tradition of secretly blessing families they know with gifts for the Twelve Days of Christmas. We loved the idea and decided to try it this year....but we're only "blessing" one family, not six. :) We chose a family we know from school - and from church - who are having such a really, really hard time financially right now. Our small little gifts certainly won't turn their lives around, but we're praying they will at least bring a little cheer to an otherwise difficult time.

Today was day three, and oh. my. goodness. we are having so much fun!! The first night the kids and I parked across the street from their house, and a few houses down. The three of us got out and snuck (sneaked?) up to the DARK house, left the gift on the porch, then raaaan back to the car trying not to bust out laughing in our excitement.

Last night, we were expecting more of the same, but when we got close to their house we could see that the porch light was on! Aaagh! I stayed in the car to keep it running, while Kloe and Jacob slinked along the front of their garage like spies and set two mini fruit baskets on the porch. From the car I was whisper-screaming, "Noooooo, not BEHIND the screen door!!" The kids raaaan back to the car and when they got in I said, "When they open their glass door, the baskets will be behind it....they might never see them!" Kloe heaved a great sigh, then for a second time bravely faced the danger of being caught, and went back to move the baskets to the other side of the door. :)

TONIGHT....tonight we got home from church late, and so I went alone after the kids were in bed. The porch light was on again! I parked a few houses down, sneaked quietly past their garage, and just as I was about to creep up onto the porch, I could see that the curtains on their front window were open!! Surely they weren't trying to catch their mystery gifter? HaHaHaHa!! :) I love it! (and....I didn't get caught. as far as I know.)

We are having such a blast doing this! The morning after we left the first gift, as we were on our way to school Kloe grinned a huge grin and, in that same voice you use when you can't WAIT for someone to open that PERFECT Christmas present, she squealed, "They're finding their present right now!" We have been giggly and giddy about it for three days. So, so fun!

Dear Moss family, thank you so much for sharing your awesome tradition with us...albeit unintentionally. I'm hoping it will become one of our annual traditions, as well. And we will think of you (and miss you. and give you credit.) every single time we run hysterically through the dark, trying hard not to bust out laughing, secretly delivering Christmas cheer to some unsuspecting family.

Merry Christmas!

Tiny Talk Tuesday

Inspired by our friends the Mosses {Jen, I'm sorry I copy you all the time. I have no creativity of my own, and you have all the best ideas! Your blog is my personal Family Fun Magazine :) }, we've decided to do the 12 days of Christmas this year for a family we know from school (details in another post...hopefully!). The kids and I sat down to brainstorm ideas for 12 different gifts we could take to the family. One idea that came up was those little ornament-shaped bottles of Coke...have you seen them?


One of the children from this family is in the same grade as Jacob, so I asked him, "Do you know if (boy's name) is allowed to drink Coke?"

He said, "Ummm, I don't know....I think he might a Mediterranean."

Signs of the Season

Seven for Sunday

1. She did it!

Kloe has been saving up for a trampoline for like forever. She has saved and saved and saved, and I'm so proud of her! So many times she would say, "I want this or that..." but would choose not to buy it and instead keep saving. She asked for money for her birthday, and had several other "donations" from grandparents and other relatives. When we were at Grandma's house for Thanksgiving, she gave Kloe a jar full of pennies, and when we counted it all out there was just over $10.00 - just enough to put her over the top of her goal!! We went to W*lmart last Sunday and she bought her trampoline with her very own money. She was sooo excited!



Jacob (and Annie) helped Daddy put it together.



Way to go, baby girl, you did it! I'm so proud of you!!



2. Advent. It is sooo overwhelming to me. There are so many books and calendars and traditions and different ways to do it. Singing. Reading. Scripture. Stories. Crafts. Baking. Chains. Candles. It totally and completely makes my head spin. And so I've avoided it until this year. Recently I saw this free devotional being offered by Ann at Holy Experience, and it was all laid out so nice and neat, so easy, all there in one place. I decided this was something I could manage and was just about to hit "print" when I ran across this book:

From the website: "After running away from his father's tents in a moment of anger, ten-year-old Jotham has lost his way, and his family. As he journeys through Palestine in search of his nomadic home, Jotham is helped by a fool, a priest, a zealot and a wise man. Chased by a gang of thieves, thrown from one "foster parent" to another, Jotham slowly discovers the miracle of the first Christmas, and some miraculous things about his own life and his own family.

Written as a devotional for parents to read to their children during Advent, Jotham's Journey unfolds day by day until the exciting climax on Christmas Day. Each day's installment of the story is followed by a short devotional which will challenge your family to share in Jotham's discoveries."

I loved the idea of a progressive story, so I ordered it from Amazon and it arrived in two days! :) About half way through the first night's reading, Jacob sighed and said, "I love this. I love hearing stories this way. I love it when you read stories to me." It was perfect. And, true to the author's predictions, at the end of the first night, Kloe asked with eager anticipation, "Can we read day two? Pleeease?"

And so....ahhh. Simple, easy, intriguing. There are so many traditions I would love to do for Advent. But for now, this is perfect for us.

3. I have to admit I was a little sad that no one played along with my little stolen meme last week.

4. I know I'm supposed to be getting in the Christmas spirit, but I'm still basking in the beauty of fall that's all around us here. This is the scene outside our lobby window at work. So beautiful...



5. And, these guys are back in town....one of my very. favorite. parts. of fall.



6. The Mister and my mom threw a surprise birthday party for me yesterday. Yep, I really was surprised. I actually was surprised that I was surprised! Mister threw me a surprise party for my 35th and...umm...yeah. Not surprised. But yesterday they totally got me! :) Only problem is, when the surprise is for me, well, there are no pictures because telling me to bring the camera is not too conducive to the whole surprise thing. It was lots of fun. All except for the old people jokes.

7. With The Voyage of the Dawn Treader coming out next week, the Mister is doing a re-screening of Narnia LWW tonight to see if we think it's ok for the kids to see yet. We've never let them watch it because of the wolves and the sacrifice scene. I love, love, love that movie, but we're very particular about what we allow into their hearts and minds. Overly so, some would say. But we believe it's imperative to guard - and teach them to guard - their hearts.

The first time I saw LWW (in the theater) I was in the middle of doing Beth Moore's Believing God study, and I just wept through the entire movie because of all the symbolism. Peter's sword. And shield. "Stay your weapons. This is Peter's battle." "He's not a tame lion. No, but he's good." Oh my word. I could cry right now just thinking about it.