Happy 11th Birthday, Grant

Our oldest son turned 11 this month!

Just a few snapshots of his special day.

We let him take the day off of school 

(one of the perks of homeschooling!)

and he had several friends over playing with him later in the afternoon!

Nothing makes this child happier than sharing cupcakes, Minecraft, Legos, and a game of hide-n-seek

with all his buddies!

We love you, Grant, and are praying for God to work in a mighty way in your life!!

A girl's 13th birthday party idea

It's birthday season at our house!!
We start celebrating birthdays in January with our youngest, and have one birthday every month through May.
During April though, we have 3 birthdays in a span of 10 days in addition to our wedding anniversary and extended family members birthdays!!

This year our second born turned 13!!
Yikes!
We now have two teenagers in the house.
(And actually, I reeeeeally like having older children in my house!!  Lots of perks and fun!!)

So when she told me awhile back that she wanted a sleepover this year, I knew I would have to have a theme!!
Birthday party ideas for 13-year old girls can be tricky.
They are too old for a lot of the typical girl stuff, but yet fun enough to still be willing to do something out-of-the-ordinary.
So I got onto Pinterest right away.
When I saw this idea, I knew we probably had a winner!!
Ashlyn was all for it......so a "Camping Party" it was!!

***WARNING:  Lots of pictures ahead!**

 When the girls arrived, this little table was set up with some snacks for them before we left on our scavenger hunt.  These cute little favor boxes contained trail mix for the each girl.

 I thought for sure I took pictures of the entire table and the cute picnic basket set up to hold water bottles.......

I was totally inspired by the idea I saw on pinterest to come up with cupcake display.

Can you tell what it's supposed to look like?

We just made the cupcakes ourselves and spray painted them (with Wilton's edible frosting coloring spray)

to make them look like fire!!

The first activity we did was a scavenger hunt at our local shopping mall.

Ours is all outdoors, so I let the girls go in teams with 5 things written on index cards they had to find.

Here the girls have found a sample of s'more flavored popcorn.

They also had to do things like try on a pair of hiking boots and take a picture to prove it.

When we got home, we were all starving and I made pigs-in-a-blanket, baked beans,

and tator tots.  I served them in recycled tin cans wrapped in a strip of pretty paper and tied with twine.

I'm kickin' myself for not getting a picture of that either!!

Movies came next, followed by making real s'mores in our fireplace!!

The girls did actually start out in the tent in the backyard, but I woke in the morning to find this:

Happy 13th Birthday, Ashlyn!!!

We love you!!

Fun spring art!!

This adorable little art project is not original with me.

It was, indeed, a pinterest find.

But it looked like a winner to me, so my plan was to do this at our "Celebrate Spring" party.

I loved how easy it was for my little ones to do.

Let me just say though, not all soda bottles are created the same.

But don't just take my word for it.....

Pinterest fail.

So here's my tip-of-the-day.....

This project works best with Diet 7-up or Seven-up bottles.

The pattern on the bottom of the bottles is flat so the paint sticks to the entire

flower pattern on the bottom.

If you look at the bottom of Coca-Cola bottles (or Dr.Pepper or Sprite), you'll notice

that the points of the flower patterns are raised and will take the paint

and not the entire flower pattern.

We used the smallest size 6-pack bottle available,

and were extremely happy with the results!

Happy painting!!

Easter Weekend Recap

I won't lie.
I think I love Resurrection Sunday more than Christmas anymore.
Not that the Christmas season is not meaningful and bursting with Scriptural teachable moments,
but that what we're celebrating (the resurrection of Jesus Christ from death and the grave) is the pivotal doctrine on which all of Christianity is based!
His resurrection is proof of all that He did and who He said He was and why He came to earth in the first place.
If He had not risen....then He would be a liar.
I am so profoundly overwhelmed with gratefulness that He defeated death, returned to Heaven, and is seated "at the right hand of the Father," interceding on our behalf.
That's reason to celebrate!
In reality, we should see the words like, "JOY," and "PEACE" at the Easter season!

Since January, my husband and I have been in rehearsals with our church choir for an Easter Cantata.
The weekend finally arrived, we felt prepared and confident, and I end up with a throat infection.
Could hardly talk, much less sing.
But with the Lord's help (and a good microphone!) I was able to perform a monologue as the Samaritan Woman.
My husband performed as Peter.
He was also able to sing along with our choir, though I was not.

Worth Baptist Church: Easter Cantata

(My part starts right around the 20:00 minute mark.

My husband's part is right around the 30:00 minute mark.)



Easter morning we woke to dark overcast skies which added to the ambiance of a "quiet" breakfast
by candlelight reading the scriptures about the women who went to Christ's tomb early in the morning.

(I was only mildly disappointed that the grass seed we planted on our Easter Lenten Garden

refused to grow.)

I hid our "Resurrection Eggs" around the house and after the children scurried to find them all,

they received one of these.

If your not familiar with "Resurrection Eggs" you can find information about them here.

They are one of my very favorite object lessons to teach children the details of the death and resurrection of

Jesus.

 Family pictures followed!

Later that afternoon, we had lunch at friend's home.

We capped off our day of celebration with the final performance of our Easter Cantata,
"Calvary's Love."

I hope you all celebrated with those you love the greatest expression of Love the world has ever seen!

This....lovely "Easter Garden".......perfect weekend activity

This is our version of this lovely "Easter Garden" that I have been admiring

for the last couple years on the internet.

I love that my children can be involved collecting the items needed for this project,

can help planting the seeds, and the wonderful visual that it is in reminding us

of the great sacrifice that Christ made for us that we remember at this time of year!

For some wonderful tutorials on this project:

An Easter Family Grace Garden

Hill of Calvary

Easter Garden

Mini-Resurrection Garden

Make an Easter Garden

For some wonderful add - ons:

Watercolor Butterflies {Free Printable}

Winged Wonders

Celebrate Spring 2013!!

"It's the most wonderful time of the year......"

Wait.

Wrong season.

But it really IS the most wonderful time of year.

Last year, I started something that I liked so very much that I decided to revisit it again this year.

And that is to separate out our celebration of the spring season from Resurrection Sunday.

As I've grown older, I've come to more fully appreciate what my Savior did for me and the rest of mankind on the cross of Calvary, and ultimately His display of power over sin and death by His resurrection from the grave!!

I still can't dilute the meaning of that event with chocolate bunnies, duckies, and Easter eggs.

I wrote more about that and described last year's spring celebration here.

This year the first day of spring rolled around on a Wednesday that my husband had off, so that was the perfect opportunity for me to take advantage of his help as well as to make it a "Family Day."

**Warning:  Lots of pictures ahead**

Instructions for the sweet little bird nests above can be found here.

We went to a brand new park this year, but it was so breezy I had to 

change some plans around.  I couldn't set up everything like I had envisioned,

and we ended up doing our crafts back at home.

But we were able to do an egg hunt.....

The children all enjoyed exploring this new pond area,

and we were excited to see many turtles playing hide-and-seek with us!

Once we got back home,

we were able to make some spring art for our fireplace mantle.

More on this later.

For several years, I've been reading about this wonderful "Lenten Garden"

and we finally put one together in preparation for our Resurrection Sunday celebration

in about a week!

More on this later as well!

P.S.  Yes, I'm aware that the stone rolled in front of the grave was not in three parts.

But my children found these and put them this way while we are still looking for one large stone

to replace them!!  Watch the grass grow with us!

Abby's birthday celebration

Hoo boy!!
What craziness has been these last 7 days!!
Last week was spring break for all the schools in our area,
and our two oldest girls had been invited to go on vacation with friends to Hot Springs, AR.
Right smack in the middle of that week, our house got hit with a swift moving stomach virus.
It started Wednesday with our youngest son.
On Thursday evening, I got a call from my friend in Arkansas who had my two girls to let me know that Ashlyn, my Type 1 Diabetic, was throwing up.  She eventually ended up in the ER before it was all over, but that is another story to come.
I ended up staying up till 2 in the morning that Thursday evening to make sure Ashlyn was fine and my friend had all the information she needed to get her discharged.
By the time Friday evening rolled around, I was exhausted because that had been my grocery shopping day, I was planning for Abby's birthday the next day, my two oldest got home that afternoon and I was pretty emotional, and I was already running on limited sleep.
I was so looking forward to a full night's sleep when our oldest son woke me up at 3 am to tell me he was going to throw up.
Which he did.
Twice an hour for the next four hours.
I never was able to go back to sleep, so I just started my day at about 6 am.
Saturday, the 16th, was our 3rd daughter's birthday, and several times she had reminded me that she wanted "donut store donuts" for her breakfast.
So I just made an early run for donuts.
I had so wanted to do some fun things for her on that day, but with a sick child needing my comfort, two exhausted ones recovering from a long trip, and other pre-scheduled activities that day, we just hung around the house.
I wish it could've been a little different day for her, but it was what it was.

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