Rainy with a Chance of Tarballs!

This is our fifth day at Perdido Key. It has been fun to be with my family and have few obligations to fulfill. But it is definitely not the beach vacation of my dreams. We only have one more day for the weather to act right! Did you hear that clouds, go away!? I have a tan to work on. :)

No fun!

GeoTagged, [N30.31834, E87.42475]

We are in Perdido Key, Florida on vacation. Thus far, we have had one nice sunny day out of three because of the tropical storm brewing in the Caribbean. The oil spill debris is steadily getting worse. It makes me so sad. I am hoping for some divine creativity for my kid's sake.

On a sunny note, it is good to be with my mom and dad. I love that it is stress free. The only real chores are pertaining to the dishwasher and washer/dryer. We have made dinner a couple of nights and gone out to eat at McGuires (which is another post). :(

I have had time to make three bracelets and a necklace. I have a feeling I will be making a whole line of jewelry this week! :) Lots of pics to come.

5 Minutes for Faith . . . . Summertime Challenge

I have a post up at 5 Minutes for Faith today. It's titled "Summertime Challenge." I hope that you will check it out! I hope you are having a great summer!

A Little God and A Little Strength

I have a million things to do not to mention work, but I have to write. I just got back from getting Hansel from camp. Now mind you I did not know if he would call me a day in and say he wanted to come home or if they would call and say he was hurt. But nope, no call. . . .for three days!!!! I was so excited to go and get him I could hardly stand it. My eight year old daughter said I needed to calm down. I got there and he could not talk. He had lost his voice from all of the screaming and singing they had been doing. He was hot and sweaty. He looked tired and worn out, but I saw a difference in him. It was not that he accepted the Lord into his heart because he did that several years back. He was different, still that same sweet spirit, but I think even sweeter!

They were singing really fun songs and he asked me to come up and sing and dance one with him. He is 10! He is still at the age where I am somewhat cool, maybe not for long and definitely not coordinated. I went. They gave all the t-shirts out and lots of applause for all of the help to pull the camp week off. We got in the car to get his belongings from the dorm and when he gets in the car he says in his very raspy voice, "Mom, I got a little God this week and a little strength." He pulls up his shirt sleeve to reveal his sweet ten year old bulging muscle. He goes on to tell me that he needs to read from Matthew 4. He reads in his hoarse voice how Jesus was tempted and then he attempts to exegete the passage. He said one of the boys in his dorm wants to be a pastor and preached this to them.

He read the Bible a lot on the way home and had a glow about him. He was on the mountaintop this week. I remember that feeling. What an awesome feeling. He told me he was going to have to borrow my Bible for church from now on because he needed to follow along at church. I realized before he left that he did not have his own Bible (other than a picture Bible and a Precious Moments one). When he got home I had a present on his bed waiting for him. It was an Adventure Bible with his name on it. He opened it up and looked at it like it was better than a ginormous pack of Pokemon cards. He thanked me and said he was even going to keep the box it came in.

Now he is in his freshly made bed, reading his Adventure Bible, sipping hot mint tea and honey to get his voice back, and getting ready to drift into a very deep after-camp sleep. Praise our Holy and Precious God for moments and days like these. Thank you Jesus for allowing my son to have "a little God and a little strength" this week. You are Incredible.

On Your Mark. . .Get Set. . .Grow Up

There is nothing like sending your child to camp for three days to make you realize that they are growing up. Hansel is going to church camp tomorrow for the first time. And catch this. . .on the list of toiletries it said "deodorant." Yikes! Hansel refused to take it. Honestly, he wouldn't remember to use it even if I forced it on him!
He really is the most "good-natured" kid you could have. He loves his family, especially his sister. He would do anything for anybody. He is a great helper around the house as you can see in this picture.
I am going to miss him this week, but I am just thankful that he is not going off to college or getting married. I have a few years on that one! I am trying to savor the time that I have with him right now. It is good.
Jeremiah 29:11

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Saving the World One Step at a Time

Since the summer started I have made a new commandment in our home. Thou shalt only use paper plates for breakfast and lunch meals. I know this is bad for the landfills, but I do not want to spend my entire summer cleaning up behind my two compulsive snackers! Really, this is very unlike me. I am all about saving the environment. We typically do not buy paper towels and use reusable towels that I can throw into the laundry. We have a compost bin where we put all of our vegetable waste. We even go so far as to all use the same toothbrush to conserve water. Just kidding! I just had to throw that in there to make sure you were awake.

Using paper plates is quite contrary to what I have instilled into my children. My son, who I think is kind of pre-adolescent (10) because he has become quite argumentative about such topics has really taken offense to this new commandment in our home. He said that I am destroying the earth one paper plate at a time. Can you believe anyone in my home could be so opinionated!

I have decided to fight back, not by giving up the paper plate rule because I do not want to clean up behind them all summer. I have decided to, as often as possible, walk him to swimming instead of drive. I did not make it to the gym this morning, but I needed some cardio. It is only a little over a mile away and it is a great way to start the day. Hansel loves the idea of walking because we are being mindful of the earth and it is a great warm up/talking time. So Hansel and the Princess are saving the world one step at a time. . . at least until the summer is over. Then onto new adventures.

What I Could Do With My Extra $45 A Month

I was thinking about this post where I was able to save our family $45 a month. I got really excited about saving all of that money and I told my eight year old daughter about it. We had been discussing the fact that we only had $50 in our eating out budget left for the month and we had to be careful not to get ourselves in a bind where we had to eat out. She immediately said, "We can eat out with that extra $45!" While I was excited about that prospect too (which is one of my favorite things), I realized that was probably not the right thing to do with the money. After all, I already spend $69/month in gym membership. It seems that we have some kind of dyslexia in our world where we run ourselves crazy at the gym and then go eat 1,000 calories in Mexican food right after that. Believe me, I am guilty as charged, but there is still something a little off with that. Don't you think?

That brings me to, what should I do with the extra $45 a month. Gretel talked about it a little more and we thought we might should give it to Shirley, our church's Compassion International little girl. I thought, "Mr. Savings" is always crying for more. But what could I do that would give me "the Biggest Bang for my Buck" so to speak. Perhaps, paying more on my car loan? Perhaps investing eternally in missions. Perhaps contributing more to the incredibly huge building project for our church? There are so many things, people and events that need my monetary help. Where do I start?

I am going to ask the Lord for guidance. I hope that I can invest my money wisely instead of squandering it only to feed my flesh just a little more.

So what would you do with an extra $45 a month? Inquiring minds want to know.

Want to Save $45 a month? I Do!!

I am always looking for money saving, time saving, calorie saving in my life. I imagine most of us are. My Prince Charming and I had been seeing I Phone commercials that said the unlimited calling plan is $69.99. Hmmmm. . .I have an I phone, my I phone plan is $99.99 just for the unlimited phone calling each month. Apparently, they changed their rates and were just going to allow me to pay an extra $30.00 a month until I died or went broke. Either way is not cool.

So, I got on their website and can you believe that there it was plain as day, $69.99 unlimited local and nationwide calling. The other amazing thing is that I saw a button that said, "Change your plan." What?? I don't have to haggle with anyone to spend $30.00 less a month? I was really amazed at the AT & T website.

Then, while I was feeling really lucky, I started to look at how much I was texting a month. My highest month was 180 texts. I had unlimited texting. I know, you probably think, "what was she thinking signing up for all of that?" I had no idea how much or how little I would talk or text so I asked for the "Platinum package." :) I've had it since September and had too busy to really think or look at it. Guess what! I could go down to the cheapest texting package with my measly 180 texts a month.

All in all, I was able to save $45 a month on my I phone bill. Let's face it, I phones are expensive, but fun! If I can have fun at a lower price every month, I will take it.

The moral of the story is, start looking at your bills each month to see if you think you can save a dime here or there. I think it will be worth every dime you save!

I Thought I Could Trust You

Dear Olive Garden,

Yesterday, I talked my whole family into eating at your establishment because I thought I could trust you. I just knew you had a salad that I could eat on my diet. I was careful on your breadsticks because they are 150 calories a piece. I ate 1 1/2. Yes, that is a record for me! I ate your Zuppa Toscana soup. Even though it was unlimited I ate only 1 bowl because that is another 170 calories.

Your salad, though, was something that I thought I could trust to fill me up and make my trip and self discipline worth it. I had 2 bowls and swiped a couple of other little pieces of lettuce from the bowl too when everyone was finished. I topped this lovely meal off with 1/2 a mint. Perfect, I thought, I am not hungry. I probably got away with maybe around 500 calories.

Little did I know that your salad would betray me. What I thought was the safe dish, so much so that I did not check the calories beforehand, was an evil calorie breaker. As you know, I have a food diary where I log in my calories. When I opened my book on calories, I saw that one serving of your lovely disguised salad was a whopping 350 calories per serving. Olive Garden, I had two bowls + of your salad and I because of you making your salads so caloric I had to eat a salmon burger for dinner. Blah! I went over my carefully regulated calories for the day and now I have to exercise more to lose the weight. I ate at least 700 of my 1400 calories a day on salad.

Could you please tell me what you put into that salad dressing that makes it so caloric? Is it heavy whipping cream? :) Is it a pound of chocolate? Although it is good, it was not worth wasting 1/2 of my calories for the day on. :) If I could make a suggestion. . . .could you put a warning label on the side of your salad that tells us calorie counting dieters to beware? I know this would mean a lot to many others besides me.

Thank you for letting me tell my story and get this off my chest.

Frustrated Calorie Counter

Declaration of Freedom

For the past six months I have been going through Beth Moore's, Breaking Free Revised Edition. I had some "revised bondage" so I thought I would venture through the Bible Study for the second time.

You know the Bible Study is actually only 10 weeks (2.5 months) and it took me since November (six long months) to make it to the last line. I was joking with my friend who led the study and told her that I think that it took us longer to go through it than it did for Beth Moore to write it. It took so long to finish the Bible Study my friend thought Beth might have another revised version coming out again. :)

I am glad that I "savored" it. I really felt like it impacted me more. We had some incredible discussions in our group. The whole experience really bonded us as sister's in Christ or siestas as Beth would call her groupies.

This afternoon, as I was working on History with my daughter and my friend's daughter, who we co-teach, I realized a very important part of my "Breaking Free" journey. We were talking about the American Revolution. I am not a history buff, although I really love learning about it the third time around. (Sleeping in history in high school, sitting by the love of my life in college did not help the history to stick very well the first and second time.)

This afternoon we discussed the fact that they signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Then I realized that they were not actually free on that day. This is probably where you say, "duh, where have you been?" (Sleeping?) That was near the beginning of the American Revolution. They were not actually free until 1783; seven years after they had declared their independence.

I realized that although I am declaring my freedom this day upon completion of my Bible Study, the war has really just started for me. I have worked through a lot of my past again, but I will still have to continue to fight each and every day to not to continue the negative patterns of my lineage. I have to walk in faith that I am free. Just like our forefathers, I am writing my own Declaration of Independence in faith that someday I will be completely free.

My Declaration of Dependence and Freedom

We hold these truths to be self evident that she, created in God's likeness, is given certain unalienable rights, that among these are abundant life, liberty in Christ and the pursuit of an eternal joy. She is beautifully made, a hand-crafted work of art. Being His workmanship and in His likeness she is free to worship her Creator in any way that she chooses, whether by raised hands, clanging cymbals or dancing in an undignified way. She is free to make different decisions than the ones who have gone before her. Given wholeness and security in Christ she has been given eternal blessings that far outweigh anything here on earth.

Whenever any form of bondage appears, it is her right to abolish it. She will aggressively pray for her children, grandchildren, and even her greats to be men and women of God who are free from any form of bondage; free from drugs, alcohol, depression, manipulation and any other form of chains chemically, physically, mentally or spiritually.

She refuses to allow Satan to have even a toehold in her life. She will defend her family, her life in Christ and her Christ to the grave if need be. A rich walk with Christ is not easily established or should be changed for light and transient causes. She will stay close to her sister's in Christ, and the bride to which Christ died for so that she may be rich in knowledge and faith in Him.

She, therefore, a representative of Christ, appeals to her Almighty God to help her each and every day to fight the good fight. A fight not against flesh and blood, but from all rulers and principalities of evil. And for the support of this declaration she pledges to her Lord: her life, her fortunes (how great or how small it may be :) ) and her pride.

---- Clappy Shoes

Weekend Project

This is a picture of my weekend project! It was really fun. I used my cricut that my mom gave me for Christmas to put this in my laundry room.

It is kind of crooked, but it is quite symbolic if our wacky family. :).

Grocery IQ App

Both my husband and I have I-phones. We were sitting around the other day thinking about how we needed an iphone app that would sync between our phones that could keep up with our grocery list. We always have a running list that we struggle with communicating when the other ones go to the store. Usually he will call and say what do you need at the store and I will text or email him my list.

Eureka! We struck gold with this app. It is called Grocery IQ. It not only has a list that syncs between our phones, but we scan our favorite (name brand items only) items and it tells us exactly which ones to pick up at the store. So when my hubs goes to the store and cannot remember which coffee creamer I like, he can just look at his app and it stores my favorite. It really is amazing. You can scan, just like a grocery scanner, any item even including books and it will store it in your phone.

There are other cool features like storing items by the aisle, ability to mark off items as you go, possibly coupons for your items and the ability to clear your list once you are finished shopping. It really is amazing.

So, the moral of the story is, if you have an iphone, get this app!!!

Lots of App Love,

A Normal Day and other Musings

Today seems like a "normal day." I usually say, "whatever that is" but today I think normal is appropriate. We woke up at a reasonable 7:00ish. We had a nice pancake breakfast that dad cooked on the griddle. We ate the ferociously amazing hotcakes while watching Star Wars, the Clone Wars. I have decided that while I had a "princessish" themed wedding that Gretel will probably have a Star Wars themed wedding featuring her as Queen Amidala. Somehow that seems right.

Anyway, after breakfast we worked on the house a little, cleaning our rooms (except I did not take the lead there, which I need to desperately). I did laundry, which was much better than the 498 loads I did last week. I think I might have been a week or so behind last week which made this week's so much better.

Also, we watched my favorite house flipping show called "Property Ladder" where I decided that is my next venture. . .flipping houses. Actually, it is Prince Charming's next venture, but he does not know that yet. Also, don't tell him, but I am going to be his boss and he will work for me and I am going to be a very rich woman. :) Just kidding, honey. It does look fascinating though.

There are many many other things going on in the recesses of my mind about my future, but lets just keep those in my mind for now.

What is your normal Saturday morning look like?

Saturday Blessings,

Strange Talk at my House

I need a translator. Can you figure out what my kids are talking about? I typed up a 3-5 minute conversation of my kids this afternoon. Please help, I think I am being taken over by Pokemon.

This guy is a manake

Those little guys who are sting rays

I am on level 38 and I just killed it

It is a lot for a level 1

I have oxcelery, I got the evolution of evelray

Ah, the evolsion of manake

Oh wait, walterpulse, stinkers

Down to the ground on top of the hound

How much did you get

1,412 almost level 50

Monster raptor wants to learn bravebird

Whirlwind isn’t that good

One time whirlwind saved my live. . .

Have you experienced any of this strangeness in your home? Please tell me that I am not the only one.

Shaking the Eight Ball

Have you ever wished that your scale was like an eight ball and you could just shake it again for a different number? Well, I feel that way this week. I went on vacation for three nights with my honey bunches and guess what, I gained three pounds! That is a pound a day people. That is just crazy. It was all worth it though, right???

The place where we went to get away was in Eureka Springs, AR. It was a bed and breakfast called Mt. Victoria. It is known for it's awesome breakfasts and even being featured in Southern Living. The one that was featured was Chris' signature smoked turkey breakfast pastry. I am here to tell you that it was reallllllyyyyy good. I'm not kidding. I have thought about it several times since I got home and I think that I am gaining weight thinking about it.

Eureka Springs was a really neat place to visit. Prince Charming and I had been talking about going there for several years and until now had not been able to go for whatever reason. I am really thankful for the time away. Now I need to figure out how to not expect breakfast being made for me every morning at 9:00 am and oh the not having anything to do aspect was something I could get used to as well. OK, back to trying to shake the eight ball and get a new number. Wish me luck.

Yummy Granola

Last week, my family went to Little Rock to visit my sister-in-law and niece who came in to visit from Pennsylvania. It was so fun to see my little niece and experience the harsh realities of hearing her tell me in her cute little voice, "no" that I could not hold her. She is two and I have not gotten to see her very much because they live so far away. It was definitely a fun time minus the rejection. :)

Upon our arrival, my mother-in-law displayed a yummy concoction that we fell victim to the whole time we were there. It was "Ultimate Irresistible Granola" from All Recipes submitted by Veronica S.. Thanks, Veronica S, for the 20 pounds! :)

When we got home, I made it for our family and it really was not around for very long. The only thing that I would add to this recipe would be a dash of vanilla in the canola and honey. The only other direction I would give would be to make sure you have two large baking sheets where the granola is not piled on top of each other in a thick layer. It is hard to get it to be crunchy otherwise. Mine turned out different from my mother-in-laws because of that, but I was assured by my many family members that it was still good. It was more granola bar texture rather than granola.

Ultimate Irresistible Granola

Prep Time:
15 Min

Cook Time:
20 Min

Ready In:
35 Min

Servings (Help)

US Metric Calculate

Original Recipe Yield 20 servings

Ingredients

• 5 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup blanched slivered almonds
  
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (I just bought a can of nuts that had walnuts, pecans, etc)
  
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 cup sesame seeds ( I did not have so I just put lots of sunflower seeds)
  
• 1 cup wheat germ ( I did not have this either, but I am going to get some next time)
  
• 2 cups shredded coconut
• 1 cup unsalted sunflower seeds
• 1 cup canola oil
• 1 1/2 cups honey
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup dried cranberries (I substituted craisins)
  

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, stir together the oats, almonds, walnuts, pecans, sesame seeds, wheat germ, coconut and sunflower seeds. In a small pan over medium heat, stir together the oil and honey. Cook and stir until blended. You could also do this in a large measuring cup in the microwave, heating for about 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Pour over the oat mixture, and stir to coat evenly. Spread out in an even layer on two cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven, until the oats and nuts are toasted. Immediately after it comes out of the oven, stir in the raisins and dried cranberries. Let stand until cooled, and stir again to break up any large clusters. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to two weeks, but I guarantee it won't be around that long!

Seriously good family memories with good family food!

Don't Think I'm Weird!

Don't think I'm weird if you see me driving with my fingers crossed!

My son has been reading a series called "Diary of a Wimpy Kid.". In the book they give each other the "cheese touch" if their fingers are not crossed.

I don't know about you, but the "cheese touch" sounds pretty icky! You wouldn't want it, would you?

Cheese touch, you're it! :)