Holy Week

This is the palm tree I planted on my patio yesterday, in anticipation of Palm Sunday today. It has been a wonderful day! I hope you are having a blessed Palm Sunday and anticipating Holy Week as well. We started this morning with breakfast as a family- coffee cake and fruit, with a lit candle on the table, which simply helps us remember that this is a special time. We attend church as a family on Saturday nights, so after breakfast my daughter and I were able to scoot over to Africa church and then go out to lunch together.

This morning we read about the Triumphal Entry in Mark's and Luke's gospels, noting especially how Luke's gospel details how Christ wept over Jerusalem... He was not exactly upbeat or giddy as He rode the donkey colt into the city to the chorus of "Hosanna!" He knew some who praised Him were not true disciples and in just a matter of days would be crying, "Crucify Him!"

Here are a few things we will be doing this week to observe Holy Week in our home... There are some simple (but powerful) readings developed by Noel Piper that we will be doing this week found here. These are in her book Treasuring God in Our Traditions, which is available to read online here. (I just love the Pipers! They make so many of their materials available for free. It's amazing!) We are going to hopefully make the "Easter Mountain" which is explained here in chapter 9 of the book.

During Christmas we read the first half of John Piper's Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ. I purposely stopped in the middle so we could finish it in the days leading up to Easter. It is available to read online here. I highly recommend it to read for yourself, or aloud to your older children. There is also a supplemental Bible reading plan to accompany the book, available here, that we will make use of as well. It's so helpful!

Friday night we will enjoy a time of fellowship with our Family Bible Fellowship (Sunday school class which we attend as a family) at our annual Passover Seder meal. If you don't have a group who does this or know of one you can attend, this site has some great recipes and explains it very thoroughly. Attending a Seder meal has always added meaning to our family's observance of Good Friday.

I would love to know some of the ways you make Holy Week a set-apart time for your family, and I'm always looking for new things to incorporate into our family's celebrations, so if you have some ideas or links, please let me know!

Have a blessed week!

Fun at Aunt Cyndi's and a Chinese New Year Party!

Well, it's been a little over a week since I posted. I do plan to continue talking about our adoption (Oh, if you haven't read it, please read this post below! This is the biggest thing going on in our lives right now!) but last week we had just a little more going on. I got to keep my nieces for three days, and we had a wonderful Chinese New Year party on Friday. It was a week of fun, for sure!

My brother and his family are moving a few hours away (::sniff::) and while he and my sister-in-law were working on the move, I was excited to spend a few days with my sweet nieces here. G, the four year old came first while H the 6 year old spent an extra day at my mom's getting over a stomach bug. It was so fun to have little ones in the house again! It's getting me ready to have one or two more!! Here's a little slide show of our fun. It was fun to get our gray tubs of toys down out of the attic and enjoy them once again! We also pulled out some books on tape that hadn't been listened to in awhile. I found a fun cardboard "clubhouse" at Hobby Lobby that they could color, which we all enjoyed (and the beanie babies got to live inside it for a few days.) Speaking of beanie babies, I also found at Hobby Lobby these fun "build-a-bear" type beanies you could stuff yourself. We had a great time!

Then on Friday we celebrated Chinese New Year with two other families who have hearts for China like we do. In fact, they have both adopted precious daughters from China! So we all dressed in our Chinese clothes and enjoyed some fun Chinese activities and food, while we welcomed the "year of the rat." We made "Year of the Rat" picture frames, Chinese lanterns, read a book about Chinese New Year and all of the customs,ate some yummy Chinese take-out, enjoyed two fun games, danced to some hip Chinese pop music off of iTunes, and popped party poppers. (I've posted the games and resources we used on my homeschool blog.) It was a great time! I'm still finding confetti!

We had a great week last week, and I hope you did, too. We have our first visit with our social worker for an extended time at our agency tomorrow morning. Things are clicking along!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Menu Monday and Happy Thanksgiving!

Oh, I'm JUST so happy. This week is finally here! And it's the week I've been praying for... a week OFF. Off of school, off of housework, off of the phone and computer, off of errands, off of ministry responsibilities, and off of kitchen duty! I know, Thanksgiving seems an odd time to be out of the kitchen, but that's where I'll be-- out! We're spending the week RV'ing in a beautiful state park in Oklahoma. This will be our third year to enjoy time away- just the four of us- enjoying time outdoors and being thankful, especially thankful to our sweet friends who are so graciously loaning us their RV.


Today I'm baking some of the things we love to take- sausage balls, banana bread, pumpkin pie and cookies. Dinner tonight will be a leftover buffet, and then tomorrow we're off! I've got my"camping style" Thanksgiving dinner all ready to go. I've got a smoked turkey which we'll do in the dutch oven over the fire. The stuffing is simply two boxes of Stove Top stuffing, some chicken broth, a can of cream of mushroom soup and a can of cream of chicken soup in the Crock Pot (my kids LOVE this!). I've got another can of cr. of chicken soup for our "gravy" and some potato flakes to mix up mashed potatoes, some green beans and some rolls to heat up over the fire as well. (The "old me" would not have considered this a proper Thanksgiving dinner at all... I like the "new me" much better!) Take my word for it, eaten outside by a campfire, this is the best Thanksgiving dinner ever!


The rest of the week's cooking is being done by my fun husband who came home with this over the weekend. Yes, our menu consists of whatever can be cooked over a fire (steaks, hot dogs, stew, biscuits, and of course, s'mores!)

(Those of you with a more "refined" palate should stop by Laura's to read other people's menus or to link your own!)

We're also taking some ideas/activities from Family Life's Thanksgiving resources. I'm adapting the Rainey's "five kernels of corn" activity to also correspond with this reading. I'm also taking some scriptures on thankfulness so that we can apply those scriptures as they pertain to God's faithfulness to the Pilgrims as well as to our family. I want to also pray those scriptures- thanking Him in advance for the way He will be faithful to us in the year to come.


I'll leave you with some pictures of what we'll be looking at this week...

I am so thankful for you, that you stopped by. Have a blessed, blessed week wherever you are and around whatever table your family gathers.

God is good, all the time.

Happy Hallo-weenie!

My little dog was so not amused when taking this picture. (He was a sad clown) But, he'll do anything for a goldfish cracker!
We took some time yesterday (finally!) to go to the "pumpkin patch" in our town and look for the perfect pumpkins.

SO, this is what we're doing this morning... The strainer is for the pumpkin seeds which I will roast later. We love those!

We will carve pumpkins this morning and read Pumpkin Patch Parable. Even though the kids are older, but we still do some of these things every year... they love looking forward to simple little traditions. I know Halloween has become somewhat controversial in Christian circles in recent years. I actually love that it has become a discussion as I feel we should really examine everything we do. After really looking at it and praying about it when our kids were really young, we really didn't feel convicted about what our family was doing... dressing up, welcoming neighbor children, getting out and about in our neighborhood and being a light (which, admittedly, we don't do enough of during the rest of the year...) THIS is the day the LORD has made! Every day is His. So, later we will dress up, have a great time, and most of all strive to bring glory to Him (our goal every day.)

Another thing my kids know to expect is that we will spend a fair amount of time talking about Reformation Day. Our hymn this month has been "A Mighty Fortress" and we will watch part of this classic Martin Luther video (though last year we watched this one with Joseph Fiennes and it was excellent. We liked it better but we don't own it.) I love reading about this great reformer!

For a "treat" today, here are some great Martin Luther quotes to ponder:

"Pray and let God worry."

"The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid."

"Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave."

"You are not only responsible for what you say, you are also responsible for what you do not say."

"Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God."


Have a blessed day!

Freedom From... Freedom For

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1

Let freedom ring! Yes, today we celebrate our country's freedom. Our hard-won independence. Our patriotism. When I really begin to think about it, my mind automatically thinks of the Revolutionary War heroes who gave all. I found out last year that I have a patriot in my ancestry, which qualifies me for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. I remember reading through all of the research and seeing my family tree leading me to him and seeing his name, rank, and location. All of a sudden I felt a... connection. A connection to something historical and fascinating. Yes, today I'll be thinking of my Great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Thomas.

And today I'm also thinking about being set free. I remember in Beth Moore's "Breaking Free" study years ago, coming to grips with the concept of being truly set free. If you haven't done that study, I highly recommend it, or at least reading the book. (Even if you're not particularly "Beth Moore-ish," the information it contains is so beneficial and straight from the heart of God, it'll be worth your time, I promise!) I'm not sure if it was in that study or in subsequent readings that I really began to ponder the fact that I've been set free from... and I've been set free for.

Freedom from one thing leads to freedom to do something else. So, today as the firecrackers are popping, I'm going to be thanking my Heavenly Father that He sent His Son to set me truly free- free from the eternal consequences of my sin, free from sin's bonds while on this earth, free from thinking that this life is all there is. And I'm going to be thinking all day about what I've been set free for.

As one of my favorite Ginny Owen's songs says:

You're free to dance

Forget about your two left feet

And you're free to sing

Even joyful noise is music to Me

You’re free to love

'Cause I’ve given you My love

And it’s made you free

I have set you free!

My mind finds hard to believe

That You became humanity and

Changed the course of history

Because You loved us so

And my heart cannot understand

How You accept me as I am

But You say You've always had a plan

And that's all I need to know

So when I am consumed

With what the world will say

Then You're singing to me, as You remove my chains

Free from worry

Free from envy and denial

Free to live, free to give, free to smile

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's true freedom.

Don't you feel a connection to something historical and fascinating now, too?

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

To The Ends Of The Earth

"Who am I Lord? Or, rather, what is my calling? that you appeared to me in so great a divine quality, so that today among the barbarians I might constantly exalt and magnify your name in whatever place I should be, and not only in good fortune, but even in affliction?"

"So that whatever befalls me, be it good or bad, I should accept it equally, and give thanks always to God who revealed to me that I might trust in him, implicitly and forever, and who will encourage me so that, ignorant, and in the last days, I may dare to undertake so devout and so wonderful a work; so that I might imitate one of those whom, once, long ago, the Lord already pre-ordained to be heralds of his Gospel to witness to all peoples to the ends of the earth. So are we seeing, and so it is fulfilled; behold, we are witnesses because the Gospel has been preached as far as the places beyond which no man lives."

~from The "Confessio" of St. Patrick, available in its entirety here.

Without a shadow of a doubt...

Spring is coming early!

Phil didn't see his shadow. (I didn't either, when I went outside.)

Well, some think that Groundhog Day should be outlawed, anyway...

Happy Groundhog Day!