Picture Time!

A pic of me with my oldest daughter, Echo Jade.

Today Only-Free copy of 31 Days to Clean!

Sarah Mae, over at Like A Warm Cup of Coffee, is giving away free copies of her book, 31 Days to Clean- Having a Martha House the Mary Way. Click here for details! This sounds like a wonderful book to inspire me to do some spring cleaning around here! I can't wait to get my copy. Thanks, Sarah Mae!

Monday Means...

Preparing for the week ahead by making breads, tortillas, and granola bars for my family.

On this most recent Monday, (last Monday) it meant making 38 flour tortillas, 18 sandwich rolls, 16 almond dark chocolate chunk granola bars, and 1 loaf of whole wheat flax seed bread.

I feel so grateful when I look in my fridge and pantry and see freshly made tortillas and breads that will last my family a good portion of the week. The granola bars, well, they are usually gone the same day. :0)

Foodiacs King Arthur Prize Package

Foodiacs' Spring Fling Giveaway is offering a King Arthur prize package which includes a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer and a year's supply of King Arthur flour! Click on this link to enter.

Our Family Portrait by Mahan Media!

They are making a new church directory at Valley, and we were told that we should bring the family and have our picture taken for it. When we got there, I was surprised to find our worship leader, Jessica Mahan, behind the camera lens. This woman is talented! She not only beautifully leads worship at our church, and gives voice and piano lessons, but also, apparently, takes stunning, professional portraits as well! This is our family portrait for the church directory. It's the first picture we have had taken all together since the wedding and I just love how it came out!

For more examples of Jess's handiwork, you can visit her website here.

Communion

The worship band sings "Oh Glorious Day" up on stage. It's one of my favorite songs. My husband sits next to me. He takes his huge, strong arm and puts it around my shoulder, pulls me close to him. I rest my head against his chest...and he starts to pray. "Dear Lord, we thank you for all these blessings You have put upon our lives, Father. We ask that you would watch over the children, Lord...help us to teach them to do Your will. We thank you for all things, Father..." My eyes well up with tears as I listen to him quietly speaking the prayers of his heart.


Every week we take communion at church, and every single week, my precious husband thanks the Lord for his "beautiful/precious/loving wife"-the words that describe me change from week to week, but he always gives thanks for me very early on in his weekly communion prayer. It makes me feel so grateful to have a wonderful, loving husband. Taking communion with William is such a privilege. It refreshes our hearts for the week to come, unites us in worship, strengthens our marital bond, and helps us to set a good example of a God-centered marriage for the children. The first thing we did after taking our wedding vows was to take our first communion together-before anything else, even before our first kiss. We wanted to make our covenant with the Lord above all else, followed by our vows to each other. How fitting that we get to take communion at church together on a weekly basis, to keep fresh in our minds and hearts the promises we have made.

Thank you, Father, for sending a strong, God-fearing head of household for our family. I'm so glad I don't have to do it alone anymore.

My sister Lena

and her family are in the process of adopting a beautiful, precious little bundle of joy named Anna Faith.

She has started a blog to chronicle her family's adoption journey-and boy, is it a beautiful one! Would you mind clicking on over to my sister's blog and checking it out and praying for my beautiful niece and her family?

My son...

Christian, now has his own music page on facebook...

Click here to check it out and like it!

Spring Break Fun!

We were supposed to spend a day picnicking at San Antonio Falls near Baldy summit during spring break, but it rained just about the whole week. The one day it didn't rain it wasn't warm enough to take the girls up there.

A cold day demands hot chocolate! We decided to have a "tea" (hot chocolate) party. The girls and I made homemade biscuits to go with our hot chocolate. Gwennie had hot herbal tea. The girls did a lovely job setting the table with all kinds of mismatched dishes and teacups, and some cute, cheery placemats with a cherry motif. All stuffed animals residing in the household were invited to partake of our festivities.

The bottom plate of biscuits were large and round. The top rack of biscuits were little heart shaped biscuits. They were super cute! The recipe we used had half white flour and half whole wheat. The biscuits rose beautifully, and they came out absolutely delicious!

Hubby bought me a variety pack of Knott's Berry Farm jams on our trip there last month, so I kept them in my bedroom until I could make homemade biscuits for the whole family. (When you have teenagers, if you open up all that jam it is gone very quickly! I wanted to make sure everyone in the family got to have some.) The jams were so yummy! We had strawberry, grape, apricot/pineapple, blackberry, and apple cinnamon to choose from. My favorite was the apple cinnamon, followed by the sweet, dark blackberry. All of the different flavors were really great! Jenna decided the gold bow from the wrapper would look nice around our jam display... :0)

We had a lot of fun on spring break, but I think my two favorite things out of the whole week were our tea party, and when we all went to see "Mars Needs Moms" in 3d. It was an excellent movie with a great family theme! It's too bad spring break couldn't last longer...

Highlights of the Week

Jenna does her daily read-aloud in the kitchen. Every evening she reads to me while I cook dinner.

Autumn in her "cardboard box Jeep" for 1st grade safari day. The first graders got to "safari" all around the school and show off their Jeeps. Autumn's had real working taillights. :0)



Gwennie got the citizen of the month award at school! Great job, Gwennie!