Christmas Giveaway

For as long as I can remember I have enjoyed reading the Vision Forum catalog and buying items from their online store. Vision Forum is a Christian book and resource store that helps... well further one's vision lol. This year Vision Forum is giving away $600 dollars worth in gift certificates. If you would like to enter to win this fabulous offer please go to A Wise Woman Builds Her Home and leave a comment.
                                                 I hope y'all are having a wonderful evening :)

This is what happens when you don't post in months

Well by forfeit Teresa won my book giveaway being the only person to comment.
So Mrs. Garlic we'll be sending you your copy of "A Child's book of Church Etiquette" asap.
To all y'all out there who had given up hope of my ever posting again sorry you missed out on this great opportunity and I'm sorry for not posting in so long :P.

TV dinner anyone?

On Tuesday I decided to make a TV Dinner for after Dinner with the help of all the children.

Now you might wonder why on earth I would make a TV dinner for after dinner so maybe this excerpt from the recipe book will help enlighten y'all ;)

" No need to worry about your peas and carrots mixing with you chocolate pudding in this TV dinner...it's all made with candy and sugar. Go ahead and grab a chicken leg by it's white chocolate bone, or dig into the pile of frosting mashed potatoes topped with caramel gravy. You might want to save the vegetables for last, because the peas and carrots are actually Runts and Starbursts."

For a sweet tooth like myself a description like that is VERY tempting lol so I decided to have a special cooking spree with the children as I knew they would greatly enjoy making this. So I went and bought the necessary ingredients and told them we were gonna do something special after lunch.

Cutting orange Starbursts

Happily picking out all the green Runts

As we began the children were still wondering what in the world I was doing but they were soooo excited to help and they enjoyed getting to eat the left over candy too ;)

Cream cheese frosting

Mashed potatoes with butter and gravy

Carrots and Peas ( My personal favorite lol)

Ready for dinner. Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, Carrots and Peas and Chocolate Pudding (for "dessert" ;))

Sooooooo HAPPY :D

All my helpers

So there you have it TV dinner cupcakes. It was sooooo much fun making these with the chillens and they enjoyed eating the fruit of their labors.
Have a blessed day y'all!!!

A Child's Book of Church Etiquette

My Mother has written a book!!!
I'm proud to present to y'all, "A Child's Book of Church Etiquette". This small book is written specifically for parents to read aloud to their children and goes into details about the importance of proper behavior in the worship service. It's written in a very clear and understandable way and is full of beautiful illustrations your children will love looking at. We are selling it at the price of $8.95 + shipping. However, if you leave a comment before Monday, the 6th of November we will be selecting one of you to receive a free copy. Please comment and feel free to order here using the Pay Pal button on the sidebar. This book would be a great Christmas gift for all the special children in your life ! ;)
I hope you enjoy this wonderful book and that it would be a great blessing to all who read it.

A Tribute

On Wednesday, April 20th, Jonatan David Torres went home with the Lord after a long fight with cancer. On his 15th birthday he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer. He went through 26 rounds of Chemotherapy but then the doctors found tumors in his lungs. Jona underwent several surgeries and in December 2010 he was given a month to live. I knew Jona as a little boy as his family attended our church before God called them to start a church in Greer and have many memories of his happiness and his love of practical jokes. He was a wonderful testimony and rebuke to all who knew him and through his 2 year battle he never complained and he even thanked God for the cancer because it had drawn him closer to God.
Jona wanted to glorify God with his life and with his death if God so chose. At 11:40 Wednesday night God decided to take Jona to his eternal home, where he is now free from pain. Jona DID glorify God with his life and with his death and has left a remarkable testimony for all of us to follow. Please pray for the Torres family as they adjust to life without Jona.

Jona wrote a song about Romeo and Juliet for a school assignment and performed it at school. To view it go to: YouTube- "Two Lovers" A Song by Jona Torres

A Blessed Weekend

This weekend we had the great privilege of hosting a "La Espada" evangelistic conference at our church. Our good friends the Garlick's came and Bro. Garlick did all the preaching.

We had lots of special music which was sooo nice. Here the men are singing "Here is Love" one of my personal favorites and Havi and I got to sing "Amazing Grace, Amazing Love" as well.

Many people surrendered their lives to full time service as well and we were blessed to see the fruit of our hard labors so plentifully granted to us.

We also had time for wonderful fellowship with the Garlicks between services and we have tons of wonderful memories of their visit. It's wonderful to have friends like the Garlicks who love the Lord with all their hearts and try to glorify him in all they do.

Playing "Tricky, tricky bear" at 10:30 pm lol.

Mr.Garlick plays the guitar beautifully and he accompanied us as we played. Also this game is a rather fast paced game so that's why the pictures are rather blurry.

And for a grand finale we celebrated Bro. Daniels birthday with him!!! I thank the Lord sooo much for His bountiful blessings upon us an pray that He would help us all to continue faithfully, pressing towards the goal. Also I would like to thank all the Garlicks for allowing themselves to be used by the Lord in such a great way here in Greenville.
God bless y'all!!!

The delights of baking

There is nothing quite like the delicious smell of freshly baked bread wafting through the house and cutting slices of it while it's still warm and slathering butter and honey onto it.
And with the new Bosch my mother got for Valentines day it's a breeze to make and the bread comes out oh so soft. So without further delay I'm off to the kitchen to bake to my hearts content:)
Blessings to all!!!!

Ohhhh so sweet

Victoria making salad

Little ones can sometimes be considered "in the way" when one is cooking but if you take the time to incorporate them you can make them the happiest children and have a blast yourself.
Take time to make someone smile today:)

Conferences in Atlanta

This last week has been chock full of conferences and we have therefore been keeping pretty busy. Daddy was in Panama last week and arrived back home on Monday just in time to leave for a "La Espada" conference in Atlanta.

3 new friends, Rebekah, Bethany and Hannah
Havi and I had the great privilege to help teach the children ages 6-11 and we had a BLAST and were able to make lots of wonderful friends.

Acting out the story of Jonah:)
Poor Daniel had the great privilege of being Jonah and was quite nicely thrown into the sea LOL.

Haviland narrating the story

As if Daniel's being Jonah wasn't enough, Havi decided to have revenge on her older sister and made me the big fish!!! I wasn't quite sure how to swallow someone bigger than me but I think I managed OK and the children enjoyed it:)

The ships crew awaiting the storm

Daniel and Timothy lead in the singing

On the last day all the Pastors, Missionaries and Evangelists and their families had
a big competition, Men against women, and whichever team won, got a great prize of Banana splits so you can just imagine how that went!!! It was tons of fun and everybody enjoyed the wonderful, wholesome games.

I was somehow chosen to walk around all the lunch tables, blindfolded, with an egg balanced on a spoon in my mouth. It was an interesting, to say the least, experience and I'm happy to report that I won!!!

Seeing how many marshmallows they could stuff in their mouths and still say "Chubby baby".

The "Cooking knowledge" competition.
In the end I think the teams tied but my family had to leave early so we didn't get our prize:(
We arrived back home Wednesday about 10 min. before our church service started and rested Thursday ( which we were in great need of as going to bed at 1:00 am 3 days straight is not conducive to very good health. Honestly I now have a greater respect for people who teach room fulls of little children!)
We left again on Friday, this time for Sprucepine but I'm afraid I didn't take any pictures as I was in charge of all the music and couldn't very well take pictures and play the piano at the same time;) We returned home yesterday pretty tired but blessed in the thought that God had graciously used us and praying that our work would not be in vain.

A challenge to all

"Remember also you Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, "I have no delight in them"; before the sun and the light, the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain; The conclusion when all has been heard is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person."
~Ecclesiastes 12:1 & 13

Blessings

Perhaps some of you will remember this post asking y'all to pray for a couple at our church who were expecting baby #5 (she had miscarried the other 4). Well God answered our prayers and here is a picture of Fernando and Alejandra with their beautiful baby, Raquel Alejandra, who I might add, is 7 months old (This picture is long over due lol).

~"For I know the plans I have for you" declares the Lord, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope'. ~
~Jeremiah 29:11

Spring days

The past few weeks we have enjoyed beautiful spring weather here in SC, and so we took advantage to be outdoors as much as possible.

Playing with the boys AKA climbing onto the roof LOL:)

Playtime also included climbing trees

We also had the opportunity to go on a field trip to Paris Mountain with our home-school co-op.
As you can see there's LOTS of children :)

(From left to right) Adriana, Katie, Me, Haviland, Andrea, Jasmine and Abby fishing in the FREEZING COLD creek for insects to study.

Jasmine, Haviland, Jared, Mark, Danny and Ben examine the Garter fish that Ben caught.

Ohhhhh soooo cute!!!!
This is Nathaniel better known to us as Bubby:)

Fishing away

Studying water temperature and pH level

Busy writing down our observations

Rebekah, isn't she beautiful?

Ben, Mark and Dan studying very hard LOL ;-)

David

Erika fishing

Canadian Geese

This was a really neat sight. 7 turtles on a log

This picture has nothing to do with nature but I found this carved on a bench at the park and thought " WOW B.F. for Bethany Franco" LOL.
Who knows what it really means but it was a neat discovery, if not very scientific;)

So sweet!!!
Well I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into our field trip.
Thank you to all our church families for the wonderful time we all had together!!!

Yes I'm still alive:)

Well First I'd like to thank all of you who expressed their hopes that I would post soon. Due to computer failure I hadn't been able to post and then school started, adding to the difficulty and then our internet crashed!!! But here I am at last and I do beg pardon for taking so long.

I'm very grateful to the Lord for all of His bountiful blessings the last few months. Being able to spend time with family and friends over the holidays was wonderful and being able to see how He works all things together and many times gives us the desires of our heart even though we don't deserve them really was exciting. Now I'm afraid that Because of the computer problem I may have lost most of the Christmas pictures but please pray that they would be on the external hard drive so that I'll be able to retrieve them. In the mean time I'll share what pictures I have.

Christmas dinner: Cuban pork, Black Beans, white rice.
On the 25th we had Nacho over and we all had a blast!!!

Comfort food LOL ;)
I also got to see my very first white Christmas!!! It was so special.

It was so nice sitting inside the cozy house, watching a good movie and sipping a hot cup of tea while outside beautiful, crisp snow fell.
On the 26th we had a special youth service at our church. All of us young people were in charge of the music and preaching. God really used it and it was a great blessing. I'm uploading videos of the specials on Vimeo so please watch them whenever you have a chance. On the eve of new years eve we headed down to Happydale for a night. It was sooooooo much fun and we have tons of wonderful memories. Thank you so much Casseroles!!!

Sitting by the fire after dinner.

This is my lawyer, Mortimer Brewster AKA Sayre Castlebury, opening his Christmas gift.
(which happened to be a jar of Arsenic with some old lace;))

Me with my Christmas gift which says "Dinner will be ready when the smoke alarm goes off" Hmm I wonder how Sayre knew that LOL.

One of the highlights of our stay was riding the four-wheeler through the woods. It was sooo much fun feeling the wind in your face and going as fast as you possibly could. The bad thing is that I was cold the rest of the day:) After spending this wonderful time we went home and got ready to go to church for the new years eve banquet. We had games and testimonies and lots of food. It so nice ending the year and starting the year at church with all our friends. We stayed till 1:30 am enjoying the fellowship.


A week or two later we got 6 and 1/2 inches a beautiful, fluffy snow! That's a record for Greenville!!!

Everything was beautifully covered and the snow stayed for a whole week (another record)

Shiloh, enjoying the snow.

Sledding with the Lawrence girls

The children had so much fun playing outside.

Victoria's shoe made this and I thought it was sooo pretty that I took a picture of it.

Jared and David playing policemen after spending the day outside.
A couple of weeks ago we also had the privilege of celebrating my grandmothers 75th birthday.

We had such a nice time with her, she is such a blessing to us all.Happy birthday Abuela!!!
Well I hope you all had a wonderful new year and Happy Valentines day to all!!!