sunday snapshot..christmas pie

We baked our Christmas pie a little late this year.  We had so many sweet treats on Christmas day thanks to the cookies and treats we'd made plus the ones Nana brought.  We didn't need any pies!  That's so sad, isn't it?  It worked out well anyway because Megan received a little baking kit for Christmas.  She asked everyday since then if we could bake and we finally had time yesterday.

First we made a little blackberry cobbler.  The blackberries were on sale this week at Kroger.  Yay!

 

 

The boys measured it.  I don't think they really had much reason to do that except they wanted to play with the yard stick.

Then we went to work on an apple pie.  Megan helped pretty much through the whole thing.  The boys jumped on in when I asked them to cut apples.  They like to use knives. 

Megan's set came with a mini pie pan.  As soon as Seth saw an apple in his stocking, he was asking Megan to make him a little apple pie.  So we did that.  And we made a big one for all to share.

 

I guess you could say our Christmas pie turned into a New Year's pie, but I'm not sure they are going to last that long.

christmas 2012

Our tree 2012

We had such a fun Christmas Day! 

In fact, Seth said it was the best Christmas

ever and that last Christmas was the second best.



Todd was really surprised.  Right after he opened them, he came over to me and gave me a big hug.

Now Seth can go out fishing with Keith on his kayak.

YAY!  This is just what I wanted!

Um, Rockstar Keith???

What!  Astros hat!  Bam!

It's impossible to pass by these without drumming just a little

Rockstar Megan!

Playing Lego Indiana Jones, The Original Adventures!

Playing Lego Lord of the Rings.  Precious..my precious..

One picture of me from the day...I was there!

sunday snapshot: rolo pretzel turtles

Rolo Pretzel Turtles are so good, they are bad.  Oh, so bad. for me!!!

The mixture of sweet and salty is perfect. 

 Megan and I made some on Saturday. 

 I think she unwrapped a whole bag of Rolos and didn't eat one until I said she could.   

She is a great little helper.  I love my sweet girl.

 

 

If you NEED to make some too, here's the recipe I used.

 

Christmas Eve Eve

All dressed up for church today.

And we are reminded that..

Christ put on humanity and humility in the stable and gave up the heavenly and kingly palace for a period of time.  Now He sits in His rightful place having conquered what no ordinary man could...sin and death.  And He did it for me.

december birthday party

A week ago we went to a sweet little friend's birthday party at the park.

The boys were none too thrilled at all this girl stuff, but Megan was so happy to see her friends and to have fun for a bit.

 

Then we headed over to the Lego Club Christmas party.  That was more the boys' speed.

 

It was one of those busy, but fun December days.

Not too many of those left as we near the new year.

peace out.

life in 7d

I bought my first dslr camera a couple of years ago, secondhand, from a friend.  I've learned and loved that little rebel xti, but the time had come move on.  For a year I've saved all the money I could and, finally, I had enough to move up to the Canon 7d.  From 8MP to 18MP.  My trusty 4GB Compact Flash card only holds half the pictures it used to.  I'm geeking out on it. Oh boy, I need more time to learn it, but already, I'm all in.

where in the world did you go? why brazil?

Some of you may be wondering (maybe not all) why we went to Brazil.

Keith had a connection there.  In college Keith had a roommate that had grown up in Brazil.  He grew up at a New Tribes Mission school for missionary kids.  His dad grew up at the school too.  So one summer Keith went down with his roommate to the school and spent a month there tromping through the jungle, waterskiing in the Amazon and adopting a parasite we dealt with just 3 years ago (that's another story).

The school still exists and serves American and Brazilian missionaries to Brazil.  Tribal missionaries who want to protect their children from the rampant immorality in the tribes  and city missionaries who need a way to provide a good education in a safe place a place for their children to make friends send their children to Puraquequara, or PQQ. 

Since Keith already knew about the school and had been there and because we wanted to take our children with us we thought PQQ would be the perfect place to go.

And it was.

It was a life-changing three and a half weeks.  Want to stir your heart toward missions?  Go live with and serve missionaries for a few weeks.  You'll be impressed, amazed and humbled.

One phrase I keep going back to over and over again in my mind. 

Our extraordinary (Our family giving up comfort, time, money, etc for 3 weeks in Brazil)
is their ordinary (these folks have given up comfort and closeness to family and familiarity and about a million other things to serve God in a foreign land and that life is their ordinary)

A little more about the book Radical.  In it the author suggests tithing on your time.  In other words, using a tenth of your time each year to serve God physically somewhere foreign.  Why not try it?  You tithe on the money you bring home.  He gave that to you.  And all of your days were given to you by Him too.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,   
when as yet there was none of them. Ps. 139:16

Why not tithe some time back to Him?

And serve someone like this.

Christmas Card outtakes

It's always a challenge this time of year to find a day and time to get everyone in the family looking spiffy and feeling cooperative enough to get a nice family photo.  Add to that the fact that I'm the one usually taking the photos and now need to be in the photo and it gets a bit more complicated.  Thankfully, we had a wonderful lady(Keith's mom), volunteer get volunteered to take our photos this year and, thankfully, Keith's parents's home is an idyllic place to take photos.

Here are a few outtakes...hope you smile a little, or maybe even laugh.

Could not get the children to do what I had envisioned. Ha!

Muff relieving herself!

Sure should have ironed Keith's sweater!!

Seth's signature look

Todd smiling while showing teeth.  :p

 

 

...

Trying to catch a grasshopper

Shooting grasshoppers