It works!

This may seem trite, but I often decide to bake spur of the moment, and in the evening, Nehemiah likes to enjoy the fruits of his/our labor before bed--surprise, surprise! Anyway, it takes too long to soften butter to room temp in our chilly house (in the winter), so I went in search of an alternative, and wouldn't you know, I found one! We made a batch of chocolate chip cookies this way tonight, and it worked! I've done it with the microwave before, but I find the results to be inconsistent at best.

Photo credit: simplyrecipes.com

Praise the Lord

This morning I woke up to find this picture of Keanan (from Haiti on Diplomatic Parole) greeting his daddy in Orlando. Praise the Lord and thank you for praying!


A few days ago I mentioned this situation from a blog I follow called, Rage Against the Minivan--I'm so glad that Keanan is home and some good is able to come from an impossible situation. The Lord is merciful in His provision for and salvation of His little ones.

Storming the Gates

I have come across a blog called Rage Against the Minivan in the past few months, and while there are things I don't have in common with Kristen (I mean come on--y'all have seen my minivan proudly tooling around town!), I want to focus on what we do have in common...a faith in Christ and a love for our kids. She was in Haiti with her baby girl visiting their son (who they have been in the process of adopting for the last 3 years) when the earthquake struck. She and her daughter have made it home safely--praise the Lord! Join me in praying for their son to come home. Here is some information she has given about the process of something called humanitarian parole--where Keanan, her son, may be able to come to the States and to their family until Haiti's infrastructure improves and it is safer for him to be there again--it has been extended to some; I am praying that her family will make the list. Kristen is one of many US parents waiting on their Hatian children. Here is a powerful music video by the talented Aaron Ivey, another one of that group.

Join me in praying for these children and families please.

Before and After

Along with my new camera, I have been doing more photo editing than in the past. Here are some before and afters, so you can see the difference between what my camera does, and what my computer does after. :) Fun stuff! PS--My new camera is a Nikon D-3000 and I am editing with free Picasa software.

Befores: Afters:

Snowy fun!

Both kids are taking decent naps this afternoon, so I have had time to edit more pictures of our morning--here they are! :)

Nehemiah was plotting the perfect snowball hit for me all morning--this photo proves his devious mind!

It is rare to have a picture with both kids in the frame!

Us, today.

So I have a million new pictures taken with a brand-spankin' new, shiny, fancy camera, and all that jazz--and things in my head to write down, but we all have to start again somewhere, so here's to a start...this is us, today, in the snow. :)

Merry Christmas!

I got my craft on for the ladies in my family this Christmas. The gifts are hidden in these homemade fortune cookies...what're you getting? I'm not tellin'!

Anyway, I'm linking these to the craft challenge for the month on Lil' Betty's Blog--enjoy!

Pray for Sam

Hi everyone--during this busy season, I am taking even more of a blog break than normal, but this is too important not to write about!

I have a friend from youth group when I was in middle and high schools. His name is Daniel Thompson. He and his wife Jennifer have a baby boy named Samuel. I think they say all of this best, so I am going to post some of the story from their Children's Hospital Care Page:

Shortly after his 20 week ultrasound Samuel Dean Thompson was diagnosed with a heart defect known as HLHS (Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome). In patients with HLHS the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped and not able to function. The left side of the heart pulls oxygen rich blood from the lungs and distributes it to the rest of the body, with the loss of the left side babies usually have a week or less to live. We were presented with 2 treatment options, a heart transplant or a series of 3 heart surgeries. We chose the surgeries because the thinking is that it is better to make due with the heart you have rather than replace it, if at all possible. The first surgery, which is often called the Norwood procedure, occurred on September 12th. He did wonderfully and recovered better than anyone could have hoped. The medical team couldn't stop saying how they hadn't seen a Norwood recover as well as he did in such a long time. We got home from the hospital on October 26th. We were home for nine days when we went into children's for a routine check up. It was then discovered that his heart function had drastically decreased. We were admitted that night with the plan to administer treatment to get his function back to where it was. Unfortunately the treatment was unsuccessful and the only option left for him was to have a heart transplant. He was placed on the transplant list on December 1st at the highest priority. We are now patiently waiting for a heart to become available that will suit his needs. We maintain the hope that someday through all of this he will finally have a working heart, and the potential for a healthy life.

Currently he is at Children's undergoing a process designed to weaken his immune system so that it is able to take a heart transplant without rejecting it, because currently he could only receive 3 out of 100 hearts, and that is assuming they are the right size.

Here are a few recent pictures:

This is Sam and his daddy, Daniel.

And Sam with the Colorado Avalanche yesterday. (He's also the second image here.)

Please join me in praying for this precious little one! They are hoping to let him go home next week some. Wouldn't it be great to have him home for Christmas!

So happy together! :)

Camera conundrum--resolved!!!

My camera is found! Here are many pictures that were on it when lost. Some at our house, and some from our trip to Iowa in November. :)

Whew!

Sorry such sporadic blogging...technical difficulties on the camera front--again--it has been the year of camera disaster, much to my sadness! The last few days have been rough--you know the kind...the when it rains it pours kind of days. Ben left for a business trip and the same day, we all developed fevers to go with our colds. And Maltby puked on the floor 3 times! That is because he is so emotionally gifted--he wouldn't eat the first two days Ben was gone, so when he did eat he was over hungry and he gorged really fast. Well his stomach wasn't ready, and he took it out on the carpet. Nothing like cleaning that up while you're sick and on your own! I thought I'd try to get out yesterday to shake some of the cobwebs out, and my fun outing to the local coffee shop yielded a closed shop. Apparently it closed yesterday and won't reopen again until January under new ownership. Uugh! So, like I said, it's just been several pity party days in a row!

Seems to me that I need to start looking for the happy--good things. Currently I am experiencing concurrent naps...SCORE! Ben is going to be home soonish and I have a funny Nehemiah story...

On Saturday we went to my in-laws for dinner and my mother-in-law had out her Christmas "pyramid," one of those wooden, candle powered spinning things. Nehemiah loves it! The next day at home, he asked me to light a candle. I looked back over my shoulder, and he was holding his plastic Batman helicopter over the top of it to see if the rotors would spin! I told him to be careful because it could get hot, and then distracted him with me in the kitchen. A few minutes later, the phone rang, so I was distracted, and Nehemiah decided to try again. He melted the bottom of his little helicopter and learned a valuable lesson. :) It amazes me how well his mental wheels turn! <3

New Jammies

Nothin' like 'em:

Dress-up

When we found out that the Halloween party we were planning on going to was canceled due to the flu, we decided to put the kids in their outfits for Small Group last night. Here are the obligatory cute shots:

Everything's Amazing; nobody's happy

Oh my gosh! This is SO true and is totally crackin' me up today! How 'bout y'all?

Working away is not always work!

In preparation for a silent auction benefit thingy I am helping out with a bit, I was putting together some lots to bid on. One being a scrapbooking lot. It includes lots of little embellishments, and it would be overwhelming to lay them all out, so I typed up a list of the items and then made these cute little origami boxes out of scrapbook paper to contain and pretty them up! :) This is a major accomplishment for me, because my 3rd grade students were consistently better at origami then me--it's just not my thing. Ahem, wasn't my thing, until tonight. Check 'em out! I used the tutorial for origami gift bags over at one of my new haunts, infarrantly creative. And I decided handles would make everything even more cluttered--um, did I mention I couldn't lay my hands on my hole-punch? But seriously, I think simple is better! ;)


The kids were pretty much having none of it, so I bribed Nehemiah with a toy we had put back until he was old enough for it...his IKEA train set. He adored it! The timing was great, having just been to the train museum last week.


And Adelynne? Well bless her poor, over-tired, no-napping soul, she tried!

Baking is fun in the fall!

Making Pumpkin Pie Cake (we made it with no nuts--of course!--and got the recipe from a friend, but I found it for y'all online anyway!) with Nehemiah for our small group tonight:

Here's another!

We are having a benefit dinner and silent auction for a friend at church with breast cancer. My small group outfitted me with supplies to make a diaper cake for the auction, and here it is, my first gender-either cake! :) Adelynne looked at the lion with pleading eyes the WHOLE time I was crafting. ;) She got the extra pink teething ring from the pack though, so no complaining was actually heard!