Traveling Texas, Testing, T’s and Treats

As you can read in the title this post if full of lots of different things.  A and I have been out of town the past few days so now I am catching up in many ways including the blog.  We attended the TX Baptist State Convention with 3 others from our church.  It was held in Amarillo also known as The Yellow Rose of Texas which btw between that and “Amarillo By Morning”, I found myself singing a lot!  I want us to go back to Amarillo maybe next summer.  The second largest canyon in the US is located there.  We didn’t have any time to see it and I would like to take the girls.  I just thought it was flat here.  It is SO flat there!  The convention was good.  It was interesting as a first timer (me) to see how decisions are made and to be part of that decision making.  We gained some insight into ministering to those in poverty which was really good and something we needed.  We ate some good food and the uninterrupted fellowship was nice.  We are extremely thankful for Melbie who came and stayed with the girls for us to go!  They of course had a blast! 

Now for the catching up:

Last week we took Sallie to her ENT in the metroplex.  He said her ears are just full of “stuff.”  He really thinks it is just debris, etc and not the cholesteatoma  which will be great.  He just has to get it all out and see.  They also did some hearing tests while we were there and the results were interesting for lack of a better word.  They showed more nerve loss and normally her tests indicate more bone loss.  SO, this throws another kink in the puzzle and leads to confusion on what device to implant.  All of that to say, we honestly are discouraged by this.  It is hard when the best of best ENT specialist is uncertain.  We go Nov 7th and she will be put to sleep to have everything removed from her ears and for a sedated hearing test.  We will see what the results are and go from there.  We need lots of prayers!  Specifically pray that the tests will leave no doubt in the Dr’s mind or ours as to where to go from here with a permanent hearing device.  Either way we have some major hurdles to jump once the decision is made but our God is able!  As always, please pray for peace for our sweet girl…

I took this pic in the Dr’s office.  She did really well that day!  I have a feeling going to the hospital might not be as easy…  Her bangs are going to drive me insane!  I am attempting to grow them out but one day they were so bad I trimmed them a little.  I hate them in her eyes but they will not stay back yet!  This DOES NOT happen so I HAD to get a pic of this!  Ell does not like matching her little sisters (I can’t imagine why!)  I came home one day showing her the stuff I got to make these shirts for the other girls and she said she wanted one!  Up close.  I am rarely completely pleased with my creations but I really like these!Ell did not want her name on hers so this is what I did with hers.  I think she liked having hers a little different!Not sure how I cut Ell’s head off on this one.  They wore their shirts “Trick or Treating” with their Missions Groups from church.  I thought this was a really cute idea.  The church was given a list of items needed for a Hospitality House in our area which houses families of hospital patients at a low cost.  The girls then went from house to house trick or treating for the items and they then took them to the House to drop them off.  Because we spent time in the Townhouses at UAB when Sallie was born we really have a heart for this.  Here the girls have their stuff and are leaving to go “trick or treating”

Today Mill and I made treat bags for Lizzie’s class.  This yr I am her room mom.  I decided since I was Sallie’s last yr, I would be Lizzie’s this yr and Millie’s next yr.  I did not think I could do Sallie and Lizzie.  I really could but it would be slightly difficult on party days.  Now that I am doing things for Lizzie’s class I feel bad that I am not for Sallie’s.  I will still help with parties for her but it is just not the same.  Anyway, they only get 2 parties a yr which they do Christmas and Valentines and then they do an Easter Egg Hunt.  Halloween they do costume parade (which is tomorrow) and then they give them treat bags so the room mother is responsible for that.  Mill had a good time helping me put them together!  I saw something similar to this on pinterest of course and decided to make a variation of it to send for the class’s snack tomorrow.  It is caramel corn (which I had a really hard time finding and thought I was going to have to end up making it but found it at Cracker Barrel while A and I were gone), candy corn, pretzels, marshmallows, and m&ms.   I wanted the m&ms that they have had at Halloween in the past that were purple, orange, and black but I could not find them anywhere this yr so I ended up with fall m&ms which are darker fall colors.  I think it would be fine to use regular m&ms too.  You could add raisins or cheerios or maybe gold fish.I dipped it out into these cupsAnd then placed the cups in these bags and tied them up.  They would have been cuter tied with black ribbon but I forgot to get the ribbon so I just used the ties that came with the bags.  I am sure Kindergarteners will not care!  Well, one of them might!And another treat-it has been a cold, RAINY day today!  Praise God the bar ditches are full!  FYI, bar ditches is rural Texan lingo!  I love looking out the door and seeing this-rain and green!  It is clover but it is green!

15!!!

15 years ago today I married my best friend!  He is still my best friend but my best friend and I have been through far more than we ever imagined 15 years ago!  We are better friends because of it all… 

We have proven many statistics wrong!  Not because it has been or is always easy and far from perfect but we take the bad with the good and we work through it all.  One of the best things A ever told me (with much authority) is that divorce was not an option and that we would work through every problem as if it were not an option.  When giving advice to other couples I usually share this because it really makes a difference in how you handle situations.  If there is no way out then you either work it out or live a miserable life together and no one wants that.

The world says we shouldn’t have made it to 15 but through GOD we have made it and I look forward to 15 more and 15 more and 15 more and…  We are not perfect and neither is our marriage but we do value our marriage and we do invest in it realizing it is work and we do place it above our children and all other things besides God and I am thankful that after several years of an “OK” marriage we  realized it takes all this to have a great marriage.  We want to instill this in our girls so that they can have great marriages from the beginning!

A officiated a wedding on Saturday and as I sat and listened to the ceremony and the words of God being spoken by my husband I had an incredible sense of thankfulness that he strives to be the husband HE has called him to be.  Thank you God for giving him to me and for the wonderful institution of marriage!

It was a very sweet ceremony and this was an excerpt:

Marriage is God’s truest celebration of love. In 1 Corinthians 13 we read:

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,

⁵ does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,

⁶ does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;

⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never fails

Paul concludes this chapter by saying, “but now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love”. Love demands a mutual submission, as Paul says in Ephesians 5: 20-21,”always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father; be subject to one another in the fear of Christ”.

He speaks to the wives.

²² Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

²³ For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body.

²⁴ But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

Then He speaks a word of encouragement and definition to the husband:

²⁵Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,

²⁸ So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself;

²⁹ for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,

³¹ FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.

³³ Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

The wife’s role is that of an attitude of reverence in her spirit, a servant’s heart, a grateful spirit, and a quiet spirit. The role of the husband is to be that of a priest to lead his family in worship, a provider to furnish for them the necessities of life and a valiant warrior to protect them from both physical and spiritual evils.

I pray that I am that wife and that I strive to be a more Biblical wife every day (The quiet spirit part takes A LOT of work for me but I have come a long way)!  The greatest thing I ever did in our marriage was to begin to RESPECT him (although at times I still fail miserably).  We need love, they need respect which is clearly stated in verse 33 above which is the basis of my favorite book on marriage titled Love and Respect.

15 years later and I love you more every day!!!

15 years and 4 daughters later and I love the way you love them!And one more because they are precious and prissy and ours 15 years later!

15 years later and this is how we spend our Saturday mornings (most of them anyway)!  And yet another one of the many reasons I love you so much 15 years later!I love that as I type this you are on a date with our firstborn because you love her that much and because you want the best for her and you invest time in teaching her God’s design for relationships AND that 15 years later you asked the other girl in this picture for a date this week too!!!

15 years later and I can’t wait to love you MORE with every passing day!

Pumpkin, Prayer, and Page

I’ve been thinking about the pumpkin muffins below and Hello! why did I not think to use spice cake mix.  I will have to try that.  Friday I made pumpkin bread (yes, I love pumpkin) and it was SO good.  It was perfect!

There are tons of pumpkin bread recipes.  I think I will stick to this one. The taste and texture are great!  Only thing that would have made it better was a pumpkin spice latte!  Yes, I love pumpkin “stuff” that much!  It makes 2 loaves so plenty to share!  Here’s the recipe:

3 cups sugar
1 Cup Vegetable Oil
4 Eggs
1 15oz. Can of Pumpkin puree
2/3 Cup Water
3 1/2 Cups Flour
2 tsp. Baking Soda
2 tsp. Salt
1 tsp. Baking Powder
1 tsp. Nutmeg
1 tsp. Allspice
1 tsp. Cinnamon

Preheat your oven to 350. Prepare 2 – 9×5 baking pans with non stick cooking spray. Cream sugar and oil together. Add eggs, pumpkin and water. Sift all dry ingredients together. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Bake for 1 hour.

A month or so ago our Men’s Brotherhood at church decided to do some work on the sidewalk leading to our house.  It is just really old and did need some work.  I have always wanted something done to it but have never said anything and would have never asked for it to be done.   So, I was thrilled when they came up with that project on their own.  In the last post you saw where A was removing the tree from the brick patio.  Well, I have always wanted that tree gone too but that meant that there was either a hole there or we had to do something there.  Once again, not something I would ask for.  SO, when they called about the minimum on the concrete it was enough to cover that brick area too.  God is so good to us in all things!  The tree is now gone and the work has begun to get a new sidewalk and to extend the porch over the brick area. You will notice between the area they are working on and the house is bare beds.  There were just random shrubs and flowers, etc there so we have removed all those ourselves and hopefully once this project is done we can get some shrubs in those beds.   Some of our men and RAs came over Saturday to begin work on it.  This picture was taken about 8 am and by 10 it was pouring RAIN!!!  Yes, RAIN!!!  Praise the Lord!  I do want my project finished but we were thrilled to see RAIN!  We got 4 inches!!!  I have never been so happy to see RAIN!!!  Our prayers for RAIN were answered and we are thankful!

So, our planned busy Saturday ended up a fairly lazy RAINY Sat!  We made the final touches on our new church web page.  Still a few more things we would like to do but after lots of work it is up and going!

Check it out www.redspringsbc.wordpress.com  I have also linked it on the left side of this blog.  The page is set up as a blog so we will be making regular posts and A will be posting on various topics weekly.

Life Lately

A working on our newest project-more to come on that laterWith help from his assistant!  Friday is supposed to be A’s day off and sometimes it is and sometimes it is not but last Friday he was off at least most of the day.  I think Millie really enjoyed having Daddy to herself.  Pretend she does not have on 2T jeans that obviously still fit in the waist but slightly short!

Building a “tall tower” as she saidFriday we were discussing dinner plans and we decided on potato soup.  A then mentioned that we should try bread bowls.  I love bread bowls for soups and dips but never attempted them.  Over the past year we have discovered many uses for frozen bread dough, including making wonderful cinnamon rolls with it.  It is really cheap and has so many uses.  I do not stick to a certain brand, just whatever is cheapest.  At some point I saw on the bag the idea of bread bowls.  So we went for it and they were great!  As you can see we made different sizes.  The girls thought they were neat.  I am thinking now soup will not be the same without the bread bowl!YUMMMMMM!!!

Saturday afternoon our SS class went to see Courageous.  It was a really good movie and definitely makes you think.  It was also good for us to get to fellowship without our children.  The movie is targeted at men but great for families in general.  I have heard a lot of talk about men needing this because of this and that and I agree and they are to be the leaders of our homes in every way but I think too often as women we do not allow them to be the leaders and/or support them in that role.  We need a lot of work too!  Our small group is beginning the study on Sunday nights so I look forward to digging deeper into the Bible on these issues. 

I saw this recipe for pumpkin bread or muffins on pinterest and wanted to try it.  It is simply yellow cake mix and a can of pumpkin puree.  I added cinnamon and nutmeg to mine because we love the spice.  They were easy obviously and pretty good.  They could have used some more spice and I am not sure what they would be like without and spices.  They are not our favorite Pioneer Woman Pumpkin Spice Muffins by any means but they were good for a quick fix.  I made cream cheese icing for them.OR, you could serve them plain I get the comment quite often that our girls are so “put together”.  Just in case the prior pic of Mill outside was not enough, here is further proof that they are NOT always “put together”   Note:  This was her own creation!You never know what these 2 will come up with.  This was their attire today after school!Blurry but this picture has so much to say!  LOTS OF PERSONALITY in this one!Once again, poor quality but I do love it!  Lizzie has been completely wiped out when she comes home from school.  Today she finally found some energy to play with Millie who is just bursting at the seams every day to get her home to play with her.  It is a struggle!  Today they had a great afternoon together!  Just like old times!Sallie looks less than thrilled in her big sister’s shoes!Daddy’s Home!  Not sure why so many blurry shots but I just had the camera close and took these.  Thankful the girls have a daddy who runs and plays with them (among many other things)!And He’s down!

I realize Ell is nowhere in this post but I tried to catch her this afternoon as she came in between FFA Ag Issues (yes, I said Elleigh and Ag stuff in the same sentence which could be a post of its own!  I am glad she is well rounded!) and FCA dinner but she does not cooperate when she is lookin’ “rough”  What can I say?  She got it honest!