Life Centers 5K

Life Centers is having a 5K to raise money for their organization.  Life Centers help young women who find themselves pregnant and in a difficult situation.  By helping these women through their pregnancies and being available to help them after the baby comes, they get to show Jesus love to those in need.  If you would like to donate online to Life Centers you can go straight to my Fund Easy page

https://secure.ministrysync.com/ministrysync/event/website/?m=1936061#2

Let's reach that $1000 goal!!

Valentine's Day 2012

Hadley was very excited about Valentine's Day this year. She talked about it the whole week leading up to it. We had decided to bake cookies and take them to everyone at Daddy's work that day and she was really looking forward to it. Since she was so excited I decided to run with it! We had hear decorations all around the house: on the mantle on the TV on the doors, on the cabinets in the kitchen, going up the staircase. The girls thought that was really fun. We also had heart shaped food all day long!

Here is a picture of our decorated living room and the girls are playing with balloons they got when they woke up in the morning!

This is our heart shaped toast for breakfast

After we went to bible class we came home to heart shaped PBJ's for lunch!

After they ate their lunch they got their giant heart shaped cookies. This was the highlight of the day! I think they were very cute eating cookies the size of their head.

Here are some pictures of the cookies we passed out at Daddy's work. Hadley did a very good job walking up to each person and saying in a clear and audible voice "Happy Valentine's Day." I was so impressed by her because that is very much outside her comfort zone and she did an excellent job of it. It helped that we practiced beforehand. Bryan and I really want to teach her that we can make people feel respected and important by making eye contact and smiling. I also wanted to show her how nice it is to give to other people and this was a chance to practice both. And a chance for mommy to use her mixer and play with flooding sugar cookies.

I put John 15:13 on the cards and on the back I put my website for Joyful Bakes so maybe if they like my cookies they'll order some more :) It was a fun Valentine's Day!

Vision Forum

I wanted to take this chance to tell you about Vision Forum. They have a great selection of trustworthy Christian Books to choose from. I like that they offer excellent resources to go with your homeschool curriculum. Or just to read for fun. I know my husband would really love their history collections.
I like they way they categorize things for boys/girls/family/homeschool so it's easy to find. I can't wait till my girls are older and we can read some of their books together!!!

Proverbs Study Guide

Bryan and I believe that the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge like it says in the bible. One of the things we like to do is read Proverbs to the girls during Family worship. A radio host of a pro-homeshcool conservative Christian program we listen to is having a give away of his Proverbs study guide. You should check it out.
You can find Kevin Swanson at generationswithvision.com
and you can find the giveaway at http://raisingolives.com/2011/10/family-bible-study-guide-for-proverbs-giveaway/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RaisingOlives+%28Raising+Olives%29#comment-79271

I hope you enter to win!

Bonnets and Prairies

As many of you know we are into Little House on the Prairie right now and Hadley has to be Laura or Mary all the time. This had made for some fun sewing on my part. We are going as a prairie family for Halloween and today I made a bonnet at nap time. What do you think?



I used a tutorial that you can find here: http://howtodresslikeapioneer.blogspot.com/2010/01/bonnet-tutorial.html
Being that this was my first bonnet I think I did a pretty good job. However, I started out making myself a pink bonnet and messed up so bad I couldn't salvage the fabric..so I guess this is my second attempt. In any case, it was fast and easy and I'll be making 2 smaller ones for the girls tonight when they go to bed. Then we'll be all ready for Halloween!!

Apple Butter

Apple Butter is the opposite of me losing weight. But it is SOOOO good. And I decided to take a crack at making it myself this year. We went to an apple orchard over the weekend and stocked up on Cortland apples. We got 1/2 a bushel to be exact. Hadley and I spent yesterday peeling, but to be honest Hadley did most of the work. We used a counter top peeler and she got to crank it and watch the skin peel off in a long snake! I did not get any pictures of that. Then I put all my apples in the crock pot turned it on and went to bed. When I got up in the morning I woke to the smell of awesomeness! I made a fresh batch of biscuits and we had biscuits and applebutter for breakfast. (We did NOT overstuff ourselves on them, and I did NOT turn around and eat the leftovers for lunch)
Then to preserve all my hard work I bought some cute little half pint mason jars and I canned all that applebutter. It should last us a while and maybe I can give some as gifts. Next on the list is applesauce. I have quart jars for those and hopefully it will turn out as successfully as the applebutter did. YUM and Happy Fall :)

Large Family Logistics

http://raisingolives.com/2011/07/large-family-logistics-four-moms-giveaway/#comment-61864
I saw a book called "Large Family Logistics" at the homeschool convention this year and I've been interested in reading it every since. Go to the Raising Olives blog and you can enter to win a copy!