Highway Thoughts

I like to listen to MP3 sermons on my drive to and from work (45 min if traffic is good). Today's message was by Chuck Swindol, it was about how Jesus was tempted, and I noticed something I hadn't noticed before.

In Matthew 4:11 the Bible says that Jesus went out into the desert to be tempted by Satan. I was convicted by the fact that when Jesus was tempted, at the worst point, He had Satan himself, a lack of shelter for 40 days and a lack of food for forty days - in the desert, and yet he still didn't fail; he resisted.

Oh how I fail so often, but not because of extreme duress or anything like it. I sit here with food in my stomach, money in my pocket, a roof over my head and all my dreams handed to me. I still fail, how weak I am. Praise You Lord for forgiving me! Praise You for loving me even after I fail again and again and again.

Jesus didn't care about his dreams. He came to this world fulfilling only His Father's will. I'm sure He had dreams, things He would have liked to do, a life He would have liked to live - a life He could have lived if He had wanted to. You could say that His dream was to fulfill His Father's will, and that's true. But I'm sure there were things he wished he could do.

I LOVE the cold weather, I LOVE snow and I LOVE driving in it (with the correct vehicle, which I don't own at this time). I don't even mind shoveling it. But I have to admit that I am spending sooo much time shoveling that I'm not getting other things done.

But the Lord has blessed me with two sons who like to help me. And they REALLY do help too! First of all they are good for company, its nice that they can talk to me about real stuff, not just nonsense. They also keep my mind from wandering which usually leads to my worrying about stuff or reliving arguments.

Our winter has been too cold to make a snowman (the snow won't stick together). So we resorted to piling the snow and making snow monsters. Although I have to admit that they really look a lot like Marjory from Fraggle Rock. I'm pretty sure Nathanael's was friendly since he's kissing his. BUT - I must warn you that Mattathias's monster looks friendly but that is just a guise; all the little bumps covering what looks like a stick are actually TEETH! I got that information from Mattathias as he was closer than I was.

Secondly they really do move snow! If I let them they can easily have two cars worth of the driveway cleared before I am able to get out there. They also get the path ready for me by clearing a line down the middle of the sidewalks making it faster and easier to clear the sides.

Mattathias is usually able to stay out longer (he's like me and doesn't really have a limit, we can stay warm indefinitely), but Nathanael is getting better at handling the cold and he's also getting better at shoveling effectively. I won't even get into how they help when I'm mowing; I'll save that for this summer.

Thank you Lord for my wonderful family! Raising 4 1/2 kids is a lot of hard word (I won't even mention how hard it is for Andrea) but the Lord makes it well worth the effort!

Create a Toddler shirt

So. . . Brian sent me link to a craft site. He probably didn’t expect me to blog about it 2 hours later though (took me a while to find a shirt that would work)
Anyways, one of the crafts he told me to check out was this :
http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-toddler-dress-from-a-t-shirt/Make a Toddler Dress from a T-Shirt!! How Cute!!
I finally found a shirt, it was a plain black shirt in a medium size (It was in a box in the basement, probably should have landed in Goodwill a while ago, but I was glad to find it.

So I cut it up, and pulled out my sewing machine and sewed it up. Next time, I’ll take note of how long the original shirt is on her before cutting, I actually really liked that length, and so I had added a couple of extra inches so it would have a bit longer waist.Oh well, a fun cute play dress!!

Oh, and I sew over a piece of dental floss when I need to gather. Just a zig zag stitch over it, and then pull the floss as tight as you need, and move the gathers as needed. So much less perment, and easy to do ;)And then, because I thought it was a bit plain I added some hearts. (Don't mind her pile of clothes, she just changed right there, and I forgot to hide them ;) )

Typing fun

Mattathias received a computer for Christmas this year. It was one of those kids computers, and hit has a lot of games, and a few 'programs' on it (calculators ect.) Of all the things on his computer his favorite program is a lot like Notepad in Windows. Really, the only thing he can do, is type letters. I wanted to get a picture of the last couple, because he's really funny in how he does it, but I was too late, it doesn't save any of his old info, just erases them.
Here are a few examples of what he has said:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM HAVE FUN AT BIAGIES HAVE A GOOD DAY

(This one is my fav)
MY DAD WORKS AT REMAX REEL ISTATE GROUP. HE IS THEIR TECH GUY. WE GO THERE ONCE A MONTH TO VISIT HIM.

He figured out how to capitalize things, and decided it looks really cool that way, so he won't leave the letters little ;) Sometimes he asks me how to spell things, but most of the time he just types it, and shows me later. I think it's really cute to watch him come up with things to say.
I'm thinking about finding a computer program to teach him typing, that is a game too. There are so many of them out there, it shouldn't be too hard once I decide to add that to his school day.

Story books

Yesterday after our reading lesson Mattathias and I talked about who writes stories, and we decided to write a short story of our own. I divided a page into six boxes and each box had one sentence and a picture that went with it.

Bunny soup by Mattathias
There once was a bunny who wanted soup
He found a house
He found a garden in the backyard
In the garden he picked vegetables
He put the vegetables in a pot
His friends were watching so he invited them

Cake Balls 2

Well, we did finish the Cake balls forever ago, and they have all been eaten too. Sorry it's taken so long to get this on.
The cake balls were pretty easy, but the trees, wow. :) The kids had tons of fun with these :) they got to add all the sprinkles!!
The trees 'hated' me. I had lots of trouble getting almond bark green, so I tried white baking chips. Still had lots of trouble, so finally I went to green frosting, and that was hard to work with, so I finally dipped the rest in chocolate. they were cute and tasty, just a pain. Probably my own lack of experiance ;) I would recommend the cake balls, but only if you really want a challange would I recommend the shapes ;)

Christmas Treats

I found a really cute reciepe on http://www.bakerella.com/ and had to try it!! So today the kids and I started making cake balls. Two different flavors and designs. We are doing Chocolate/chocolate balls, and then Red Velvete/White bark (colored green) trees.
We decided to make ours in two days so mommy doesn't stress out too much :)

The Ingrediants

There's three pans because I don't have two 9x13's, but I don't use it that often anyways.

Crumbled Cake!!

Getting started making the cake into balls

I made all the tree shapes, and the kids made the ball shaped ones.

EWWW, look at those hands :)

(see the rest tomorrow!!)