Multitude Mondays

963. first snowfall

964. mad digging to find mittens, boots, snowpants that fit
965. Christmas music
966. playing guitar
967. making Jake laugh in the car
968.  Grandma Sinnaeve's tradition to take each child out for their birthday, spending time with them one on one
969.  playing Turkey dice game @ the Sinnaeves

970.  watching Landon & Chaney in Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - love it!!

971. siblings helping one another get BSF done and helping Mom by doing it

972.  playing Up & Down the River @ the Oesterles', laughter, teasing, fun, singing tunes from Joseph & Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with Cheryl

973.  Risk take-over in our home....almost every day, sometimes many times a day, the game will be spread out and kids will be taking one another on... Nate has become a real threat in this game and he and Isaiah are often battling it out for who is the winner  (check out Nate's face....he loves it when he's winning, he hates it when he's loosing)

974.  If it's not Risk these days, it's some other board game, like Monopoly

975.  celebrating Isaiah's 13th birthday with awesome, close friends!!  Goofing around, playing Capture the Football forever, teasing the dogs...

976.  boys growing up....friends that have grown up with them

977.  Making birthday calazones and slush with no birthday cake b/c we all knew we'd be filled to the max on 'zones and slush!

978.  Neighbor boys who come over any time of the day to play more Capture the Football

979.  more Risk!

980.  making gifts....knitting potholders to felt up and give away, baking Snowflake bread for neighbor

981.  eldest offering to make cookies
982.  eldest growing in serving others and doing another's chores for him
983.  beautiful REAL wreath from our friends in the woods

Making Laundry Soap

Recently, during a visit to watch a lady from our church make homemade bar soap, she shared a money-saving tip with me for making your own laundry detergent.  According to her calculations, it ends up costing about $2.00 per 5 gallon bucket.  For our family, that will be a huge savings.  It wasn't hard to make either.  Here is the recipe:

4 cups - hot tap water
1 Fels-Naptha bar soap (in soap isle at Meijer)
1 c Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (in laundry isle at Meijer)
1/2 c Borax (in laundry isle at Meijer)

1.  Grate bar of soap and add to a saucepan with hot water.  Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted. 

2.  Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water.  Add melted soap, washing soda, and borax.  Stir well until all powder is dissolved.  Fill bucket to top with more hot water.  Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.

3.  Next morning, stir up with your hands (will feel like jello) and then fill a used, clean laundry soap dispenser.  Shake before each use (will gel).
4.  To use for top loading washing machine:  3/8 c in each load.

Christmas Cookie Maddness

This year, I decided to make 3 different recipes of Christmas cutout cookies, so our family could decide which one they liked the best.  In the running was my Grandma Monroe's recipe, my neighbor- Amy Grice's recipe and Better Home & Garden's recipe that Ted has said he always liked.

So in the course of two days, we made about a bizzillion cookies and the kids were on frosting burnout.  We watched Elf and Voyage of the Dawn Treader while we frosted. Ben was the first to fall out and stop decorating.  He laid curled up on the floor with Maggie.  Madeline and Nate were close second, still sitting in their chairs, but unmoving with a dazed expression in their eyes, and holding their sticky fingers up as an offering to God.  Jake was the trooper, decorating until we had one cookie left and no more frosting!

 After the last cookie was frosted, I instructed the kids to choose a cookie from each batch and conduct a taste test.  If you can imagine, after stealing cookies and licks of frosting throughout hours of making them, my kids weren't that hungry to do a taste test.  But the results eventually came in:
1st place:  Amy Grice's recipe (Isaiah, Madeline, Nate, Charli & Ted)
2nd place:  Grandma Monroe's recipe (Jake, Ben)
last place:  Better Homes & Gardens recipe

I could kick myself because I didn't take any pictures of all the cookies we made or any pictures of the kids eating them in the next few days.  The sad part is that I don't think they even lasted a week!  The kids ate them all the time!

Here is the top two recipes:

Amy Grice Sugar Cookies

2 c sugar

1 c shortening

3 eggs

3/4 c sourmilk/buttermilk

1 t soda

3 t baking powder

1 t salt

4 c flour

Chill dough 4 hours or overnight.  

Roll out and bake @ 350 for 10-15 min.  

Iced with powdered sugar icing w/ hint of almond flavoring.

Grandma Nettie Monroe's Christmas Cookies

Mix - 3 eggs, 2 c sugar, 2/3 c milk, 2/3 c shortening

Combine dry ingredients and then mix with wet mixture - 1 t baking soda, 1 t nutmeg, 6 c flour.  

Roll out to 1/4" thickness and cut.  

Bake @ 350 for 6-8 min.  

Decorated with powdered sugar icing.

This Little Light of Mine

I've fallen in love with this song by Addison Road.

 

This Little Light Of Mine

There’s a little flame inside us all

Some shine bright, some shine small
The rains will come and the waters rise
But don’t you ever lose your light
In this life you will know
Love and pain, joy and sorrow
So when it hurts, when times get hard
Don’t forget whose child you are
Chorus
This little light of mine
I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine
I’m gonna let it shine, gonna let it shine

May you live each day with no regret

Make the most of every chance you get
Let your eyes get wide when you look at the stars
With the same sense of wonder as a child’s heart
With the ones you love treasure the time
And for those who are gone keep their memories alive
Hold on to your dreams don’t ever let go
There’s a fire inside you burning with hope

Repeat Chorus

One day there will be no more pain
And we will finally see Jesus’ face
So until then I’m gonna to try
To brave the dark and let my little light shine
Repeat Chorus

Count the Cost

It costs something to be a true Christian. Let that never be forgotten. To be a mere nominal Christian, and go to church, is cheap and easy work. But to hear Christ’s voice, and follow Christ, and believe in Christ, and confess Christ, requires much self-denial. It will cost us our sins, and our self-righteousness, and our ease, and our worldliness. All- all must be given up. We must fight an enemy who comes against us with twenty thousand followers. We must build a tower in troubled times. Our Lord Jesus Christ would have us thoroughly understand this. He bids us “count the cost.”

~ J.C. Ryle

This last week in Experience God I was bombarded with the words costly....to be obedient will be costly....to follow Him where He leads will be costly....God is so cool how He doesn't let me get away with my, "I'll just think about that tomorrow" heart lately.  I love Him!

Christmas Traditions

As I watch my children pull out Christmas decorations, it reminds me of my childhood.  Did I drive my mom crazy too with my haphazardness in what I wanted to get out first?  Once the tree is up, the kids want to look through their boxes of personal ornaments and see who can get their's on the tree first.

Then comes the nativity box which contains 5 sets of nativities and all the kids want to set their's up somewhere, but mostly the end up keeping them on the toy shelf and playing with them.

Then pack away everyday frames and nicknacks to make a room for Mom & Dad's nativity set.  It's ironic how we have to make room for Jesus, just like so long ago in Bethlehem.

There's always the random fun things as well, like Ben modeling a fashionable treeskirt/manskirt...

and Jake serenading us all with a wooden recorder he found (and driving us a little crazy with it.)

Then it's time for our traditions....our Mary's Starpath.  This tradition has been with us since our first kids were little.  At the beginning of the Advent season, our stars are lined up as a winding path under our tree, big stars marking each advent Sunday and they lead to the wooden stable.  Each night as we prepare to move Mary & Joseph to the next star, we light a candle and sing this song...

On the golden starpath walking,
Mother Mary travels far.

Brings to us the light of heaven,

Brighter than the brightest star.

Moonbeams shine for Mother Mary,

Bells of heaven sweetly ring,

All the earth is hushed to listen,

When the angel voices sing.

Soft her footstep on the starpath,

Stardust sprinkled in her way,

Mary brings to us the Christ child

Brighter than the brightest day.

Then the youngest children take turns taping the star passed onto our starry sky.  Each advent Sunday we read a chapter from Mary's First Christmas.  Another tradition we've done since the kids were little.  It always makes me cry.  Each Sunday, part of our nativity scene grows as well, one week I add the shepherds, one week the sheep and cattle, one week the wise men travelling across the room. 

What would Christmas be without homemade gifts as well.  It is one of my favorite memories from each year....sitting w/ a knitting project in my lap, while the other children are knitting close by and we listen to audiobooks like The Christmas Carol, Narnia series, and many others from Focus on the Family Radio Theatre.  Here is a project I worked on, knitting up potholders then felting them so they would be tight.  I love making these!

Another tradition we have is baking and making treats.  I've shared already about the Christmas cookie challenge we did this year.  I think that did us in for making sweet treats, so I decided to make Snowflake bread for our neighbors.  The kids helped make it, they love to knead the bread, and then they delivered it late one night in the dark, down Crocus Trail to our five neighbors who bless our life day in and day out.

I used our much loved bread recipe and made it Snowflake bread by adding a cut snowflake on the top.