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Giving Thanks for Thanksgiving.

Posted on Nov. 23, 2007 at 5:01 PM

Yesterday was such a wonderful day. I am so incredibly blessed with family and friends. We had, including my sweet husband and girls, 38 people present for Thanksgiving dinner.

Every family brought food. We had quite a wonderfully delicious array … turkey, gravy, two different types of cornbread dressing, bread dressing, cranberry sauce (not from a can!), mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole (with nuts and sugary stuff on top, sweet potatoes with butter, green bean casserole, asparagus/bacon something (I cannot remember the name :) ), cheese ball and crackers, olive melody, raw veggies with ranch dip, black olives, Kamut rolls, white rolls, ambrosia, pumpkin pie, two type of cheese cake, truffles, chocolate covered peanut butter balls, homemade whipped cream, carrot cake, coffee, tea, sparkling fruit juices, spiced apple cider and of course water.

We had 24 children between the ages of 3 months to 17 years. What fun was had by all. We have this big yellow garden cart and it was the hit of the day. Rides all over the yard for hours … my lawn is flat! Ha!!

And oh the conversation … what a joy! Add in guitar playing, singing and an old fashioned musical bottle blowing concert! What else could be wanted?

The wonderful ladies even cleaned the kitchen, did all the dishes, directed yard clean up and the gathering of all trash. That made me want to cry. I have been able to rest and recover today … I am soo very blessed.

Our first guests arrived between 12-12:30 and the last left after 11:00. Such sweet fellowship! What a wonderful, wonderful blessed day!!

~ Rachelle

Roses for Mother's Day

Posted on May. 16, 2007 at 3:16 PM

My sweet husband and daughters gave me a dozen of these lovely roses for Mother's Day. I love roses. :)

~ Rachelle

Our California Vacation

Posted on Apr. 5, 2007 at 5:17 PM

During my little blog vacation my family and I were taking a Real Vacation. We spent 8 days is beautiful southern California.

Over a year and a half ago my husband received a vacation package as a gift for his 20^th anniversary from the company he works for … we finally got to use it.

We stayed with my sister and brother in law for four nights. They pampered and spoiled us! We had such a wonderful time visiting and spending time with them. The other nights were spent at the Bahia Resort which was nice but not near as homey as my sister’s house.

We were very busy our entire vacation. We visited: The Birch Aquarium, The San Diego Automotive Museum, The IMAX theater at the Rueben H. Fleet Science Center, Museum of Creation and Earth History, Sea World, The San Diego Museum of Man, The San Diego Natural History Museum, The San Diego Zoo and my favorite … the Ocean!

We had a great time and I am amazed that I was able to go so many places and still able to stand by the time we got home. For those of you who do not know, I have a chronic illness that makes life a little difficult at times. I have seen a turn around in my heath recently that this trip proved true. I am so thankful to the Lord and those who have been praying for me.

Here are some pictures from our trip …

~ Rachelle

Keeping Pumpkins Experiment - February

Posted on Feb. 16, 2007 at 8:36 AM

Last Fall I wrote about an experiment my family does each year. After we are done with our pumpkins for Fall decorating we put them somewhere on our back patio and ... well, they just sit there looking pretty for as long as they will last. Our pumpkins from 2005 lasted until the middle of Summer 2006. I do live in Arizona and the Summers highs are always in the hundreds so lasting that long always surprises me a little. The pumpkins below were bought in October 2006 and I took these pictures this morning, Feruary 16, 2007. They are in great shape, still firm and looking much like they did when we brought them home.






~ Rachelle

Thanksgiving Traditions

Posted on Nov. 21, 2006 at 7:49 AM

Thanksgiving Traditions

From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

Tradition:

1 a : an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom) b : a belief or story or a body of beliefs or stories relating to the past that are commonly accepted as historical though not verifiable traditions attributed to the Prophet -- J. L. Esposito>
2 : the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction
3 : cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs, and institutions

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Tradition. Traditions. We love traditions at our house! We even have one tradition, that seems to be a part of every holiday and celebration at our house, that I really, really, really dislike!

Our Thanksgiving traditions …

Our menu rarely changes. The favorites must be served or … it will not feel like Thanksgiving! Or so my family tells me. :) The menu:

Turkey. Our turkey is roasted/steamed in either a granny ware enameled roaster or a 18 quart Nesco electric roaster. The innards are removed, the turkey rinsed and then patted dry with paper towels. Next comes the oiling. We normally use extra virgin olive oil to coat the turkey end to end but I think we will use butter this year. We often rub some herbs and spices on the turkey and once even took the extra step of pushing a spice mix under the skin. The turkey is placed in the pan, *breast down* and about two to three inches of chicken stock is added to the bottom of the pan. This causes a lovely turkey steam bath. I should say that our goal when cooking a turkey is a yummy moist turkey that is carved on the counter and placed on a platter for serving. Our turkeys are usually broken and falling off the bone at the ending of their cooking time. We do not concern ourselves with our turkey making a beautiful presentation. Taste over looks is our motto!

My dear mother in law’s should be famous Cornbread Dressing. It would not be thanksgiving at our house without this. We would give up having turkey before even considering the removal of this favorite dish from the menu.

Mashed potatoes from real potatoes, no boxed allowed.

Green beans (sometimes broccoli). Somehow, we often forget this until the last minute when everything else is just about done.

Rolls. Often those nasty white flour ones all for lack of time to make our own. Much preferred are homemade. My older daughters are setting our yeasted buttermilk bread/rolls dough to soak today! They will be cooked tomorrow. Yay for making things in advance.

Gravy. Yum. I love gravy. My mom usually makes this right before the meal. Confession … I drown most of my meal in gravy.

Veggie tray. Carrots, cucumbers and homemade ranch dip.

Black olives. A throw back to my childhood and a necessity! I love black olives.

Cheese ball and crackers. Another one of those we have to have its. 

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Decorations. We have a few Thanksgiving decorations that we like to have about each year. We have a ceramic turkey with little pumpkin candle holders that I got the first year we were married. It is in soft fall colors and is supposed to look like it was quilted and stuffed. I have a turkey timer that I got from Cracker Barrel while on a vacation that must come out each year and take a place somewhere in the kitchen. Our glass pumpkin shaped containers were candle holders one year, this year they are filled with a variety of nuts still in their shells. We always try to have different gourds and pumpkins about. A large leaf shaped maple syrup jar serves as a vase and a couple small leaf shaped jars, still filled with maple syrup stand at it’s sides.

Our Thanksgiving table is graced with several leaf shaped dishes that belonged to our grandmas, they are filled with butter, olives or other little things. A dozen cute little candle pumpkins join the leaf dishes each year along with a bunch of dried leafs from a vacation we took a couple years ago. We live in a desert and have few leaves that actually turn yellow or orange when they fall. So, when our vacation happened at such a wonderful time of year and the city we were staying in was in beautiful autumn color … we collected lots of leaves to bring home of course. 

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Our Thanksgiving Book. I bought a little spiral bound book intended for scrapbooking at Michaels. I printed out our Thanksiginvg recipes and mounted them in the this little books and made a decorative cover. I intended to make a list of who came to Thanksgiving dinner each year in all the extra pages but have not remembered. Maybe this year?

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Oh! I almost forgot to add my disliked tradition! Can you guess? Last minute running around like chickens with our heads cut off cleaning, picking and making everything ready! I often wonder why we did not start sooner or if we did start sooner what were we doing since there is still soooo much to do!!! :)

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Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Christmas Traditions

Posted on Nov. 3, 2006 at 11:29 AM

Our Christmas Traditions

~ Each year a few days after Thanksgiving we start our Christmas devotions. We choose a new candle each year and burn it each night. My husband reads a small portion of Scripture each night slowly reading our way through the Christmas stories in both Luke and Matthew. We sing a few hymns and pray. This is followed by the taking down of the day marker for our count down to Christmas. We have a framed cross-stitch calendar with little pictures tied to each day. It has a picture of a nativity scene at the top and each of the day pictures have something related to the Christmas story.

~ Christmas morning – the first thing we do (sometimes before and sometimes after getting dressed for the day) is to read the Christmas story in Matthew or Luke, sing songs and thank the Lord for coming to Earth as a baby to bring us salvation.

~ We collect Nativities. We have all kinds … metal, glass, wood, clay, cloth, porcelain, paper mache and even a some made of plastic. We put them throughout the house. We have so many that we can no longer put out the wise men in the sets for lack of room!

~ We love to listen to Christian Christmas music starting Thanksgiving night. We have a small collection of cds and try to add a few more each year.

~ We do have a Christmas tree but, other than colored bulbs and lights, we try to have the ornaments represent the Lord or something He made. We have many nativity ornaments and put a wooden nativity (one that includes the stable, all one piece) in the lower branches of our tree each year. 

~ We rarely put presents under our tree and those are only ones that come in the mail or are dropped off by my mom (and we try to put those in a closet instead). I do not care to have Christmas be about gifts and prefer to not have my daughters dreaming about what may be hiding behind paper under the tree. Besides if we put presents under the tree … where would the cats lay?? :)

~ Gifts. We do give gifts to our children for Christmas but do it a little different than most people we know. We have never had our children make a wish list or even asked the girls what they want. I give a lot of thought to what to get the girls and pay attention to their interests during the year. I try to buy them useful, quality items that will bless them and stimulate their mind or give health to their body. Many of the gifts we give are group gifts. We have four categories of gifts that we give: books, crafts, games and the other category.

Books - we usually have a small stack of good books and/or field guides. Often we buy books from Keepers of the Faith. This category and the Crafts one below are wonderful for helping supply things needed in our homeschool. :)

Crafts – somehow this has become a tradition! Paper (white & colored copy weight paper and white & colored card stock), envelopes (for making their own cards), colored pencils, erasers, crayons, regular pencils, decorative and regular scissors, punches, stickers, tape, glue sticks, chalk, ect…

Games – we usually buy at least one game for the family game collection.

Other – this is the fun category for me. This is the gift area that is handpicked to interest or just for fun. For my older girls: one year scooters, one year roller blades, one year a mass of scrapbook stuff and last year the fillings for a sewing box (that was really fun!). The younger girls usually get something different and I am drawing a blank other than last year … a Playmobil dollhouse complete with the furnishings and dolls.

~ Since we do not put the gifts under our tree … what do we do with them. Create a treasure hunt of course! We hide each category of gifts in a different place in the house and I write a series of clues (in rhyming fashion) that the girls have to figure out to find them. When they find the gifts they bring them to where we (my sweet husband I) are to open them. This is soo fun.

~ Wrapping of gifts. We rarely use wrapping paper. Instead we use gift bags (with Nativities on them. :) ) and big bags I made out of material. The bags are like pillowcases and wonderful for wrapping oddly shaped things or many things in one (like the craft supplies … it all usually goes in one bag).

With all these traditions it may surprise some to know that I have studied Christmas, it’s origins and traditions in depth. At one time I was ready and willing to give up any participation in Christmas in any way, shape or form. So you understand the hugeness of this willingness I must tell that Christmas has always been my most favorite holiday. I have loved the Christmas season since I was little. My studying caused me feel sooo guilty being a part of such a holiday and I thought it must be displeasing to my Lord. I practically begged my husband to let us stop taking part. He, my sweet husband who loves the Lord, said “no”. He did not feel it was sinful or wrong. We have never done the Santa tradition and already had some of our traditions in place (such as Christmas morning worship). So I rested in my husband’s decision and chose to make the Christmas season, Christmas Eve and Day focused on Jesus and His coming to earth as a child to bring us salvation. I try to bring Him into our celebration in every way I can.

I learned a couple of things during that time in my life:

- That a wife should be very careful when she begins to read and study other people’s writings and opinions. That she should not allow convincing writing styles, or those writings that cause feelings of guilt, to sway her beliefs or opinions without much prayer and discussion with her husband. She should not embrace other’s ways in her heart until she knows that those things are the way the Lord is leading her family through her husband.

- Since the husband is the leader of the Christian family the Lord is perfectly able to tell him when it is time to make radical changes to how the family lives and celebrates.  

- That choosing to adopt the ways and opinions of other people without the blessing of your husband, even if only in your heart, is a recipe for heartbreak. It can also possibly cause you to look down on your husband as less spiritual than you or just make you wonder why and how he does not see, understand and want to act on what you do.

- Do not be afraid to follow your husband’s lead. He is the one the Lord set up as the leader of the family. There is nothing wrong with discussing new ideas with your husband but if he does not agree … rest in his decisions. If the Lord would have your family change it’s ways He is surely able to tell your husband in His own time.

Christmas … still my favorite holiday of the year! :)

Ten ways to prepare for the season

- Remember the reason we celebrate – Jesus!

- Make lists

- Delegate

- Relax

- Enjoy

A Fall Tradition

Posted on Oct. 26, 2006 at 7:33 AM

I really love pumpkins and each Fall we buy several to decorate with. I always felt bad throwing them in the trash when they were no longer wanted as decorations so ... we do something with pumpkins that no one else I know does. Each year when Thanksgiving is past we take all our pumpkins out to our back patio and find a place for them. One year they were all on a bookcase. Last year most of them were by the back door. Then … really creative here … we leave them there! And we go on with life.  What is the point of all this? To see how long the pumpkins will last before they rot and have to be thrown away!

Below is a picture, taken on May 9, 2006, of three of our pumpkins (those are white ones barely peeking in on the sides of the photo) that we bought last Fall. My daughter checked her journal to see if we recorded the final throw away date. I think we forgot. She thinks it was early August, I thought it was late July … close dates anyway.

The pumpkins do some strange things sitting out there. We had a Cinderella pumpkin (big flat squatty brownish orange pumpkin … such a cute pumpkin) that had a place of honor for it’s last days … it was on a little metal table in the center of a sitting area. It grew all kinds of weird knobby things the older it got. I wish we had taken a picture! My number two daughter did cut it up and inspect it before we threw it out.

The pumpkin below did not have all those brownish scratch looking spots when we bought it … they are from age. I just told the girls we need to take more pictures this year as documentation and we must record the final toss date! I do think it is rather neat that pumpkins can last so long outside exposed to the elements, I do live in Arizona and 100* temps start in May. This yearly experiment of ours may seem silly to some but we do homeschool and these are our “Pumpkin Studies”. Do you think this could count as Science?! :)

Christmas …

Posted on Dec. 5, 2005 at 12:27 PM

Oh how I love this time of year! We finally did some decorating this weekend and we bought a new tree. Well … took back a new tree that was waaaaay to big around to fit in our living room without putting the loveseat in the garage and then we bought one of those tall skinny trees with the lights already on it. It is 9 feet tall but only about 45 inches in diameter. I am slowly getting used to it. It has taken me three years to even consider having one of *those* trees in my house. I still think they are kind of funny looking!

This is the tallest tree we have ever had. Our ceilings are 10 feet so with the star on top it will be close! We decided on such a tall tree so we will have room for all our ornaments … when you get a smaller diameter tree you have waaaaay less branch to put things on. Our tree theme is Jesus birth, things that God has created and Country Victorian. Sounds like an odd combination but we think it is pretty.

We also collect Nativity scenes. We have many different kinds - glass, ceramic, wood, paper, resin, cloth … hmmm, I don’t think we have any made of metal! They are all so different and several are from other countries. It is a challenge to find places to put them all. We found a couple of cute ones at JoAnn this weekend.

We started our Christmas devotions right on time this year, on the 1^st. We did Advent a couple times several years ago and then created our own family devotion time that has become tradition. Each year we buy a special candle that we light each night for our family devotion time. My sweet hubby then reads a part of the Christmas story in either Luke or Matthew each night (we usually go through the story at least twice in each book from the 1^st to 24^th). After reading, we sing Christmas songs. Last year we made our own Christmas songbooks out of small three ring binders … it is nice to have allllll the words, some of those songs have many, many verses! We close with the two littler ones blowing out the candle (they take turns each night) and taking down the days piece on the countdown calendar. The calendar is a cross stitched and framed piece that my mom made for us that has a little cross stitched pictures tied on each day. The main part of the calendar is a Nativity scene and the pictures for the days are things like a shepherd, a king, a gift, animals, a manger, Mary & baby Jesus together.

The Christmas season is here …. Yay!!

Thanksgiving Alert!

Posted on Nov. 10, 2005 at 3:10 PM

Let the countdown begin!! Thanksgiving is two weeks from … today!