BHG Videos

Wow I was looking around Better Homes and Gardens and you know what?? They have videos, really, lots of crafty videos and all sorts of stuff. So just a little tidbit!
Have fun but don't waste too much time looking. :0)

Pretty Thanksgiving Centerpiece

I just love this look. I love the simple elegance of the white candles and the natural materials. Nice idea for the Thanksgiving table.

Pillar candles, white pumpkins and cream-colored gourds fill the top of a round butcherblock cutting board. Sprigs of wheat act as filler on the right side of the arrangement. Vary the look with golden yellow candles mixed with mini pumpkins and oak leaf sprigs on a tray.

Check out BHG for more great centerpiece ideas.

Gingerbread Waffles

INGREDIENTS
1 cup light molasses
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt


DIRECTIONS

In a small saucepan, heat molasses and 1/2 cup butter until almost boiling. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Stir in baking soda, milk and egg.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, ginger, cinnamon and salt. Make a well in the center and pour in the molasses mixture. Mix until smooth.

Spray preheated waffle iron with non-stick cooking spray. Pour mix onto hot waffle iron. Cook until golden brown. Serve hot with chocolate sauce or syrup of your choice.

Lack of Testosterone at Home

Testosterone Yep you read it right. All the testosterone has been depleted from our household. Johnny (wonderful husband), Cody and Joshua have all gone to Budapest to preach a Baptist history conference. Well actually only Johnny is preaching the conference the boys are going along to play with the missionary family's 13 kids. They are having a ball I have heard through YM.

So Hannah and I have been the soul recipients of the peace and quiet life has to offer when there are no little boys around to break through it. You know what, I hate peace and quiet. I am majorly missing the men in this family. They were due to be there through Monday evening but because they love us so much they are driving home Sunday night after the last meeting. Oh how nice it is to be loved.

We've had lots of fun though, just being girls. The past couple nights we have spent the evenings quietly enjoying the things we enjoy.

Hannah loves paper dolls so we found a treasure chest of them on the net. We found one page that is absolutely full of paper doll links. There are all kinds of choices too. Then we found a really good one, over at Simplicity and it's wonderful. Hannah has had so many hours of sitting and quietly enjoying the dolls that I was able to make two skirts for me and a new Bible bag for Hannah. So if you have little girls, check it out! :0)

Also while we played with the dolls and sewing a bit we listened to an audio book. Actually we have it downloaded and it was so nice to listen to. We listened to the Little Princess in two evenings and it was so nice. I've read the book and seen the movie but I like it better when someone else reads it, then I can do something else while I listen. Anyhoo, I wanted to pass on a link for some free audio book downloads. Scoot on over to kayray.org and start enjoying.

Okay so I'm going to have my dear daughter take a picture of one of the skirts I made a couple days ago so I can post it here.

Oh yea back to the testosterone thing, they're coming home tomorrow and it will be none to soon for me. Although Hannah has been sleeping with me, it's just not the same and I can't wait for my dear one to be back in bed beside me where he belongs. :0)

Seeing the Island Krk

We had a wonderful time showing our friends the Brantleys around Croatia. We went to a wonderful little town on an island in the Adriatic Sea where the walk ways were super small and everything was Mediterranean, it was so picturesque. Here are some pics I took while we were showing them Croatia.

This is the back side of the walled fortress thinggy that butted up to the sea. It was lovely looking out onto the open sea. I took a photo over the wall of the fortress out toward the Adriatic, that's another island you see out there peaking in from the left. Pretty huh?

This was the other side of the walled fortress you seen in the previous picture. It was so cool to be in this 1500 year old island town. Most of the structures on the island were made from the white rock that lines the Adriatic coastline.
The little halls are lined with little coffee houses. They serve the strongest black coffee you could ever want, I order mine with milk. :0)

I loved this little hallway because of the bell you can see at the center of the picture. I think that was a little church like thing.

I was amazed how many little towns there were nestled into the mountains along the coastline.

This last one is Johnny and I with our oldest son Cody (14). See how I'm slowly becoming the shortest on in the family? Even my 11 year old is hitting a growth spurt and my 9 year old daughter is already wearing my socks!

My Super Sweet Family

We've been preparing for our furlough and realized we needed a new family picture. We got all gussied up and headed off for the nearest photographers. In this picture my kids are 14, 11 and 9.

Here is a picture of our kids the day we arrived in Croatia, their very first trip out of the states. Cody was 7, Joshua was 4 and Hannah was 2. Pretty big difference from the above photo. I'm amazed how big my kids are getting, makes my eyes a little wet if I think about it too long. I thank the Lord daily that they are all healthy and pretty normal kids.

Blog Lines???

So am I the only unfortunate soul that is having problems with Bloglines??? I can't get to any of my feeds and I have been trying for weeks. I really do want to come and read all your blogs but I can't remember all my feeds. :0( Am I alone in this peril or what???

Seeing Croatia!

Last week we had the priviledge of showing around some dear missionary friends of ours. The Ingrams are missionries from our home church in Texas and serve the Lord in Romania. They came down and spent a few days resting and looking around Croatia with us, what a great time we had. Croatia is absolutely lovely. Here are a few pics from our trip.

I had to use this picture first, not that I'm proud of my best friend, well yea I am, he's my knight in shining armor and he's gets better every year. :0)

This was the prettiest little corner in the Palace of Diocletians in Split, Croatia. It was huge and this was only 100th of the size of the palace. What a sight!

Croatia's coast is totally clean. We were on the island national park of Kornati in the Adriatic. The water was like something out of a movie, you could see way down to the bottom it was so clear.

We took an hour and half boat trip to the islands. This is our Hannah getting to drive the boat. Actually the captain was selling those bandanas and was trying to get us to buy them. The funny thing is, he also had a plastic pipe that he gave her, she wouldn't take it but still. After Hannah was the captain we watched about 25 unsuspecting sailors get pulled into the captains room, he placed the bandana on their heads and the pipe in their mouths. Little did they know, by the time the last one had the pipe in his mouth it had been in about 20 other mouths before his. GROSS!!!

The boat ride came with complementary entertainment, well two guys singing actually. Really they don't look like much but they sang divinely. The sang Dalmatian love songs about Croatia. It was great. We talked with them for a long time.

We walked through the narrow streets of Diocletians palace and it was amazing. Want a wonderfully historical but lovely place to visit...Croatia! Oh yea those are my kiddos! :0)

This is the tower to the 2000 year old place of worship in Diocletians palace. I took this picture from an underground dungeon kinda place, it was awesome.

This is coastal town of Vodice, we stayed here in an apartment. We payed 50 Euros a night for 7 people, not bad huh??? The Apartment was brand new, it was really nice.

Me and my huney, married 15 years and still having way too much fun! :0) And yes I know that fluffy women shouldn't wear stripes!!!

We found a really nice place along the coast and looked for shells and critters. That's me in the black skirt with the sun glasses on my head. We found a hermit crab and I was showing how sweet the little things are.

Then we found a little sandy place and let the kids wade. Well it started as wading then it turned into swimming. Yes they were fully dresses except for shoes. They had a ball. I know your not suppose to swim in your clothes but oh well, it was great. They had to ride in the cargo part of the van on the way back to the apartment and they sang all the way.

Here's the last one from the trip, the sunset was just perfect too. We loved our time by the water. WOW what an incredible God we serve. He took the time to make every detail perfect in His creation. How blessed we are!!

Yep, it's me!

Goodness have I been gone a long time or what??? Over the last few weeks we've driven more than 2000 kilometers and seen way too much.

It's really nice to have guests from the states but when they are back to back it gets a little tiring. We did have a wonderful time over the last several weeks and I took lots of pictures. I'm going to downsize them later and post some.

We started school a few weeks ago only to have the guests come. It set us back a bit but things are back in swing now. This year we have a 9th grader, yea a 9th grader, I'm shocked too!! :0) Then we 6th and 4th graders, our plate is a bit full this year, hey it would be full with only the Algebra. Did I tell y'all that I stink at Algebra??

Oh yea one more thing...Thanks Ladies for all the sweet e-mails letting me know I was missed and wondering how we are, that means a whole bunch to me! Y'all are just way too cool!!!

Well I got this death notice this morning from a friend and thought I would share it. The latest victim of the EColi outbreak! Very sad!