Hello All!

Just popping in for another long update :).

Things are going okay here. The fall season has been a busy one. We have been busy with pears and apples and venison and various other things that come up this time of year. We are so very very blessed. This year we were given several bushels of pears, a couple bushels of apples, and recently about 70 lbs. of ground venison (its really good! no gamey taste at all). God is so good to us and always provides above what we ask!! This last week we had revival at our church and it was a blessing but was also quite exausting. We had church every night from Wed. thru Sun. and the services were near two hours long and then each night a different family served a meal to the entire church after the service. We were out late every night and then we were up early and doing our regular daily routine. By Sunday night everyone was exausted LOL. It was well worth it. The evangelist was fantastic and his messages really hit home for us. My husband made some decisions that I can already see are affecting his life and I am praising God for it.
Thanksgiving is coming up and we were invited to spend it with a family from our church and we are really looking forward to it! I will still make a small Thanksgiving meal for us to have on Friday but it will be so much simpler than the usual meal that I spend days working on. We can start decorating for Christmas on Friday so I am excited!! Whooooohooooo!!! I also have to start sewing again since there are only 37 days til Christmas! I am thinking about making the ladies those dishtowels with the potholders sewn on the corners...I saw something like that on Rachel Ray and thought that all the ladies I sew for would actually like them since we all seem to use our dish towels to get stuff out of the oven anyways lol. I have no idea what else I will be sewing yet though. I have so much I want to do and not enough time to do it all. I am going to have to seriously schedule my time from now until Christmas!
I found a wonderful recipe for spice glazed pumpkin scones at another blo!g and I am going to make that this monday for our ladies stamping party at church. It seems lately that all my "social" time has been spent with folks from church (and thats a good thing!)
Well, I have alot to do and need to get going. You all have a blessed day

update

just have a quick few minutes to update on what I have been doing. Things have been crazy busy here with the fall canning, baking, schoolwork, etc. We have had several of our "upkeep" appointments this month as well....all the kids had to see the eye doctor and yes, all of them needed glasses (not unexpected), then we had the dentist appointments, and next week we have spanky's diabetes appt. so we have been running alot. We also have been living on a weird time schedule that I have finally decided to change.....our days have been running from 9 or 10 in the morning to about midnight and I want to get back to the 7 am to 9 pm schedule if I can but it seems our life just runs at the odd hours more. I am not even sure I should change it although I feel like I "ought" to because so many folks act shocked when they find out how our day goes. We, unfortunately, have a person in our church that is a public school teacher and she thinks that everyone should go by the 8 to 3 school schedule. I don't know why I let that get to me. Our schedule is fine the way it is but I still feel like maybe I should go back to the more traditional times....maybe not thought. It does work for our family.
We have had some issues at our church lately, too. One big one is that someone in the church keeps insisting on dusting the pews with Liquid Gold furniture polish. My son is allergic to nuts and the almond oil in the LG really trigger a reaction from him. Thankfully we haven't had to use the epi but still....we have asked repeatedly that they not dust with it, it was removed from the cleaning cabinet and yet, someone keeps using it. That someone is well aware of the nut allergy and the LG issue. It makes me wonder exactly what she is trying to do? So anyhow, until the issue is permanently resolved he will be going to church with my inlaws whose church is Peanut/treenut free due to a child with nut allergies. Atleast I know he will be safe there. I hate to do it, but until this issue is resolved I have to keep my son safe.
We don't ask that our church be a nut free zone, that simply wouldn't be feasible for everyone in the church to go to the extremes that we adhere to. I would never expect anyone to do that, but I don't think I am asking to much by asking them to use one of the other dozen dusting products in the churches cleaning cabinet to dust with. Really, is that being unreasonable? Its not like I am saying that anyone can not bring things with nuts into the church. Heck, on Monday night we had a ladies thing and one of the ladies brought cookies with walnuts in them and I was in heaven because i can not have them at home or around my son. I don't get upset about that stuff because he doesn't come into contact with it....but the pews? C'mon, we sit in them 3 times a week.
Well, now that I ranted instead of sharing, I guess I will get off my soap box and get back to work.
Y'all have a nice day!!!

A wonderful day!

Last night we went to a revival meeting with some friends from our church. They used to go the church that was hosting the revival and invited us to go with them. It was an hours drive from our home but well worth it! It was absolutely amazing!! I have never been to a revival where the folks were so revved up before and we loved it! The preaching was by a Brother Fugate and he really knows how to "bring it"!! The church was so small that the pews weren't much longer than a loveseat and we were literally piled on top of each other with each adult holding one or two children on their laps just so everyone could fit in the sanctuary and the singing was so loud and not just because the room was small but because everyone was really giving their all. The preaching really hit home and the alter was full during the prayer, so full that folks were just kneeling where they stood or sat. Never seen anything like it before in my life!!! Its wonderful to see God's people like that!

Afterwards we went to DQ and enjoyed icecream and fellowship and didn't get home until after midnight. We have been very blessed to meet a family that is similar to ours at the church we attend. They have been such a blessing to us! Missygail is the only girl besides me in our home and she gets so lonely for female companionship of girls her age sometimes. This family has 9 girls (yes! 9!) and they are all such wonderful girls. Their oldest is teaching Missygail to play the piano which is such a blessing! She has been praying for piano lessons for years and finally God has answered in such a wonderful way!!

Tonight we have church as usual and I am looking forward to it. I love to go to church. I always have, even as a little girl. My family didn't go to church so whenever someone would invite me I would beg my parents to let me go. Sometimes churches have problems and we get hurt there but I am learning that no one is perfect and that you just have to let things roll off of you and not let them make you bitter. All too often people get hurt in church (emotioally, not physically) and they get bitter and never come back...sometimes its the lost who get hurt and turn away from any chance at salvation because of it, and sometimes the saved get hurt and give up on church and get bitter. I have been there, my husband has been there but we are learning that if we extend grace to those who hurt us its much easier to keep serving the Lord and enjoying ourselves while we are at it.

My younguns

Tang Pie & Veggie Pizza

This is one of my favorite summer desserts. Its very citrus-y and refreshing (though not so frugal to make)

Tang Pie
1/4 cup of Tang drink mix*
1 tub (8oz.) sour cream
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1 tub (8oz.) of coolwhip

Thaw the coolwhip. Beat together the sweetened condensed milk, Tang, and the sour cream. Fold in the coolwhip. Pour into a graham cracker crust and refridgerate for atleast 2 hours.
*you can use any sweetened drink mix in this with great results. We like it with the Countrytime lemonade and pink lemonade powdered mixes.

Veggie Pizza
1 cup each of diced broccoli, cauliflower, and shredded carrots
1 block (8oz) of cream cheese
1 cup of sour cream (8oz)
1 bottle of ranch dressing
1 bag (8oz) mozzerella cheese, shredded
2 tubes of cresent rolls
Unroll each cresent roll tube into its own 9x13 pan. Bake until done and cool. Soften the cream cheese and beat it together with the sourcream and the ranch dressing. Spread on the cresent rolls (we spread it on thick...for thinner layer of the spread use only half of the mixture). Mix the veggies together in a ziplock baggie and then sprinkle evenly on the dressing mix. Sprinkle the tops with the shredded cheese. Serve cold.

I took both of these to a ladies stamping thing at church and had several requests for the recipes. Its so easy that a child can make either recipe. In fact, for this particular church thing MissyGail made both recipes by herself. All I did was chop the veggies for her!

Daily chat

Hi all. I thought I would stop in and visit for a few minutes. Last Saturday (not this past one but th, e one before that) Hubby and I went out on a double date with another married couple from church. We had an absolutely awesomely fun time!!! We played putt-putt golf and we ate Coldstone icecream (oh my word!! its beyond divine!) and then had a nice dinner. Afterwards we went to Starbucks. I had never been to any of the 4 places we went that night.....and I have to say that I was not overly thrilled with Starbucks. I just am not a coffee person. Ick. But we had a wonderful time of fellowship with them and a nice date. However, we came home to sick children. Little Miss, Spanky, and Taterbean were sick. I wound up taking them to the doctor and they all three had ear infections and Little Miss also ended up with bronchial pneumonia and Spanky had a bad cold. Happily they are much better now.

We had done 2 days of school before they got sick and all last week they were too sick to sit up for very long, mostly they laid around and slept so Hubby and I agreed that we would "officially" start school on September 1st. That gives them plenty of time to heal.

Well, I need to run. I still don't have my computer hooked up right at home yet and my time is up LOL.
Have a great day and God bless!!

General Daily Talk

I am at my inlaws house sitting with my husband's elderly aunt. She is a wonderful sweet lady and I adore her. She recently moved in with my inlaws and can't be by herself for very long so I came to sit with her today so her grandson and my son could swim and go fishing. They went fishing and it started pouring down rain but they perservered by taking an old seat from a van down and a huge picnic umbrella and setting up their own little area safe from the rain. They even caught some big fish LOL.

Its finally hot here. We have been blessed with a very mild summer so far but Saturday the temperature started climbing and it has gotten HOT. I am so thankful that the duplex we live in has central air conditioning. We haven't had air conditioning in almost 3 years and it is so nice. The utility bill was high but not nearly as high as I expected it to be. I try to keep it at 76 but these last few days it has run non-stop. I am almost looking forward to fall.

I got the Christmas music out yesterday and had it playing. It drives the kids nuts but I just love it. I wasn't planning on getting it out this early this year (I made it all the way thru July without playing any of it LOL) but my MIL gave me a candle warmer and some candle tarts to go in it and one was scented "apple clove butter" and I swear it smelled so much like Christmas that I just couldn't resist getting out the Christmas music! Now I am also planning gifts. I was going to start early with gift buying and making but with the move and all I just have not had the time or the money to do it. I need to get on it now though. I have no idea what I am going to make this year. I know my MIL needs a new pair of fleece mittens (she got gasoline on the pair I made her last year). I just don't know.