During the big snow last week, I pulled out two things: a bowl to start collecting falling snow and this recipe for Snow Cream.

Super easy and a fun treat.

1. Collect a large bowl full of fresh snow (best to do this after an hour or two of snow fall, so pollutants are out of the air/snow and you'll be eating only fresh, clean snow).

2. Mix together 1 cup of milk and 1/2 cup sugar (I thought this was too sweet, so maybe slightly less sugar next time). Add a dash of vanilla.

3. Mix your fresh snow into the milk/sugar mixture until you have an ice cream consistency. Ours was a little thin - more like ice cream slush - but it was still delicious.

4. Enjoy!

I've heard that you can put your own spin on this - for example, adding a hot chocolate packet to make chocolate snow cream. Be creative. And by all means, let the kids help with this project! :-)

2/7/2011

Here at the beginning of this new month, I wanted to give an update for how things are going with a few of my goals for 2011.

Spiritual Goal: read through the Bible this year. How is it going: Great! I have a One-Year Bible that lays out what to read in daily sections - one longer Old Testament passage, a shorter New Testament passage, along with very short sections of both Psalms and Proverbs. My daughter has a children's One-Year Bible and is working alongside me, reading a section each day. We're both chugging along and making daily progress.

Physical Goal: lower my cholesterol and lose weight. How is it going: Well. I have been spending 30 minutes on our treadmill doing fast walking, 4-5 days per week. This week is the start of my 4th week of this exercise routine and I have already seen improvement. I'm also being more aware of the portions of food I eat and have added one more fruit into my day. So, it is going well.

Growth Goal: catch myself when I'm angry before I blow up / exercise self-control.
How is it going: Alright. Any growth in this area is so hard to measure, but I am encouraged. I am making baby-step improvement in this area, with lots more room to grow!

"If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time." This is my year of aiming at something. If I make it through December and have achieved my goals - wonderful! But even if I don't make it through the year but have made some progress and improvements and baby steps to my goals - it is worth it! Better to have aimed at something!

This week we were re-licensed as foster parents with the Indiana Department of Child Services. The process of transferring our license from our previous agency went very smoothly and took less than 3 weeks total.

So, we remain in a state of anticipation - waiting for a phone call, hopeful that this move will make us more likely to have options to work with younger children. We wait to see who the Lord will bring our way.

I was recently inspired by some other blogger's Valentine's wreaths, so I attempted a basic "rag" version of my own. I was very pleased with how it turned out.

Step 1: Find a wire hanger and bend it into a circle shape (or heart-shape). I kept the hook at the top for hanging the wreath, but that you could use wire-cutters to remove it if you'd rather hang it another way.

Step 2: Choose colors of fabric to use for your rags. I chose colors that could make the wreath versatile - plain red, plain white and red-and-white stripes. This wreath could be used for Valentine's Day as is, Christmas with a green bow on it, or Independence Day with a blue bow on it. Love that!

The fabrics were left-overs my mother-in-law was getting rid of so the cost to me was zilch. I spent maybe 2 hours on this project from start to finish, including time my kids were "helping."


Step 3: Cut strips out of the fabric. We cut strips of fabric about 1 inch wide by 5 inches long, but the size is totally dependent on how you want it to look. So test a few sizes and see what you like best.

Step 4: Tie the fabric strips onto the hanger in a basic pattern. I tied just one knot, but you could double-knot if you have longer strips and want them more secure. Keep pushing them closer together, making them tighter. In the end, none of the hanger should be showing.



Step 5: Hang up and enjoy your wreath!

To see some other Valentine's wreaths, there is one here and another one here.

This week my daughter and I finished reading The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene Du Bois. This is a Newberry Medal-winning story that was new to me in recent years. It has become my favorite children's book that I discovered as an adult! :-) (Charlotte's Web remains my childhood favorite children's book)

Professor William Waterman Sherman is the main character of the book. A teacher who loves ballooning, Sherman decides to take a year off to just float around the world in his hot air balloon (which has a small basket house attached to the bottom). He ends up crashing on the island of Krakatoa, meeting 20 families that have relocated there because of the diamond mines found near the base of the volcanic mountain. He spends just 3 days there until he and the families just barely escape the volcano's massive eruption that blows the Island apart (this is real history - happened in 1883). Of course, they all escape in a huge balloon rig. The balloon theme runs throughout the book, weaving together lots of creative uses and inventions.

I love the storyline of the book and how Professor Sherman is retelling his balloon tale so the reader, like the audience in the story, is hearing the events for the first time. But I also love the sheer genius of the creativity of the story. The elevator beds that lower to lower-level bathrooms or raise through the skylights for sleeping under the stars - my daughter immediately asked her daddy if he could install that in her bedroom! :-)

I love books that let your imagination soar and The Twenty-One Balloons is one of those books! I highly recommend it to all parents of young children (though technically this book is at a 5th grade reading level, so there were vocabulary words that my 2nd-grade daughter didn't understand... but now is as good a time as any to expand one's vocabulary!)

5 out of 5 stars for The Twenty One Balloons!

It's been a while since I've posted anything foster-related because there hasn't been much going on, except some behind-the-scenes activity.

We are transferring our foster license from our previous agency directly to the Indiana Department of Child Services.

Why?

• Our previous agency worked more with special needs and hard-to-place foster children. We did not know this until recently.
  
• Our previous agency is the second round of help for foster children. The first foster homes that are considered are the ones licensed directly with the State. If children are too much for those foster parents to handle, then they are referred to an agency like our previous agency.
  
• Our previous agency worked more with older children.
  

We are trying our hand at more homemade things in an effort to eat healthier and to save money (it's a beautiful thing when those two can be done at the same time!)

Last weekend we tried homemade yogurt using this recipe. This turned out great and we've been enjoying some healthy and delicious yogurt each day. Mixing it with fresh fruit and/or grape nuts is a filling breakfast!

We made 8 homemade pizza crusts to freeze and use throughout the month.


We made bread-machine buttery rolls using this recipe from Money Saving Mom. These were very good fresh with butter or honey drizzled on top. They didn't save well, so it's best to make enough for one meal at a time.


Last weekend we tried our hand at homemade noodles using this recipe from AllRecipes.com These turned out well, though we need to roll them a little thinner next time. Homemade chicken and noodles was a hit with the entire family!

And lastly, we made homemade pop tarts using this recipe from heavenly homemakers! These were surprisingly easy to make and even without using wheat flour, they are healthier than Kellogg's Pop Tarts. We enjoyed them as a dessert with one meal this week.

Have you tried making anything homemade lately?

1/19/2011

Works for Me Wednesday - Cooked Carrots Even My Kids Love!

Every mom knows how hard it is to get your children to eat veggies. Recently I discovered a way to serve carrots that my kids absolutely devour! And just as thrilling, it's super simple!

Cook your carrots (in boiling water until tender). Drain. Put a dollop of butter on the carrots and a small amount of brown sugar. Stir gently. Serve.

Since first trying this, I use a slightly less amount of butter and brown sugar each time (weening off the sugar... until my kids will enjoy the natural sweetness of the carrots alone).

Both my 7-year-old and my 3-year-old love carrots this way. They will ask for seconds and even thirds until every bite is gone. My daughter especially asks if she can finish all the carrots, after everyone has been served their first helping. My kids have never been big on veggies, so this is huge! I am now serving carrots every-other-day, with no end in sight!

It works for me!

The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White. Does that name sound familiar? E. B. White also wrote Charlotte's Web - my absolute favorite children's book of all time! Because of that fact, we picked up The Trumpet of the Swan and read it this week.

We liked it! Was it as good as Charlotte's Web? No, but it was a fun book to read. Entertaining. Laugh-out-loud funny in some spots. Educational as well.

The first few chapters seem very realistic. A boy is camping in Canada and finds some trumpeter swans on a pond. He is fascinated by the swans, as they swim and nest and eventually hatch their young. Then the story turns into fantasy, as one of the young swans takes a liking to the boy. They become friends. The boy helps the swan, who, as it turns out, has no voice and cannot talk, beep, squawk or trumpet as a swan should. The swan ends up learning to read and write, as well as learning to play the trumpet (since he could not do this naturally). In the end, all is well.

This is a great story to teach the "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" philosophy of optimism. Louis, the swan, learns to communicate in other ways since he has no voice. He is able to accomplish much with his life. He eventually fell in love and wooed his lovely Serena and became a father, despite his lack of natural "trumpeting" ability. His life lacked nothing because he chose not to sit on the sidelines and throw a pity party over his misfortune.

The Trumpet of the Swan was a fun read that I would definitely recommend to others.

1/17/2011

It's Monday. I am trying to get back into the routine of having a menu plan for the week before the craziness really kicks in. This week instead of the actual recipes planned out, I'm going with the following basic framework. My hubby's been finding lots of new recipes for us to try out so this week will include some of those.

Monday - pasta or casserole
Tuesday - something with beef (or venison, as we have a lot of ground venison my dad gave us over Christmas that we use instead of beef)
Wednesday - crockpot
Thursday - either tuna something or breakfast for supper
Friday - something with chicken
Saturday - hamburger helper type of dish with beef or venison
Sunday - leftover buffet

As usual, we are working off our pantry/storage stash. We try to stock up when we can get items free or super cheap. This week's meals will come from what we already have on hand. So far this month, we have been able to spend under $150 on food and might just stay within our $250 food budget for this month (this would be a new "low" for us; can't keep it this low every month, but we want to see if we can do it).

Do you have a plan? Meals don't just make themselves... get a plan together based on ingredients you already have on hand. And "bon appetit" this week! :-)

Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson

I found this book while doing some searching on Amazon.com for classic children's literature. The themes of this book revolve around showing kindness to animals and recognizing the importance of all creatures.

My daughter enjoyed this story. As with many books, the animals are talking and carrying on like people do. In this story, there are at least a dozen animals who live near the old house on "the hill." And new people are moving into the old deserted house. The animals are beside themselves with curiosity about the new folks. They turn out to be wonderful people, who share bountiful trash with the skunk and raccoon, leave plenty of veggies in the garden available to the little critters, have no issue with the mole tearing up their yard and will lend their aid to nurse an injured rabbit back to health. In the rather anti-climactic ending, St. Francis of Assisi is lifted up as the patron saint of animals and everyone lives happily ever after.

I found this book to be entertaining (and even suspenseful at times) but the ending to be a let down. And although I am all for treating animals fairly, I'm not all for thinking that animals have humanly thoughts about life or that we humans should treat animals necessarily as we treat humans. This book seemed to elevate the animals a bit higher than I do.

Another ok book - not great, but not terrible.

3 stars out of 5 from our family.

The Cricket in Times Square is another classic book that slipped past me until recently. I'd only ever heard the name before... until my daughter and I read it one chapter at a time in December.

The book is basically the Country Mouse, City Mouse tale. The cricket is from the country and lands in the subways of New York City, not knowing how he got there or what to do now that he's there. He's befriended by a cat and a mouse and a young boy who keeps him for a pet. In the end, though, the cricket is unhappy with the busyness of the city and leaves to return to quiet country living.

As a Wisconsin farm gal who has turned city gal to live in Milwaukee and Chicago and now suburban gal to live in the South Bend, Indiana area - I can relate to the cricket. For my daughter, I think some of these themes were lost as she was simply entertained by the story of the musical cricket with his odd friends.

A good story. Not a favorite, but a good story nonetheless.

3 out of 5 stars from our family for The Cricket in Times Square.

I recently read the article here.

I loved this because Paul Tripp put into words what I've thought for a long time. I'm all about setting goals and have no problem with New Year's Resolutions. The new year is a great time to evaluate where we're at and where we want to be. But making a statement in January doesn't get you any closer to that goal. It's the daily carrying out of baby steps that gets us there - not one big dramatic statement of resolution.

It is 10,000 moments of me holding my tongue when I want to speak a harsh word.
It is 10,000 times of speaking in a soft tone and not yelling at my kids when their toys are left out on the floor again.
It is 10,000 steps of obedience and faith.

It is how we live our lives each day that matters. What baby steps will you take today to achieve your big goals?

Me?

I am seeing my doctor today to discuss my high cholesterol to brainstorm ways to lower it... one of my physical goals for 2011.

I am reading a few chapters of the Bible each day to accomplish my goal of reading through the Bible in 2011... one of my spiritual goals for this year.

I am working on exercising self-control throughout the day, keeping my tongue and frustration in check. I hope to see improvement in this area of personal growth in 2011.

I challenge you to not just set goals, but to find baby steps that can be incorporated into your daily life to achieve those goals over time. 10,000 moments will get you there!

Christmas is over. Sniff. Sniff.

I hate taking down the decorations. I hate throwing out the Christmas cards, pictures and letters. And so began our annual tradition of praying through our Christmas Card list.


Whenever we're ready to start taking down the decorations, we start praying. We take one card/picture down each day and pray specifically for that person or family. [Yes, we hang up all of our cards on a wall, but whatever you do to save your cards will work just fine].

If they took the time to pick out, write in, address, stamp and mail a card to us, is taking a minute or two to pray for them really too much to ask?

This year I've added another layer to it. In addition to praying for the folks, I'm also trying to write a small note (or email) to each one on the day we're praying for them. This will encourage them and let them know that at least today someone was lifting them up in prayer.

This tradition does a few things that I love:

• I can help model the importance of prayer for others to my children
• We have a physical reminder of folks to pray for
• The holidays seem to last well into January by keeping our cards up longer
• People are lifted up in prayer to the Lord and encouraged to know that we care
  

In all the craziness of Christmas, remember this. I call it 1st Corinthians 13 - Christmas Style. Merry Christmas!


If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls, but do not show love to my family, I'm just another decorator.

If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime: but do not show love to my family, I'm just another cook.

If I work at a soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home, and give all that I have to charity; but do not show love to my family, it profits me nothing.

If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes, attend a myriad of holiday parties and sing in the choir's cantata but do not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.

Love stops the cooking to hug the child.

Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the spouse.

Love is kind, though harried and tired.

Love does not envy another's home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens.

Love does not yell at the kids to get out of the way, but is thankful they are there to be in the way.

Love does not give only to those who are able to give in return; but rejoices in giving to those who cannot.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.

Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust; but giving the gift of love will endure.

By Sharon Jaynes, Celebrating a Christ Centered Christmas

This book - One Wintry Night by Ruth Bell Graham - is new to me. It came highly recommended from a homeschooling friend so I purchased it a week ago and started reading a chapter to my daughter each night. What a delight is has been!

The color illustrations are by Richard Jesse Watson and are superb! Each one is very detailed and so life-like. They draw you deeper and deeper into the story.

The storyline is that of the Christmas story, except that it starts at the beginning of history and explains the need for a Savior. Chapters cover creation, the garden, the fall, the flood, the promise to Abraham and the prophecies of a Messiah, all setting the stage before getting into the traditional Christmas story. There are 11 chapters total.

Even though my daughter has heard all of this before, the strength of this book is how it ties it all together - the importance of Jesus' birth because He is the promised Messiah from long ago, the One who fulfills the prophecies, the One who will take away the sin of the world that began in the garden of Eden. It is the overall story of the Bible told in terms anyone could understand and with such beautiful illustrations to enhance the story.

I highly recommend this book to share with the children in your life!

Our first foster placement has come to an end. Yesterday our foster agency called to say that CJ's grandma has completed the paperwork and background check necessary for her to become his legal guardian. So as of yesterday afternoon, he left our home. We had him with us for just 10 days.

How are we processing all of this?

The bad:
*CJ was a handful and showed us in some ways how unprepared we are to handle a 9-year-old boy. So, I guess you could also call this good: we feel stronger than ever that desire to accept younger children is in line with what we can handle and what our kids can handle right now
*My kids are absolute sponges who soaked up a lot of the misbehavior CJ exhibited. The hardest part of the last 10 days was watching their behavior head downhill more and more as the days passed.

The good:
*We gave it our all and did the best we could with CJ
*Our kids opened up their hearts to love someone new
*We got our feet wet in the foster care system and learned more about how the pieces work together than we could get through the "theory" discussed in our training classes (ex. the role of the state case worker, our agency case worker, our role, the school's role, etc.)
*We provided a safe environment and consistent structure to a boy who needed it. And we made some memories. I am so glad he was able to go sledding almost every day, to help make and decorate sugar cookies, to plunk at the piano and realize he kinda likes music, to pick up some books to just read for fun - I'm fairly certain none of these activities would've happened in his previous home.

So, we have made it through our first foster placement. Who knows when we'll get our next call with a child to consider. In the meantime, we're enjoying reconnecting as a family of 4 and are preparing for a wonderful Christmas together.