Friday, November 28, 2014

Taking the day off...

This morning the girls and I, all 5 of us, are headed to my parents for the day for round 2 of Thanksgiving dinner ;)  My sister and brother in law, my twin brother and sister in law, and Daniel are all up there so we are going to join them.  I already have a ton of pictures to edit and I'm sure I'll be adding a few more to the bunch so stay tuned on Monday for a catch up post! 
 Enjoy your weekend!

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are spending the day with Doug's family.... watching the parade and the dog show and eating yummy food :)  Take the day and enjoy some time with your family!  
We all have a lot to be thankful for!


Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Little Junior Church Class

These kids have worked SOOOOO hard on this verse and song!  I'm so proud of each and ever one of them.  The little girl on the right has only been coming to church for 3 weeks so she didn't have the verse down yet, but she knows the song so good and was such a big help!  

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Is it enough?

I ran across this on Facebook and it hit me hard...I thought I would share it and challenge you to join me in giving Christians a fresh start from whatever past they may have...If God isn't tossing them away as garbage, why should we?

One night in a church service a young woman felt the tug of God at her heart. She responded to God's call and accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior.

The young woman had a very rough past, involving alcohol, drugs, and prostitution. But, the change in her was evident. As time went on she became a faithful member of the church.

She eventually became involved in the ministry, teaching young children.

It was not very long until this faithful young woman had caught the eye and heart of the pastor's son. The relationship grew and they began to make wedding plans.

This is when the problem began. You see, about one half of the church did not think that a woman with a past such as hers was suitable for a pastor's son.



The church began to argue and fight about the matter. So they decided to have a meeting.

As the people made their arguments and tensions increased, the meeting was getting completely out of hand.

The young woman became very upset about all the things being brought up about her past.



As she began to cry the pastor's son stood to speak. He could not bear the pain it was causing his wife to be. He began to speak and his statement was this:

My fiancee's past is not what is on trial here. What you are questioning is the ability of the blood of Jesus to wash away sin. Today you have put the blood of Jesus on trial. So, does it wash away sin or not?



The whole church began to weep as they realized that they had been slandering the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.


Too often, even as Christians, we bring up the past and use it as a weapon against our brothers and sisters.

Forgiveness is a very foundational part of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If the blood of Jesus does not cleanse the other person completely, then it cannot cleanse us completely.

If that is the case, then we are all in a lot of trouble.

What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Psalms 55:231 John 1:9


Original link can be found here.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Much needed time....

My sister and brother in law live in South Carolina.  Because of that, we don't get to see each other very often.  Usually they will come up once or twice a year and we meet at Mom and Dad's house to see them.  This trip, they decided to swing into our place first and spend some time with just us.  It was so nice!  We got to do some catching up, Chelsea and I did a ton of talking and we got two hands of hand and foot in.  The fellowship was awesome!  It was sad when goodbye's came, but we are going to drive up to my parents on Friday to see them again.  I'm so thankful for time.  So many people take that for granted.  I'm guilty of that as well as guilty of taking my family for granted.  We get so busy in our own lives, its so hard!  I'm so grateful for the times that make me stop and enjoy, exactly what God has blessed me with!  I have a bunch of pictures from our visit, but I need to get some time to edit them.  So it might be a bit!  :)

Friday, November 21, 2014

Homemade puppets :)

Meet Esther...

Madalyn and Marissa worked hard making her.  They even sewed on the eyes themselves!


I hot glued the hair on for them and they styled it.

I love their imagination and craftiness!

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Time flies...

I woke up with can not believe how fast time is going lately.  My sister is going to be here in 2 days...and it seems like I've been waiting FOREVER for this weekend to be here.  Next week is Thanksgiving already and we only have 10 days left in November!  December is right around the corner!  

Today is kind of a quiet day... not much going on, which means not much to blog about.  The girls were such an awesome help yesterday shoveling driveways.  They were troopers!  I was kinda worried about how Molly would react to all the snow, since its a little hard to force a 100 lb dog to go out if she doesn't want to.  She went out no problem and after getting over her confusion proceeded to plow through all the snow!  She loves it!  She didn't want to go back inside even though she was really cold and needed to.  I'm very thankful.  I'm hoping today to get school done and head out to play with the kids.  It is beautiful out!  So much to be thankful for...


Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Snow...

Today the blog is going to be short.  This is going to be one of those storms that people aren't going to forget.   Today I'm praying for my family and friends out in Buffalo that are struggling with the huge amounts of snow.  76 inches in 24 hours, deaths, stranded people, no power... Lets join together and pray for their safety.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Kings Kids Class Special

Sunday the Kings Kids Class sang...they did such a great job!
(P.S. for anyone who may have noticed and wondered, Marissa lost a screw out of her glasses and I haven't gotten her in for an eye appointment.  She is due anyhow and either way we have an hour trip to her eye doctor so we might as well just have her seen again.  Until then she is doing great without them and is convinced she doesn't need glasses anymore...which is what the eye doctor thought would happen after a year.)

Monday, November 17, 2014

Jaime's B-day party!

Doug and I were in charge of building "Olaf" for Jaime's Frozen party.  After a crazy morning we finally got started!  





While we were decorating, Madison was in charge of taking pictures...









The finished project!  Yes his head was supposed to be off...he was melting!

Present time!

Toby kept giving me this look.











Josiah was very interested in my camera...so we ended up with some of these ;)






He is too cute!






Grace got to cut the cake first, with the help of Doug (he has a hold of her pony tail) since their birthdays came next.  It's a Howanietz tradition...along with singing Happy Birthday as crazy as you possibly can! ;)