Teaching At Bright Lights

For the past few years, we girls—as well as Mom—have been involved in a Bright Lights group. “Bright” stands for “Being Radiant In Godliness, Holiness, and Testimony.” It’s a Bible study group for girls, and we have really been blessed by not only the character building, Biblically-focused lessons, but also meeting other like-minded Christian girls.

Our most recent topic has been courtship. Since that is a subject that our family is very passionate about, we volunteered to help teach one of the lessons.

We set up a “Recommended Resources” table with many of the books, movies, and CD talks that we have regarding courtship and Biblical daughterhood.

Before we started the lesson, I helped organize an activity with the girls. Each group of 4 or 5 girls was given a stick of gum. They were allowed to touch the gum, rub it on their faces, stick it in between their toes, and generally mishandle it. Once the last person received the gum, we told them they could eat it. As you can guess, there were many exclamations of “Eww! Gross! I would never do that!” Later in the lesson, they found out that the gum represented their hearts, and how dating multiple people ruins the purity of the gum. One day our spouse will have to “chew our piece of gum.” Our job as young ladies is to keep it pure and undefiled for them. Who wants a passed-around, picked over, and mishandled piece of gum?

Mommy did a great job preparing and teaching the main lesson. She gave Biblical examples of godly relationships between men and women, and examples of ungodly relationships from scripture. She also talked about the main differences between Biblical courtship, and cultural dating.

To illustrate the principle of a young lady saving her whole heart for her future husband, the twins performed a skit! In the first part of the skit, Roma explained that she had prepared a cake for her friend. She had tried to take care of it, but there were a few times when she left it alone, allowed others to touch it, left it out in the rain, etc.

As a result of not guarding her heart-shaped cake, her friend was less than pleased with her “gift.” There were even whole chunks missing!

Rubia on the other hand, carefully guarded her heart/cake. She was able to present it to Roma as a whole heart.

Mom also talked about ways that young ladies can serve during their single years while they prepare for their future husband.

We really enjoyed the opportunity to teach the lesson, and hope that it will encourage the girls in our group to study the word of God and stand firm in their beliefs regarding Biblical romance and preparation for marriage!

More School Days

On Friday, we talked about school days of the past. I thought I would also share with you some present-day school pictures. With the holidays being over for now, and the school year half over, we’ve really buckled down hard on school for these first few months of 2012. Oftentimes we experience a little bit of a slump during this time of year, and we wanted to change that.

So if it seems that the blog posts are a little shorter and less about special activities, it’s because we’re very focused on our work!

Ben has been working very diligently on astronomy reports, economics assignments, and Bible Study among his other subjects.

I’ve been busy planning music lessons, finishing a math book, preparing for chemistry finals, working on Spanish verb tenses, and more. And just as a note, my desk space isn’t normally this messy. J I like to pull out all my assigned work for the day and then I work my way through the pile. This photo was taken at the beginning of the day! J

Here, Rubia and Roma were working on an astronomy book report, and also planning foods to eat at Superbowl.

Josiah and Daddy have been working on a special project which he will tell you more about later in the week! Stay tuned!

Purify

“Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

Psalm 51:7

~ Posted by Betsy

Recipe--Bacon-Cheese Puffs

One of our favorite Superbowl treats that has made an appearance year after year, is bacon-cheese puffs. These treats are small and make the perfect appetizer. As another plus, they are very easy to make. We hope you like them!

Bacon-Cheese Puffs

1 lb. of bacon, crisply cooked and crumbled (if you are using bacon bits, I would recommend using only ½ a pound)

2 ½ cups shredded cheddar cheese

2 Tablespoons mustard

1 cup mayonnaise

1 loaf sliced party pumpernickel

Combine bacon, cheese, mustard and mayonnaise together; spoon onto each slice of bread. Arrange on an ungreased baking sheet; broil until bubbly, about 5 minutes. Makes 30 servings. Enjoy!

Friday Flashbacks: School Days

When we kids were younger, we did lots of hands-on learning for school. We were blessed to be in a large homeschool group that went on many field trips.

One such field trip was to a local nature center. In the above photo, we discussed insects and their stages of life while dressing up as butterflies.

Another project we did was making Alaskan Indian masks while studying history and geography. That’s Ben behind the mask, by the way. J

We studied ornithology by setting out foods to attract specific birds. We had a summer filled with watching Baltimore Orioles feast on oranges on our deck.

We learned about bees and keeping hives by visiting a bee-keeping farm. We were able to get very close up and see how a bee hive works.

*What is one of your favorite memories of your early education? Are there any field trips or projects that stick out in your mind? Please share them in the comments!*

Mommy's Birthday!

Last month we celebrated Mommy’s birthday! This year, we had a more low-key celebration than last year, but we still enjoyed celebrating together as a family. On her actual birthday, the boys were coming home from a Boy Scout camping trip. They arrived home late afternoon, and cleaned up and unpacked. Then we took Mom out for dinner at Applebee’s.

Waiting for dinner at Applebee’s.

Photo Credit: Roma.

When we came home, we had birthday cake! Mommy picked out Turtle cake with Black Walnut ice cream. It was quite rich! While we ate, she opened her birthday gifts and cards. I think her favorite gift was an electric blanket. J Her and Daddy will get LOTS of use out of it during the cold winter nights!

Photo Credit: Roma.

The next morning, we kids carried out our six-year tradition of making Mom breakfast in bed. Breakfast has gone from burnt pancakes and scrambled eggs six years ago, to homemade cinnamon rolls with a ham and cheese omelet this year!

Photo Credit: Roma.

The rest of the day we had no school since the teacher had a day off. J We are so very thankful for our Mom and all she does for our family. We’re so thankful we could celebrate another wonderful birthday with you! And we hope for many more!

The Beginning

(posted by Mark)

“For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him.”  (Colossians 1:16)

As I sit down to write my first post on our family’s blog, I gaze out the window and observe the full moon. What a stunning site! Many have falsely worshiped the moon over the years. The ancient Greeks built monuments to their moon goddess Artemis. How sad that they did this, when they could have worshiped the one true God that created the moon, our Lord Jesus Christ!

One of my favorite books of the Bible is Genesis.  It is there that we see the awesome power of our Lord as He spoke the great words of Creation.

Have you ever spent time in the study of creation? As a scientist with a doctorate degree, I love to study God’s creation. It amazes me how far astray the evolutionist will try to lead Christians. It is a dangerous path to take such a liberal stance on the book of Genesis, and state that evolution and Christianity are compatible, as this grossly underestimates God’s great power.

Consider the “primordial soup” at the evolutionists’ beginning. How could such a random mixture create life? Perfect conditions had to exist to even create a simple amino acid. Scientists now feel that the atmospheric conditions at the “beginning” would not have supported the creation of an amino acid. Molecules have chirality, or a left and a right. The amino acids which form the human body are all remarkably left handed. Evolutionists attempt to rationalize this as some random radiation event, which caused selective destruction of the right handed amino acids. Creationists would simply say this is part of God’s design.

While we have been fortunate to witness the invention of many great drugs such as penicillin, there is still illness among humans.  Evolution would suggest that over time, things should continue to improve. Our bodies would mutate and evolve into superior beings. This simply has not happened. The medical field has observed an increase in known diseases from mutations. The ability of some diseases to adapt and resist treatment has also been observed.

There are so many aspects of creation that we could devote a entire blog to this topic, but I will leave that to the experts. If you have not had the opportunity to visit the creation museum in Kentucky, I would highly recommend a visit. Information about this wonderful museum can be found at www.answersingenesis.org. They also have many great resources on their website.

Superbowl

This past Sunday was the NFL Superbowl game! While our family doesn’t go crazy over football, we have all grown to enjoy watching the Superbowl together and making lots of yummy treats to eat during the game.

Last year’s Superbowl was fun, but this year was even better since we had friends over! This is the first time we’ve had a Superbowl party, so we kept it pretty low-key. But we still had loads of fun!

As always, we had plenty of finger foods for dinner!

Cheese-stuffed mini-meatloaves.

Reuben appetizers.

Bacon-Cheese Puffs.

Orange slices.

Lots of colorful grapes.

Pepperoni Bread.

Apple slices with peanut butter-honey dip.

Chips and salsa.

Colorful crudités with spinach artichoke dip.

Honey Barbeque chicken wings.

We had lots of fun watching the game together in the living room! Our families were rooting for opposing teams, so that led to some bantering. J

During halftime we served the desserts! We had two football cakes, one with the words “Patriots” and “Giants” on it, and the other with “Superbowl XLVI” on it. They were served with ice cream and quickly devoured.

We also had some delicious lemon cheese bars (sorry for the poor lighting in the picture. It was quite dark when I was trying to take the picture.)

We were very excited that the Giants won the game in the last quarter (our family had been rooting for the Giants through the game!) Here we are finishing the Superbowl Challenge sheets we had kept track of during the game. This was a list of questions on the game that we filled out before the kickoff. Then during the game, we kept track of our scores. Some of us did great and others, well, not-so-much. J But we had a wonderful evening together and we’re so glad that we could share time with friends!