Our First Night at Youth Group: A White Elephant Christmas Party

Due to a lack of space in their prior meeting place, our church has Sunday school/youth group on Wednesday nights instead of Sunday mornings. On our first night there, they were having a special night without the regular activities: they were having a white elephant Christmas party!

 

Right now the middle school kids meet first with the high school kids following. Ben and I stayed out on the mezzanine and read while we waited for our class to begin.

The youth group is larger than the last one we were in, but it’s not so large that it gets impersonal. I think I’m going to enjoy getting more involved!

The gift exchange took up all our time because so much stealing of gifts occurred. J The hot items of the night were Starbucks and iTunes gift cards, and a unicorn pillow pet. It was a very funny evening!

All of us look forward to resuming again in January and getting involved in the Bible study small groups for the teens!

 

Blogger Challenge Day 3: Your First Love

A few months ago, I started a blogger challenge. Instead of doing 30 consecutive days, I’ve been doing the topics as I’ve had time. There’s just been so much other interesting stuff to blog about!

 

I debated for awhile about how to blog on this topic, my first love. My first love in life is my Savior, Jesus Christ. When I was younger, I used to have crushes on a lot of boys. I tended to be infatuated with boys a lot of the time. As I grew older, I was convicted that I should be more in love with my Savior than anyone else. Instead of obsessing over others, I needed to be obsessed with serving Him!

 

Over time, God truly answered my prayer: that I would focus on Him more than on young men. Looking at young men as someone else’s future husband really helped. I know many godly young men who would make excellent husbands, but God is helping me to see that more likely than not, they will not be MY godly husband.

 

Earlier this year I read a book called “It’s (Not That) Complicated” by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin. It is a book on guy-girl relationships that’s not full of fluff, but rather a true Biblical look at the way our relationships are supposed to be. It really helped solidify in my mind a proper perspective on my relationships with young men.

 

One day, more likely than not, I will be married. I want to be able to say that aside from Christ, my husband will be the only man I’ve ever loved in that way. As much as I look forward to that day, Christ will forever be my first and greatest love!

 

A Good Christian

“If you would be a good Christian, there is but one way, you must live wholly unto God; and if you would live wholly unto God, you must live according to the wisdom that comes from God; you must act according to right judgments of the nature and value of things; you must live in the exercise of holy and heavenly affections and use all the gifts of God to His praise and glory.”

 

--William Law, 1686-1761

 

Recipe--Coconut Biscotti Dipped in Chocolate

Earlier this week, I was wondering what I was going to do about a recipe for the blog today. Our main computer with all my pictures on it hadn’t been hooked up yet. All I had were the pictures from the last 2 weeks. As you can imagine, we haven’t been doing much fancy cooking, what with moving across the country and all.

 

But we had unpacked a few important things: our cookbooks and basic ingredients for baking. I’ve wanted to try making biscotti for awhile now. Since we don’t start school back up until next week, I decided that now was as good a time as any to try making some!

 

After perusing our biscotti recipe book, I decided to try two different varieties: Coconut Biscotti dipped in chocolate, and Maple Pecan (recipe coming next weekend.) They both turned out delicious and I had solved the dilemma of what to post about. J

 

Biscotti would make a great Christmas gift for friends or family, especially coffee drinkers. We stored some of ours in a wide-mouthed canning jar. A nice red ribbon tied around it would make it the perfect gift!

 

Coconut Biscotti Dipped in Chocolate

 

½ cup sugar

½ cup butter, softened

2 Tablespoons vanilla

2 medium eggs

1 ½ cups unsweetened coconut

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

¾ teaspoons baking powder

½ cup bittersweet chocolate chips, melted (I ended up using twice this amount because it wasn’t enough for my liking. J)

 

In a large bowl, cream sugar and butter. Add vanilla, eggs and coconut. In a medium bowl, combine flour and baking powder and stir into coconut mixture. Divide dough in halves or thirds. On a well-floured surface, shape into logs. Transfer logs to a parchment paper-lined or lightly sprayed baking sheet, and bake in a preheated 350° oven for 15 to 20 minutes or until firm and lightly browned.

 

We were actually given a biscotti pan as a gift, so I used that instead of making logs on a baking sheet.

Cool on a rack for at least 5 minutes. Cut logs on the diagonal into ¾-inch slices.

 

Return slices to baking sheet, leaving space around each slice, and continue baking for 10 to 15 minutes or until desired crispness.

Place on rack and, when completely cooled, dip about 1/3 of each biscotti into melted chocolate. Dry on rack.

Makes 24. (I only made 12 because I wanted them to be thicker.)

 

Tips:

 

If the dough is too sticky to handle when it is time to form it into logs, chill it in the refrigerator for 1 or 2 hours and then work it into logs on a well-floured surface.

 

Do not crowd the biscotti slices on the baking sheet for the second baking. They need room for the hot air to circulate.

 

To make the biscotti crisper, flip it half way through the second baking.

 

My New Room: Packed and Unpacked

This Friday Flashback post doesn’t go back as far as most of them. In fact, it only goes back one week! This is partly because our main computer still hasn’t been set up and I don’t have any of our old pictures. Also, things can change a lot in one week’s time!

 

All of my good friends know that I keep a very neat and clean room. I can’t stand clutter. The last time we moved, I had unpacked every box in my room by the time the movers left that day. This time, it took a little longer because I wanted to go through things and purge a lot. This is what my room looked like last Friday.

And this is what it looked like last night! Everything is in its place (except for the things that need to be hung on the wall), lots of things were thrown away, and there is a stack of stuff to donate. I’m so pleased to be rid of those boxes! Now to tackle the other areas of the house . . .

December Nature Pictures

My December Nature Pictures turned out a lot different than I was expecting at the beginning of this year. I had no idea that we’d be moving to Texas, and the climate down here is certainly different than in Michigan! Normally I’d be photographing snow scenes at this time of year. But when the temperatures rise to the 60’s every day, there’s no snow! J

 

In Michigan, pansies were some of the first flowers to bloom in the spring. Here they are considered winter flowers. The garden at the entrance to my Dad’s apartment was full of them!

This is the view of the back pasture behind our new house. It’s absolutely beautiful!

We also have a grove of pecan trees on our property. They are ripe and ready for harvest!

The views of the sunset and the night stars are stunning out here in the country. I have a feeling I’m going to love living here!

Moving In Day

Thursday, December 6^th, was our big moving day! We had lived in Dad’s apartment for several days while we waited for the moving van to arrive with all of our things from Michigan. We were anxious to get into our new house!

We arrived at the house around 8:00 a.m. to meet the movers. They were running a little late, and arrived around 8:20 a.m.

Unfortunately they ran into a little problem: they couldn’t get the trailer through our gate! It was just too narrow and the shoulder of the road was too soft. Apparently, narrow is the gate that leads to our house! J

They had to call their corporate office and get permission to order a shuttle. Our driveway is VERY long so they needed something to haul a large amount of stuff from the trailer to the garage.

While we waited for them to return, we kids went on a walk down our road. Our next door neighbors have some absolutely beautiful horses! They’re very friendly as well.

Around 10:00 a.m. they finally arrived back with a big U-Haul truck and started unloading everything. That’s when the real craziness began! J All day long they were loading the truck, bringing it up the driveway, unloading it into the house, and repeating the process. We were very busy directing them where things should go.

One big problem we had all day involved the neighbor’s dogs. We don’t even know where these dogs came from, but they seem to really like our house! The movers had to leave the doors open all day to carry things in and out. The two dogs ended up inside our house on many occasions. We finally gave up trying to shoo them out; it was a losing battle. By the end of the night, the little Basset hound was sleeping curled up on our kitchen floor.

For lunch Mom went out and got us Sonic burgers and fries. I had never had them before, but they were good even though they were a bit pricy.

Our garage quickly filled up with boxes, both full and empty. It’s a bit of an adjustment trying to find a place for everything that was in our basement and our shed, since we have neither out here.

One of the families from our new church brought dinner over for us. It was a big blessing to us!

I never cease to be amazed what professional movers can do! They managed to take this huge hide-a-bed couch all the way upstairs and fit it into our office. They are awesome! We were blessed to have very nice packers, loaders, and driver. Three of the guys that came to Texas were the ones that had loaded up the trailer in Michigan. I think it helps the transition go a bit easier. Even though we hardly knew anyone here, we could at least have the same people unloading our things!

Daddy signing all the papers at the end. It’s a done deal now!

The movers didn’t leave until 10:20 p.m.! They were really pushing to finish it in one day, despite the unexpected delay with the truck. Our driver (pictured above) had a big reason to hurry; his wife had their 7^th baby earlier this week! The baby came 2 weeks early, so he wasn’t able to be home for the delivery. If he can stay on schedule with his deliveries, he can get home by the 16^th. Please pray that Mr. K and his family will be reunited soon!

We all crashed into bed that night. It felt so good to have a real bed after camping out on the floor for a whole week! Now all we have to do is unpack the 260+ boxes and get everything put away. J I wonder how long that will take . . .

Christmas Hoe Down

On Wednesday, December 5^th, our family attended a Christmas Hoe Down at our new church! As many of you already know, Dad’s been attending this church since he moved down here in October. He had told us about the Hoe-Down and we were excited to be able to attend!

 

We weren’t sure what to expect since we’re pretty new to this Texas/Cowboy thing. J But we ended up having a lot of fun!

 

They had lots of dancing throughout the night, mostly for the kids with a few of the adults joining in. They did Cotton-Eyed Joe, the chicken dance, the Cha-Cha Slide, the electric slide, and lots of country songs with plenty of two-stepping.

For refreshments, we enjoyed hot dogs, root beer, cookies, fruit, and Christmas candy.

We girls enjoyed the fireplaces in the new building! J It reminds us of our fireplace in Michigan.

They also sang Christmas carols, and had a contest for the kids with prizes for those with the best Western-themed outfit.

 

One of the gentlemen at our church brought his lasso rope. The kids had a rousing tug-of-war competition!

The Hoe-Down was a great way to get to know some of the people at our church. We look forward to getting more involved!