Easter Firsts for Our Family

I had intended to post this yesterday but my to do list was a mile long and my family and home-keeping comes first. So this may seem like old news but our Easter was made up with a lot of firsts for our family and thought I would share them with you.

It was our first Easter living in Kansas away from all our family. It was also our first Easter at a new church.

It was the first Easter where I was responsible for the ENTIRE meal. I was a little intimidated having the weight of an expensive piece of meat on my shoulders but I guess with ham, unless you overcook it and dry it out, you really can't mess it up.

It was the first time I attempted making a pie crust. I wanted my Grandma's recipe but I couldn't get a hold of her in time. I used this recipe instead from AllRecipes.com. If you have a great pie recipe you use feel free to send it to me. It turned out okay for my first try but I made it a little thick. I know to roll it more for next time!

We also started something new with the egg hunt. I added scripture verses into the eggs that were about Christ's death, burial and resurrection. Eian put them in the order they happened. Since he's 10 I had to come up with something challenging for him. He seemed to like it and it helped me by writing out all the verses and bringing the Scriptures closer to my heart. I would have typed them but the computer was acting up and processing slowly. I appreciate writing them now though. :)

Although I missed being near extended family, it was nice spending some much needed family time with my three guys. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

This post is linked to Titus 2sday

Last Minute Easter Activity for Kids

It's easy to become busy during Easter with the holiday meal planning, shopping and cooking, church activities and services, egg hunts, buying goodies for the kids, etc.

So it's understandable that if or when you have time to slow down you forget something. Unfortunately, it's easy to forget the main reason we even celebrate Easter...the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

Here are two easy and quick activities to do with the kiddos to help remember Christ this Easter.

Resurrection Rolls

We've made this a tradition the past few years in our house but as I share this with friends I find there are many variations. This recipe is simple and works for us though.

You Will Need:

1 can of crescent rolls

8 regular marshmallows

cinnamon

Just unroll the dough and separate following the perforation marks. Sprinkle cinnamon on it to represent Christ's body being prepared with spices for burial. Place the marshmallow on top, which is Jesus' body and then roll the dough around the marshmallow just as the stone was rolled in front of his tomb. Make sure you seal all edges to prevent any oozing.

Bake the rolls according to the instructions on the package.

Eat and enjoy and notice that just as Jesus' tomb, they are EMPTY!

Some of the marshmallows ooze out sometimes despite your sealing efforts but if you bake on a Silpat sheet (any silicone baking sheet is okay) or parchment paper you should be fine.

Plant Seeds

Planting is always a good way to tie in your faith and show that just as God creates new life from that seed, we are also a new creation in Christ. It was a rather warm day when we did this Friday so the kids enjoyed getting outside and of course getting dirty. Yep, they're all boy!

I hope everyone has a blessed Easter!

Having a Little April Fool's Fun

I'm not usually known as a prankster and probably take life way too seriously sometimes. April Fool's Day brings out...well the FOOL in me though! :)

There's something about having a day you can plot, plan and follow through with a goofy prank on an unsuspecting family member or friend that's a little thrilling.

So who's my "victim" this year you ask? Well that would be these guy here!

My son is at the age where he loves practical jokes and is always trying to pull one on me and his dad.

So I thought I would put my old scrapbooking supplies (from before days of children) to good use. These little sticky guys are great on the under side of a breakfat plate!

Yep when Eian went to put his empty plate in the kitchen he was delivered quite a surprise!

Now I know many of you mischevious moms probably have more clever ideas than this one but not bad for a last minute thing huh? The whole point was to have fun with Eian and get him smiling before school and I think I succeeded! Happy Foolin' Day!

New Favorite Appetizer Recipes

I was curious, did any of you try new recipes this Christmas that are now mainstays? If so, it'd be so cool if we could all share either by comment on this post or post your own on your blog. Just link back to me so I can come check it out! I'm always looking for new recipes to try!

I don't know if any of you visit Kraft Foods for recipes. It's one of my favorite sites. All their recipes usually use ingredients I already have or are easy to get and for the most part they're pretty quick and simple. Quick and simple is crucial in this house!

So for Christmas I wanted to have some appetizers while the rest of the Christmas dinner was baking but I needed something simple but tasty and I found two!

Creamy Crab Dip and Spinach & Artichoke Dip. They were both sooo good. You'll have to go to the Kraft website to get the recipes but I'll share with you my substitutions and omissions.

Creamy Crab Dip
The only changes to mine were omitting the shredded cheese, switching out the green onions with 1/2 cup regular yellow onion, and using imitation crab (not by choice, price won) instead of the canned stuff. I was skeptical about the Grey Poupon at first but it really gave it the zing it needed. Oh it was sooo good. We served this with the Town House Toppers Garlic & Herb crackers.

Spinach & Artichoke Dip
We made this just as is but served it with tortilla chips. I was craving the dip from TGIFridays and this was definitely a very close runner up!

I hope you enjoy these as much as we do!

An Ode to My Christmas Decorations!

So like I said in my previous post... I Love Christmas! I love the excitement and anticipation that comes immediately after Thanksgiving. I love the feeling of giving back to others (which I should do more often anyways not just at Christmas!) and finding new a creative ways to share the love of Christ. I love coming home from a long day of work to getting that warm and cozy feeling while being surrounded by all our decorations and lights. I love the swirl of outreach events our church participates in. I love looking at all the lights. I love all the food, the family visiting, sharing gifts, and the list goes on!

However, what I do not love is the break in my routine that the busyness of the Christmas season creates. Now I know this is my partial type A (I'm not a full-fledged type A, thank goodness) personality coming out along with a lot of selfishness. But I admit it, I am so looking forward to getting back to normal mode it's not even funny. I had to work the Friday after Christmas after having 6 days in a row off and I was really thrilled to get back into my old routine! So one of my attempts to "Get Back to Normal" is taking down the decorations, which I hope I can finish by Wednesday. We're going to Ohio to have Christmas with my husband's family and the last thing I want to do when we get back from our long drive is pack up stinkin' decorations! So I'm sharing some photos of my Christmas decor before they meet their demise!

Good Bye Christmas TreeGood Bye Nativity

Good Bye Kitchen Shelf Decorations

Early spring cleaning here I come!

Christmas Happenings

Well it's been a busy couple days! We had my mom, dad, sister, bro-in-law and their two kids, and my brother and his little girl over for dinner and presents. This is probably the best part of our Christmas routine because we don't have several houses to bounce around from. We can stay in our jammies all day if we wanted! Everyone seemed to have a good time. My hubby is going to kill me for posting this photo of him playing Santa but I just can't help it!!!


Here's my son with one of his presents, an apron. A friend of mine is super talented at sewing and quilting and she was nice enough to throw in this project in the midst of all the others she does this time of year! Thanks Ruthie and show her some love by visiting her blog. Eian's taken an interest in cooking this year. Not just cookies, brownies and other fun stuff but actual meals. So I figured I better nurture this new passion of his before it's too late!


Here's my niece with one of her new toys. Imagine that, it's another baby doll!!! She was sooo excited to see all the presents under the tree when she first got to our house that she tried to go straight to opening them when we hadn't even eaten yet.

We then went and visited with my uncle on my mom's side Friday night to see family we hadn't seen forever. G'ma made a yummy wiener chili and tons of desserts. My nephew wanted to spend the night with us at first but then didn't want to leave my uncle's. I wonder why... all the guys were found in the basement watching iron man on awesome surround sound and playing pool! A man's paradise!

We didn't get home too late Friday night but Eian had been dying to play his new Spiderman Monopoly game (thanks a lot Stace!). So we started at around 9:30 and didn't finish until shortly after midnight! Boy it's hard to count your money and net worth when you're dozing off let me tell ya!

Then Saturday morning it was off we go again! We had my Dad's family Christmas at Noon. Eian was so excited, heck we all get excited to visit my Dad's family! We all just have such a good time catching up, eating, and stealing family bags! Yep we don't do gifts for everyone anymore. Our family has grown to nearly 50 people if you count all the great grandkids and spouses so each family brings a bag. We then either do trivia or some other game to get the bags but you can always steal a bag too. There's always one bag that everyone fights over. The kids just love it!

I wanted to share some photos but I have several so keep on scrolling. This first one is of us getting ready for the gift bag swap. Yep, I told you we had a big family and so big that we've outgrown my G'ma or Aunt's house. So we have it at my Grandma's church's rec hall.

Yep that's me in the jean jacket and pink top but I'm not sure what I was looking at.
My sister and brother-in-law, aren't they cute?


Here's Grandma Cathryn. She's my inspiration! We always put her front and center and make her open her gifts first. You can tell she hates all the fanfare! She's such a humble woman, gotta love her.

And here's a photo of my sweet little niece (the green sweatshirt) who's not so little anymore, actually she's now a sophomore in college, but she'll always be my baby. I took a pic with her and our cousin Kay. Such pretty girls!

And finally to wrap it up, here's a pic of my cousin Jenny with her cute little guy. He's a sweet little cuddle bug too! Well hope you enjoyed my photos. I know there;s a lot but it was too hard to choose which ones I wanted. Don't worry... there will be yet more photos to post when we have Christmas with my hubby's family in Ohio next weekend! I love Christmas but I am definitely ready for normalcy!

Merry Christmas!

Here it is nearly 10 am and my boys are still snoozing so I thought I would take advantage and wish all of my family & blogging buddies Merry Christmas! This has been one of the best Christmas' and ironically it's been our lowest budget one so far. Funny how becoming humble and not having what you're accustomed to can actually be a blessing! My husband, son and I have learned a lot about trusting the Lord and helping and appreciating one another more. Thank you Lord for NEVER leaving us nor forsaking us and providing for us this Christmas!

Merry Christmas Everyone and I Love You All!!!

Living Nativity

It never ceases to amaze me that God blesses our church's efforts to reach out to the community through our Living Nativity. It's our 18th annual and each year the number of people who come to hear the gospel message gets bigger and bigger. I am by no means posting this to be boastful but simply to praise God for His faithfulness.

You can enjoy our nativity two ways. One is to drive through which is of course the warmest option but also the longest. The wait for drive thru's last weekend was 1 hour! The other option is to walk thru. This is the one I prefer because you get to be up close and personal with the cast and animals. The best part is going through Bethlehem and having the little "street kids" begging you to buy their fruit and the Roman guards asking you for taxes and if you have your papers! Too fun!

It was about 30 degrees last night which isn't brutally cold but it feels like it when you're out there for any extended length of time. With that said we still had over 400 people walk through and over 600 people drive through. God is just awesome! Every year we enjoy being a part of this ministry.

I posted a link in the beginning of this post. Feel free to visit and get the schedule for this weekend. We are however cancelling the nativity on Sunday night due to the windchill factor will be well below zero. Brrrrr!