Hearts in Service

My baby turns ten years old today! It's hard to believe that she is getting so grownup. She has such a bubbly and joyful personality and we love her to bits! Happy Birthday, sweet pea!

The children are always asking me to make waffles for breakfast and this is our favorite recipe. Sift together: 2-1/4 cups of flour, 4 tsp. baking powder, 3/4 tsp. salt, and 1-1/2 Tbsp. sugar. In a separate bowl, beat together 2 eggs and then add 2-1/4 cups of milk and 3/4 cup of vegetable oil. Add to the dry mixture and just stir until moistened. There will be lumps. Preheat waffle maker and add 1/3 cup of batter to each side. Cook for 4-6 minutes and viola! Waffles. Enjoy!

Kelli hosts this each week and I always enjoy the opportunity to sit down and make some cards. I made these tonight. Dan's birthday is coming up. These next two are my favorite out of the bunch. For more beautiful cards, go check out Kelli's blog.

When asked what she wanted to do for her birthday, Emily chose a trip to the Bronx Zoo. Her birthday is not until Saturday, but because of a conflict we decided Tuesday was the day to do it. It really is a wonderful zoo, even though it's in the midst of a huge city. We spent a lot of time in the bird house. Look at her eyes. Her allergies are acting up big time! Actually, it seems to be the only place that my camera will take decent pictures of birds! We took out a family membership so Emily got a t-shirt out of it. The boys got to lug heavy backpacks all day. We brought our lunch because spending $4-$5 on a hamburger is not my idea of a good time! Unfortunately, I only seemed to be able to get the backside of most of the animals. This guy looked how I felt by the end of the day. We rode the monorail through the Wild Asia exhibit. In the Congo. Emily loved the butterfly garden. My little butterfly. :-) It was a really nice day and I'm glad we went while we could becuase we

Emily's birthday is on Saturday and a friend, with permission from me, gave her an early birthday gift. It's a little dwarf hamster. Oh my, she is so cute! I'm not usually a rodent type of girl, but Lilly is the cutest little thing. Emily is allergic to pet dander, but she has been really diligent about washing her hands after handling it and of course, it's so tiny that it doesn't seem to bother her. Emily has wanted a pet forever so this has put her over the top with happiness. She keeps coming up and hugging me and thanking me. However, given how hard she cried when her snail in the fish tank died, I'm not looking forward to the drama when this one dies! In the meantime though, Emily is on cloud nine!

When I was in college, friends invited me to go cliff climbing at the Gunks, which is the local name for the Shawangunk Mountain ridge which rises more than 2,000 feet above sea level. Today, we got the chance to go back as a family and go hiking up one of the mountain ridges. I'm tired! It was a gentle climb but we hiked for 3 hours. Here they are on drive up. The hike wasn't too bad for most of the trip. Unfortunately, Emily must of been tired today. She usually loves to hike and is far ahead of us. However, she kept lagging behind and dragging her feet. Just picture the sound of whining and you'll get the idea! :-) However, Dan is a pushover and carried her A LOT! The boys were estatic because they spotted this in the grass. Stephen got a hold of it. The view from the top! Emily was all smiles for the camera and she was much more chipper on the way down.

Dan & I realized yesterday that we have not done anything as a family in months. It seems like every waking moment is taken up with church - funerals, weddings, hospital visitations, meetings, programs. In fact, Dan does not even take a day off because he tutors part-time to bring in extra income. So this weekend we are focusing on us! Yesterday, we went to the Franklin D. Roosevelt mansion & library. They had free World War II demonstrations and booths on the grounds of this beautiful estate. Free is good! They had a battle simulation while we were there with World War II reenactments. After the battle, they allowed the children to go pick up the shell casings. Emily got two with the help of her brothers. Then we looked at all the different tents, vehicles and guns. Okay, I do have to say that this totally bored me. I am not a big gun person. However, the kids loved it because they got to hold the weapons. Yes, even Emily who reminds me regularly that she is a tomboy

I was rummaging through the freezer yesterday and realized that I had numerous bags of raspberries from two summers ago. I decided to make raspberry jam which is my childrens' very favorite of all. The smell was wonderful. Jars processed and ready to go. Finished product. The only problem I had was it didn't set properly, so now I'm going to have to start from square one! This happens every summer at least once so I'm hoping this is the one and only batch I'll have to mess with. It's a great feeling of satisfaction though to see all those jars of jam.

I've been reading through Proverbs, taking one chapter a week with some friends. We are on Proverbs 10 this week and I was reflecting on the following two verses this morning. Proverbs 10:4-5: 4 Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. 5 He who gathers crops in summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son. How we doing on working hard in our homes? Are we being diligent about taking care of our house? At the end of the day can we look back and know that we've done our best for the Lord. Are we gathering "crops" and producing fruit in our homes? To be honest, there are many times when I seem to hardly work. Oh, I will do the basics (cooking, laundry, school) but I do allow quite a few time wasters to gobble up my productivity. One of the biggest is the computer. The other day, I realized that I had sat in this chair for almost two hours!! It is so easy to get caught up in email, different websites and "re

Kelli hosts this each week and I always enjoy the opportunity to sit down and make some cards. For those of you who have noticed an abundance of crafty posts on cards, I do have some sewing projects in the works and I'll share some of them soon! I wasn't thrilled with any of these cards this week. I really need to get some more supplies but I'm trying to use what I have first. I really feel like this one needs a ribbon or something. Anyway, I was not feeling particularly inspired last night but thought I'd share them anyway.