Bible Verse - Week 12 {{with link up}}

With the Christmas season upon us, I am excited to share verses about the birth of Jesus! He is the reason for the season!!

An InLinkz Link-up

<div align="center"><a href="http://abcsandsweettea.blogspot.com/2015/11/bible-verse-week-12-with-link-up.html" rel="nofollow" title="ABC's and Sweet Tea"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfJ35cKqRTNxakZ-nmHu6PnxIdi5X6sYTzSEo7PHzraNeVQvspO1i0huA7fLQaQBNVDXMvHiysnwcgAaKwBQkmGmBvV1aLeIpYde-syFt-AZ-I3FZw4Z7ihGE7Km53Rayl-xrxmKKI5-k/s1600/memoryversegrabbutton.jpg" alt="ABC's and Sweet Tea" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Generate your button code

Thanksgiving and good news!

  Thanksgiving 2015 has come and gone.  I hope everyone ate good food and made lots of memories. We had a wonderful time back in our home town visiting our friends and family. It was such a busy time that I didn't even have time to turn my computer on!

I spent most of my time with my beautiful grand baby, Mila Rose.  What a blessing she is!!  It is amazing what a few months time does to change a baby. She has gone from just being cute and cuddly to a wiggly, rolling, crawling, constantly moving little ball of joy. She is one of the happiest babies I've ever seen!  She loves to play pat-a-cake and peek-a-boo.  She can say baby, and ba ba, mama, dada, and bye bye.  She loves to look at herself on my phone and say "baby baby". It's absolutely precious. I am so thankful for her. She brings me a joy and happiness that I can't even explain. I wasn't sure what to expect when I had grandchildren, but I can tell you that I would take a 100 more. They are absolutely precious little gifts. I hate that I live so far away from her. It makes it very hard to leave to come back home! This was the best Thanksgiving so far. I had my sweet husband, my 4 wonderful kids, and this new addition to our family. I thank God everyday for these blessings that he's so graciously given me.


Probably one of the most special things that happened this Thanksgiving is a memory and a lesson that was taught to my 10 year old Gavin.  My mother in law had gone to an auto parts store on Wednesday to get a part for my father in laws truck. It had broke down unexpectedly and he needed to get it fixed asap. A young homeless man was there and they struck up a conversation.  In the conversation she asked him if he knew Jesus, and he said that he didn't. He said that there was so many bad things going on in his life that he didn't feel that it was the right time to know him. She told him it is the PERFECT time to get to know Jesus and that He loves him no matter what he was going through! They prayed the prayer of salvation together and she told him to meet her there on Thanksgiving at 2 p.m and she would bring him dinner.

Well if you know Gavin and his heart then you know that he wants to feed and shelter every person that is homeless and hungry. When he found out that Mam-Maw was bringing Thanksgiving dinner to this young man, he wanted to help. What a humbling experience for this 10 year old boy.  He saw first hand the gratitude and pure appreciation this young man had for a meal provided by a stranger. Gavin decided that he wanted to give him the $3 that he had so that he could also have a meal for Friday.  He thanked Gavin and said that he was going to eat his (3 plates full) of food on a park bench near by. I believe that God places people in your life at certain times for different reasons.  I believe that he placed my mother in law in his path so that he could have a meal for Thanksgiving and at least go one night without being hungry. Remember the saying, "You may be the only Jesus that person sees." How true that is!

On another note, I have some wonderful news to report! I have been chosen to be a member of the Homeschool Review Crew for 2016!  I am super excited about this! I can't wait to use new products and give a personal review of each one! I know that I don't order anything before reading reviews on it. It's helps so much to see how someone else used a product and what they think of it. I hope to give you the most thorough review of each product that I'm offered.

I'm off to get the Christmas tree and all of the decorations out of the attic. It's that time of year again! The kids won't let me go another day! Have a blessed week everyone!

Memory Verse Week 11 {{with link up}}

I am definitely standing on this scripture this week with all of the sickness that's been going on in this house! I hope everyone has a great rest of the week!

An InLinkz Link-up

<div align="center">
<a href="http://abcsandsweettea.blogspot.com/search/label/Memory%20verse" rel="nofollow" title="ABC's and Sweet Tea"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfJ35cKqRTNxakZ-nmHu6PnxIdi5X6sYTzSEo7PHzraNeVQvspO1i0huA7fLQaQBNVDXMvHiysnwcgAaKwBQkmGmBvV1aLeIpYde-syFt-AZ-I3FZw4Z7ihGE7Km53Rayl-xrxmKKI5-k/s1600/memoryversegrabbutton.jpg" alt="ABC's and Sweet Tea" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Review of "Homespun Holidays" by The Old Schoolhouse

With the holidays fast approaching, I had the pleasure of doing a review of Homespun Holidays by The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. This 89 page printable e-book is chock full of all things that represent this time of year. Although The Old Schoolhouse is offering this e-book for free right now, it is definitely worth paying for! Hurry over and get your copy here, so you too can stop stressing over the holidays.

This was my first Old Schoolhouse product, and I am thankful to have the chance to review it for the Schoolhouse review crew. Let me tell you, upon receiving this e-book I was immediately impressed with the beautiful cover. It completely represents this time of year for me. From the sweet one room schoolhouse to the fall/winter pictures that surround it, it gets me in the spirit for my favorite time of year! After opening Homespun Holidays you will find a treasure of beautiful and colorful pictures, fun poetry, fall and winter inspired recipes, and tons of crafts to keep the kids busy all season long.

One of my favorite things about this e-book is all of the fall and winter inspired recipes that are included in it! I would purchase this book just for that. They are all lined out on beautiful and colorful recipe cards that you could print out on card stock to keep. They also have them in a regular page format if you would rather print it that way. I wanted to try every single recipe in here. They aren't recipes full of ingredients that you have to go out and search for which is always a plus for me. I like what I call "real people" recipes and this is exactly what you get here. I am looking forward to trying so many of them this season.

I'm going to be honest, I am not good at decorating for the holidays. I can take an idea and run with it, but coming up with them myself is hard for me. There are some easy but very cute ideas throughout this book for both seasons, fall and winter. Anything from making your own scarecrows and pumpkin carving, to making your own door hangers and wreaths. They are all family friendly and great for all ages.

Gavin decorating his bag

It has been kind of a crazy week here with Edyn recovering from an awful case of food poisoning, so we haven't got to try as many crafts as I would have liked to. 

There are so many great ideas it was hard to choose between them! I did want to try one for the fall and one for the winter. We decided that we wanted to make the thankful bags. We are going to be making lunch for the guys that work with my husband and we thought that we could use these bags to put their utensils and napkins in, plus they would be kind of like a placeholder at their table.

Edyn painting her hand to make the turkey

We decided to get out our paints, colored pencils and markers to decorate our brown paper bags. I just let the kids create whatever they wanted to do. They both wanted to paint their hands and make turkeys out of them. I really loved this craft because they got to talk about what they were thankful for this year. They are really pleased with how they turned out! 

Finished bags

While scrolling through, my kids knew immediately that they wanted to make the giant paper snowflakes. When I first saw them, I thought they would be kind of complicated. I was wrong. These snowflakes were so much fun to make that the kids are already talking about making more in all different colors and sizes. I suspect our home is going to look like Elsa's ice palace by the time that they're done!

This is how Gavin liked to hold his tape

We got our supplies which only consisted of white construction paper, scotch tape, and a stapler and got to work. The book has very detailed instructions along with some very good pictures to help you along the way. Once you understand where to cut and where to tape, it's so quick and easy from there.

We decided to hang them in the entryway

Overall I give this e-book a big thumbs up. It is just so full of holiday spirit on every page. We had so much fun planning what recipes we were going to try first, and deciding what crafts to do next. Get your free copy of Homespun Holidays, a big mug of hot chocolate and have a great time with your family making new crafts and decor, or simply coming up with new family traditions.

 

Wordless Wednesday...Happy18th Birthday Drake!!

Happy 18th Birthday to my oldest son, Drake!!

Food poisoning and balloons

Happy November! Oh it's been a fun last couple of days here.

Edyn loom knitting a hat

November is supposed to be the month to reflect on what we give thanks for. I can tell you another reason I am thankful for homeschool is because, food poisoning. Last Saturday my daughter started feeling bad and ended up running fever with stomach issues. We think it was bad sushi. Yuck! Shes still not feeling well, but hoping that shes on her way to being completely healed. The silver lining is that she has taught herself to knit on the knitting loom, and has even made 2 hats!

  

A few months ago I had heard that there was going to be a small hot air balloon festival about 30 miles from us. I was so excited and wanted to bring our kids. I had never seen hot air balloons, and it's always been a dream. The festival weekend came around, Friday night thru Sunday night, and it was so exciting, and FREE to get in. You just had to pay to park and at $15 for all of us, I was in. I had done all of my research, as usual lol. I planned, talked to my husband, planned some more because, I wasn't interested in anything but seeing the balloons take off. I could care less about arts and crafts or music, just give me the balloons!! The website said they would take off on Saturday morning at 7:30 a.m. This meant we had to get everyone up, dressed, and out the door by 630. It was 30 miles away, and we new we had to park and walk. Well I should have known to get everyone up by 3 a.m. for us to be on time. My kids were moving as slow as molasses up a tree! We didn't pull out of our driveway until 6:50 a.m. I was not a very happy camper. All I could think is we are going to miss it. Then I got on Facebook to check the event again to see if anyone had posted about parking. Oh, well if my stress level wasn't at a 10 from being late, it was at a 15 after I got on Facebook. Comment after negative comment were complaints from the night before.

 "Parking is terrible!"

 "Completely unorganized!!" 

"GET THERE EARLY!!"  

Well goody. This looks like it's shaping up to be a great time. I told my husband, I am about ready to turn around and save our gas after reading these comments. We kept going and arrived about 7:20.

Beautiful sunrise on our way

The line of cars looked like a hurricane evacuation. I thought well great. Not trying to be negative Nelly, but maybe we can at least see a balloon float over our car while we sit here in this hot mess. All of a sudden, the cars started moving and flowing right into the gate. This may be happening after all!! We parked, jumped out and walked I know 4 miles uphill, but we made it just in time to see the balloons filling up and getting ready to take off! 

Edyn loves this pic she took and edited herself

We watched all of the balloons take off, and walked back another 4 miles uphill to our car. It was well worth it for me. I can't wait until my husband takes us to the one in New Mexico!

In an effort to get healthy, I decided to go plant based. It wasn't something I wanted to push entirely on my family, but it's something I wanted to do personally.

I knew that I would have to still cook meat for my family, but I also know that I am the one that meal plans. My family has been eating healthy and eating less meat, even if it is by default lol, They are really learning to embrace all kinds of fruits and veggies. I am going to shamelessly beg my husband for a Vitamix. It can be my birthdayChristmasValentinesdayorjustsimplybecauseI'mawesome gift from him.

 I really don't care, I just know I want a red one. **hint dropping right here**  On a plant based diet, there are quite a few soups that I love to make. For most of these soups, you will need vegetable stock. I was buying this stuff left and right, and thought at $2 a box, I'm going to have to take out a loan! I realized I had everything I needed to make my own. The kids wanted to help so I of course took them up on it.

There's those sweet small hands again.

We did the math together and we ended up making the equivalence of 7 boxes for the same amount of money as 2. Next time we will make even more!

Last but not least, we got to find a Geocache while we were at the park one day. If you aren't sure what Geocaching is, it's like a big scavenger hunt.You use GPS to find coordinates to the cache.

They come in all sizes! Sometimes they are small with nothing but a log, and sometimes they are big with little trinkets or toys in a big container. Those things are called swag! Here's the link to Geocaching.com if you would like to learn more. We absolutely love doing it as a family. Believe me after you find one, you will love it as much as we do! Be sure to watch out for Muggles!

Here's a video of our favorite Geocaching Youtuber! We love the Geocaching Vlogger!

That about wraps up what we've been up to. I hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend!

-Tasha