Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday. As my husband says I am half way to 70, my children say I'm forty, forty nine and a hundred. So how old am I? I am 35. I am very thankful for the birthdays I have. When I was 28 I was not looking forward to being 30. I dreaded it, but then I got very sick. Almost died, was given a one percent chance to live. I believe I would have died had it not been for the prayers of so many people. God healed my body and allowed me to live. I have been enjoying my birthdays ever since and so far it doesn't bother me to get older, even though I do struggle with the gray hairs, etc. Ha!!!

Today we don't have anything planned as our van is still broke down so we can't go anywhere. Tim and Alexis have went to a funeral. The boys have cleaned the house for me. They did a pretty good job. Trevor baked a cake and we are waiting on it to cool so that they can frost it. I am making some bread today because we could not find any at the stores yesterday that didn't cost a fortune. I have lasagna planned for supper,but Tim may come home and decide to cook something. He likes to cook and I enjoy it when he does.

If anything exciting would happen to happen today then I will post about it later.

I am very thankful to God for allowing me to live, He has blessed me with so many things. I have wonderful parents, growing up I didn't think that, but as I am getting older I'm glad God gave me to them. I miss them very much. I miss talking to my mom every day. I still get to talk to them, but not as often now. I am very thankful for the Godly upbringing they instilled into my life. I also have one set of grandparents still alive. They have been an encouragement to me over the years. They are a wonderful example of how to live a Godly life.
Then my in-laws. They are great people. I have gotten to know them while we lived in NC. They have been a big help to us in so many ways and a blessing. We appreciate them so much. I am also thankful for my husband. He has stood by me through many trials, happiness, sadness, etc. I am learning to love him more and more. Then God blessed us with four beautiful children. They are a lot of fun to watch and life my spirits many times by little things they say and do. God has blessed me and I am so thankful for another birthday to be alive and to serve Him.

IN NEED OF PRAYER

Please pray for me. I've been having a rough time lately dealing with some things. The devil has been fighting. Please say an extra prayer for me.

The Joy of Fast food!!

The other day Alexis came in the house with her friend Erie. She was carrying something in her hand. I asked her what she had, she showed me something wrapped up in a Burger King wrapper. Erie was standing off to the side, Alexis said Erie brought me this. Erie had been to Miami with her mom and brought Alexis back a sandwich from Burger King. So Alexis was eating fast food while the rest of us had to watch. She was so excited about that sandwich and it was nice of Erie to think of Alexis. That is one thing the kids miss, there are no fast food restuarants here in the islands. So Alexis enjoyed the sandwich while the rest of us looked on.

A Delicious Recipe

I was looking through my cookbooks today trying to find something different to make. I found this recipe. it turned out very nice and tasted good. The kids enjoyed it. Alexis asked if I would make it for lunch and supper.

Pumpkin Chocolate Loaf

3- 1/2 cups sugar

1- 1/4 cups vegetable oil

3 eggs

1 can (29 oz.) solid-packed pumpkin

3 squares (1 oz. each) unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled

1- 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3-3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1-1/2 teaspoons salt

1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1-1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1-1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 to 1-1/4 teaspoons ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 cups (12 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips

In a large bowl, combine sugar and oil. Add eggs; mix well. Stir in the pumpkin, chocolate and vanilla; mix well. Combine the dry ingredients: stir into pumpkin mixture just until blended. Stir in chips.

Transfer to three greased 9-in. x 5 in. x 3 in. loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 55-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing fram pans to wire racks. Wrap and freeze for up to 6 months. yield: 3 loaves.

Busy

It has been a busy week. Between the everyday things (laundry, meals, cleaning up around the house, dealing with the neighborhood kids at are house, children's service, regular church services, etc. , etc., etc.). Our regional director (Frank Vaughn ) and Bro. Pierpoint were here from Hobe Sound, FL Wed. and spent the night. It was nice to have them here and spend some time with them. The kids really enjoyed them being here. The received candy, etc. They are now on North Caicos along with Tim. It is conference time, so today is busy with meetings (for them). The kids and I were unable to go at this time. Just cost to much money. So we are here at home alone.

I was able to take some time to myself and put a puzzle together. I enjoyed that. I don't know where the kids found the puzzle, guess it was left here by someone. It was to hard for the younger kids to do so we have been putting together little kids puzzles also. They enjoy puzzles.

the past couple of days have been fairly nice temperature wise. A little cooler. Before it was very hot. Even the kids said that it was to hot to do much. We did get some rain the other night. Our cistern is almost full, which is very helpful. Water is a major concern, we can buy water and have it brought to the house to fill up the cistern, but if it rains than that saves alot of money.

Thank you to all that pray for us, etc. We appreciate all you do.

Children's Service

Thought you might enjoy looking at some pictures of our children's service. The kids have worked hard at inviting and bringing people to church, raising money to help kids at the church in Grand Turk, etc. We kept track of points for boys team, girls team and those that brought visitors each week. then after a month we had a special time set aside for them (this past Wed). We had pizza, popcorn, etc. for them. Also the one that brought the most visitors (Doniesha) was allowed to throw a pie into Tim's face and the team (boys) that had the most points got to throw water balloons at Tim. This was all his idea, I'm glad he choice himself to be on the receiving end of all that. the kids really enjoyed it and we are thankful for those that have been coming to children's service each week.

Doniesha throwing the pie in Tim's face.

The after effects of how Tim looked!!!

An upclose picture of Tim's face!!!

Here are some boys throwing balloons at Tim. This helped wash off some of the pie!

The group of kids.

Aunt Betty

My Aunt Betty died. they think it may have been a heart attack. She has battled a lot of health problems during her life. She was diabetic and had a lot of problems controling her sugar. As a result of an injury on her foot, gangerine set in and she lost part of her leg. She also went blind. Through all of her problems she kept a good spirit and continued to praise God. I am thankful that I was able to see her last November while we were on deputation and look forward to seeing her in heaven someday. Please pray for my uncle and cousins as they deal with this loss. My cousin Crystal will especially need prayer. she has down syndrome and I'm concerned about how she will deal with losing her mother. Thank you for your prayers at this time.

Barracuda

Tim caught a big barracuda this morning. he thinks this is the one that has been bothering him when he goes diving. So he wanted to see how big it was compared to the kids. So pictures were taken of the kids beside the barracuda.

Trevor

Alexis

Tyler

Tanner

Work at Grand Turk

While in Grand Turk I was to help with the cooking. So Tim set me up a temporary kitchen. It worked out well and quite a few meals were cooked here.




Here Tanner and Alexis were working on knocking a concrete wall down. They had fun hammering into it and seeing that they could actually knock it down. They worked very hard this past week.

Tyler was a big help in working with the guys that came down. Here he is working with Norm. my kids had fun picking on Norm and Norm I think had fun picking on the kids also.

Forrest, Tim and Key Key are thinking on how to get the next piece up on the ceiling. We got all of the church ceiling up and the sunday school rooms framed and part of the ceilings up in those along with other things before we had to leave. The team of guys will be there for another couple of weeks working so Lord willing more will get done.

Here is Trevor and Alexis scraping paint off of the walls. It is very old paint and peeling so I had them working on it. We used plastic spoons. It worked very well and they were excited about seeing the paint come off of the walls.

Grand Turk

We spent the past nine days in Grand Turk working on the church there. One evening Tim took the younger kids and i to the Lighthouse. It is along the beach where it is very rocky and huge dropoffs. it was beautiful and very peaceful to walk along the top and look out over the ocean and watch the waves and imagine the huge fish swimming below (this is the 8,000 feet deep water). it was very windy up on top and we had to be careful to not be blown over, at least us lighter ones, Ha!! I really enjoyed walking along by the water.

Here is a picture of Tim and Alexis, notice how their hair is blown back away from their faces.



Tanner and I

A look from top of the cliff

Lighthouse

Tanner and Alexis posing for a picture with the ocean in the background.

We really enjoyed our time in Grand turk. Will try and post some pictures of working on the church later tonight.

School is over

Another year of school is finished for Trevor and Tanner, Tyler has just a few more days to finish up. they have worked hard this year and finished ahead of schedule even with all of the travels we had to do. never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would homeschool my children. We just finished up our third year of homeschooling. I dreaded it every time I thought about it. That first year I could not understand why I had to teach school to my children ( the older boys were attending a christian school). Then when we felt led to go to the mission field i knew why I had to homeschool. Since that first year I have felt more confident about teaching, and have been getting into finding different ways to teach and different books to use. it is more fun to me to be able to shop for school things. I actually enjoy it. Now, don't get me wrong, there are some rough times and days that have many ups and downs, but we made it through another year. If anyone has any ideas on math I would appreciate it. I am still trying to find a math that will work for my kids. We have done A beka and ACE math and both have been a trial. I plan on starting Alexis in Kindergarten soon so that I have time to concentrate on her before the boys start back in school this fall.

Teenager

It is official....we have a teenager in our home now. Please pray for us. Tyler celebrated his 13th at the beach in Grand Turk. We are over here working on the church and so spent some time in the water. it was a beautiful day and the water so very clear.



Posing for a picture. The sun was very bright today.




Enjoying the chocolate cake. YUM!!!!YUM!!!!!