This is one of my favorite recipes for the summer time. I like to cook it and keep it in the fridge, the longer it is in there, the more the flavors blend together.
Ingredients:
Directions:
Mix all ingredients together, toss and refrigerate. Serve Chilled
Well, we are officially into our second week of summer here, and our first week of camp. Every year about the beginning of May my sister and I begin to scout out and plan the activities for the summer. Not just family vacation, but what activities we can do with the kids. When you start searching you will find that there are a myriad of things to do with your kids that are low cost, and even free.
Here are some ideas to look into if you are still looking for things to do with your kids this summer.
1) Vacation Bible School: This one is a classic. Although some churches are going to night VBS for the working mom, there are still many that do the morning time. It is several hours for a week, we are talking plenty of time to entertain them, and get your grocery shopping done. Most VBS start as early as 4 yrs. old. Pay attention to the church signs as you drive around, they are everywhere.
2) Free Movies: This is a national program that provides free family friendly movies at the theaters during the summer. Check out your local theater for times and days. It is typically once a week, and in the mornings around 10 am. At the theaters around here they are even offering for every canned good you bring to feed the hungry they give you a box of popcorn. They are small individual boxes so each child needs to bring their own canned good. The movies are movies that are no longer in the theater, but they do not care. It is a completely free trip! My 3 year old even sat through it, and if they don’t oh well it’s free!
3) Swimming: Most of us know somewhere we can go swimming, but if you know no one that has a pool, find if you have a local County Aquatic Center in your area. Ours even has slides and is 0-8 feet. It is very inexpensive, about $2 a person.
4) Children’s museums, and play areas: While most of these places can be pricey our Children’s Museum offers free admission every second Tuesday of the month from 1-4. This is done in other cities as well, so check out your closest museum, zoo, and other places of interest for children you may find a discounted or free admission you can take them too.
5) Play dates, or “trade offs” 🙂 : My sister and I each have 6 year olds and and 3 year olds. We noticed when the 2 three year olds are together without the big kids they get along famously, and the same is true for the older ones. So we have a kid “trade-off”. Not only are the arguments reduced, but the activities the kids can do is age appropriate, and no one is bored or is it above their heads. It just makes a day go smoother, and yet you have no more or less kids.
6) Load up the bikes and go to the park. This is always the easy and free activity.
7) Stuck at home? No problem: There are plenty of things you can do from your home and front yard.
I have created an outdoor play center in my garage. Buckets of Sidewalk chalk, play dough, bubbles, sidewalk paint,etc. (Crayola has come out with sidewalk paint, I love it) We can open the garage and they can play with an assortment of things outside. I even moved their “Rose Petal Cottage” into my garage (since we do not park in it anyway) and a bucket of dolls and a stroller they can keep out there to play with. They love it. And best of all they are outside. We do not have a “play-set” so this gives them plenty of activities to keep them entertained outdoors. Then there’s bikes, and balls to kick and throw with them .
Plan a baking morning. You do not have to do anything special. I bought a box of muffin mix that only needs water added. I let my kindergartener measure the water and pour it in. (Educational because she is learning measurements) and they get to stir, spoon it in, and watch it bake. It does not have to be extravagant, you just have to be prepared.
Build a tent. Ok, for my girls this means throw a big blanket over the top of the dining room table, big enough to hang down over the sides, and they will play for hours under there.
Water balloon fights:Â Always fun for all ages.
8 ) Get Creative! There are a million things like these. So get creative, and use the internet if you need. Kids are not that difficult to entertain, jut time consuming. The key ingredient is to plan your day in advance. By the morning you should have an idea of what the day will look like, and remember to just enjoy having them home. Before you know it they will be back in school and another year has slipped away.
Happy Summer! Â
We all have busy schedules, and the more kids you have, the older they get, the more activities accumulate. It is a slippery slope to find yourself running here and there and everywhere. With soccer on Monday and Dance on Tuesday, Church on Wednesday, karate on Thursday, and sleep overs on Friday, when do you stop as a family? When do you take time for yourself? When do you have a date night with your spouse? The answer, you don’t.
“If we fail to plan, we plan to fail”. When we fail to plan our time appropriately we allow life to get the best of us, and we forget to schedule the most important things…Us! So how can we avoid letting “life” get the best of us?
The first thing is to create a family calendar. Everyone’s activities, appointments, and meetings should be on one central calendar. This allows for you to not overlap activities. It is especially useful for spouses because I can easily see if he has any appointments or meetings as I am trying to plan things where I will need him to be with the children, and vice-versa. One suggestion is to use different colors for each family members activities. I use a calendar which has a pocket in the back. I can store permission slips, wedding invitations, etc. anything that I may need to keep close to a calendar. It is also a place to store those different colored pens so they are always handy when you are ready to write on the calendar. (We use pencils, so that it can be erased, and changed easily.) Be sure this calendar has large boxes to write in. If you use a pencil as I do you will want the paper calendar not the glossy kind. If you use the glossy kind use a sharpie, it will not smear.
The next step to organizing your time is to evaluate the importance of all that is on that calendar. So many times once we write down everything we do we can actually begin to eliminate some things. Have your child pick their favorite activity, and eliminate their least favorite. If there is not one activity that is the favorite, then eliminate the one that takes the most time from the family. For instance if your child loves both soccer and ballet, realize that soccer has a lot more practices and games than ballet.
When you are scheduling, write in the date nights, the “you” nights, and the family night. Our spouse and our children are the most important things to us, right? Yet we do not think to put them on our list of things to do. Make a point to pick a night for family night. It can be flexible from week to week, but decide what night and write it on the calendar. This is a “keep at all cost” appointment. With it on the calendar, you can honestly say “No, I am sorry we have something planned for that night.” It also reminds you and your family just like any other appointment.
The date night is the same. However often you decide to have a date night, choose the night and write it on the schedule. Don’t assume you will fit it in somewhere. If you do, life will keep that time from happening. Last but not least, write yourself on the calendar. Again, some women need “girls night out” once a week, while others are o.k. with once a month. However often you need it, don’t wait until you are pulling your hair out before you realize how long it has been since you have been by yourself, or with the girls. Make the time!
Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem. Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people—blind, crippled, paralyzed—were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, “Do you want to get well?”
The sick man said, “Sir, when the water is stirred, I don’t have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in.”
Jesus said, “Get up, take your bedroll, start walking.” The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off.That day happened to be the Sabbath. The Jews stopped the healed man and said, “It’s the Sabbath. You can’t carry your bedroll around. It’s against the rules.”
But he told them, “The man who made me well told me to. He said, ‘Take your bedroll and start walking.'”
They asked, “Who gave you the order to take it up and start walking?” But the healed man didn’t know, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd.
A little later Jesus found him in the Temple and said, “You look wonderful! You’re well! Don’t return to a sinning life or something worse might happen.”
The man went back and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. That is why the Jews were out to get Jesus—because he did this kind of thing on the Sabbath.
But Jesus defended himself. “My Father is working straight through, even on the Sabbath. So am I.”(John 5:1-17 TM)
Of course we have a time line in which things should happen. We should be married by a certain age, we should have the career, the house, the car, we want by year 200- and we should have children by this age. And no matter how many times we see our time line fail, we continue to inform God how things are supposed to go down.
In the scripture above we see that Jesus was on no man’s timetable. First let’s look at the invalid which he healed. The scripture says he had been there for 38 years. Jesus was 33 years old when he started his ministry, 36 when he died, so how many times in his life had he passed this man? All his life. Why in that time had Jesus not healed him? Why did he allow him to suffer for 33+ years. We may never know. But it was perfect timing, he says later in the scripture He only does what He sees the father doing (verse 19-20), so when He healed this man it was because He knew that was the moment and the day.
Let us take a moment to also see another point here that shows God’s timing. The Jews (Or Pharisees, in this case) became angry because he healed a man on the sabbath, which was against Jewish law. Again, God is not bound by man’s timing. Or, there were hundreds of invalids there that day, why did Jesus only heal the one?
I may never know the answers to this until heaven. Did God cause this man to be an invalid? No. Did He always intend to heal him? Yes. So what was he waiting for? The perfect time that He, and this invalid, would receive the most benefit of the moment. It is not always about us, in fact your miracle and healing never is. It is always in order to bring God’s glory to others around you. Eternal Perspective says you already have breakthrough, miracles, and healing. God is not on your time line, or on this world’s. He stands above the line of time and sees beginning to end. So Eternally He sees you where you want to be, but you only see where you are.
While the trials we are walking through seem to reflect God’s indifference the truth is He is at work on your behalf, and He always has intended, and indeed will, bring your breakthrough if we remain faithful.
So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit…
Friends, when life gets really difficult, don’t jump to the conclusion that God isn’t on the job… Be content with who you are, and don’t put on airs… God’s strong hand is on you; he’ll promote you at the right time. Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you… The suffering won’t last forever. It won’t be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ—eternal and glorious plans they are!—will have you put together and on your feet for good. He gets the last word; yes, he does.
(Galatians 6:9; 1Peter 4:12; 1Peter5:7;11 TM)
I had to go into the kitchen and check this out for myself. Who ever looks at the end of your aluminum foil box? What a fantastic idea! I have to say that my Kroger brand aluminum foil did not apply here. But the Reynold’s did.
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I’ve been using aluminum foil for more years than I care to remember. Great stuff, but sometimes it can be a pain. You know, like when you are in the middle of doing something and you try to pull some foil out and the roll comes out of the box. Then you have to put the roll back in the box and start over. The darn roll always comes out at the wrong time.Well, I would like to share this with you. Yesterday I went to throw out an empty Reynolds foil box and for some reason I turned it and looked at the end of the box. And written on the end it said, Press here to lock end. Right there on the end of the box is a tab to lock the roll in place. How long has this little locking tab been there? I then looked at a box of Saran wrap and it had one too!
Hope this helped you! Have a Happy Weekend!
My friend Tracy gave me this very easy recipe, and after making it for my family it is yet another one to add to a great family favorite. Your kids will love it!
Ingredients:
2lbs. of ground chuck
2lbs. of Bok Choy
1 bunch of green onions
3 packages of Ramen Noodles (roast beef flavor)
Feta Cheese
Directions:
Brown the ground chuck and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Drain
Stir Fry the bok Choy and Green Onions together until tender
Boil Ramen Noodles with 2 packs of the seasoning that comes in the package
In a Large baking dish (Corning ware) mix the ground beef, the bok choy, and the extra seasoning packet.
Add boiled noodles straight from the pot. (Do not drain- use tongs to place the noodles in the baking dish)
Mix all ingredients together, and then add the Feta Cheese on top.
Bake at 450 degrees until noodles are slightly browned.
When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child. ~Sophia Loren, Women and Beauty
A man’s work is from sun to sun, but a mother’s work is never done. ~Author Unknown
The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men – from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
Today more than 40% of moms are raising children on their own. While I could talk about the hard things that single mom’s go through ( from a LITTLE bit of personal experience) This is not a post about the hardships of single parent-hood. This is to encourage any single moms out there who worry about their children. This is an excerpt from a letter my friend sent to her friends recently, me included obviously.
I have known this friend since I was six years old. She lived with my family for awhile, and some where a long the line my entire family “adopted” her as their own. But it seems mine was the first of several who “adopt” this beautiful girl.
God knows what he is doing. He will bring father’s, siblings, and even grandparents to your child. And when there is no one person to fill that role, God can and will fill that for them. He knows the plans he has for your child. Plans to prosper them and not to harm them, plans to give them hope and a future. Before they were formd in your womb, He knew them. And He knows better than you do what they need. (Jeremiah 29:11; Jeremiah 1:5)
“Friends love through all kinds of weather and families stick together in all kinds of trouble” (Proverbs 17:17). “Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family” (Proverbs 18:24)
Last night, I talked with my sister on the phone. Together we reflected the sadness in our life stemming from the absence of our father. Through the years it has been a heartbreaking struggle to overcome the idea that the one who helped create us, never cared to love us. As we talked, we resurrected feelings of rejection not only from out dad but also his side of our family. Never fully accepted and always treated as outcasts, our hearts ached at the realization that we did not belong. As we continued to chat, God began to speak to me. In the midst of complaining, I was reminded of my life as it is now…amazing! There have been times in my life when I believed I lacked much. What I have come to realize is that I have all that I need…great friends, eternal family and never ending love and encouragement. All lacked, God has given me in abundance.
I opened this with two scriptures regarding friendship. Were you wondering how I might transition from the above story to friendship? Here’s how: “a true friend sticks by you like family”.
Growing up and into my mid 20’s, I thought I could never really be happy. Feeling the rejection from both my mother and father, I wondered how I could ever overcome such loss. As I have grown and matured, not only as an adult but also in God, I see that overcoming the adversity has been much easier than I could have expected…and I didn’t have to do much. God, being the great Father He is, did it for me! He has provided friends who have become my family. In the loss I have felt, God has restored my ideals of family…how they act, how they live, how they encourage and how they love.
As she and I talked I began to see that I did not need to dredge up the past. Why open wounds that have begun to scab over and heal? Carefully, I placed my Neosporin and Band-Aid over my scratch and let the healing process continue…minimal to no scarring to be shown when the process is completed. I smiled-and cried-as God reminded me that He created me…not my natural father. His love and acceptance have always been there. As His truth stared me in the face, and He patiently waited for me to grasp hold of this concept. Today I recognize that along my journey God has placed in my life people who helped bring me to where I am. Those people are you! You have seen me through many moments…happiness, success, sadness and failure. You’ve kicked my butt and comforted me. You’ve wiped my tears and encouraged me to move on. You are my earthly rocks…the truest of the true.
“Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.” Joshua 1:3
You’ll notice a common thread throughout the Bible. When we really need Him, God shows up and does for us what we can’t do. The rest of the time, which is most of the time, He strengthens us and says “keep treading and trusting.” There’s no magic carpet. To achieve anything worthwhile you have to walk it out in faith, step by challenging step.
The Book of Job has 42 chapters. In the first 41, Job lived through the loss of his health, his wealth and his family. With friends like Job had, he didn’t need any enemies. His doubts were relentless. Over and over he questioned God but got only silence for an answer. He persevered through tough days and sleepless nights believing, “When I’m tried, I shall come forth as gold” (See Job 23:10). Notice: (1) It takes fire to produce gold. (2) Only the refiner knows the degree of heat and amount of time required. (3) To rush the process is to produce something of lesser value.
God told that every place the soles of their feet trod, He would give to them. C.V. White says, “The man who succeeds never waits for the crowd. He strikes out for himself. It takes nerve, it takes a lot of grit, but the man who succeeds has both. Nothing important was ever done but the greater number consulted previously doubted the possibility. Success is the accomplishment of that which people think can’t be done. “Complacency, fatigue, criticism and discouragement are hurdles you must constantly overcome. So, keep treading and trusting!”