Christian – The Bless Your Heart Blog

Random {Christmas} Rambles

A little recap of our Christmas holiday…

We got to see Santa and a couple of real live reindeer…

We ate a few chicken nuggets, went to the doctor for the FIFTH TIME IN 2 WEEKS and then came on home.

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Sweet Sayble is finally feeling a bit better. She got croup just like brother but had two infected ears on top of it and now has a cold. We did a lot of this around here…and I haven’t minded a bit to be honest…

Sweetest little (bald) thing... — Sweetest little (bald) thing…

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One of my FAVORITE things to bake is pumpkin bread and banana bread. I’m not a fan of thick, dense, heavy bread and these two are moist and light and heavenly, if I do say so myself.

Since we had a little downtime with all the sickies, I cooked up 22 loaves for some of our sweet friends…

We ate two and took two the Phipps family Christmas and the kids were asking for some this morning. Guess I shoulda made more…

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We always get the kids Christmas jammies as an early gift. They got to open them before we went Christmas light looking and hot cocoa drinking last week.

They got changed immediately and looked ADORABLE!

He looks so protective in this one... — He looks so protective in this one…

We cruised around Holyoke and then came home for some popcorn and a little Apple Dumpling Gang watching! This was one of Wrexy’s FAVORITE movies as a kid and our kids have fallen in love with it as well.

It was a REALLY good day…

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My home is truly a place of refuge for me. The other evening we had the lights off and the Christmas tree was glowing and the candles were filling the air with sweet scents…the kids were playing joyfully in the other room and Sayble was cooing at an angel from the nativity scene…daddy was on his way home and supper was in the oven and I was just so at ease. There is truly no place I’d rather be than HOME.

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Our sweet neighbors invited us over to have supper and have a little Christmas celebration. The kids had a ball (per usual) and were bouncing off the walls in excitement. (Pretty sure the Krueger house was a LOT quieter after we left!)

Mr. Rick built the kids a barn for all of their farm animals and toys and it. is. gorgeous! The hay mow flips open and the barn doors slide; there’s glass in the windows and ‘Phipps’ is engraved in the side. Seriously, you guys, it’s one of the kindest, most thoughtful gifts we’ve ever received. The kids have played with it CONSTANTLY since then!

Twins - Mr. Rick and Sayble — Twins – Mr. Rick and Sayble

Sawyer posing and Wryder over-smiling...you know, the norm! — Sawyer posing and Wryder over-smiling…you know, the norm!

Wryder didn’t fully understand that the barn was ours to take home. When it was time to go, he immediately started melting down and said, “Can I please come back and play with it sometime?” Ms. Kristi jumped in and saved the day and helped him realize he got to take it home. He stopped, dried his eyes and started jumping up and down with joy! It was pretty cute.

Mr. Logan and sweet Sara got the kids an EQUALLY awesome gift – a membership to Adventures in Odyssey! For the year, we can listen to any and every episode that we can! With our living in the boonies and driving 30 miles+ to get anywhere, this is a GREAT gift! The kids (and us!) love it!

We are blessed with some of the best friends, I tell ya…

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On Christmas Eve, we spent the day getting ready to head to Nebraska. We still had laundry to do and suitcases to pack and a few last minute gifts to wrap.

We ate a yummy lunch of steak and potatoes – everybody’s favorite – and took communion as a family. We are so thankful that Jesus was born! We took time to thank Him for the ultimate sacrifice He made for us with His death and took time to remember the faithfulness He’s shown us in 2015. We are a blessed people….

We went to Christmas Eve services at church and the kids got to get fancy!

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Sawyer and Wryder left Santa some cookies and milk and they left carrots for the reindeer. 🙂 Santa showed up and the kids didn’t even get up until 8:00 to check out their goods!

For Santa and friends

Microphone for WD and a push toy for Sayble

Wrexy snacked on the carrots and then threw them in the yard as if the reindeer ate them. The kids found them this morning and were SO excited!

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They have been so kind and gracious and grateful this year…makes a momma’s heart happy. They’ve wrapped “gifts” they’ve taken from their rooms and made gifts and then wrapped them all with whatever they could find.

Wrex was looking for his shoes to go to the barn the other day and Wryder had taken those, too! We found them wrapped in tissues under the tree. Their generosity and desire to bless blesses us…

Earrings Sawyer made me...her creativity is ASTOUNDING! — Earrings Sawyer made me…her creativity is ASTOUNDING!

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We headed to Nebraska on Christmas day to be with the Phipps family. We had a WONDERFUL time being together. The kids had so much fun playing with all of their cousins and we had fun with their cousins’ parents. 🙂

The boys got pajama pants and we took the mandatory modeling picture. If you don’t hear from me for a while, it means one of these guys has killed me for posting this. 😉

All of us grandkids got to give Grandma Rusk a very special gift this year. We wanted to make it the grand finale – the last gift to be opened – but we were all so excited we did it pretty much first thing!

A merry Christmas for a special lady... — A merry Christmas for a special lady…

It worked out well because the kids were all quiet and there weren’t a lot of other distractions. This lady is something else and so deserving of every good thing.

We took time for everyone tell the family a big thing they felt like the Lord was doing or something they really needed prayer about in the new year. During that time, Granny said that she’s gotten the same word two different times that the Lord has a mission for her in Stillwater. She was saying she didn’t really have a clue as to what it might be or have any preconceived notion what it was but she was ready to get there and get going! Lord I hope to be here and be that ready to serve the Kingdom at 80 years old…

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We finished up Christmas here today. This year has been especially fun with the kids older and fully able to soak up the joy of the season.

Wryder with the Paw Patroller and Lookout

We are so fortunate to have daddy home with us the rest of the week for Christmas vacation. We plan to soak him up and watch fun shows and eat fun food and play games and enjoy being together…our favorite thing!

Oh, and nap.

Christmas break is hard, y’all!

Phipps County Fair

Sawyer turned FIVE a few weeks ago and she wanted to have a county fair birthday party…so we did! 🙂

She’s not very big into sweets but she really wanted to try cotton candy at the rodeo on July 4th. Turns out, she’s a fan! She REALLY wanted cotton candy at the party so that was the theme of our invitation.

Come one, come all... — Come one, come all…

When I think of the county fair, I immediately think of show animals and I knew Wrex had a few boxes of rosettes in the garage from his show days that I wanted to use. When I decorate for parties, I’m all about using and re-purposing things we already have so this was an easy way to add some purple pizzazz without spending any money.

For the backdrop, I had the idea to make paper rosettes with Sawyer’s name on them. I just happened to find the purple and white paper fans at Oriental Trading for $0.50 a piece and then cut scrapbook paper to make the ribbon tails. We printed letters for her name and added them to sparkly foam and voila! My favorite part of the party…

Wrex and his dad made these ‘lemonade stands” for me out of old pallets we had in the shop. We added a little paint and our rosette bunting and I absolutely loved how they looked…

We had a glitter tattoo booth, too! I made livestock and ribbon templates, bought some glitter tattoo glue and some glitter and fancied the kids up…I just didn’t get any pictures of any of that. Boo.

We HAD to have a cake walk – Sawyer’s favorite part of the party (besides her uncles, friends and cotton candy).

Wrex found some scrap carpet at Menards and I painted the numbers and made some tiny cakes and the cake walk was born.

Sawyer’s other favorite birthday game is pin the tail on the donkey. We decided to pin the ribbon on the pig – totally fun to watch the kids fumble through this one! I found some farm animal clip art I liked and had them blown up and printed at Staples as an engineer print ($3!!) and we used the pig for the game and the other animals as decor…

The kids got prizes at every game station, so we made little bags so they could keep up with their treasures…

I got lucky and found a roll of purple and white gingham table covering that totally jazzed up our tablescapes. For centerpieces, I bought some purple buckets at the dollar store and planted some wheat seed the neighbors gave us. We watered and waited and two weeks later we plopped some purple animals in them and called it cute!

Uncle Waco ran the cotton candy machine, automatically making him the most popular guy at the party…but he probably would’ve been anyways…

Besides cotton candy, we had BBQ sandwiches, corn dogs, curly fries, corn on the cob, popcorn and pickles!

We opened some presents and just had an all around good time!

The birthday girl got sang to but opted out of eating her cupcake. 😉

At the end of the day, we thanked our guests with goldfish! Wrex thought real ones would be a cool, affordable parting gift but we opted for making goldfish soap so we didn’t upset any parents. 😉

We bought some plastic goldfish and some clear, glycerin soap. We melted the soap down, poured it into bags, added a cute little fishy and tied it up with a ribbon. These little guys were adorable, if I do say so myself.

All-in-all, it was my favorite party I’ve thrown. Maybe it was because I know the birthday girl had such a good time and felt so loved…that’s the point, right?

with her (our) sweet friend, Andrea... — with her (our) sweet friend, Andrea…

Next up is Grandma Rusk’s 80th. It’s gonna be a ball!

Praying for Our People

Wrex and I were working downstairs yesterday afternoon and Sawyer was up playing in her room. We looked at each and smiled every few minutes as we heard her worshiping at the top of her lungs. “I’m running to your arms. I’m running to your arms. Nothing compares to your embrace. Light of the world forever reign.”

We got to talk to her later about what was happening in Iraq and that was the perfect way to initiate the conversation.

The images coming out of that country are absolutely heartbreaking. I’ve come across a few on Facebook and I can hardly bare to look. I try to scroll right past them as quickly as possible…and then have to remind myself that not looking is not going to solve the problem.

I can’t help but see the face of baby Wryder in this photo, instead…

I get so comfortable in my corner of the world. While we’re out going to family reunions and renovating playhouses and worshiping the Lord in our homes, people are being forced from theirs. They’re running for their lives, just hoping to survive. Children and adults are dying of dehydration, are being thrown off of mountains, beheaded and executed. Our people are dying en masse because they proclaim the name of Jesus.

Join me in praying for our people. We are praying that the Lord shows off in the grandest of forms. We’re praying that the shield of protection around these people is impenetrable and that because of that, ISIS members will have their eyes opened to the glory of the Lord. We’re praying for revival, for shifts, for change, for life.

The homes of Christian (and other non-Muslim) families in Iraq are being marked as such.

It’s a symbol used 1) as a mark of shame and 2) to give permission to ISIS members to kill anyone left in the residence and to pillage their belongings. That symbol is nun, 14th letter of the Arabic alphabet. It’s equivalent to the Roman letter ‘n’ and is the first symbol in words like Nazarene…as in Jesus the Nazarene, as in ‘can anything good come from Nazareth?’…it’s a common Arabic term for Christians.

Some Iraqis around the city of Mosul are standing in solidarity and have began to use this symbol (on social media and in their city) as one of hope instead of shame.

10488083_428374527300687_349373373144429446_n — “We are all Christians”

"Yes I am and I am proud." — “Yes I am and I am proud.”

We will do the same.

Pray for the persecuted Christian all over the world.

Pray that the Lord will show off and protect His people for His glory.

Pray that the genocide stops, in the name of Jesus.

Pray for our people.

Easter Advent: Palm Sunday

Save for Sawyer’s very first Easter, we’ve done an Easter advent of sorts with her. It’s been a great tool for her (and us) to learn even more about Jesus and to prepare our hearts regarding the significance of the Easter holiday.

Each day, from now until Easter, I’ll post the advent activity that we’ll be doing in our home and I encourage you to check in and do the same! It’ll be good, clean, faith building fun. 🙂

The Triumphant Entry

As a Bible believing Christian, the death of resurrection of Jesus is quintessential to our faith and His entrance into Jerusalem is most definitely a part of that story. If you think about it though, there wasn’t anything that was really “triumphant” or noble or victorious about his journey into Jerusalem. He was riding a donkey…not even a horse, people…a donkey! He didn’t have an army of men surrounding Him, just a bunch of ordinary people who would turn their backs on Him in a few days; the people shouting “Hosanna” would later shout “crucify Him!” The man who was decorated as “king of Israel” would be brutally beaten and killed in five days. Doesn’t seem very triumphant, does it?

Oh, but it was! That entry was the beginning of the greatest triumph ever made in known history – the defeat of death. No one, other than Jesus, has ever been able to gain victory over death; it simply could not contain Him. I’d call that triumphant…

Read: Mark 11:1-11 Matthew 21:1-11

Watch: Praise Parade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq64oLGugp8

Do: Act out the triumphant entry!

— Make palm branches out of construction paper. We traced hands to make the leaves and glued them to a tongue depressor.

— Take turns having someone be the donkey (or get a toy horse), Jesus and the crowd.

— Wave your branches and shout “Hosanna! Hosanna to the King! Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Pray: Lord, thank you for being our King. Thank you for coming to save us. You are the God who saves!