Updated Pictures of my Babies!

They grow up so fast. I know that they are still babies, but time goes by so quickly.

Abigail is almost 4 months!

Ezekiel is almost 2!!

New Furniture!!

Well, we have been married almost three years now so we decided to get new living room furniture. All of our other furniture was mine that I had accumulated over the years and most of it did not match. We wanted to get something that was ours!! We had some extra money and decided to get new furniture. It came yesterday! Here are a few pictures.

Raspberry-Chocolate Cheesecake

I usually do not make dessert, but I love cheesecake. I found this recipe and thought it looked easy enough. It was so good! I got it out of a Family Circle magazine and then found it on-line HERE. Enjoy!! (Sorry I forgot to take a picture-next time.)

Makes: 12 servings Chill: 4 hours
Prep: 15 minutes
Bake: at 325 degrees F for 10 minutes; at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes

Ingredients
Crust:
2 cups soft macaroon cookie crumbs
3 Tbs. unsalted butter, melted
Filling:
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1 egg
1/3 cup sugar
1-1/2 Tbs. lemon juice
1/4 cup milk chocolate chips
Topping:
3 Tbs. seedless raspberry jam
1 Tbs. milk chocolate chips

Directions
1. Heat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Crust: Combine cookie crumbs and butter. Press into the bottom and 1 inch up the sides of a 9-inch springform pan. Wrap foil around bottom of pan. Bake at 325 degrees F for 10 minutes. Coolon a wire rack. Increase oven temperature to 350 degrees F.
3. Filling: In a medium-size bowl, beat cream cheese, egg, sugar and lemon juice until smooth.
4. Sprinkle 1/4 cup of the chocolate chips over the bottom of the cooled crust and spread the cheese mixture evenly over the chips.
5.Topping: Heat raspberry jam gently, until just liquid enough to drizzle over the top. Sprinkle remaining 1 tablespoon of chips over the top. Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 to 40 minutes or until filling is set.
6. Remove cheesecake to wire rack and cool completely. Refrigerate for 3 to 4 hours until completely chilled. To serve, remove from refrigerator, let stand 15 minutes, then remove side of pan.

Watch Your Man

I just listened to this and would encourage other wives to listen to Watch Your Man By Carolyn Mahaney  

Click HERE to download and listen. This message was delivered at Sovereign Grace Ministries’ 2007 Leadership Conference.

Here is a description of the message:

Part of a wife’s biblical role is to bring faithful, gentle correction to her husband when necessary. True friends are willing to humbly correct one another, but if a wife does this poorly, she can damage her marriage.

In this seminar for women, Carolyn Mahaney explain’s a wife’s responsibility to lovingly watch over her husband. She gives biblical advice on questions such as how to correct in humility and love, when to forbear patiently, and when to prayerfully persist and appeal for change. Most important, Carolyn encourages wives to rely on God to change their husbands’ hearts and actions. It is God’s favor and approval—not change in their husbands—that wives must ultimately seek.

Olympic Junky?

I am not sure about you, but we have been watching the Olympics every night. I usually am not so interested, but this year I cannot get enough! I have enjoyed the swimming, volleyball and gymnastics so far.  Ezekiel has enjoyed it too. He keeps saying "swim, swim" or "run, jump, flip".

For those of you who have been following, here is what Michael Phelps eats each day, amazing!

"Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

That's 12,000 calories a day--six times what the average man should have."

[HT: JT]

Poll: Homeschooling a constitutional right

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--More than eight in 10 Americans were at odds with a California appeals court that ruled in February that parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children, according to just-released data from LifeWay Research.
It seems the California appeals court now agrees. In a stunning move Aug. 8, a three-judge panel of the court reversed itself, saying the state legislature has implicitly accepted homeschooling as legal. "We ... conclude that California statutes permit homeschooling as a species of private school education," the justices wrote in their unanimous decision.
LifeWay Research, in an April telephone survey, found that 86 percent of the respondents agreed that, "Parents have a constitutional right to homeschool their children." ...

read the rest of the article here.

My Favorite Scripture!

I had seen these and wanted to make one, so I did. Just click HERE and make your own.