Catch up

So much has happened since I posted last. Where do I start? Where do I finish? How much do I remember?

Our Big Bus Blowout went really well! This is the anniversary of our bus ministry and we celebrate every year and try to get as many people as possible to ride the buses to church that day. We ran two buses this year. "A" bus had 71 riders and "B" bus had 51 riders! Praise God! We even had several parents come along with their children that day. Two of the mothers that came that day got saved!!!!!! I think there were 10 children that got saved that day as well. Praise God!

Those who rode the bus to church for the Big Bus Blowout


Abby is getting so big! We had her 3 month checkup last week. She is now 15 pounds and 25 inches long. She is in the 97th percentile for length, and the 85th percentile for weight. She can almost roll over. She loves to sit propped up on the couch watching everything going on around her. She LOVES her fingers and putting things into her mouth. She doesn't really suck her fingers, she chews on them. Anything she can her hands unto goes straight into her mouth. She is also "talking" more. Most mornings when I go in to get her she is lying in her bed just talking away.

Every month we have what is called "Strength and Beauty." This is an activity for the teen girls. We get together every month to have fun and learn stuff. In June we learned how to knit. I'm still working on my scarf! This month I gave the girls some old pants and told them to be creative and make a bag. They were a bit apprehensive at first, but they got into it and did a really great job. I didn't get a photo of all the bags, but these are a few. The point to this was to make do with what you have and be creative.

A few of the bags the girls made

We even celebrated the 4th of July on Sunday night. We had one of the families in the church over and we had hot dogs and roasted marshmallows in our fireplace to make s'mores. YUM! We had a great time just being together - even though the holiday has no real meaning here. My husband is so awesome at letting me celebrate my American heritage and making those celebrations fun. We even had fireworks! You can only by fireworks here in November so we saved some from then and lit them off on Sunday night. Our friends that came over had a little boy who is 1 1/2. He loved the fireworks!

This Friday and Saturday is our 4th annual Youth Rally. This year we have teens coming from 7 other churches. Please pray for their safety as they travel and for the preaching to get a hold of their hearts. We should have somewhere around 60 teens here for this.

Well, that's all I can remember for now. Thank you all for praying for my sister and her family. I know they appreciate the prayers.

Prayer Request

Please pray for my sister, Kris, her husband, Scott, and their 5 children. A couple of weeks ago they had a fire in their basement and had extensive smoke damage from that fire. The house had just been cleaned and they were finally able to move back. Well, they had another fire today which completely destroyed their home. They have really good insurance, praise the Lord, but they will have lots of decisions to make in the days ahead.

Thank you!

I'm Still Here!

Just wanted to let you all know that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. Our computer got fried a week or so ago and we are waiting to replace it. We all are doing well. Abby continues to get bigger and bigger. She has recently started putting everything in her mouth. Her hands, her bib, her blanket, her toys, etc. Anything she can get in her hands goes into her mouth. On Wednesday, the 17th, she turned 3 months old. She was supposed to have an appointment on Thursday with the nurse to get weighed, measured, etc., but the nurse had to cancel. We are still waiting to hear back when the nurse will be able to come. I was really looking forward to having her weighed. Oh, well, another couple of days won't hurt anyone.

Tomorrow is the 11th anniversary/birthday of our church's bus ministry. Every year we do something fun to celebrate. It is called the Big Bus Blowout. We always do something special for the kids that are so faithful to ride the bus. This year we have "Birthday presents" that we are giving away. The kids get points for bringing visitors and also a chance to spin the "winners' wheel" for a chance to win more points. The top winner will get to choose from an assortment of "Birthday presents" whichever they would like. Please pray that we have a good turn out for this day. We've even heard that some of the parent's of the bus riders are going to come.

Recipes

A couple people have asked me for these recipes, so I thought I'd share them here so everyone can see them.

Golden Mantou
1 Tablespoon active dry yeast
1 1/3 cups lukewarm water
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons sugar (you can add up to 1/4 cup if you want it sweeter)
1 egg
5 cups all-purpose wheat flour or bread flour
Oil to fry dough in
1 tin of sweetened condensed milk

Stir yeast into the lukewarm water and let sit for five minutes. Add oil, salt, sugar, and egg; stir well, and then incorporate the flour. This should create a soft dough. Knead until smooth, and then let the dough rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour. Roll the dough out into a log with a diameter of about 2.5 inches. Using a sharp knife, cut into 2 inch pieces (it should make around 20), and let rise again for at least 30 minutes. Heat enough oil in frying pan to cover balls of dough. Deep fry until they are golden brown. Serve with an open can of sweetened condensed milk. No double dipping! :)

The recipe says that it sould make about 20. I cut them smaller and got about 36 decent sized ones. If you only cut 20 they would be quite big.

Pasta Bake
This is a recipe that's not exact - I kind of make it up as I go :)

Ingredients:
Mince (hamburger)
Tin of tomato puree (can of tomato sauce)
2 teaspoons oregano
2 teaspoons garlic or onion salt
Spiral noodles or macaroni
cheese

Brown the mince. Add tin of tomato puree. Stir in oregano and garlic salt. Let simmer for about 20 minutes. While sauce is simmering boil pasta according to package directions. Drain pasta. Stir pasta into sauce. Put in casserole pan. Top with shredded cheese. Bake at about 350F until cheese is melted.

Enjoy!!!!

Pardon The Mess

Have you ever gotten the incredible urge to be creative? On Thursday morning I woke up and wanted to make something - something really creative. So, I decided to make Abby some clothes. I only had two small problems, though. First, I didn't have any patterns in her size and secondly I didn't have any fabric. What to do? Someone recently gave us quite a few womens hand-me-downs. None of them are anything I would personally wear and there were a lot of pants in there which we wouldn't want to give away. After rumaging through the clothes I found two pairs of jeans. I decided to make Abby a skirt and a dress from them. I just used her measurements to make the skirt and one of her other dresses as a pattern for the dress. I think they turned out adorable. The dress is my favourite! Now I'm done being creative for awhile!

She was getting a bit sleepy in this picture.

I think she likes her dress!