CAKE PLOPS! :)

Okay... they're REALLY called CAKE POPS! ha ha! But... ours kinda turned out like CAKE PLOPS! ah ha ha! :)

I saw this totally cool book and thought how much FUN it would be to make these little guys…  especially for school treats, Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day! They are soooooooooo CUTE!

Well…. Kinz and I gave it a valiant effort.  Melting the chocolate and getting it in the right consistency was a little tricky for us. Soooo… we struggled a little in the cake pop dipping process.  If anyone out there has done these sweet little doooo dads and has a trick or two up your sleeve on how to do these successfully – I would LOVE to hear it!

We decided to stick with the simple ones – dip it (or try to anyway :) and add some purple sprinkles.

This is our end product.  I didn’t have any styrofome to put the POPS in so I did it the UPSIDE DOWN way - hence the new term CAKE PLOPS! ha! :)

Regardless on how they look – they DID taste pretty goooooood! :)

The ideas in the book are adorable!  But, I've got some experimenting to do before I can add too much detail to our CRAZY CAKE POPS! ...the mystery lies in the candy melting... I'm just sure of it. 

Eric Ludy - Depraved Indifference

Thanks B Given!

Thanksgiving - 2010

We enjoyed 22 guests and my MOM and my Aunt Jackie’s AMAZING cookin’!

♥ THANKS B 2 U MOM! ♥

Oh and I contributed some homemade egg noodles – that I think scared a few guests (I’ve got a lot of those leftover… hmmm) ha!

Mom brought BINGO which we were ALL able to enjoy –

young and a little older ;)

It was GREAT FUN! It has really become an AWESOME tradition to celebrate this day at our home with

Friends and Family!

We let the kids do a little fishin’ from the balcony looking down into the living room… The kiddos throw a fishing line over the edge and TUG, TUG, TUG they reel in a

FUN little treat! Our oldest fisherwoman was Ashley (21) She wanted that FUN DIP BIG time! :) ha ha!

Our Grand Finale was a little FIREWORK Show!

Since we still had some leftover from the 4th of July, we thought, hmmm... why not! :)

(I’m sure our neighbors just love us) ha!

We have SO MUCH to be THANKFUL for! 

GOD continues to BLESS us - as UNDESERVING as we are! 

THANK YOU JESUS!

1 Thessalonians 5:18 

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Ephesians 5:20

Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Psalm 107:1 

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!

Colossians 3:15-17

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

James 1:17 

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 

  

P.S. I had just received my Simply Love T-Shirt in the mail from

 

MYCRAZYADOPTION.ORG

 and I realized I ordered the wrong size so I gave it to my Mommaseeeeta who wore it very well Thanksgiving Day! ♥

SNOW FUN!

No school and a beautiful, thick layer of snow aaaaallll over the place.  We all had a Gooooood ole time playing in it before Thanksgiving!  Erik tied a couple sleds to the back of the four wheeler and it was craaaaaaaaaaaaaazy fun! :)  …Furbee (my lil yorkie) even hopped on for a ride! ;) ha ha!

We live up on a hill – so we were stuck home for a couple of days! We decorated for Christmas, drank hot chocolate, made snowmen, snow angels, went sledding, cozied up by the fireplace ***(especially to warm up Kinzi's chilly tootsies!)

… made some super, duper memories!  

I can’t wait to share moments like these with our little sweetie(s)! I am SO excited to meet her. …wrap a little scarf around her and put on her little mittens! ♥

 

***Disclaimer: Kinzi's sweet feet where only out there for a quick picture! :) ha ha! 

A little story about a BIG God and a TOTALLY COOL SIS!!

Omigoooodness it feels like FOREVER since I’ve had a chance to sit down and update my BLOG – BIG things were happening and I am still sitting back in AWE of how COOOOL God is and how GRATEFUL I am that He put a TOTALLY AWESOME Little Sister in my life… ♥

 

…Okay, so my little story started out November 7^th! Yep! Orphan Sunday! Erik and Kinz had a softball obligation, so I took Madison and Ida to church.  I was SO excited to hear stories or see videos or just listen to how our church is a advocating for the Orphans… I was wearing one of my favorite adoption T-shirts… I wanted to talk to everyone about ADOPTING that Sunday.  I wanted to find common ground with some of my other church going peeps… As I sat there, by myself… at church, I was a little bummed to hear a sermon on work ethic, (However, it was a great sermon and our church does advocate for the orphans) I was still bummed out....

It’s funny, when you sit in church by yourself, you do things you may not do if someone was with you… (I don’t know why that is) But, when the offering plate made its way around to me… I decided to fill out one of those little yellow cards that asked for prayer requests… 

All I put was, “FUNDING FOR OUR ADOPTION.”

Well… the next thing I know ORDINARY HERO is offering a MAJOR fund raising opportunity for Adopting families… selling their amazing merchandise and they send the profit straight to our Adoption Agency. YEP, I signed up that very second… Not really thinking I would be too successful at it.  For some reason I think I’m jinxed in the FUND RAISING department. :) 

On November 18^th I received this from our church:

 Hi Darcee -

Thank you for sharing your prayer requests for the week of November 8^th. 

During this week we specifically prayed for God's provision for funding for your adoption from Ethiopia. 

Please let us know how you see God answer your prayer requests or how we can more specifically pray in relation to the requests you have shared. 

Thank you for your willingness to share your requests with us and your faith in God to meet your needs!

With You In His Grace!

Pastor Drew

Caring Ministries/Celebrate Recovery

WOW! HOW COOL is that! OCC is a VERY large church, and so to receive this email made me feel REALLY good! Someone prayed specifically for our family and funding for our adoption to bring our sweet little girl(s) home!  …and I could already see God’s hand in all of it…

I sent an email message out to a few friends and family… My SISTER – shared it with her friends, they shared it with their friends… she was emailing me almost every other day telling me how many shirts her EXTRAORDINARY friends had purchased – 

these are a few of her emails from the month of NOVEMBER:

“i totally already ordered 4 shirts the last week!!!” – from my sis

“GOODMORNING SISTER!!!! FYI…… I SENT OUT A MASS EMAIL LAST NIGHT TO A LOT OF MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY……GOT MY FIRST RESPONSE THIS MORNING…..MY FRIEND JAIME BOUGHT 4 SHIRTS FOR HER FAMILY!!!!  MAKES ME CRY JUST TYPING THIS!!! HOPE THIS GIVES YOU A GREAT START TO YOUR DAY!!!”

“I forwarded it to all my Liberty Christian peeps, as well!  When Christians come together, big things happen!!” - Kristin’s friend Jaime

“JUST GOT ANOTHER SHIRT ORDERED FROM MY FRIEND RACHAL!!! SHE ADOPTED A LITTLE BABY THEY HAD IN FOSTER CARE!!!  SHE IS A TOTAL SWEETHEART!!!  I'M SOOOO EXCITED BY THE BUZZ THIS HAS STARTED!!! LOVE YOU!!! KRISTIN”

 “ADD ANOTHER HOODIE TO THE LIST!!!!  ELAINA JUST SENT ME THIS EMAIL :)  LOVE YOU!!!! KRISTIN”

“THE SHIRT COUNT GOES UP 5 MORE….MARK & JANET BOUGHT 5 SHIRTS!! WAHOO!!! I LOVE THIS  :) XOXO KRISTIN”

“My friend Carin just facebook'ed me and said she ordered shirts for her family!! Wahoooooo!!!! Love you! Kristin”

“Hey Darc, Got your email this am about being one of the top families!!! Holy Cow!!! My friend Earlien at work just bought 4 more shirts last night. Love you!! Kristin”

“HEY DARC, I SENT OUT ANOTHER EMAIL LAST NIGHT TO MY FRIENDS AND BAM!!! 2 MORE SHIRTS SOLD!! STEVE’S COUSIN DEANNE PURCHASED 1 SHIRT LAST NIGHT and WENDY ALSO ORDERED 1 SHIRT LAST NIGHT. J  HAVE A GREAT SNOWY DAY! LOVE YOU! KRISTIN”

“DEDE JUST BOUGHT 2 T-SHIRTS AND I JUST BOUGHT 2 MORE SHIRTS AND ORNAMENT AND A COFFE/COFFEE TUMBLER!!! I'M STARTING OFF MY BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING THE RIGHT WAY!!! LOVE YOU!! GOBBLE GOBBLE!! KRISTIN”

“DARCEE, OH MY GOSH.....MY FRIEND ADAM PASSED OUT FLIERS YESTERDAY AT HIS CHURCH FOR YOU GUYS WITH THE INFO FOR ORDINARY HERO WITH YOUR NAMES!!!  THEY WERE ALL WEARING THEIR OH SHIRTS!! ISN'T THAT COOL!!!  HAVE A SUPER DAY!!! ONLY 2 MORE DAYS LEFT TILL WE FIND OUT IF YOU ARE TOP 3!!!  WAHOOOO LOVE YOU! K”

OKAY… I was seriously in tears after each email she sent… now I’m in tears all OVER again just sharing this!!! I am SO INCREDIBLY BLESSED with SUCH an AMAZING sister!!! I am at a loss of words for the HUGE amount of gratitude in my heart right now… I think it could just EXPLODE! ♥ …It has just been AMAZING to see people’s generosity in helping to bring our daughter(s) home, people I don’t even know, people I do know, people I haven't seen in years, people I just talked to yesterday!!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH! FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART! I AM MORE GRATEFUL THAN YOU WILL EVER KNOW! 

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!