Striving for Godly Families.

I stumbled upon the Duggar Family's website tonight, while searching through some of Angie's favorite websites. I like this grid of character qualities that they follow, and I also like their House Guidelines. Both would be interesting tools to adapt for our own families! They also have a good list of web resources that they suggest for raising families of faith.

I also thought I would share their answer to the question, "What are your top five best parenting tips? (For parents with families of all sizes.)" that I found on their site:

1. Teach our children to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength, and memorize God’s word together as a family.
2. Teach them to have a servant’s heart, leading by your example. Love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Daily read the Proverb of the Day that corresponds with the day of the month and discuss it as a family.
4. Diligently keep up with each child’s attitudes and actions and ask what is going on in their heart.
5. Pray with them one on one letting them lead in prayer and then you closing the prayer time together.
6. Ask God to help you conquer anger because it can destroy your relationship with your children.
7. Praise them ten times more than you correct them.

It's so fun to learn from other families!

Yummy Cake!

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My friend Michelle brought a wonderful cake to Bible study last week. It was Southern Living's Buttermilk Breakfast Cake. She says that it's easy to make; it's beautiful; and it's super yummy!

1 (18.25 oz.) white cake mix
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup melted butter
5 large eggs
3 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
Shortening
1 tbsp. granulated sugar
Buttermilk-Vanilla Glaze (recipe following)

1. Preheat oven to 350. Beat first 3 ingredients at medium speed with an electric mixer 1 1/2 minutes or until thoroughly blended; add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.
2. Stir together brown sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.
3. Grease a 12-cup Bundt pan with shortening; sprinkle with 1 tbsp. granulated sugar.
4. Spoon 1/3 of batter into prepared pan; sprinkle brown sugar mixture evenly over batter. Top with remaining batter.
5. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until a long wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Cool cake in pan on a wire rack 15 minutes; remove from pan to wire rack, and cool 20 minutes. Drizzle Buttermilk-Vanilla Glaze over slightly warm cake.

Buttermilk-Vanilla Glaze
Makes about 1/3 cup
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1 to 2 tbsp buttermilk
1. Stir together first 3 ingredients and 1 tbsp buttermilk until smooth, adding additional 1 tbsp. buttermilk if necessary.

Beautiful Headbands for Little Girls

Jolie Fille Bowtique has the cutest accessories for little girls - and they are all handmade by a sweet mommy friend of mine. If you have gifts for girls on your shopping list, take a minute to visit her website. Here are pictures and prices for her headbands, but she also has tutus, bows, beanie hats and pony-o's. They are very fairly priced and very carefully made - I think you'll love them!

Sparkle headbands $5

Crocheted with bow $6

Custom crocheted $8

Crocheted with a flower $7

Teaching Children About Purity.

Recently, several mommy friends have initiated conversations about teaching children and tweens about sexuality and purity in a Godly way. I think that must have been God's nudge to get me thinking about these things, so I did a little research.

These are books that my trusted mommy friends recommended:

• 5 Conversations You Must Have with Your Daughter by Vicki Courtney. It is a wonderful resource for teaching our girls purity. I highly recommend it to all moms of daughters, no matter how old they are!
• “Sex Has a Price Tag: Discussions about Sexuality, Spirituality, and Self-Respect” by Pam Stenzel.
• We used the series "God's Design for Sex" (1st book is called The Story of Me, and they have a book for each age range - got a little hokey by book 3 but the first few were good for the early ages)
• Preparing your Daughter for Every Young Woman's Battle (good for tween age - the 1st 1/2 of the book is for mom/dad, and then the 2nd half you do together)
• Preparing your Son for Every Young Man's Battle (same as above - there is also a Every Young Women's/Man's Battle, but we felt this would be more appropriate for high school age)
• Tribe - Michael Ross (My son did this as a devotional)
• We've had conversations with our girls, but not used any books thus far. When they are high school age (maybe younger?) I'm going to have them read Lauren Winner's book Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity because I think it addressed the heart component of purity much better than anything I've ever read. It's not at all, "Don't have sex before marriage. Just don't" which is what I think kids hear most often. Instead, Winner explains why this is what God wants for us and, as always, she does so in an authentic, compelling voice that makes you feel like you're having a dialogue instead of reading a treatise.
  

I also found several books recommended by either Focus on the Family or Family Life Today, but I haven't read any of them yet.

• Created by God: Tweens, Faith, and Human Sexuality Parent Guide and Student Book
• How to Talk Confidently With Your Child About Sex
• How to Talk to Your Kids About Sexuality
• I Want to Teach My Child About Sex by Dr. Karl Wendt and Shannon Wendt
• Teaching Your Children Healthy Sexuality: A Biblical Approach to Preparing Them for Life
• Teaching Your Kids About Sex I-II

I also found a list of articles and podcasts by Family Life Today that might interest parents interested in these topics.

I'm sure some of you have already found great resources to help you on this journey - do you have suggestions for other moms? If so, I hope you'll share them, so we can learn from each other.

Thanks!!

Coaching Basketball.

We are about to set foot on a new adventure - coaching our son's basketball team. Well, I say 'we', but really it's my DH that will be coaching. I'll probably be the organizer, the #1 encourager, and the one managing the other kids on the sideline. But since I'm the researcher, I decided to look around the internet for some resources for volunteer coaches. Most of the sites I found were pretty sales-oriented, but I found one that looked really good. If you're in charge of coaching a basketball team this winter, check out Break Through Basketball's resources.

Or if YOU have great advice for coaching 7-8 year old boys, we'd love to hear it!

Yummy Recipes.

Here are few recipes that I'm looking forward to trying...

Tasty Tuesday: Cream of Broccoli Soup from Women Living Well Blog

Fluffy & Light Pumpkin Pancakes from The Mother Load

Chocolate Pudding Finger Painting from Having Fun at Home

I love Halloween treats!

My friend Michelle just found a great online list of the best-of-the-best homemade Halloween treats, and she wanted to share it with you.

Check out this list of 50 ideas at Blisstree. Here are some of her ideas that my kids will love exploring:

Pizza Mummies
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Pecan Caramel Spiders
Ghostly Pumpkin Pudding
Pumpkin Pie Pizza Cookie
Halloween Rice Crispy Treats
Hot Buttered Cider
Cranberry Pumpkin Cookies
Sweet and Salty Pumpkin Seeds
Turtle Corn
Caramel Nut Popcorn
Pumpkin Fudge
Cheese Pumpkins

Sharing Baby Clothes With Needy Families.

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Strick’s Gift is a new non-profit organization dedicated to helping newborns in need in Nashville, Tennessee. While many children are born to families who have the means to provide plenty in terms of clothes, blankets and bedding, many other families are unable to afford these necessary items. Strick’s Gift is a way to bridge this need.

Strick’s Gift is dedicated to the memory of and was founded in honor of our first son, Strick. We want to celebrate life and welcome with joy the babies that make it to this world safely. Our objective is to collect and pass along gently used and new infant clothing (premature to 12 months), blankets, burp cloths and bibs to underprivileged newborns in Nashville.

Currently, Strick’s Gift is working with Baptist Hospital, Vanderbilt Hospital Medical Center, Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and another great organization in town, Nurses for Newborns (www.nfnf.org). We collect donations of gently used and new infant clothing, blankets, burp cloths and bibs and then divide donations into individual bags. The bags bear the Strick's Gift logo, and the items are wrapped in blue tissue paper. We hope to have at least seven days worth of clothing for each newborn. We present these items to the families in the hospitals as a gift. Each gift is brought directly to the baby in need just hours after he or she is born by a nurse or social worker that is familiar with the needs of the child. With each bag a card of well wishes from "One Angel to Another" is attached.

Strick’s Gift is a unique opportunity to impact newborns almost immediately. Additionally, it is a unique opportunity to address a significant need that you may not have realized is so great.

If you would like to participate please go to www.stricksgift.org and see how to donate – or just go ahead and email us at info@stricksgift.org and we’ll write you back!

Thank you!
Lena and Geoff Levendoski
Founders, Strick’s Gift

Parenting Boot Camp - Generation Cedar.

My friend Angie really enjoys reading the Generation Cedar blog, so she shared several of her favorite posts. As I start reading them, I thought I would also share them with you:

Early Child Training
Raising Children to Know God in the Moment
Do You Have the Hearts of Your Children?
Handling Sibling Disputes
Important Things for Mothers…
Take My Life
Courtship: Preparing Sons

Generation Cedar's goal is "to equip and strengthen Christian families, knowing that strong families make a strong nation... Our title, Generation Cedar, taken from Psalm 92:12, is meant to represent a new generation…one that is rooted in Christ for life, extending to the next generations."

Smores - All the Yum, Much Less Mess!

We had a campfire with friends last week, and we learned a whole new way to make smores - without all the mess and juggling! Angie & Steve bought chocolate covered graham crackers (in the cookie aisle) to sandwich the toasted marshmallows. It worked SO much better than the traditional smores, and it was just as yummy. I think I even liked them more, because there was extra chocolate!

"My 7-yr old says, on a 1-100 scale, the chocolate flavored cookie smores were 99, and the regular smores were 95 or 85." That's a good testimony!