Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

Our Valentine’s Celebrations!

Feb
20

On Saturday, the 11th, we hosted a Valentine’s dinner for the couples from our church.

We had lots of fun getting everything ready!
Lots of cooking…

Charity cutting up onions

Old love songs… ;)


Last minute, we decided to learn a couple of old love songs as entertainment for the evening. Although I’m not sure it sounded that great, we definitely had fun serenading all the love birds with “L-O-V-E” and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”. :)

Enjoying our time together to the fullest!
Benjamin and Charity

Abbie and Hannah

Washing dishes…
Carinna

Benj

Mom did an amazing job decorating!
Mom

I LOVE chocolate

John-Clay and I were grateful for all the help getting the photo booth ready to take pictures for the couples when they arrived! ;)

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Maggie

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Mounts Fagalas Chathams Elliotts Henrys Determans
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And during dinner…

We kids served them, while they ate by candle light…

Maggie serving

They played some games and told lots of hilarious stories, and we heard LOTS of laughter!
Mom and DadMr. and Mrs Fagala


The honeymoon stories were soooo funny!!

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Meanwhile, back in the kitchen…

That’s one good reason to serve at an event for couples…you get to listen in on conversation between married folk. ;)

On the 14th, Dad and Benjamin did something special for all of us girls. They bought us flowers and chocolate and took us to dinner at Tio’s Mexican Restaurant! Grandma and Grandpa came with us too, and we had a great time. <3 John-Clay and Caleb had a fun Valentine’s Day, as well. They went to the OKC Thunder basketball game! :)

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Hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s Day!
Remember……Jesus loves you!!!

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January Life at the B’s

Jan
23

Nineteen days since our last blog post???? Please kindly ignore that fact. Actually, it doesn’t seem like we have had much of anything to post about – just normal life. :) So enjoy this random conglomeration of an update!

During Christmas and New Year’s, Dad re-did our kitchen floor using vinyl tiles.

Before (can you tell where our chairs have been? :)Kitchen floor redo

After:
Done!

I’m so proud of my dad. Almost 15 years ago, he began remodeling this house that wasn’t even live-able. You wouldn’t be able to tell that if you walked in today! He has poured so much time, energy, and money into making it a HOME for us. Matter of fact, our house turned 100 years old in 2011! (We thought about having a celebration, but never got around to it. ;) Sure, there is always something more to fix and lots of “character” to the old place, but hey – that’s the fun of living in an old house, right? ;)

Delish with milk and coffee
More of Abbie’s delectable delights – homemade strawberry, butter cream, & chocolate donuts…YUM. Strawberry was the best. :)

Uncle Chris and Aunt Janis were at Grandma’s over the weekend, and we really enjoyed spending time with them!
Scrabble is a tradition with Uncle Chris
J-C and I competing with the Scrabble expert (aka: Uncle Chris).

Conclusion: I need to study more vocabulary words. :)


Aunt Janis, me, Carinna, Abbie, & Charity waiting a turn for one of our favorite Okie things to do…shoot guns. ;)

Charity and Carinna

Well, that’s all the randomness for now. Lord-willing, it WON’T be 19 days before we post again! :-/ God’s got some things stirring in my heart that I hope to write about soon.

Until then, keep loving Jesus!!

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Christmas at our house

Dec
31

photo by Charity

Christmas is definitely one of my favorite times of year! We have some really fun traditions, I love being with family, plus I get to bake … A LOT! :) No, really, I think you’ll be able to see why it’s so special to me after you look at all these pictures – enjoy!

Silver Dollar City

 

The twins and I got to accompany some friends to Branson earlier this month. There’s a lot I could say, but to sum it all up, we had a VERY good time! A big highlight was that we unexpectedly all got free tickets to Silver Dollar City-it was so pretty all decorated up for Christmas, and the roller-coasters were terrifying  great!

 

Caroling at the Senior Citizen Center

When we got back home, most of our family got to sing and play for the sweet folks down at the Senior Citizen Center here in town.

Caroling at the Senior Citizen Center

Wrapping up goodies

Tradition: We always go Christmas caroling to our neighbors, and around town. (including the local police station and sometimes to random folks we’ve never met =) Our list is getting bigger. It seems to be a real blessing to others, but sometimes I think we are the ones who feel the most blessed by it.

As I said earlier, we did LOTS of Christmas baking. =)

"We wish you a merry Christmas"

Christmas caroling.

 

Tradition: For several years now, mom has put together a themed Christmas tea for just our family. This year the theme was ornaments. She did an AMAZING job with spazzy decorations and lots of good food – we all really enjoyed it!

 

After the tea, Dad read from a Christmas devotional, then we opened stockings and presents. With both the older boys working, and well, I guess some us girls have taken plenty of trips this year, it makes me appreciate even more when we can all be together – I love my family.

Benjamin and Caleb 

Candlelight service

For the first time, our little church group held a Christmas Eve candlelight service, complete with beautiful carols and formal dresses. It was lovely.

Luke 2  

We were encouraged to memorize Luke 2:1-20, this was a blessing to me.

 

Tradition: Daddy writes up our annual Christmas letter. We sent out 106 copies this year! :)

We had a special time celebrating at Grandma’s house on Christmas day after church. We are so blessed to have godly grandparents who live close and love the Lord.

Christmas Day duck hunting

A few of us did some duck hunting, we got…one. :) (Carinna didn’t hunt, she brought our dog to retrieve the ducks, and Dad carried a rifle hoping we’d spook a doe.)

Some special things we do at Grandma’s on Christmas is: Eat Grandpa’s amazing chex-mix and open stockings.

Grandpa and Charity

  

We taught and learned some new games this time. It was fun and we had some pretty good laughs! =)

 

On the 26th, we drove up north a little ways to welcome the Paine family to Oklahoma. They are moving here from Chicago. We had a great time fellowshipping, playing volley- ball, and playing games. We are glad they live “close” and are definitely looking forward to the next time we can get together with them!

Granddad

On the 27th we celebrated with mom’s side of the family at Granny’s house.

Yay! We remembered to sing carols this year! :)

It’s pretty fun, there are 5 great-grandkids now, which means there are little people around again! =)

 

The winners of a game with their prizes. :)

Twins!

Twins holding twins. Carinna has Nickolas Patrick and Maggie has Natalie Shae.

 

Special traditions at Granny’s are: Eating her delicious homemade cinnamon rolls and playing white elephant.

“ And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto YOU is born this day in the city of David a Savior which is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11

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What Season Is It?

Nov
07

According to this picture, you would think it is spring…

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Yes, our lilacs are BLOOMING.
In NOVEMBER!!

At our house right now, you could be collecting colorful leaves off the ground with the rich perfume of lilacs floating through the air. Crazy! =D I guess the drought caused the lilacs to go into dormancy, and now the big rains woke them up and they think it is spring. =D

According to this picture, you would think it is summer…

ice cream
We made homemade oreo ice cream last week for a guest who we were trying to bribe to stay longer…it worked! :) It was a little strange to enjoy the treat on a chilly day instead of in the triple-digits, but delicious nonetheless!

According to THIS picture, you should know it’s fall!!

chai tea
Last winter, we became huge fans of chai tea. The other day, Mom brewed up this new recipe from Taste of Home which we heartily rated as a 5-star winner! We use sucanat in place of the sugar (sucanat is unrefined sugar that tastes more like brown sugar and gives a slight caramel flavor to the tea). Unfortunately, we haven’t tried it with whipped cream on top yet, but it would be delicious!

Chai Tea

2 cups water
2 individual tea bags
1 cinnamon stick
6 cardamom pods, crushed
1 whole clove
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
2-1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup sugar
Sweetened whipped cream, ground cinnamon and cinnamon sticks, optional

In a small saucepan, combine the first six ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 5 minutes.

Stir in milk. Return to a boil; boil for 1 minute, then strain. Stir in sugar until dissolved. Pour into mugs. Top each with whipped cream, cinnamon, and a cinnamon stick, if desired. Yield: 4 servings

“To every thing there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:”
Ecclesiastes 3:1

May our Unchanging God be your stay in whatever
season of life you find yourself in today!

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The Unforgettable Camping trip!

Oct
26

Here we go!

did we bring to much stuff? ;)

When you have this many people, I guess it takes ALOT of stuff. ;)

  CharityMom and Carinna

Hannah's joyful smile!

 

Lunch =)

Notice their big smiles? They REALLY enjoyed their lunch! (smirk ;)

J-C MaggieDad Supper

This is delish!

If ya’ll ever go camping, you HAVE to try this one! First, cut a big slit across the top of a banana, then fill it with butter, chocolate bar, nutella, peanut butter, and marshmellows, then roast it over the fire and consume.

Abbie and Hannah trying to come up with new roasted concoctions… :)

Roasted AppleRoasted banana

Charity

Benj.

Gotta love singing your heart out around the campfire. =D

Singin' together 'side by side' :)

BreakfastBenj.

We enjoyed catching a lot of fish-perch, crappie, and bass.

       Fresh, fried, fish.

Now that is what I call FRESH fish! This stuff was amazing!

Granny, Hannah, and Granddad

Granny and Granddad (mom’s parents) joined us on Saturday, and greatly contributed to the loads of fun we had!

Hiking trails...

Storm clouds are rollin' in.

The hiking trail we went on was stunningly gorgeous! Near the end of the trail was this beautiful view of the lake.

…take notice of the storm clouds rollin’ in…

Happy trails

Climbing the water dam

There was a really cool water dam near the camp ground we climbed, it was pretty epic!

At the top of the dam

We sang from the top… :)

  

Playin' croquet

GrannyGranddad

Twins

Hannah =)

Grannddad won this game, by the way...

The sun was in her eyes... :)

Go Granny!

On Saturday afternoon/evening/night :), the big adventure came – in the form of a STORM. Thank the Lord, those of us who were out hiking made it back in time before it hit. Knowing that a storm was coming, and that our big tent leaks (from past experience :) Mom, and others took out some stuff and piled it in the van, so it wouldn’t get all wet.  As the storm quickly approached, we snarfed down our supper, finished filleting the fresh catch of fish, Granny and Granddad headed back, and we all piled in the vehicles to take refuge, all except for J-C and Caleb who stayed in their tent to hold it down.

This is a 15 second video, of a 30 minute time lapse to show you how quick this thing came!

Waiting out the storm

As the rain poured, it lightening and thundered, we waited and waited, Dad checked the weather on his phone, we phoned called and walkie-talkied each other back and forth to give each other updates…and ate good comfort food like chips and cookies…:) As we watched the wind pick up, we started wondering if our big tent, which we’ve had since Charity was 6 weeks old,(17 1/2 years) was gonna survive, so we got out and put more stuff in the van, shortly after, the wind whisked it up, right in front of our eyes and blew it into a tree!!! …so glad we took that stuff out! We found out the wind probably got up to about 60 mph!

We were very thankful that the baseball size hail didn’t hit us! Meanwhile, Granny and Granddad were having a VERY difficult time getting home. With the Lord’s protection they finally made it.

 Bye bye tent!

Now that it was very dark (round 10:00) and 6 of our sleeping places were slightly unavailable   GONE, Mom and Dad decided that the girls should all sleep in the van and Mom sleep in the car.

Adventure is out there!!!A sister sleepover in the van. :)

A spur-of-the-moment sister sleep-over in the…VAN…of all places!!! What a night!

 

Hot Chocolate  These donuts are a camping tradition.

The ol’ tent gone kasplat. Guess it was time for a new tent anyway. =)

 

Sunday we attended this local church, did some more hiking and fishing, and a lot of rearranging and packing-up. Our stuff needed a lot of organizing after last night.

On our way home, those in the car barely missed having a head-on collision driving on a two-lane road. They topped a hill and saw a car coming from the other direction erratically drive in their lane, to the shoulder and grass, and back to their lane. Not knowing where the car was going to end up, mom didn’t know what to do. She stayed in her lane, and the car stayed on the shoulder coming the wrong way, passing within 6 inches of the car. They think they heard the other car scraping the guard rail, and then it zipped right back in with the line of cars that it came from.  We are praising the Lord for His hand of protection and guardian angels!

Needless to say, after such a dramatic weekend, it was a very good feeling to be home ALL TOGETHER, ALIVE, WELL, AND SAFE, and in our own beds again. :) I don’t think we’ll ever forget that memorable camping trip.

Until next time…

happy trails! =)

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