Resurrection weekend and all the fun

Friday we went to a beautiful Good Friday service at church where we read the account of the crucifixion  in the gospels and sang hymns about the cross. Loved it!
-So thankful for that Friday long ago when Jesus chose to die on a cross for all of mankind for all time. And REALLY thankful for Sunday when he ROSE from the dead!

Afterwards, we had friends over for homemade pressed Cuban sandwiches. After that we hit the strawberry fields for the opening day of the u-pick season. Yahoo! My BFF said "Becky has 4 slaves and I only have two." LOL! My 'slaves' and I brought home 21 quarts! Smoothie heaven! But tonight strawberry milkshakes are on the menu for dessert.

Yesterday Joy had her first softball game and it was pretty exciting. She hit a home run !!! And she also got a  double, later in the game. Whoo-hoo!
 Then she and I decided to spent the rest of the day being crafty. We are making 'nerdy chic book clutches' but we think maybe they need a better title. lol
First we had to cover the books we chose with fabric. That was fun until I almost ruined our coffee table spilling modge podge all over it. -not fun!

Then we had to hollow out the books.

Who knew that hollowing out books would take forever.

We are still working on them. I'll post a picture when we finish.

I'm a huge fan of banners garlands and I'm always finding a reason to make one. I found this site and it made my whole day! Talk about making it easy on a banner-addict and such cute letters too!
Free printable alphabet banners!
I made her LOVE banner with twine and clothes pins and it turned out really cute.

Zac keeps us supplied with free coffee and tea from Starbucks, which is a fun blessing. I LOVE the Tazo Passion Tea!!! I kept wondering what I should do with all the tea tins and found a fun idea on Pinterest to start a kitchen herb garden in them. I think the green thumb gene skipped a generation in my case. : ) But we'll see how it goes. Maybe they will be full of cute sprouting herbs in the near future.

 I bought this Easter Lily for Zac's girlfriend's family who had us over for Easter dinner.

 Here is our traditional Easter morning picture, minus Andrew, spent the night with his friend.

 So I had to I catch a picture of him later, with Joy in the van.

That's all we've been up to. Hope you all had a Happy Easter!

~Becky

Wednesdays in the Word

"The angel didn't move the stone from in front of the tomb to let Christ out. The angel moved the stone to let you and me in to see He wasn't there,,,
The risen Christ doesn't come through doors...
Don't worry about how closed the door is or how tight the gate is or how shuttered down the situation is. Christ doesn't need open doors. He walks through walls. There's no situation today that He can't walk through instantaneously."  ~Louie Giglio

Amen! Be encouraged, Friends.

~Becky

Events and yumminess of the weekend

Usually we have a date night on Friday nights, but since Hubby's back is still re-cooperating from going out during the spring break, we stayed in and it turned into a cozy, quiet night for us all with a thunderstorm going on outside. We recently got hooked on the TV show Blue Bloods and bought the first two seasons, (because so far, it is clean and we sure can't say that  about most shows these days, which we always seem to have to turn off)
Saturday, Zac spent 8 hours caffeinating the greater Tampa Bay area ; )
 and Nathan went to his internship at the audio/video electronic repair store. Good news, there! -He's going to start getting paid for everything he fixes. Hooray!
Hubby had a job to do and he hired Andrew to help him out. They had a great time together.
Joy and I were up early for her first softball game but then found out that it was cancelled due to all the rain the night before and we were thrilled and headed back to our beds. : ) (she's been fighting a cold and didn't feel up to playing anyway)
 We had our annual 'House Party' celebration that night, to thank our dear friend Carlos, for all the work he did adding-on to our house in 2005. Joy and I spent the day cooking for the party and I did some decorating using a 'building/construction' theme.
She's been practicing for her internship, this summer at the bakery, and she made these cupcakes for the newly engaged couple:

 Soooo beautiful! We had so much fun that we were hoping someone else we know would get engaged so she could make them again!

Then our "mini Martha" (Stewart) made some eggs that looked like these:

and they were almost too cute to eat! We put them on a bed of alfalfa sprouts for grass and they were just adorable.
It was a fun night of celebrating and giving thanks and of course, lots of eating! We are always amazed when we watch the slide show of the building pictures and see how much work it was. May the Lord, forever bless Carlos!

Sunday we woke up to a plumbing emergency. The wind knocked down a palm branch which hit an exposed PVC pipe in our yard and broke it and water was going everywhere. Bless my dear Hubby's heart, that was not fun to wake up to. He stayed home from church and worked on it and the rest of us left.
Then we spent the rest of the day relaxing and the guys of the family all got together and made a great dinner and did all the cleaning up to thank Joy and I for all the things we did for the party (which of course was all instigated by the best Hubby) : ) So sweet!
~Becky

An amazing night

 My best friend bought the two of us tickets to this last weekend:

AHHHHHHH!
It was amazing! "Indescribable" really. (pun intended) : )

All I can say is, Heaven is going to be sooooo much fun, because worshiping God in a crowd of over 10,000 people sure was!!!
It was soooo incredible to hear Chris Tomlin singing all my favorite songs LIVE. My new favorite is God's Great Dance Floor. Louie Giglio taught on the Prodigal Son and said 'If you don't like to celebrate, then you aren't going to like hanging out with Jesus." : ) The children from the Watoto Children's choir were in the audience and he invited them on the stage with him to dance to the last song, God's Great Dance Floor, while gigantic beach balls where flying around. So much fun! We could barely move due to the fact that we were only allotted about 6 inches of space a person, in the nose bleed section, and there were two huge men on either side of us, but it was still a blast! One unforgettable night!

 CNN interviewed Chris recently. It is estimated that around 30 million people sing Chris' songs on Sundays! What a blessing he is to the body of Christ.

 (here)

~Becky

Wednesdays in the Word

Sometimes I'm guilty of skimming or skipping through the genealogies on my Bible reading plan. : )
But I'm really glad that I didn't the other day because if I ever knew this fact then I had forgotten it and it blessed my socks off.
Guess who was Boaz's mother?  
Rahab!!!! -"Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab,
 Boaz begot Obed by Ruth and Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David the king."
Don't you love redemption? Rahab's whole story speaks of it. She went from being a harlot in the book of Joshua to being a heroine of faith mentioned in Hebrews 11!
"By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace." Love that!
The Bible says that "faith comes by hearing" and I was reminded of that when I read what Rahab said here:
"We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Eygpt....And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath."  Amen! Josh.2:11
And because of her faith: "Joshua spared Rahab the harlot, her father's household and all that she had. So she dwells in Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho."
  Josh. 6:25

After Jericho was destroyed, Rahab lived among the Israelites, married Salmon and became a respected member of the community. I've heard it said that Rahab went from 'being a lady of the night to a lady of the light, from a harlot to a heroine, and from a prostitute to a princess.' Amen! That is redemption!

So, here the point to all of this:

Don't you think that when Boaz heard Ruth's story, that she just might have reminded him a little of his own mother?
I do! Here's what he said to Ruth when they met:
"It has been fully reported to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people whom you did not know before. The Lord repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge," Ruth 2:11-12
His own mother was a woman who had 'left the land of her birth' and came to live with 'a people she did not know before' to live under the shadow of His wings in her new found faith. Imagine growing up and hearing a first hand account of hiding the spies, sending the soldiers the wrong direction, the vow, faith in the red cord and the faithfulness of God to her and her family when the walls of Jericho fell down! Amazing!
- And I happen to think that Boaz immediately recognized that same faith and courage in Ruth, when they met. : )

~ For more on Boaz and Ruth's love story you can go here and read how girls "need to wait for their Boaz and not settle for a Bozo." And it is continued here.

So thankful for redemption!
~Becky

Staycation wrap up

I pretty much succeeded in wearing everyone the plumb out on Monday, lol
so they were glad that Tuesday's surprise itinerary was not as full. : ) It was also raining out so we got off to a slow start.
Fun thing number one was to do a little clothes shopping.
 -Except the boys somehow all bought head phones and not clothes. Hmmm, how did that happen?!
Then we headed off for some miniature golfing and go cart riding. It was about this time that Hubby realized how bad off his back was and that he needed to head home. : (
It was sooo sad. Dad makes the fun happen around here!
We were all gloomy for awhile and then tried to have fun.

 Zac and I were hole in one buddies so we posed for this:

The go carts were closed due to the weather which worked out because the guys didn't want to ride them without Dad anyway. Next on the list was lunch at our favorite pizza place. We got it to go and headed home to spend time with Dad. We rented Life of Pi and Wreck it Ralph (loved that one) and had a quiet evening at home with lots of comfort food like popcorn, nachos and sundaes.

 The last day of the staycation was suppose to start off with segway riding, at the beach,

which we were thankfully able to reschedule until hubby's back is feeling better. Next on the list was indoor surfing.

 This was Joy's third time going there and she's really got the hang of it now. 

The boys decided they aren't big fans of indoor surfing. 

Next, came lunch and gourmet cupcakes! Yum! Then we headed back home to Dad and then off to church.

It was a great 3 days even though it didn't turn out quite like we planned.
We bonded, we made memories and recouped from care-giving. : )

~Hubby missed work for the rest of the week recouping from his back injury and taking trips to the chiropractor. He's doing much better now, PTL! Hoping this isn't the end of his Frisbee golf/bowling career! lol
~Becky

Scenes from the staycation

The staycation turned out to be really terrific and slightly tragic all at the same time. (more on that later)
We definitely made some memories!
 Each morning the kids woke up to breakfast and a surprise itinerary for the day.

I'd bought several Groupons, so the activities were half off. (yay!)

Anyway, Day 1 was our favorite!
We found the best Frisbee golf course ever!

We decided we wanted to use regular Frisbees because Hubby has been playing Frisbee with the kids for YEARS and they find them much easier to throw than the official Frisbee Golf ones. (I'm not good at throwing either kind) ; )

This guy has quite the arm!

The kids got a big kick out of my throws and got lots of pictures of me looking like I believe I can fly. LOL

Oh my! 

Here is the champ and reigning Frisbee king! : )

Loved the hills and the massive trees!

Didn't love the pond...

where Andrew's Frisbee landed.

It was slimy and gross

but that didn't stop Nathan from trying to save Andrew's Frisbee so that he could keep playing with us that day. So close but yet so far. (there was a drop off) 

Then Zac came up with a plan...

and teamwork saved the day! 

Andrew got his Frisbee back and we continued playing! 

I had no idea that we would end up playing for four hours but we did! Then the next stop on the agenda was to a famous strawberry farm for milkshakes. I guess when the Food Network says a place has "the best drinkable dessert" in the U.S. you should expect a line, but we didn't and it looked like it would take an hour and a half to experience any kind of strawberry yumminess  so we changed the plan and headed to lunch.
Then we went to the ice cream stand that is famous in our neighborhood for their milkshakes

No fresh strawberries in them but that was OK because we are big fans of peanut butter and chocolate shakes. ; )

Next up was bowling!

Then we experienced a major fail using a Groupon I'd purchased for our dinner. Oh my word. I did not research this restaurant enough before I bought it. It basically turned out to be a bar and not appropriate for family dining. (I found out later that they have the word L-U-S-T in their phone number!) So, we didn't actually eat there after all. I'm sure that will be a family joke in years to come.

And then we saw

And LOVED it.

And at some point either when he was doing this

or this

My hubby tweaked his back and his staycation fun came to a screeching halt on Tuesday, poor guy!

More tomorrow!
~Becky