Purity symbols and another 16 year old

Our youngest is turning 16 on Tuesday!!! 

How did that happen already?! 

When our kids turn 16 we give them a purity ring or other symbol of their choice. 

This post mentions what our older kids chose.    

(the "geeky but elegant ring mentioned there, ended up needing to be sent back once we realized Joy was allergic to sterling silver! So, she's on purity ring#2!) 

Andrew and I joked that what he would REALLY like is a purity PEDAL. 

LOL 

As in, an electric guitar pedal. We had lots of laughs as he was trying to come up with a way to connect purity and electric guitar. ; ) 

He has chosen a watch for his symbol and we plan to have it engraved with a verse on the back.

 

And today it hit me what verse that should be:
Matthew 26:41!!!

"Watch and pray so that you do not fall into temptation." LOL
 How great is that?!

WAY back when, I had a purity necklace. I posted a bit of our love story here several years ago. : )

Have a great weekend!

~Becky

Thanksgiving week

What a week! Wow!

Joy's purity ring arrived in the mail. We had a fun day out together on Monday.

Tuesday was a normal school day around here.

Wednesday I gave the kiddos the day off and they blessed my socks off by helping with all the dishes for Thanksgiving.
Their help made it the easiest Thanksgiving for me ever, if you don't count when we've been invited to other people's homes. ; ) Besides the food, Thanksgiving included lots of games. Hubby had archery, basketball and croquet competitions with prizes for everyone to play that day. Joy helped make the archery targets with the bulls-eyes being 'bad guys' pictures from their favorite movies. lol

Isn't he cute?

Zac took advantage of the opportunity to make time and a half and worked in the morning and came home in time for the our meal. It was great day of food and fun. (and football, if you ask the guys!)

Our kids went to bed that night and it was Thanksgiving and woke up to Christmas, because every Black Friday, Hubby and I get up early and go to breakfast and then buy a Christmas tree at Home Depot along with gorgeous 99 cent poinsettias and a wreath. -Always one of my favorite days. Then the decorating started. And once it looked like Christmas around here,

 it was time to decorate over that all that for Joy's birthday dinner! (thank you Andrew and Dad) They decided to make it a 'birthday tree' for the night. ; )

She chose a campfire theme which was fun.

Happy Birthday Joy!

We had sausages that we roasted and sauteed veggies that Zac cooked over the fire. Yum!

 Then we tried a dessert from Pinterest called 'campfire cones.' Here are a bunch of the yummy things we put in our waffle cones:

 Once we filled them, we wrapped them in foil and put them in the fire!

-We either over cooked them or under cooked them but they were fun to make and yummy no matter what.
Saturday we got up (at an hour I never have before) and left the house EARLY for her birthday gift, which was a ride in a hot air balloon ride at sunrise. -The beauty of that event deserves a whole post of its own.

This mom is plum worn out! But it was a GREAT week! ; ) And I have a two week break between the next set of birthdays. Whew!

~Becky

For the love of voting

Since I LOVE the right to vote and the whole democratic process and this is such an important election, I thought it would be fun to be a poll worker! Not to mention, it seemed like a well paying job for one's day work and we have a purity ring to buy. : ) (little did I know what was involved!)

When I was 18, I voted for the first time at a poll down the street from my house in someone's garage. (do they still use resident's garages for polls these days? I doubt it)

I used to love to bring my kids with me to the poll when they were little. One year they were given ballots with a bunch of past presidents to choose from like Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and they had their own ballot box. Too cute. Now I have an 18 year old who is going to vote in his first presidential election and a 17 year old, who will miss getting to vote by 5 weeks.

I still only have to walk down the street to vote, but now my poll is a 100 year old church. I love the run-down-but-sweet look of the old building as you open the door and the kind, elderly poll workers who crack jokes when you arrive and then make you feel like a million dollars for voting. That is why I have never wanted to vote by mail before. But this year, I had to. Being a poll worker means that I won't have time to and I'm not working at my poll. -Wow, was voting by mail ever convenient! I might have to stop being sentimental do that every year. ; )

Back to the pay...
When you realize that you have to go to a 2 hour orientation class and then a 3 hour poll worker training class, study your manual, help set up the poll on Monday night and work at least 13 hours on Election day...it doesn't seem to pay as well as I thought. ; )  My hubby has been teasing me that I will probably make about $3 an hour when it is all said and done. LOL Oh well. I'll just have to keep remembering that I LOVE the election process and hope that I still think it is 'fun' 7:00 PM Tuesday night! (or quite possible 10:00 PM)

We, of course, have to be totally impartial that day and cannot discuss anything related to the election or even speak the candidates names, which I totally agree with. But TODAY, on the day BEFORE the election....
my teens (and one borrowed kiddo) and I went to help out at Romney's campaign office!!!! Whoo-hoo! A very exciting place to be on the day before the election! They had us making phone calls. -Phone calls to people who are VERY tired of being called! Oh, do my kids have some stories to tell about those calls!!!
Our county is so important to the vote in FL that people from other states were there to help make calls. Amazing.

Lots of memories made today. Not to mention, a TV camera recorded Andrew making one of his calls and I got my picture taken for our newspaper. Then to our surprise, Connie Mack, who is running for Senator, stopped by to encourage us and give a speech. Our kids met him and had him sign their campaign poster and have their picture taken with him.

I was assigned to a poll in well, the slums, actually, and my hubby exercised his right to veto me working there. I was, thankfully, reassigned to a poll in a great neighborhood with a fun team of workers who are meeting for breakfast at 5:30 AM and who are all bringing various casseroles to insure that we don't starve. (we are not allowed to leave the poll all day/night) I'm off to study my manual and get to bed early.

Be sure to go and exercise your right to vote! It's a close race!
Go Romney!

~Becky

Purity rings and things

When our kids turn sixteen we give them a purity ring or thing of their choice. We are now on our 3rd 16 year old!

Son #1 didn't actually choose a ring, he chose a compass! He likes to keep things low key and jewelry is not his thing. We had it engraved with a verse. Hubby loves the spiritual significance of a compass. He'd love to buy them all compasses! ; )

Son #2 decided to 'go big' and chose a real wedding band! He was so enthusiastic about wearing a purity ring that it couldn't be just any purity ring. It had to be the real thing!

Our daughter, has decided on a ring. It is from the Lord of the Rings movies. No, it is not the 'ring of power!' LOL

It is the ring that Galadriel wore. She was the elven queen.

Here it is:

The ring is described online as "geeky but elegant." A very cute description that she decided fits her perfectly.

(cute how their choices reflect something about them)

I had a purity symbol, too. Mine was a necklace that a preacher and his wife gave me. The charm was a heart cut in half that I wore and they saved the other half then gave it to my hubby on our wedding day. I had fun showing it to our daughter tonight.

May the Lord help all four of them to strive for purity and reap the continued blessings it brings.

~Becky

Maybe not an elven princess but always God's

We are now on purity ring #2.
Guess who found out that she is allergic to sterling silver?
So, Joy's replica of Gladreil's ring had to go back. And it was a sad day because that ring had quite the 'wow factor.'
What we found to replace it is a simple, delicate looking promise ring of white gold with tiny diamonds. Very feminine and pretty.
 But this is much better. Sterling silver has to be taken off every time you get your hands wet and it was already starting to tarnish after only a month or so.
So, all and all, we are happy with the new purity ring!

~Becky

The new couple

I've tried to convince my boys to wait until they are about 30 until they start liking girls, but it hasn't worked. ; )

Zac and a certain someone have liked each other for almost two years now.

Which equals: sitting together at church

and sending a whole lot of texts

(even if it was in line at Disney).

After a recent get together with both sets of parents

it was decided

that they can now be an official "couple."

Which in our world, pretty much means they can still just

sit together at church, text and go out in groups !

Proud of these two for doing things God's way, in purity.

~Becky

A guy and a girl

Once upon a time,
a guy and a girl had a very important conversation around their youth leader's dining room table. It was very late and the youth leader's wife and children were in bed.
The youth leader himself was pretending to be asleep on the couch about 2 feet away, listening and enjoying every minute.
The guy waxed eloquently about his love for the Lord and his goal in life, which was Heaven.
He summed it up by saying that he thought the girl would "not be a rock in his shoe on the path toward Heaven" and because of that he was wondering if she'd want to walk the road together.
The girl whole-heartily agreed because anything that had to do with THIS guy AND JESUS was her dream come true!
She drove away from the house VERY happy, even though she wasn't quite sure what it would all entail but the Lord knew and when it unfolded it became:

Their own 3 year version of 'courting' since they'd never heard of it back then,
which led to an engagement of 6 months
and then a glorious wedding in which their purity was celebrated
and is now, almost 17 wonderful years of marriage!

When the guy and the girl reminisce about that conversation, the guy gets a twinkle in his eyes and says he was right about the girl... She didn't turn out to be a 'rock in his shoe.' She's been 'more like Dr. Scholl's insoles!' Then they laugh at how funny and unflattering that sounds. ; )

The girl feels VERY blessed that he picked her and she is honored to travel that road with such a Christ-like guy!

"For here we have no continuing city but we seek the one to come." Heb. 13:14
"..whose builder and maker is God." Heb.11:10

~Becky

Purity or pirates?!

Since we have one teen, one preteen, one 'tween' and a seven year old, I thought we might be ready for this teen and parent devotional book called Lifetraining for evening devotionals.
I think I was wrong. : )
The devo. last night was about how we, like the Wise Men can give gifts to Jesus. It mentioned that we could give our bodies as a gift to the Lord through purity. I expounded on that a little by saying that the kids could do that 'by saving their body for their future mates.'
Well, Andrew (who is seven) piped up and said
"we wouldn't have to actually use our body because we could use a life boat to save our mate instead."

And so.... I think we'll try something else. ; ) I'm glad.
(maybe Little Pilgrim's Progress)

~Becky
(originally posted on 3/3/07)