Beets, Whidbey, and HORSES

Here is What I'm Loving today!

LOVING the voices of hundreds of women, raised in praise together this morning at Bible Study Fellowship, singing It is Well.

LOVING our new Champion Juicer!  Oh my.  Absolutely LOVING it.  How it came to be ours: well, Daniel and I had been talking about getting a juicer at some point in the near future.  So one night I was researching and found that Champion might just be the best one for our family.  No kidding, the next day I had an email from Daniel's aunt who said they were down-sizing and had a Champion Juicer that they had never used and they just thought we might enjoy it.  What . . .?!  Amazing!  So we received it yesterday (thank you thank you Marlene and Greg for mailing it!!) and the three of us have had so much fun with it.  The first thing we made: carrot apple juice.  SO delicious.  And what is super fun is that Tirzah gets so excited about it.  She is LOVING the juice, and even the discarded pulp too.  She starts jumping up and down on her chair, just bouncing with excitement.  Then we tried a frozen banana through the homogenizer.  DELICIOUS!  Daniel and I were first introduced to frozen bananas, that had been juiced when we went on our trip to Kauai a few years ago.  We fell in love instantly and dreamed about having a juicer one day.  If you have never tried one, seriously come and visit and we will make you one!  You simply put a frozen banana in the juicer, and it truly becomes the creamiest type of ice cream.  YUM.  LOVING making fresh juice for my husband before work this morn.  And LOVING getting crazy with Tirzah: this morning before Bible Study we made: carrot, apple, a little orange, beet, cucumber, and kale juice!  We both loved it and our lips were stained purple from the beet juice:)

LOVING experimenting with honey in our baking.  I have tried several recipes, substituting honey for sugar and then coconut oil for regular oil and so far I have had good success.  Although yesterday I swapped honey for sugar in a chocolate chip cookie recipe, and when I peeked in, the first batch had basically become a pool. . . woops.  But I added a bit more flour and the rest actually turned out ok. This is a recipe with whole wheat flour, honey, and flax seed (I didn't have 2 eggs so I used flax instead) and they were really really good!  I am going to try and perfect it tomorrow. . . so I will for sure share it.

As far as baking with honey, I have found the tips from this link to be very helpful.

LOVING our plans for the weekend!  Both of our families are coming out and all 10 of us are heading up north to Whidbey Island to stay at a beach house.  Super Super fun!  Renee and Marlene get in tomorrow night really late, and then everyone else comes in on Friday.  It will be the first time both families have gotten together since our wedding.  What a way to celebrate God's faithfulness and His protection over Daniel during his deployment.  And what a way to celebrate (again!) Tirzah's second birthday.  Praise the Lord.

LOVING Tirzah and how sweet she is.  She has this interest in all things baptizing, ever since she watched our little neighbor boy be baptized a few weeks ago.  So yesterday, she wanted to play "baptize!", where she would go behind Daddy's big green recliner chair and say: "Father, Son, and HORSES, amen" and come out with a huge smile on her face.  It was simply precious.  Yes Lord.  Father, Son, and Horses.

LOVING this gift of graces that is continuous and never-ending:

Kendra, and her honest friendship

Revelations at the top of the stairs

That she sleeps now

Our morning date!  Second in a week!

Running to Starbucks with Little One for a Mommy-Daughter date while Daddy was away with his "boo boo friend"

Her sitting on my lap, drinking her "coffee" and doing stickers

How sweet she was to that baby girl

Making a new friend 

That Tirzah has been going to the bathroom consistently! (we were having quite a time getting her to go poopoo, but Miralax does wonders. . . so sorry if that is too much information. But all you Mama readers, I know you get it!)

A bug on the slide- holding wonder for moments

Collecting rocks for hours at the park

When she cried so hard at Daniel's leaving

Dinner chopped and all stationed out, all ready

his/His patience with me