4 Cabin Fever Sanity Savers with Printables!!!

School at this point may be on hold for the entire country with all the crazy cold weather. And even if your oldest kids are at school and your little ones are stuck in doors, have no fear–I know the feeling and opted to share cabin fever rescues that make life fun for your brood and give you a chance to sip your coffee and smile at their imaginative play! 1. Board a Plane or Train Items needed: Homemade tickets, chairs to create rows, toys to be passengers, snacks.  DVD player–optional.  Line up your dinning room chairs and ask your …

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Ebenezer Who?

Ebenezer? Who is that? No, not Scrooge. This Ebenezer was a what, not a who. In the Bible, Ebenezer means stone of help. It’s purpose? Let’s see… At one time in Israel’s history, when they faced the Philistines, Samuel and Israel fasted, prayed, repented, and offered a sacrifice. God answered their plea by confusing and defeating the enemy that pursued them. To commemorate the fact that Israel was victorious and recovered all the territory the enemy had taken, Samuel set up a stone as a marker of remembrance. When he did this, he exclaimed, “Up to this point the LORD …

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Living New in the Same Old

“How’s it going? – A New Year? A New Day?” – question asked.  “Oh the same old, same old,” comes the cliched same old answer.  And it sounds so glass-half empty – so not new – so already faltering outside the New Year gate. Sometimes, even on a shiny New Year day, that’s how I feel. Laundry still piled up. Hungry mouths to feed. Teens still angsting – just maybe over different things. Trying to grow where I’m planted, though I find myself sometimes surprised about exactly where I am. There’s a lot of same old, same old in my …

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Dear friend

Dear friend: a letter for the end of a year

  By now you know I didn’t get Christmas cards sent this year. Though I couldn’t squeeze out the time to get them done, I feel compelled to carve out this time to write you a letter.  A real letter. There’s something I want you to know before tomorrow comes and we stand on the first step of 2014 and wave goodbye to the year that was 2013.  There’s something I need to tell you. I looked back over our Facebook messages to remember that thing you said to me, but I got distracted, scrolling through all the things that …

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When Fear Captures Your Heart ~ (Four Ways to Fight Fear)

Has fear ever captured your heart? It has mine many times in the past and even recently. In 1989, I received a call that would forever change the course of my life.  See, I had lived in fear through an abusive marriage and thought that after those days were over I would not live in fear any longer. Boy was I wrong. The call brought it all back. It returned in a more vicious way than before. No longer was it about me, but now it was concerning my children. The clutches reached out that day and captured my heart …

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Abundant Life Awaits

I love the story about the little boy who heard that the circus was coming to town. Having never been to the circus, he was consumed with thoughts of going. He asked his daddy for the money to go to the circus, promising that he would finish all his chores and even do extra chores to earn the money. His daddy agreed. Finally, after a long week of hard work it was time for the circus. Barely able to contain his excitement the little boy ran all the way into town. As he approached Main Street, mesmerized by what he …

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The Indescribable Gift of Christmas

  What gift have people from around the globe longed for since the beginning of time, arrived exactly as predicted over two-thousand years ago, is not able to be bought or manipulated with money, given to us freely but paid for by the death of the innocent life of a King, wanted by all but rejected by most?   Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! 2 Corinthians 9:15    Jesus Christ the Messiah, Lamb of God, the Way, the Truth, the Life, Rabbi, Son of the Most High is our Gift!   Why is this gift a big …

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Having A Happy Birthday Jesus Party: In Your House And In Your Community

I love December. There’s so much to celebrate as well as so much to do, but one of the most fun things we’ve done over the years is to have a Happy Birthday Jesus Party. What, you’ve never heard of that? That’s ok. It’s actually something we started doing in our Kids Ministry at church and over the years we have expanded it from what we do on Sunday mornings at church to the homes and neighborhoods of the families we serve. I would love to take a few minutes to tell you about having a Happy Birthday Jesus Party: …

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The Well of Christmas Despair

Shocked. Yet honored. Placide Cappeau of Roquemaure, France, was a commissionaire of wines in 1847. Asked by the small town parish priest to pen a poem for Christmas, he was happy to share his talent with the church, even though he was known more for his poetry than his church attendance. Traveling to Paris in a horse-drawn coach, Cappeau decided to use the gospel of Luke as his inspiration and imagined he was a witness to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. By the time he arrived in Paris, he had completed “Cantique de Noel.” Moved by his own writing, …

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Tips to De-Clutter and Organize before & after Christmas

  I don’t know about your home little mama but when it’s time to put up the Christmas tree, our living room gets rearranged. And the smallest mess seems like mountains of clutter on top of the kids’ indoor adventures from negative temperatures.  And if you’re already wondering how to reorganize your home, the loot, and de-clutter with little ones under foot, here are some fun tips for you.    Christmas Ornaments You can either save the boxes each ornament comes in, or save space and time with egg cartons.                           …

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