As the Hart Longs: Meditation on Psalm 42

"As the Hart longs for flowing streams, So longs my soul for You, O God,

My soul does thirst for the living God.  When shall I come to see Your face?"

 "My tears have fed me day and night, While men have said, "Where is your God?"

But I recall as my soul pours dry the days of praise within Your house."

 "Why do I mourn and toil within, When it is mine to hope in God?

I shall again sing praise to Him, He is my help, He is my God."

~Arranged by Danna Harkins from Psalm 42

(Pictures taken by Christianna H. Sauve)

New Years Day Walk: Official

On the official new year's day Josiah, Faith and I took a Sunday afternoon stroll at the nature sanctuary with Mr. Reiche.  It was rather mild, but there were still a few bits of snow here and there.

“And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul," ~Deuteronomy 10:12

"Then the lame shall leap like a deer, And the tongue of the dumb sing. For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, And streams in the desert."    ~ Isaiah 35:6

"Teach me Your way, O LORD; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name." 

~Psalm 86:11

"And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us, And establish the work of our hands for us; Yes, establish the work of our hands."  ~Psalm 90:17

~Chs

New Year Eve, and Day: Unofficial

Because of New Year's Day falling on a Sunday this year, we decided to celebrate a day ahead.  So on New Year's Adam (the day before New Year's Eve;) we had our celebrated New Year's Eve dinner.

The first course was creamy Parmesan Potato Soup served on Grandma's eggshell china. 

It was followed by Brined and Roasted Duck for the main dish (one of our summer ducks:(,

with sides of apple raisin stuffing, butternut squash and homemade cranberry sauce.  Sparkling wild berry juice was served for beverage, and individual cups of jello finished off the feast.

After relaxing, and devotions spent in thanking God for His blessings of the past year, we finished off the evening with our traditional Chocolate Eclairs!!!

New Year's Morning (really New Year's Eve;) dawned mild and cloudy, and we started off the day with Buttons and Bowties (baked doughnuts) and fruit.

We had a wonderful time as a family playing and snacking throughout the day.  We are very thankful to our eternal Father for His guidance, love, and care of us in 2011, and we look forward to the rest of 2012, looking to Jesus Christ to lead us through each and every day, and praying that each day we would live more for His glory then the one before.  Thank you all for looking at our blog last year, and I hope you will continue to follow the Sauve Family's journey through this new year.

~Chs

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope."  ~Jeremiah 29:11

GingerBread and Definictionary: Special days Part 6

The last of our "special days" was mine, and I had our activities all lined up!  First we all worked on a page from our picture album that we are working on as a family (look for more about that soon!!).  Then we cleared off the table of paper scraps and sprinkled it with flour for making Gingerbread men!!

Most of us cut out the normal gingerbread men with a few variations and a couple of animal friends for company;  all that is but Josiah.

When all the little men and animals were cut out and lined up on pans in the oven, we all gathered in the living room for a quick game of Definictionary; that is all of us but Josiah.

Some of the Definitions were highly interesting, and I thought I would share them with you all.

Tautologize
1. To pull taut, that is to stretch tight
2. To repeat the same thing in different words
3. The study of the preparation of white leather, especially from goats, kids lamb etc.

Spiflicate 
1. To make oneself spiffy
2. To confound or dismay
3. To argue about a petty difference

See if you can guess (without looking in the dictionary of course!! :) which definition is the correct one for each word.  The other two definitions are just made up, or borrowed from another word in the dictionary.

The oven had beeped while we were defining definitions ;) announcing that our gingerbread was ready to be decorated.  Unfortunately we were limited to only 4 colors; yellow, blue, green, and tan.  Oh, and of course we had white, but we were completely out of red/pink so we had to get very creative with certain features.

My Safari man and his three elephants, kind of came out of the movie we had watched the night before, and also out of the fact that we had elephant cookie cutters. ;)

Faith made both the front and the back of a blond haired blue eyed farmer boy, and two of his hens.  The chickens wattles and combs?  Strawberry jam.

Along with many other creative and interesting shapes, Dad made our house, complete with the address on the roof.  (okay so our house doesn't quite look like that, but you get the idea)

Mother decorated an adorable little boy fishing and catching a big yellow fish, along with a dog and chicken.  Now the evening had come to a close and we were all enjoying our creations, all that is but Josiah.   Want to know just what the creative genius has been doing while we all played with our gingerbread men and their houses and animals? 

Well never satisfied to usual things, Josiah had taken his allotted lump of dough, and while we were all clamoring for the different cookie cutters, he preceded to roll out and measure his dough, cutting it into perfect squares.  His goal was to make a gingerbread house, something we had never done before, and he was determined to make it as detailed as possible just using up the candies from his now closed candy store.

Josiah ended up running out of dough, and therefore the house was equipped with natural air conditioning.  It must be a cottage in Hawaii ;P

The finished project was quite amazing, a little house with blue siding and brown and yellow accents.  Complete with rain barrels in each corner, and a little man standing in front!  We all had so much fun creating and eating our "projects" all that is but Josiah whose house lasted for three days before its demise.  The pictures of its collapse will be posted late I assure you!

~Chs

Linzer Tarts and a Movie Night: Special days Part 5

For Charity's night she decided to watch a movie, and before dinner she and I were elbows deep (figuratively of course;) in preparing a dessert to go with the movie.

Her selection was Linzer tarts.  We had never made them before, so we were in for an adventure.

 Charity (who made a special dough because of her diet) went and cut out the tops by hand - hearts and stars, triangles and circles, all decorated the top of her cookies.

Mother and I decided to use a doughnut cutter, creating just round holes.  It definitely was faster, but not as pretty.

Charity filled her Linzer cookies with strawberry jam from France!!!

We filled ours with strawberry (our homemade) cherry, and black raspberry.

They were tasty little tarts, and were the perfect thing to munch on while curled cozily watching a movie.

~Chs

Luminaries of God's Word

"Oh, send out Your light and Your truth! Let them lead me; Let them bring me to Your holy hill And to Your tabernacle." ~ Psalm 43:3

"Jesus bids us shine with a pure clear light, like a little candle burning in the night."

"God is the LORD, And He has given us light;" ~Psalm 118:27

"O house of Jacob, come and let us walk In the light of the LORD." ~Isaiah 2:5

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." ~Matthew 5:16

"Let me live blessed Lord in the light of Thy Word, let my life be a light on a hill..

..Let my life be a light shining out through the night, may I help struggling ones to the fold..

Spreading cheer everywhere to the sad and alone, let my life be a light to some soul." ~J.R Varner

~Chs

Snow creatures, and Treasures: Special days Part 4

 We knew we were in for two major creative activity days when Mom and Dad's "days" were put back to back, and our hopes were verified. 

Dad had invited Josh and Theresa to come for the evening, so as soon as supper was done and dishes washed, we gathered in the living room to receive our instructions.  The first games was held on the deck.  We were split into 3 groups.  Josh and Theresa, Faith and Josiah, and Mom and I.

 We had 10 minutes to create a snow sculpture on our designated part of the deck, and there were three categories. Largest (the one using the most snow), the most unique, and the most humorous or funny.

 Faith and Josiah were definitely on the unique side with their farm scene, including a large barn, silo, corn crib and tractor.  Mother and I sculpted a unusual leaning snowman, with a semi sculpted head, and Josh and Theresa manufactured an adorable puffy cheeked araucana chicken, with a clutch of eggs. 

 Thoroughly chilled and stiff in the knees, we trooped inside for the next activity.  A treasure hunt!  Again we were split into two teams, and given a card with a bible verse on treasure, and our first clue.  There was a clue for each of the team members, and we managed to follow our clues quite well which took both teams by different routes to the treasure: A box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates!! (One of Mumsie's favoritist candy in the world)  We all enjoyed our treat, as well as warm apple crisp and homemade vanilla Ice cream (Dad's choice) while watching "Expelled", to end the evening.

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:21

Of Letters and Numbers: Special days Part 3

When it comes to words, and educational games, Mother dear always is the MOST creative.  From definictionary to team spelling games, and many more, she has kept our interest, and this year it was no different. 

We started out the evening with an alphabetical bible name quiz.

We were split into teams of 2, Dad and Josiah, Grandpa and Faith, and Charity and I.  Mother was moderator.

You started the game with a list of the letters of the alphabet down the side of your paper, then when mother said "go!" Bible pages rustled and pencils flew.

The object was to find a name (with a matching bible reference) for each of the letters of the alphabet.  But you didn't want to pick too familiar ones, because you lost a point if you had the same name as one of the other teams.  When Mother finally told us that time was up, we all had almost all of the letters filled.  W, X, and Y however were very difficult and though no names were found, some of the teams selected titles, such as Widow.  The other names ranged from something normal like Mary (Matt 1:16) to Meremoth! (Nehemiah 3:21)

We then all gathered around the table for the second game with our snack, carob bridge mix, (Mmmmm!) in the middle.

An Alphabet Sentence turned out absolutely ridiculous and hilarious.  Just a hint if you ever make your own sentence, don't start with "All bad cats".  It kind of limits your options a little;)

The last game of the evening was a number activity...

Midnight Madness!! 

For those of you who have never played this game you are missing out.  Here are the basic rules: All the players have a piece of  paper while there is only one pen which is set in the middle of the table. The goal of the game is to write numbers from 1 to 100, but... you can only get the pen when you roll a 1 or a 6.  And of course if the person next to you rolls a 1 or 6 right after you receive the pen, then you must give it up right away!  It is always a hard laughing, fast moving, crazy writing game, and when we played it on Monday, we all managed to get quite high numbers, before Mother reached the winning 100!

~Chs