Summer Top 5's

I don't know about you, but I think just about everyone has a favorite season...mine just happens to be Autumn! I love it! However, since we are in summer, I will do my list of top five favorite things about this season, and the top 5 things I dislike about this season...

Top 5 Favorite:
1.) Warm sunny weather
2.) Visiting with family
3.) Hummingbirds
4.) Fishing (when we get the chance)
5.) Vacation (sometimes)

Top 5 UN-Favorite:
1.) Hot, blistering heat
2.) Humidity
3.) Weeks and Weeks away from home
4.) Allergies
5.) Unclothed people

I will try to do my top 5's for every season from now on... just for fun! :0) Oh, and I would love to hear YOURS too! You can email them to me at ljlavan08@yahoo.com or post them to the comments box on this post! :0) Thanks!

Puttin' on the Grits-Southern Style!

Since I've been a pastor's wife, I have done quite a bit of entertaining (probably not half of what I should, but as much as possible with the budget...). I am always looking for quick, easy, and DELICIOUS recipes that I can use for revivals or other entertaining moments in my life... Recently (as in the last 3 months), I was reading a book called "Puttin' on the Grits- A guide to Southern Entertaining" by Deborah Ford, and came across this recipe. It's SUPER EASY and WONDERFULLY DELICIOUS! At least we thought so... First of all, I want to say, I would recommend this book for you to read if you do any entertaining whatsoever. It is funny, informative, and an overall good read. However, I don't appreciate everything in the book, but you can easily overlook the parts about cocktail parties etc... :0)

Anyhow, below is a picture of the Apple Cobbler that I found in this book... as you can see, it was already sampled by the time I took this picture...LOL Another thing I really liked about it was that it only had a few ingredients--and most of them were things you would already have in your cupboards for a last minute "whip up"! :0) The actual name of this recipe is " Mama Liz's Shortcut Cobbler"...here are the ingredients... 1 stick of butter, 1 C flour, 1 C Sugar, 1 C milk, and one can of your favorite fruit! You just melt the butter. Add the flour, sugar and milk and mix it all up good! Pour mix into a casserole dish. Pour the fruit over the mixture and bake at 350 degrees until it looks done! Approx 20-30 ,minutes if I remember correctly... Hope you enjoy! We sure did! :0)

Not Your Typical Sunday

We had a little extra excitement that we weren't planning for on Sunday morning...On the way to drop the kids off at home after church, the van decided to konk out on us on the side of the road...So...since we were a little over a mile from where most of the kids were supposed to be dropped off, Luke decided to walk them home. Well thankfully after about a mile they finally got ahold of their parents who came and picked them up... I was still back in the van with two of the "kids"-one was Danielle, our faithful teenager, and her sister Dasharra (4 yr old). Well, needless to say she got a little restless, so she ate about 3 suckers that we had left over from earlier in the week! LOL (They were the small flat ones, so don't worry! LOL) Eventually we all got home but it was a very hot and sweaty wait!


Luke walking back from taking the kids home
Here's Fayzon and Dasharra before the van quit

Me, Danielle, and Dasharra waiting along the side of the road

Our poor van sitting all dejected along the roadside

This was the kids we had with us at the time of the van konking out...approx 12...

VBS Continued

Here are a few more pictures from our VBS here in King William...

This is how we kept track of attendance (the sheets around the board); and offering contest--the sheep were added to the boy or girl side for every $1 they brought in.
This was our memory verses-the 23rd Psalm on sheep

Ollie the offering sheep who popped up to tell us who won the offering for each day!

This is another shot of the backdrop and little sheepies! ;0)

Here is Bert (collected the boys offering) and Betty (collected the girls offering)

VBS in Virginia part one

Our VBS started monday night and ends tonight... mostly all our regular kids (minus a few who live too far away to come each night); however, there have been a few new ones. The pictures below were taken so far this week...

During snack time: (left to right) Cindy, Giselle, Victoria, Melodie (back row); (front row) Fayzon and Keyara.
The sheep in the fold

This is how we kept track of offering this week-boys against girls-for every 50 cents brought in they got a sheep added to their "pasture".

Sis Arlene graciously agreed to play the piano for us this week

This is fluffy--our sheep who watched for our quiet seat

VBS in Ohio

Ok, I promised to post pictures as soon as I could so here they are...these pictures were taken at the VBS in Ohio at my home church.


This is the backdrop with the little lambies down front...

Me with two of the older girls in the VBS

Snack time! :0)

Good group of kids for the week!

More Ohio VBS pics

The last day we had a special "visitor"... someone we know has sheep so they let us borrow one for the last day and the kids really enjoyed that! :0)


He walked around on a leash! LOL

Here are the kids petting him...

He ran and played with them all during their snack time! It was adorable! LOL

VBS in Ohio

We finished the VBS at my home church on friday night. We headed home saturday morning. I will post pictures later on; but I haven't had a chance to get them loaded onto my USB drive yet to bring them to the library to post... However, I will try to post them as soon as possible. It went really well though! We never went below 40 in attendance, and there were a total of 64 enrolled. I think the average for the week was somewhere around 45. The Lord really helped and we give Him all the praise! This week we are in VBS at our church, so I will be posting about that as well once the week is over... Watch for updates and pics soon!

Congrats Grads!

Saturday night we had a graduation Party for Nathan Hodak and Danielle Coleman from our church. All of the church people chipped in and helped bring in the food and we had quite a buffet! :0) Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time. The church also remembered their pastor for his ordination-with a beautiful cake and the full set of the picture encyclopedia of the Bible (not sure of the exact name of it because I'm in Ohio and don't have it right in front of me! Sorry! )

Nathan and Darius (Danielle's brother)
Darius and Danielle

The Grads--Danielle and Darius (the star of the show! LOL)

Pastor Luke with his ordination cake

Nathan and Danielle with their Graduation Cake

Update

The last few days I haven't been able to post anything because we've been busily getting ready for the "Churches" graduation party for Danielle and Nathan... The party is tonight, so I will post pictures and a new update as soon as I can! We start VBS at my home church on monday night though so it might not be for a few days...Pray for us if you think of it! I've never done a VBS before all on my own--and we have 2 to do this year! Ours and my home church...the Lord will help us though! He always does...

FIREWORKS!

Of all the things that I like to do in my life, one of the things that I don't like to miss is fireworks! I absolutely LOVE them! :0) Here are a few of the pictures of the SPECTACULAR display put on at Williamsburg this year...They did the "grand finale" 3 times! LOL We would think they were done and then they would put off another big display! It was awesome! :0) The pictures don't do them justice but at least you can get a little taste...

This was during the grand finale

Also during the grand finale

July 4th Celebrations

On July 4th we went to Williamsburg in the evening for fireworks...we also did this last year and it rained and was pretty miserable...However, this year we had GORGEOUS weather and had a nice evening...Here are some pictures taken while we were there...


Colonial Fife and Drum played for an hour before fireworks
The crowd! I think it is safe to say there were thousands there! (this was only one small section of people)

Us at fireworks

Me at our house in front of our own flag.

Luke in front of our flag