Next stop: Project Runway

The other day I'm getting ready for my exercise class, and am in the process of picking out a shirt, when my little Fashion Guru takes one look at my pants, and says, "Mommy, not that shirt. It doesn't match." Oy vey!

All it took was one broken latch...

and she was in the street.

Now before you start to worry that our dear little Kyra is the "she" in the story, take heart. I'm talking about another young lady, and the story thankfully has a happy ending.

We were driving down the main neighborhood street earlier, when we noticed a young lady sitting right in the middle of the road. I asked David to pull over, and we got out to see if we could help.

As I got closer to where she was, I quickly realized several things: 1) We were right in front of a group home with disabled residents. 2) She was alone and 3) she was in danger of being hit. Although the traffic on that particular street is not extremely busy, people have been known to come flying around that corner, and she was hard to see, sitting down low on the ground.

Not knowing exactly what to do, but knowing I needed to get her out of the street, I started praying, and then slowly started to approach her. When I got close enough, I called out to her, "Honey, you need to get out of the street. It's not safe for you to sit in the middle of the road." I then continued walking toward her, all the time talking quietly and hoping that she would even let me help her.

I helped her to stand, and we got out of the street, at least temporarily. Then things got really difficult. Her verbal skills were practically non-existent, but her sheer determination to get back into the street, not to mention extremely strong arms, was almost more than I could handle.

Still praying like crazy, I was able to keep her out of the street for the most part, until David & Kyra were able to bring out one of the caregivers from the group home. They immediately recognized her, and thanked us profusely for helping her. I said I was just glad we were there at the right place at the right time, and could help. It seems she'd been in the fenced back yard, and then had made her way out to the front with the help of a broken latch on the gate.

I'm so glad we were able to help, and that she didn't seem to be any worse for the wear. I don't know that I can say the same for her caregiver, who looked more than just a little green around the gills.

But the story doesn't end there. When we got home, I sat down to read a little bit of this great book called "90 minutes in Heaven", by Don Piper. It's a true story about a man who was in a horrific car accident, actually died, and then, in his words, "God sent him back."

I'm reading along, and I come to the following section where Don is having a conversation with the man who he believes prayed him back to life, his friend Dick Onerecker:

Don says, "Again, Dick, I want to thank you for saving my life. I obviously can't thank you enough for your faithfulness in obeying God that rainy day."

"It was what anybody would have done," he said..."I just knew I had to pray for you. I could only think that you were hurt, and I wanted to make you feel better. I didn't do anything unusual."

"But you did. When the officer told you I was already dead----"

"Listen to me, Don. If you saw a little kid run out in the street, you'd dash out there and try to save that child's life. Human nature is like that. We try to preserve life, and I will do that any time I get the opportunity. So would you....Yet here we are sitting in this place (they were in a restaurant), surrounded by people, many of whom are probably lost and going to hell, and we won't say a word about how they can have eternal life. Something is wrong with us."

"You're absolutely right," I said. "We're willing to save someone in a visible crisis, but a lot of folks are in spiritual crisis and we don't say a word about how they can get out of it."

Talk about being convicted. Here I had just lived this very scenario, and yet how many others did I pass today that were in eternal crisis, and I didn't say a word?

Going forward, my hope is to be like Don & his friend Dick who, as a result of their experiences, vowed with boldness, to be on the lookout for opportunities to talk about Jesus and His saving love.

Blessings friends!
k~

Show me the way to go home

I ran across this video on one of the local news' website and though I know we're a few years away from this for our young Kyra, it was definitely an eye-opener for me. And it's never too soon to start practicing and teaching...

By the way, just click on the word "video" above, and it should take you to the new page. For some reason, this particular blog design won't let me designate a different color for links within the post, so I apologize if it's hard to tell where they are. Technology, you gotta love it!

Oh the precious things kids say...

Our girl Kyra just loves to help out around the house with any and all chores within reason--obviously the dishwasher is off-limits, but just about everything else is fair game:-)

One of her favorites right now is helping with the laundry. She also loves to "name the item" when transferring it from the washer to the dryer, i.e. Mommy's socks, Kyra's shirt, etc. However, being 2, she still doesn't get all of her words 100% right, so some things are, shall we say, uniquely named. Take for instance, underwear. In our house it's referred to as "wonder wear"--don't know where she got this, it just is. Pretty cute, right?

Well, one day right before Easter, I decided to pop into Macy's to try & find a dress. I had Kyra with me, which I was a little hesitant about since I didn't know how she'd do with all the sitting around in her stroller, but I really wanted a new dress for Easter.

After finding several possibilities, we headed to the dressing rooms. As I'm readying myself to try on the first dress, my dear sweet daughter pipes up, nice & loud so those in the next county could hear her, "Mommy, that's your wonder wear!"

Fearing she would repeat it, if she didn't get a response the first time (something she typically does--"Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom"--you know the drill), I meekly responded, "Yes, honey. This IS Mommy's underwear."

If I could have stayed in that dressing room all morning, I would have. But the reality was we needed to get home for lunch & a nap. So after deciding on a really cute polka dotted dress, I slunk out of the dressing room, kinda hiding behind the dress, and we headed home.

Needless to say, this is not the first time I've been faced with an awkward Kyra comment (see this previous post), and I'm sure it won't be the last. But as I've always said, life's too short to get all worked up about the small stuff. And a little laughter goes a long, long way.

Here's to loving innocent comments & the ones that bless us with them,
k~

Our Easter Weekend

I'm sitting here in a nice sugar coma from all the candy I've stuffed myself with, but I thought I'd give a little recap of our Easter Weekend.

It started yesterday morning with our neighborhood association holding an Easter Egg Hunt & Coloring contest for all the kids. At least for the little ones, it was more of a "we'll toss a bunch of candy out on the grass, and they can pick it up" than an actual egg hunt, but it was still fun. They divided the different events up by age group so you didn't have the 6 yr olds slide-tackling the 2 yr olds, which was nice. We neglected to previously hold an at-home "Egg Hunting Boot Camp" complete with time trials with Kyra, as I thought this might be going a little overboard, but David mentioned to me that he'd been teaching her WWF moves, in his spare time, to get her ready. Thanks Honey!

When they said go, Kyra watched all the other kids, 3 yrs old and younger, duck under the tape, and looked over at me, as if to say, "Now what do I do?" So Super Mommy to the rescue. Flinging kids aside, left and right...No just kidding. We ran over to where there was an explosion of candy on the grass, and then started loading up her bucket. Then when all the candy had been found that hadn't been stomped into the ground, they called time, and announced the winners of the coloring contest. Our sweet girl took 3rd place in her age group!!! She received a purple ribbon (which, bonus! purple is her favorite color), and some Play-dough. Needless to say the whole event was a little overwhelming for her, but I think she enjoyed it. I've posted some pictures below of our morning.

Kyra's in the middle of the pack with the red coat

Just one piece Mom!

Then later on that afternoon we tackled the age-old tradition of dyeing Easter eggs. Kyra was a natural, and had a ball giving the eggs a colored bath :-)

We ended our day with several rousing games of CandyLand, which was a first for Kyra, as she'd never played a board game before. However, she did relatively well, and seemed to have a good time. Then it was time for brushing teeth, bath, reading a book with Daddy, and bed. Unfortunately, due to all of the day's hype and SUGAR, sleep was not quick in coming, and there were many, many crying fits, not all of them Kyra's, I might add.

Kyra was up bright and early this morning, as usual (she's her Daddy's girl!!) even though she got to sleep quite late, and there were yet more new things to experience--her Easter Basket that Mommy went overboard with, and a real Easter Egg hunt--this time inside, as it was pouring rain. She loved every minute of that, as evidenced below.


The saddest part about our weekend was that we didn't make it to church to celebrate the real reason for Easter--Christ's death on a cross & triumphant resurrection on the 3rd day. That's because in between, and probably because of all of our running around the past couple days, Kyra picked up a cold, with an extremely runny nose, so no church for us. But we did have my Mom & Dad, and our friend Lena over for Easter lunch/dinner, and ate yummy roasted lamb, potatoes, fruit salad, rolls & cupcakes for dessert.

All in all, it was a great weekend spent with family & friends & of course, you can't go wrong with chocolate & Jelly Belly jelly beans :-)

Happy Easter friends! He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!
k~

Chocolate Lovers' Brownies

As a self-proclaimed Chocolate lover, I'm always on the lookout for all things chocolate. So when Kyra asked to make cookies the other day, I decided brownies would be a better choice--less work, and the pan was clean :-)

I need to preface something however. I'm very picky when it comes to brownies. Most homemade, from scratch, brownies I've met, or made in my life, are more cake-y than I prefer, and I had pretty much come to the conclusion that I just couldn't beat the ones made from the Hershey's mix. It seems the difference was the Hershey's syrup packet that came with it.

But then, Costco stopped selling that particular mix (GASP!), so I decided to try homemade brownies, completely from scratch, one more time. With a little trepidation, I went to a new cookbook I got recently called Oregon Sampler: Resorts & Recipes, and whipped up a batch of their "Favorite Brownies", with my own little twist--the all-important Hershey's syrup :-) Oh my gosh!!! I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. My husband, who can take or leave chocolate, thought they were just OK, but I could have easily eaten the whole pan in one sitting.

So, if you are looking for the ultimate in chocolate treats, look no further--those on a diet, steer clear!

Favorite Brownies
Makes 1 dozen

Ingredients:

4 oz unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon Hershey's chocolate syrup
1 cup flour
1/2 cup walnuts (optional--I left these out as I'm allergic to them)
powdered sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt chocolate and butter in large saucepan over low heat. Add sugar and eggs, one at a time. Stir well. Add vanilla & Hershey's syrup. Add flour and nuts (if using), and stir until well combined. Pour into a greased 9-inch square baking pan. Bake for 25 minutes; center will not be completely set. Cool before cutting. Dust with powdered sugar, if desired.

Enjoy, and Happy Wednesday friends!
k~

A great Rainy Day Project for Kids

Yes, it's another one of our famous Liquid Sunshine Days in the beautiful Pacific NW!! That means today we needed to find something fun to do Inside, and At Home, as I'm still getting over the latest batch of creeping crud that has lived in our house for the last month!

So, what to do? While thumbing through one of our favorite cookbooks called "Alpha Bakery Children's Cookbook", I found a recipe for making Finger Paint that looked fairly simple, and we had all the ingredients. Whoo hoo! A few minutes later, and lots of stirring, and we had 6 beautiful pots of finger paint :-)

Before we could begin painting, however, I realized even though this was washable, non-staining paint, I didn't really want it everywhere. So I put an old beach towel on the kitchen floor, threw an old T-shirt of David's on Kyra, and we went at it.

We had so much fun, and the best thing was, because we had made the paints ourselves, I knew if some happened to get in her mouth, it wasn't going to hurt her :-)

So if you're looking for something fun to do with your kids, and you don't mind a little mess, try calling up your inner artist--you never know what you might create!

Finger Paint
Makes a lot!

Ingredients

1/3 cup of cornstarch
3 tablespoons of sugar
2 cups of cold water
Food coloring

Muffin tin
toothpicks

1. Mix cornstarch, sugar and water in 1-quart saucepan.
2. Cook and stir over medium heat about 5 minutes or until thickened; remove from heat.
3. Divide the mixture by pouring into muffin tin depressions--Be careful as mixture is really hot!
   
4. Tint mixture in each depression with a different food color by adding a couple drops and stirring with a toothpick. Stir several times until it's the color you desire and the paint is cool.
5. Time to paint!
6. When finished, you can store the paints in airtight containers, although it works best if you use them the same day as you make it.

I've also included a short video of our painting fun. Be sure to turn the sound up on your computer so you can hear Kyra's comments too. I also apologize for the graininess (sp?) of the video--I took it with our little digital camera, and it isn't the best...

Happy Monday friends!
k~