Christmas {Planning} in July!

Well, folks, Christmas will be here before you know it!  And one of my goals for this year is to shop early and another is to gift items that make a difference some how. 

(Christmas 2007)

How do I plan on doing this?  Through adoption fundraisers, helping families bring their little ones home.  Etsy shops that are ran by adoptive families.  Shops that promote social change and fight to end slavery or have a goal of helping mothers get on their feet. 

And here are a few options of where I might do my shopping or maybe some ideas of where you could do yours.

Shop to End Slavery has some great shops linked up for items from clothing to food and drink to housewares.  I personally love how they have sorted the shops by category and link to the individual shops.

Consider shopping from the Sparrow Fund.  It's their mission to help forever families be united and they also support artisans from other parts of the world.  Two blessings in one!

Check out Gifts with Humanity.  They have a wide variety of items produced in different areas of the world including America, Asia and Africa.

Shop from The Mercy House Kenya (shop is currently closed, but will be re-opening and restocked in August!)

Purchase clean water for a community who needs it.

Maybe check out the Compassion Catalog and purchase in honor of some one you love.  Their hearts will be warmed knowing you thought of them and that another life is being cared for.

Or maybe the Samaritan's Purse Catalog has something you wish to purchase in honor or in memory of some one on your gift list.

The World Vision Catalog also has some amazing ways to spend your Christmas budget.

Consider sponsoring a child through Compassion International or sponsor an orphan with ShowHope.
One other thing we plan on implementing in our family is the 4 gift rule…




This may be a little hard to get used to because we love to give gifts and training our child to focus on REAL gifts.  But this will make us much more intentional in our gift giving and still nurture certain family members love language.

Are you getting ready for Christmas yet?  How do you handle gift giving?

(Also, if you are a fundraising family, please leave a comment and I would love to include you in this post or future posts about intentional gifting!)

**Linking up!**

Cousins

 
Cousins are friends you’re related to.  I grew up with four first cousins living fairly close.  Between my brothers and I and our cousins, my grandparents had 7 grandchildren.
 

 
As time went on, we all grew up, but some things never change…
 


We grow up, we get married, we have kids, but we are always cousins.  And our kids get to play together…


And even get a little silly.



I am so thankful for cousins.  And cousins kids.  And summertime.  When cousins get to play.

Good Day

I can honestly say we had an awesome family day today. We did lots of family things and spent the WHOLE day together. That is awesome in my book.

Family Day {Miscellany Monday}

We had a great weekend of spending time together.  While I was uploading the photos from the pumpkin patch, several things occurred to me...

1.  How fast this little boy...

...became this big boy!

2. That Ethan and his mama both can hardly smile with out their eyes completely disappearing while in the sun.

3. Feeding goats when you are 17 months old is a little scarier than feeding them when you are 4 years old.

4.  Pumkin patches and corn mazes are always fun!

5. How two years can absolutely fly by and feel like decades have passed at the same time.

6. Squirrels are noisy, but lots of fun at the same time.  Especially when they join you for a picnic lunch.

7. I love it when I catch my guys monkeying around!

I hope your weekend was full of family and smiles!

I'm linking up with No Ordinary Blog Hop and Miscellany Monday.

Memorial Day Weekend Recap Day 3

Monday was our big boy's 4th birthday and we had a traditional birthday breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes with strawberrties and whipped cream...yum!

Then, another birthday tradition was to take Ethan fishing.  We got out on the lake and he had so much fun.  It was such a beautiful day!

We got to see two majestic bald eagles too.  One immediately flew away, but the other stayed around for a while.  So amazing!

After fishing, we took a rest at home then before heading to Ethan's party, we stopped by the cemetary to finish decorating for Memorial Day.

He had his first ever ice cream cake!

Then we had to play some games...

I have to admit...this is the first time I have not made Ethan's cake, planned a party and really worked like crazy to get it all done.  Being out of town the two days before just made it too hard.  But you know what... I learned a valuable lesson for times like this.  Ethan had just as much fun as he did when I worked all morning on his birthdays past....AND it was so much easier!

He was sad to leave, but he had so much fun.  He still talks about playing the games and having so much fun.

Memorial Day Weekend Recap Day 2

We had to say our see-you-laters right after breakfast and let my brother and his family get on the road to Florida.  I think it's hilarious we took about 100 photos in the hotel room!

Gracie and I



Nana and the kiddos





There is my brother again...



Aunt Ashley and Ethan

After we parted ways, we decided to drive around a bit and realized that nothing was open yet because it was still pretty early on a Sunday morning.  So we started back North.  On the way we saw a sign of something really interesting and thought we would take a little detour to one of the few freshwater pearl farms in the US.  There was a little museum and everything!

Globe made out of different shades of pearls

I just had to get a picture of South Korea :)

A partially formed pearl cut out in the shape of a heart...

This reminded me of a fetal growth chart...maybe because I look at one all the time now (at the Center).

Pearl Dragonfly

Heart!

It was a really neat experience and we may even plan to go back when they are having a tour of the pearl farm and get to see them harvested!

Memorial Day Weekend Recap Day 1

I know Memorial Day was almost a month ago now, but I just wanted to recap our weekend. 

We found out on Friday night that while on the way to Florida from Oklahoma, my brother, sis-in-law, niece and my sis-in-laws mom were going to spend the night in Tennesse.  So we decided to leave early Saturday morning and meet them in Tennessee and hang out!  Saturday was Gracie's 2nd birthday and Monday was Ethan's 4th so the cousins got to spend time together for their birthdays.  We met up and did a little gift exchange in the hotel.

My wonderful brother and sis-in-law live just outside Oklahoma City and she and her family did a yard sale a few weeks prior to this and decided to give half the proceeds to our adoption fund.  The photo above is the poster they had sitting up at the yard sale and had everyone who bought something sign a little slip that had "Bring Hope Home" on it and gave those to us.  How sweet are they!?!

Then we headed to the Old Country Store and home of railroad legend Casey Jones for a great lunch and photo ops!

Yummies...

Blackberry Butter

The beautiful light in the Ice Cream Parlor.  Check out the awesome flocked wallpaper and the tin ceiling.  Beautiful!

Large barrels of yummies!

Gracie was so tired from driving through the night.

I love Jell.y Belly jelly beans!

Rock Candy

Some of the prettiest aprons I have ever seen!

I found these pretty pink dragonfly perfume bottles. 

Yes, you read that right, canned possum....um...yuck...

Oh yes, home made fudge :)

This beaded cross had little dragonflies all through it!

This train car was outside the country store and we thought you could tour it.  When we got up to the door, we realized it was a law office.  Ooops!

We were about 5 minutes too late to actually tour the train museum :(

Pray it Forward

At Gander Mountain.

My silly big brother :)

I took a photo of this milkshake because it is a very important milk shake.  It is the first one that my husband has had in about 13 years.  He has sufferred with severe lactose intolerance for that long and has recently just discovered that the lactose pills work for him.  So yay!  This has opened up a whole new world of cooking and baking!

Later that night we stopped at a great cupcake to celebrate the kids birthdays!

Celebrating our big boy!

After wayyyy too much sugar...

There we go, much better!

Here they are together.

When we got back to the hotel room, they watched a movie for a bit together before bed.

They were so precious together!  It just melted my heart.

I'll post more about our trip home later because this post has gotten much longer than I anticipated!