Our assignment this week is to blog about your plans for Thanksgiving Day.....share your day in any creative form.  Please try to include family traditions, your menus, who carves your turkey, do you save the wishbone, the list could go on and on. 

I really enjoy Thanksgiving.  This year we head to my brother's home on the other side of Ohio.  My entire family will be there and that means lots of fun.  There will be six children running around that are eight years old and younger which adds to the festive feeling. 

We get up and have monkey bread and egg casserole.  We might also have these yummy sausage rolls (see recipe below) again this year.  This includes good coffee as well. 

At my brother's house, we usually have a smoked turkey on a smoker that he built with a friend.  We also have all the fixings including and old family recipe of cranberry ice which we start and end with.  We usually have pumpkin, pecan, and carnel pies.  Dinner is served around 4 P.M. usually. 

During the day, we cook, the kids do crafts, we watch parades and games, the men sometimes take the kids outside (weather permitting) and we plan our shopping excursions for the next day. It is cozy and warm and fun.  I really enjoy the day and the entire weekend.  Leftovers are also great!

Yummy Sausage Roll Recipe

1 16 oz sausage (my brother likes spicy; I like mild) cook on stove

1 package cream cheese mix together with cooked sausage

2 - 8 crescent roll packages unroll into individual triangles

Take the mixture and spoon it into the rolls and wrap the rolls around the mixture.

Bake for about 10 minutes at 350 and you are done.

Great served with some type of fruit! I often make this when we have company.  It is easy and well liked.

• This week's assignment is taking a deeper look into our spiritual lives and the warfare that we are individually facing.  I'd like everyone to seriously think and then blog about a situation in your life where you know that the enemy is attacking you and challenging your spiritual growth.  What area in your life are you feeling burdened or challenged?  The purpose of the assignment is to use this as a tool to arm ourselves better for this battle not to make you uncomfortable.  If this is too personal for you, share an area in your life that you have perservered in a spirtual battle or share your feelings on freedoms in general.

The area that comes to mind first as I read this assignment was lonliness.  We have only lived here six months and we moved from a place where we lived for many years.  It is hard to start over.  Although I have had people around me, it has felt as if a fog of lonliness has followed me lately.  As I discussed it with one friend, I felt as though I was to not run from the lonliness.  Perhaps it is part of being in ministry and wanting to do what God tells me.  I asked Him to bring my friends to me, to show me who to speak to and how, and bring people to speak into my life as well.  I also recently asked for prayer in regards to this with the ladies in our mission and come to find out that most of them felt this way after just moving and that it is part of the missionary journey.  How comforting that was to my weariness.  God is good.  I will count my lonliness a blessing and learn from it what I can.  I will also look forward to days of not feeling its tug!

GETTING INTO THE SPIRIT

1. Share your family traditions for Christmas and/or Advent

The night before Christmas, we go to church and have a nice dinner.  On Christmas we have a birthday cake and sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus.  We read Christmas stories, watch DVDs, make cookies and decorate them, we have a stuffed elf that visits and "wreaks havoc" (in a fun way) at night for 5 nights prior to Christmas, we get our kids picture made with Santa and display them to see the growth the kids, we hget a new ornament that shows the personality of each child that year and one for my husband and I together that has the year on it.  I always have an ornament exchange with my girlfriends each year.  Chirstmas is my favorite holiday and we focus on Christ as we do all year long.  

2. List 10 ways that you can prepare for the season

• Take Christmas picture and have it made into cards, also write Christmas prayer letter.
• Organize calendar and decide what to do and when to leave my folks home.
• Hire sitters when needed
• Address Christmas cards
• make a few maels ahead of time to freeze
• wrap Christmas gifts for relatives and give to thenm at Thanksgiving to save on shiopping them
• buy gifts all year when they are on sale, but keep a list so you do not over buy
• make sure the kids have appropriate outfits for church on and before Christmas
• plan dishes that you wikll need to take for parties and cookies for exchanges and start buying stuff little by little.
• Pray each day that the Lord will guide during Christmas time that we might be a blessing to each person we meet.

1. Post a scripture that will help you "Get into the Spirit

I am not sure that this get me in the mood, but I have it on my fridge to read daily

"Be very acreful, then, how you live- not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is."

Ephesians 5:15-17

~A website that you visit everyday

http://www.bloglines.com/

Most of the blogs that I read are organized and can be viewed on this site.  I like it as I can easily see if any have been updated and have them in folders like Christian, missionary, writers, homeschool, scrapbooking, friends….

The blogging ABC

Using one word we are to describe our personality or something important to us.  Here goes:

A merican

B ible

C hristian

Determined

Encouraging

Feeling

God

Honest

Ice cream

Just

Keeper

Laughing

Mom

Natural

Obedience

Positive

Quality (as in time)

Reading

Sanguine

Tea

Understanding

Violent (as in chasing after God in a raw, real, authentic, intentional way)

Watermelon

Xcellent (is there anything else for this one?)

Yearning

Zany

So I joined this blogging friend school because I usually blog more if I have assignments or have been tagged and it is more fun this way.   

So, on to the first assignment.

I have been happily married for almost ten years to a Peruvian man whom I met on a mission trip.  We are committed to missions and serve as missionaries presently in Ohio.  We do plan on going overseas in a little over two years.  I just started homeschooling our son Kindergaten and we are loving it. It is a good fit for our family. We also have a preschool daughter.  Reading is the hobby I spend the most time on.  I also enjoy scrapbooking, rubber stamping, pictures, and writing letters.  I have recently started freelance writing which I am enjoying.

My dream home would have an awesome view of rolling hills.  A large porch and patio.  A nice sized prayer closet with a beautiful chair andvv stool, a neat basket with what I study most including my Bible and a book shelf with anything else I might need or enjoy during my time in the secret place.  How awesome would that be.  I would also want a large bathtub that has a place to put a book to keep it from getting wet and a large closet that looks very neat and is organized to easily find anything.  The kitchen would be very modern too and would include every appliance I would dream of first being a nice juicer and water purifier. The house would also have a large playroom and the furniture would be ecclectic and lived in, big and comfy and warm.  I would also have a powerful coffeepot that made it taste like coffeehouses and my house would self clean.

How is that!