Have ‘Just A Minute’?

If you do, you might just have a chance to win a book!

Over on the Compassion blog today, there are some details on how you can earn a chance to possibly win one of 50 copies of this book, Just A Minute by Wess Stafford. This book includes 68 stories, 68 moments that have changed the lives of children. If you love the mission of Compassion, you will want to have a copy of this book in your home library. Reading this book will inspire you to remember to take a minute, a moment to make the difference in the life of a child.

So go ahead and enter the contest! And if you do, let me know where you shared your picture. But hurry, you only have until February 28th!

You started blogging when?

So I took a peek back at my old blog to remember when I posted my first blog post…April 2006!! Almost 7 years ago! Yikes!

My kids were this little once!

One of my very first posts was about our cookie making activity from using the Mystery of History curriculum. I find this very interesting because Kelsey and I are going through Volume One again this year, although I don’t believe we made the Joseph coat cookies this time.

A lot has happened since that first set of blog posts: my kids are 7 years older (and so am I!), Matthew has graduated from our homeschool and is working full time now, and Kelsey is my only student. Over a year ago, I moved my blog to Blogger and just a couple of months ago, to WordPress.com. And over the last 2 years, not only do I blog about my family and some of our daily happenings in our little corner of the world, but our experiences with Compassion have taken a front seat on my blog.

My blogging goals are posted for this year on my About page. On that page, you can also find links to some of the posts that were popular on my Blogger blog before I moved it over to WordPress.com. There is also a link to the Compassion website and a link to a Pinterest board with letter writing ideas for your Compassion sponsored kids. If you haven’t taken a peek at my About page yet, you might just learn a little more about me with the random facts I have listed.

My friend, Kendra, over at Preschoolers and Peace has been helping me with some great tips and encouragement as I begin to be more intentional about my blogging. She has a lot of great information to share, so be sure to visit her blog today.

So, if you are a blogger, how long have you been blogging?

Capture Your 365

Out of the seven prompts for this week, I only took photos for four of them. Had trouble getting inspired with a couple of the prompts for this past week. But I hope you enjoy the photos I did take this week!

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ISO 100, 50mm, f/1.8, 1/80 sec

Day 45 – Love: It just made sense that the prompt fell on Valentine’s Day! We have made it a tradition to stay home on this day for and have a nice dinner with the kids. We bring out the china and crystal, and usually have a fancy dessert. Less pressure on us this way…

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ISO 100, 55mm, f/5.6, 1/400 sec

Day 48 – Color From The Garden: First of my bulbs to bloom! It is always a surprise in the spring to see what bulbs are going to bloom.

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ISO 100, 50mm, f/5.6, 1/8 sec

Day 49 – A Favorite Snack: So I thought today would be the perfect day to bake my favorite chocolate chip cookies (it is worth the 14 day free trial to get this recipe!) and photograph them. However, I didn’t put the full amount of flour in these so they turned out rather flat (I can’t believe I did that!) To remedy this, I took another photo after dinner…

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ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.0, 1/30 sec

…ice cream, another one of my favorite snacks!

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ISO 100, 50mm, f/1.8, 1/4000 sec

Day 50 – A Tree: a winter, leaf-less tree awaiting the coming storm

What did you photograph this last week?

Sending more than money

There are a few things you can do to make your relationship with your Compassion sponsored child just a little more special.

1. Lord willing, continue your financial sponsorship until the child has completed the program
2. Pray for your sponsored child and his family daily
3. Post a photo of your sponsored child in a special spot in your home
4. Write letters of encouragement to your sponsored child

If you do these four things, you will be making a huge difference in the life of a child living in extreme poverty. Your involvement in this child’s life could be what brings him/her and his/her family into a relationship with Christ. Isn’t that amazing that a relationship that is formed from another continent can be enough to make the difference in many lives? We may never know what the eternal impact of our involvement in these kid’s lives will be.

As a Compassion sponsor, we are not required to do more than the four things listed above, but I know that as a family, we like to send more than just a letter to our Compassion kids. On the Compassion website, they give tips for connecting with your sponsored child:

• tips for writing to your sponsored child
• tips for mailing small gifts
• answers to your questions about letter writing

Another place you can find some great letter writing ideas is on Pinterest. Compassion has a Pinterest account and the fun thing is that I am a contributor to the Compassion Pinterest account! There is a board dedicated to Letter Writing Ideas which currently has just over 100 creative ideas to include with your letters.

One of my favorites projects that we have done so far is to trace our hands onto cardstock and write our favorite Bible verse. We sent these with extra cardstock with instructions for our sponsored kids to trace their hands and send them back to us with their favorite Bible verse written on it.

We have received 2 of these handprints back!

What creative item have you sent to your Compassion sponsored child lately?

Our Bucket List Date Night

Last weekend, my husband and I were able to go out for our monthly date night. Since I put the idea for each month in an envelope before Christmas, I am having a hard time remembering what is inside each envelope, which makes it a bit of surprise for me to!

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On my Facebook page, I asked my friends to chime in with the favorite local restaurant. I was looking for something new and different. My friends did not disappoint us! We received some wonderful suggestions and decided to try a small family-owned Italian restaurant. So off we went with our paper and my camera to give this place a try.

We were greeted with a hug at the door! They made us feel like family!

Once we placed our order, Kev opened the envelope to see what our date task would be…create bucket lists! Time to dream! With our red pieces of paper and sharpies, we started writing down some dreams:

• trip to Europe
• drive down Highway One in a convertible Porsche
• own a BMW M3
• take a class at the Culinary Institute

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As each course of our dinner came, we would eat and continue to write down some dream items on our lists.

• work for Disney
• go on a Compassion trip
• race a car in a vintage autocross race
• have all the camera equipment I would ever need

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Each course was so amazing and delicious. We continued to eat our dinner and write down our dreams.

• bobsledding
• own and fly my own airplane
• own Apple stock
• have a work from home job with Compassion

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We decided early on that we will be visiting this restaurant again soon!

• own original artwork from a Disney artist
• spend a couple of nights at the Ahwahnee in Yosemite

At one point during our dinner, our gracious hostess invited us back to the kitchen.

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We began to wonder if they thought we were food/restaurant critics since we had been taking notes and taking pictures :)

• visit the Louvre
• have a vacation home by the beach

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I know this is not the best picture of the two of us. The picture is a little out of focus and I only had the 50mm lens with me which is a manual focus lens. But we had a really nice time talking and dreaming and enjoying some amazing food that night.

What is on your bucket list?