Closing Ceremonies

A very excited little boy attended this year's closing ceremonies at the park.  It was the very end of his first baseball season.  Here he is running up to accept his trophy from Coach Danny.

Here he is afterwards, posing with his trophy in the very hot weather!

And here's the father / son team from the Yankee's.  I'm so proud of the both of them.  Caleb for stepping up and playing T-Ball when he declared from the beginning he didn't want to do it.  I'm so happy that he did enjoy it as much as I thought he would.  And I'm equally as proud of Johnny for stepping up as coach.  It wasn't easy wrangling 11-12 kid's for two practices a week and sometimes two games a week.  He was an amazing coach and did an awesome job with all the "little players."

I believe next time Caleb will be in the Coach Pitch league.  A big step up.  I'm sure he'll handle that a whole lot better than I will.

God bless,

Momma/Pam

Amazima Ministries

I'd never heard of Amazima Ministries before I received this beautiful birthday present from my friend N.


I don't know about you, but I listen to a Christian radio station, K-Love, and some of the stories they tell and ministries they promote are helping people all over the U.S. and the World. So many of those ministries touch my heart, but I think, what can I do?  I'm one person.  Then I go on about my day until I hear the next radio spot announcing another situation that needs prayer and support.


When N. gave me this bracelet and then shared with me where it came from and the ministry it supports, once again, my heart was touched.  There was the answer to my question.  What could I do?  I can purchase gifts for people, that I was already buying anyway, from this incredible ministry.  Several blessings will come from it.  I will be blessed by giving a gift and from knowing that my purchase will help someone so desperately in need of help.  The receiver of the gift will be blessed with a beautiful bracelet and in knowing that it's purchase helped someone so desperately in need of help.


What is Amazima Ministries?  


It was a ministry founded by a 19 yr old young lady, Katie Davis, in 2008.  This organization feeds, educates, and encourages orphaned and vulnerable children and the poor in the country of Uganda.   In Lugandan, the language of Uganda, Amazima means "truth."


Amazima ministers to the people of Uganda in so many ways.  Education sponsorship, Masese Outreach,  Community Outreach, Vocational Projects, and Discipleship.

There is a lot of information about this amazing ministry.  Here is a direct link to their website if you'd like to read all about it for yourself.....


Or if you'd like to watch a youtube video - just give a quick click here and you can see in 1 minute and 40 seconds just how these women make this jewelry.  I am completely fascinated with it!!


What I would like to focus on is the one thing that K-Love keeps touching my heart with and that is sex-trafficking, prostitution, and slavery.  The names given to horrible issues prevalent in our world are so disturbing all on their own.  I can't, even for one second, think of what these women and young girls are actually going through on a daily basis.


The website says it like this:


"To empower women and give hope, Amazima initiated a self-sustaining vocational program for mothers in the Masese community by creating handmade, unique, Ugandan magazine necklaces. Each woman in the program makes beautiful necklaces (a lengthy process), which are sold in the United States. Because of their new jobs, these women have been able to turn away from work that was harmful and dangerous for themselves and their families such as prostitution, alcohol brewing, and trash picking. Women in this program also receive money management training and spiritual discipleship. Your support of Amazima's vocational programs builds entrepreneurship, restores dignity, and empowers the Ugandan people to work their own way out of poverty."


This is what I'm talking about.  A way WE can help!


If you are looking for that different, unique gift to give someone, why not consider a purchase from Amazima Ministries?   Your purchase will be a blessing in so many ways...


Walk with the King,


Momma/Pam


{cross post with Joy810}

What a Birthday!

Birthdays.  We all have them.  We like to try to make the birthday person feel special and recognize them on their important day.  Even if it's something as simple as a quick Facebook Happy Birthday Message, which I received way more of than I can remember right now.  This year was a fun birthday. I don't expect people to go over-board and fuss for me.  Johnny - I'm not talking about you.  Hee hee....

My early birthday present this year was something I asked for - a Keurig.  Now, I'm not a coffee drinker, but I love tea. Fresh iced tea.  When I make a pitcher of it for myself, it often starts going bad before I can drink it all.  I like hot chocolate and sometimes I even like hot tea, depending on what's happening, but especially in winter time when it's cool outside.  So far, I love my Keurig.  It will also be nice to offer others fresh coffee when they come out to the house.

My 46th birthday was filled with lots of surprises.

A dozen red roses from Johnny and Caleb and two of the sweetest birthday cards I think I've ever received.  Okay, that might be a stretch because, {blush} I'm a card saver and I love to receive cards and all cards I receive a special to me.  But, I will admit, that the wording in these cards just seemed, well, absolutely perfect.

The next surprise wasn't something I could photograph.  Johnny surprised me by taking MY birthday off of work!!   Yeah!  I was so tickled.  It was so nice to spend the day with Johnny and Caleb and not have a specific agenda.  Johnny made me a scrambled eggs with sausage & gravy breakfast.  He and Caleb did a little fussing outside and then we had to decide what to do.  We debated and debated, but decided to take Caleb to see Avengers.  Okay, I know it was my birthday, and that was probably not what I would have picked to see, but when you have an almost 7 yr old on your hands, romantic comedies and the like just don't make the cut.  

So, yes.  I am one of those parents who took my almost 7 yr old to see Avengers.  Honestly, had I see it first, I probably would not have let him watch this movie.  It's too late now though.  He's seen it.  He was nervous {scared} in a few places {mostly towards the beginning}, but he really enjoyed the super heros, the funny lines and the good guys beating the bad guys.  Do I wish he'd been a little older?  Yes, probably so.  Will I think twice about other super hero movies, like the new Spiderman movie coming out?  Yes, I will and I'm almost certain he won't be seeing that one any time soon.  But, Capt'n America is his absolute favorite super hero and I am grateful he's not had any nightmares, so I think we survived this round unscathed.  

Saturday we had a family gathering at the Parker Ranch and most of the family was able to come out.  My niece, Melanie, had to work and my DIL, Morgan, took the kiddos with her to Houston to visit her family, but the rest of the crew were able to come.  We even had a couple of guests the Autry's from Rick & Steph's church.   We had hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill (thank you Johnny), buns for our burgers and hotdogs (thank you Pastor & Diane), hotdogs and cheeses (thank you Allie & Aaron), a salad and pico (thank you Dusty), 7 layer Mexican dip, chips, and birthday desserts (thank you mom), and a tasty watermelon (thank you Rick & Steph).

Here are more of my sweet gifts:

This adorable cross from Allie and Aaron.  I love it and it matches my "decor" so well.  

This was a "Bless this Home" plaque, in case you can't read the wording, that Dusty and his family gave me.  This one is quite special because my DIL was out of town and Dusty went shopping on his own.  I know he relies on her to take care of these types of things and her gifts are always sweet and thoughtful, but I rather like the notion that this time my son went shopping just for me.  ;o) 

Here they are up on the wall.  I had to take a picture from the side as the glare from the back door windows was getting in the way of the photo.

I don't have a picture of it, but due to my bragging about the ceramic knife my parents gave to John for a gift one time, they gave me the smaller, paring knife size for my birthday.  It's going to be a wonderful addition to my kitchen.  I use John's knife all the time and have even dropped it on our concrete floors causing it to chip.  Hopefully I can keep this smaller one in my hand better and free of chips.  :o)

And then my church family.  They outdid themselves this year.  It seems that one of our members, Ms. Rita, put a bug in a few people's ears that they should do something special for me.  So, in a secretive fashion, they threw together a birthday breakfast and held it before church last Sunday.  Talk about surprised.

It didn't start off good though - - I wanted to warm up something for a breakfast to eat on the run and Johnny rushed me out the door.  I thought that was a little weird that he told me naw, and mumbled something I didn't quite decipher.  And on the way to church I said, "It sure would have been nice to have had a 'pig'.  I'm rather hungry."  He didn't say a word.  But then we got to church and I saw ALL the cars there early.  No one is there early except us and whichever family is leading music that week.  I walk inside and what do I see.  A smorgasbord of breakfast items!  And lots of smiling faces!!  They got me......

They gave me the flowers pictured above, a wonderful breakfast, a card signed by everyone, and a plaque for my office wall.  I'm drawing a blank right now, but the scripture is about serving.  It's beautiful and I will think of this special birthday every time I look at it.  I'll get a picture of it and post it up here another day.

One of my dearest friends L. gave me the friend plaque with the scripture on it and a new note pad for my desk.  However did she know I was running low on post-it's?  It's gotta be a God-thing.  :)

One of my other sweet friends gave me this bracelet she purchased from Amazima Ministries.  I'm going to tell you all about Amazima Ministries in a separate post.  It's a very special ministry and deserves a post all to itself.  If you can't wait for me, go ahead and google it.  But, I promise I'll get the info up here, soon......maybe even today if Caleb keeps on sleeping.  :)

My 46th birthday came to a close and I've never felt so blessed.  Thank you to my God for bringing me through another birthday, my husband, my children, my family, my church family, all the facebook folks, everyone for treating me so special.  I feel so undeserving and am humbled by all this extra attention.  But please know that I appreciate each and every gesture so very much!

With Warm Fuzzies,

Momma/Pam

Veggie Mania

Everybody loves it when their garden is a success!  But, not everyone knows what to do with all the fruits of their labor.  This year, Johnny and Caleb truly did most of the work in the garden.  From planting, to watering, to picking.  At least until the end of the season when Johnny started getting a little busy.  I stepped in a few times to water and pick veggies that just had to be picked.  So, honestly, the success this year is much attributed to the hard work of the guys.   

This is our 3rd year to have a family garden.  I would have to say in some ways it was our most successful.  Other than the caterpillars who decided early on to literally destroy the beets, peas, and lettuce.   They tried to take out the onions, but the end result of those was to at least have some green onion and chives for the freezer.

We shared A LOT of veggies with family and neighbors.  And when it came down to it, we still had all of this to figure out what to do with!  This is 1/2 of my kitchen table folks!  I'm certain if we'd not shared, my table would have been full.

Memorial Day came around and as much as we'd have rather gone to the movies or, well, basically, anywhere, we decided to stay home and attack the veggies in order to preserve as much as we could.  I hate waste and I was determined I would do my best to prevent that this year.  So, here was a bucket of bell peppers.

Chopped!

And bagged!  Love it!  We don't use a lot of bell pepper, but when we do, all I have to do now is pull out a bag and break off a clump.  Why did I start with the bell pepper?  Because there were only a few of them and I knew they would be done quickly.

The squash on the other hand was a completely different story.  We had tons of squash.  I tried to count them, but lost count.  What I did count was the number of cups we cut up and bagged for the freezer.  107 cups of squash in all. Yikes!

I had the best help ever.  Caleb and Johnny.  I found in my kitchen drawer this neat tool I had bought from a Pampered Chef party one time.  I was a nervous wreck as Caleb wanted to help CUT VEGGIES.  In my mind I wanted to just send him outside to play, but in reality, I knew that wouldn't work.  He would feel left out and I would be knocking him out of his big-boy status real quick.  So, hence the tool he is using.  It holds the squash in place and he can cut between the tines!  Incredible tool and made my job of watching him with the knife much easier.  Whew...

I blanched the squash for a couple of short minutes before cooling and bagging.  Everywhere I read said it was best to blanch them as it completely stops the growth.  My only hope is that they will still be tasty when we defrost and eat them.  But, some attempt at preservation was better than none and watching all this go to waste.  Well, I'm sure I could have shared and given most of it away.  But, I like having lots of bags of frozen veggies in my freezer.  

The rest of the squash we cut up in small chunks.  One of Johnny's favorite meals (and now mine), is Calabasa with chicken.  Okay so that name is probably half hispanic/half white.  But, basically it's chicken with squash.  The squash "melts" down until it's as soft as soft can be.  With the right seasonings, totally yummy!

Here I was bagging it up in gallon sized freezer bags.  It takes a ton of cut up squash to make a medium casserole size of the meal.  So, in my guessing, I figured a gallon sized bag would be about a meal, plus a day or two of leftovers.

I think I ended up with 4-5 gallon bags.  So, pleased with that.  I know Johnny was hoping for more, but we shared a lot of veggies and it felt good to share with others.

 We did not grow corn this year. But my wonderful brother and sister-in-law shared their bounty with us.  We ended up with about 6 or 7 meals in the freezer.  Since Caleb likes corn, that was a blessing to have some for him.

And last but not least, onions.  The onions pictured here in this photo we did not grow.  Johnny was given a large bag of onions from the Valley.  They were the sweetest onions I think I'd ever received.  Honestly,  I cut up enough onions to FILL 5 quart sized freezer bags and did not shed ONE tear.  I mean it.  I had set myself up for crying and burning eyes.  But no.  Not one tear.  It was awesome!

It took us a full day to work through all these veggies, cutting, blanching, bagging, etc.  I own a food processor.  But, don't laugh at me -- I cannot seem to figure out how to use it to just dice up the veggies in small chunks.  The first batch of bell peppers I did I used my food processor and honestly, if babies ate bell peppers, the texture would have been nearly perfect for them.  It was almost like a soup.  I even changed blades and tried again. Still no success.  So, my goal between now and the next garden is to read the book and figure out which blade will give me the cut I want.  All the while we were cutting I kept telling myself, there has to be a better way.  I'll get it figured out.  Truthfully, it was fun.  By the end of the day my body was aching and my tennis elbow was talking to me.  But, the "fun" was in knowing that we did better than last year and preserved the fruits of our labor to enjoy throughout the next few months until we run out.

I still have the cucumbers and tomatoes to mess with.  My goal is to make a GREAT salsa and Ranchero Sauce for Johnny.  One of these days I'll get that figured out, too.

Until next time,

Papalote Mom

All Good Things Must Come to an End

T-Ball Season has come to a close.  Well, except for closing ceremonies on June 15th.  I'll try to snag some pictures if the opportunity presents itself.  But, for now, here are some photos from the end of season Yankees Team Party.

Every team party has to come complete with a cake to celebrate......and.....

 A jump house!  With water no less!  Here the kids are anxiously waiting for it to be filled with air and water so they can begin to have fun.

 I love these two pictures of Caleb.  I was able to zoom in with my camera to catch them.  There is something truly genuine about his smile and the joy he is feeling.  When he poses for me, he smiles most of the time.  But, to capture a great time on film without his knowledge is cool.

At a quick look, you would think Caleb is not in this picture.  But, I assure you he is.  He is under the feet of those climbing up the stairs.  When coach said, "get in!"  Boy did they!  All the kids piled in and were literally trampling each other to get to the top of the bounce house and slide down in the water.  I was about to run to Caleb and pull him out from under the wrath of little feet when his head popped up and I knew he was okay.  Whew!

He had a blast!

Over......

and over.....

and over.....

again.

The end of t-ball is really bitter sweet.  Caleb developed a camaraderie with his team mates and that was fun to watch.  In particular, he really like to hang out and toss the ball with Jaime.  Jaime's mom and I traded phone numbers in hopes that we can get them together to hang out some time this summer.  

Until closing ceremonies,

Momma/Pam

Theater Arts Awards

Randy loves being a part of the drama/theater arts program at Tuloso Midway High School.  He's played some very fun and interesting roles along the way.  At the drama awards banquet for the 2011-2012 acting year, Randy was the recipient of three awards:

* Best Actor

* Most Memorable Scene

* National Leadership Award

The best actor award and the most memorable scene awards come from the votes of the entire theater and drama department.  So, basically, these awards came to him via his peers who share a love for the theater as well.

The National Leadership Award is one he was given/nominated for by the Counselor at the school.  Without understanding exactly what it is at this point in time it's hard to describe it, but he was told that it is one that could lead to receiving a scholarship, which is a very cool thing.

A prideful moment.  I'm very proud of Randy and all that he has accomplished this year.  Way to go Randy!  We look forward to next year and what roles the theater department will bring your way....

Love and Hugs,

Pam

Something New

Something I've prayed about for quite a while now has finally come to be.  I'm still not exactly certain just how it's going to go, but what I am certain of is that God is in it and He is guiding me down a new path.  I'm really excited to share it with you!

In the past week, the birth of Joy810 has finally come to be.  What is Joy810 do you ask?  Well, it's another blog, but it is a special blog.  It's not a place for all the highlights of the Parker folks and the ins and outs of our life on the ranch.  This blog was specifically created to share those taps and tugs that God Himself puts on my heart.  It's a journey of sorts and I would feel so blessed if you would join me over there from time to time.

I have always wanted to write.  I dabbled in fiction writing a long time ago.  When the door to blogging was opened for me, I was really excited to jump in and give it a whirl.  It's fun to share with our family who can't be here every day, all the things that are happening in our life.

But, I still felt there was something more for me to do.  I was blessing my family, but I knew that God expected more of me.  But how?  Doing what?

The first blog post at Joy810 gives a detailed explanation as to how it came to be.  To make your way over, just give Joy810 a click......

I hope you are in some way blessed by this new venture.

Walk with the King,

Pam