BFF: Fabulous friends make all the difference!

Have you ever had the priviledge of being part of a relationship with someone who you could sincerely call your best friend? What were they like? How did they make you feel as a person? Did they laugh at your jokes? Did they lend a helping hand in your times of need? Did they like to do the same types of activities you enjoyed? How do we know when someone we meet has the potential to be that "best friend" we've always dreamed of having and hope to hold on to forever?

For all those people in my life that I have had the rare opportunity to consider being my dear friend and Godly counsel, I pray for God's richest blessings upon you today and in the years to come. You have helped me in this journey of life more than you'll ever know. It is a treasured gift to both have a friend and to be a friend to someone else. It's an even greater blessing to have that someone special that outshines the rest and to be trusted with the title, "BFF". So exactly what do you do to earn the respect of your friends and learn to be a terrific BFF?

Share with me today (if you would be so kind) and leave a comment about what you feel are some great qualities or actions that a best friend should say, or do to help their bff. I look forward to reading & commenting back on them.

Matthew 7:12a, "so in everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you" always comes to mind when I think of being a best friend. I also enjoy: Proverbs 17:17 "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." Please feel free to also share your favorite verse or phrase that keeps you in the right mindset to be a fabulous friend. Thanks for visiting & be very blessed this weekend!
All these comments on how to be a great best friend will be passed on as wisdom to my children and others who are blessed to read them, as they learn to grow in the Lord and in their relationships with friends and family. Sometimes kids "hear" best when it comes from someone other than just mom and dad. :) God bless you for sharing your gems of advice as we try to raise the next generation with love and kindness.

Extreme Weather: Massive Dust Cloud hits Arizona

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here is an amazing video of a huge dust cloud that is 50 miles wide and about a mile high! It was coming into the Phoenix, Arizona area and literally engulfs the city! One local resident commenting on the event said, "I have lived in Phoenix my entire life (21 years) and I have never seen a storm like this one. By far the largest one ever to come through here. Definately will remember this one for a very long time. We have some of the coolest weather here." per zac2060940

So beautiful yet frightening to see such extreme weather on a large scale like this all over our country & around the world lately. Its been fun to view all the gorgeous photos & videos many people have had the chance to capture of special weather phenomenon like this one. It's humbling to know how quickly life can come to a stand still or even be altered forever by the impact of an unavoidable weather event. Many are still recovering from the extreme weather that has hit in 2011 so far & we are only half way through the year. Thankfully the only real damage seems to be that thousands were out of power from this incredible dust storm in Phoenix. Hopefully no injuries will be reported.

Seeing these breathtaking images makes me want to dive into a Geography lesson with my oldest for our homeschooling. There is so much to learn from current events, but weather events just seem to be more attractive to the science enthusiasts in our house. My son is an enormous fan of extreme weather and I've always been glued to such things throughout my life as well. Watching the blow by blow updates of hurricanes, tornadoes & floods as they are happening from the Weather Channel & other news sources has been a regular pastime for us as a family. There is a lot to be appreciated in the beauty & power of gigantic storms like this dust cloud that recently hit AZ. Thanks to all the brave journalists, photographers and videographers out there that take great risks to bring the world such exciting images of it all.
Looking for more info on dust clouds to teach for science or about the weather in your homeschool or classroom this year? Click here http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43650426/ns/weather/?GT1=43001 to read more articles or see more videos from msnbc on the dust cloud that hit AZ today. Check out these sites for some more great information related to desert dust storms like this one. Enjoy! http://www.lakepowell.net/asiandust.htm, http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle09.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2011/July/theuae_July27.xml&section=theuae

Sweet ride for your toddler, Preschooler or Kindergartener!

Fisher-Price makes many awesome toys for kids, but this has been one of our favorites for several years. My four year old got the Rock, Roll n' Ride Trike when she was 2 & still loves riding her heart out on this smooth traveling big wheel. Easy for parents, grandparents or older siblings to push when they are still small, & easy enough to use the pedals once they're legs are long enough & feel ready.
This child's first introduction to bike riding is fun, colorful, very durable, & lightweight for transporting. Excellent gift idea for birthdays, Christmas or just a must have summer fun outdoor toy. We actually use it as an indoor toy also on rainy days when my daughter needs to get her energy out. We let her ride it in the garage around in circles while mom is doing laundry or getting in some exercising herself. Highly recommended product! Check out our amazon store for other sturdy kids bikes, trikes & big wheels. Summer is here & waiting to be explored & enjoyed in the great outdoors!
Here are a few other toddler bikes by Little Tikes that come highly recommended complete with sun shield, side rails for safety, & wagon compartment in back for holding treasures. Hope your days are full of joy!

Must do field trip! Blueberry picking season

Its that time of year again, folks! Blueberry picking season in FL! We had such a fantastic time last year when a group of friends came with us to a local Blueberry farm & spent the day learning lots of fabulous truths about this interesting fruit. Have you had a hard time finding some new ideas for field trips with your homeschooling schedule? Try this idea out & work it into your grocery shopping, family togetherness time & penciling in a field trip on the homeschooling calendar.

When I was a girl we had tried going berry picking every year in the fall & spring. Some berries were sweet & some were more on the bitter side. Blueberries seem to rank in a flavor category all their own. We eventually bought a blueberry bush to grow right in our own yard for yearly helpings of the delicious goodies right within reach every morning to go with breakfast. Mom had this delicious recipe for making blueberry cobbler which I loved! Since I'm not able to share the family recipe, I can at least recommend a great substitute from Rachel Ray that I attached a link to. http://www.rachaelraymag.com/Recipes/rachael-ray-magazine-recipe-search/on-hand-ingredients-recipes/Blueberry-Cobbler There are so many scrumptious recipes to use blueberries in, from cake mixes to desserts to breakfast entrees & baby foods. Having a stash of fresh or frozen blueberries (for pennies on the dollar) would sure come in handy this summer with festive Mother's Day, Memorial Day, Graduation Parties, Father's Day, & Fourth of July celebrations. Taking the family on a fun & memorable blueberry picking excursion is just the thing to meet that need for blueberries for all those mouth-watering recipes you've been dying to try out at the next holiday gathering.

During our field trip we tried to help the kids learn the value of growing fruits or vegetables at home by seeing how amazing it was to view all the fruit hanging from the blueberry bush ripe & ready for picking. We pointed out how God feeds the birds & small animals with the ones that fall to the ground. It was a busy place with a lot of locals stopping by to get in on the inexpensive fruit deal. For this fun-filled experience, we were each given a canvas sack to hang around our waste that would hold the blueberries that we picked & allow us to know when we had filled an amount that would cost the low $10 per bag fee to bring them home. It was a team effort picking enough plump juicy blueberries to fill everyone's sacks including the younger kid's bags. They found just as much joy in seeing the colorful butterflies, dragonflies, caterpillars, & spiders we discovered hiding among the bushes occasionally. The older kids got to chat with each other within earshot & view of the parents, but had their freedom to explore the blueberry farm together collecting the sweet berries. Since my family has eye issues, we also stressed the importance of eating blueberries for its vision enhancing qualities. My daughter pointed out that they taste really good too! LOl! She didn't need any convincing to eat more! It really was a great deal getting all those blueberries during this trip. Let me just say with buying one $10 bag, I was able to fill 3 gallon-sized bags of blueberries to freeze after we had eaten our fill of the fresh ones that week! It helped that my four year old simply adores blueberries at any time, day or night. I thought we'd never eat them all! LOL! Hope you get the chance to go blueberry picking this season & make it a memory while meeting a field trip requirement too! Let me also encourage you to consider getting a few blueberry bushes to grow right at home. Makes a great science lesson too!

Developing a Teen's Love to Serve

Forever thankful for the sacrifice our Lord, Jesus Christ, gave for us so that we might be receive the free gift of salvation & be alive in Him on this Earth to share His message to people everywhere. It has been such a joy & treasured event in my life to watch my young teenage son grow in his walk with Jesus. There are many steps that can be taken, as parents, to share our passion to serve the Lord with gladness before the eyes of our children. The job of molding & shaping their hearts with the right ingredients of love, faith, trust, hope, purity, kindness, & obedience to God & His Word can be a tricky one. God does give us His Holy Word as our handbook to daily living for not only teens & children, but for all ages & circumstances in life. My son, thankfully, has always had a fire to learn about new things & a great love for reading. Reading the Bible & learning more about God's ways & what He intends for my son's future is no different. My son has been reading a variety of Bible concordances & devotional books as well as learning to try different translations of the Bible to see if it understands it better. His thirst for knowing more about Christ & trying to find new ways to be trained in the Scriptures & in serving the Lord has been fun to observe. He currently has been enjoying a Leader In Training (LIT) program through AWANAS where he is able to help work with the elementary age students part of the time while working through an intense Bible Study for his age during the rest of the time. He is mentored by a trusted friend & leader at our church. Worshipping God through songs & hymns & spiritual songs as the Bible recommends, is one of my son's very favorite pastimes. He loves going to sing with youth choir, or spending time making up songs on his keyboard. Music has really inspired & strengthened my son's faith in many ways. It's one of many outlets he uses to express his creativity & to let God know how much he truly loves Him.
Developing a teen's love for serving is partly getting to be their cheer leader & observing what they do best. Sharing with them about how good they are in a particular hobby or talent, & then encouraging them to find ways to use it for the Lord's purposes in the church or community is an important part of parenting the Christian child or teen. Other avenues we've discovered that actually bring both of us extreme pleasure, is our chance to share our hearts with the world in drawing, poetry or by writing devotionals about how God has blessed our lives time & again. We started a website for Christian homeschooling families together where he can be creative & write about things he's researched, things he enjoys as a hobby such as sharing his artwork, or just writing something on whatever he is passionate about at the time. My son and I also have a natural passion to invite people into our home for Christian fellowship. My son has become a witness to several students his age, & really impressed me this past week by not only inviting his friend & neighbor to a Christian Bible Card game tournament we hold at our home once a month called Redemption, but he also invited a young man from the church youth group who we had never had the chance to meet before. This precious child of God was so excited to spend fellowship with all of us that day & to meet other Christian young men his age, it came across as sheer delight in the Lord. How marvelous to observe! It is a big deal to your teen to hear you say that you "noticed" when they did something well or boldly took a step of faith & shared with someone about God. We try to applaud our son when he is courageous enough to step out & share his love for God & invite his friends to Chrisitan events. This helps reassure your teen that its ok to be excited for Jesus!
We are truly thankful for all the gifts God has given us, & find that the more opportunities God presents for us to serve Him in our community, the more hungry we are for His Word to be prepared for the task at hand. May God be glorified in all that He does in FL & across the country in the lives of His people. We are overjoyed to be a part of His plan to share His love to others & especially happy to watch our son grow in his desire to be used by the Lord to reach others for the Kingdom of Heaven.
Is having the opportunity to watch your child or teen growing in their walk with Jesus important to you too? Believe me my friends, seek out opportunities to enrich this desire in your child & you will not be disappointed with the outcome. God's hand is moving in the hearts of His people & the world shall be impacted greatly by our sons & daughters if we take the time to cultivate their love for Jesus. May our children develop a thirst for sharing the Gospel to the people in their circle of life. Next step...mission trip!

We Take So Much In Life For Granted

Such a fascinating world we live in! It's cities, towns & countrysides are filled with all forms of life & lots of fun & exciting things for us to do! Our beloved Creator & Lord made us in His image and blessed us with bodies to use on this Earth so that like the joy within a little child, we might embrace our ability to walk, jump, play, run, skip, hop, gallop, slide, swing, twist, swim, dance, wiggle, clap, snap, wave, high-five, and many other simply wonderful uses our bodies allow us. All too often I hear people complaining or whining about a lack of material things, but if they have their health & use of their physical bodies...indeed they are rich and not in want.
We take for granted the sweet moments of getting to hold our newborn children or grandchildren in our strong, working arms, or the ability to stand up and walk our own daughter down the aisle to give her away in marriage. There are those chosen ones among us who are extremely courageous & strong in heart because of the life they've had to live without the freedom to enjoy those physical expressions of our bodies, but have learned to live on- striving to take each day one at a time, struggling with the physical & emotional battle of their very will to live at times. These brave people have either been born with disabilities, or have had an unfortunate set of circumstances causing them to be paralyzed in their upper or lower body from some form of accident, or have become injured temporarily or permanently by valiantly serving our country in the Armed Forces.
Why do we as humans have to judge so quickly somone who faces a physical challenge of some kind? These shining stars of the human race can be some of the most delightful personalities & friends I know. They did not ask for this lifestyle, but we trust our Heavenly Father had a reason they needed to live through it. Maybe their story of hardship & gaining self confidence in what they could do for themselves & what others would eventually help them with, would be an amazing blessing to all who could hear it? So many have shared their dreams & goals to enrich the lives of others in their path, by simply leading by example on how to live past the pain & persecution & move onward through the struggle to develop support, encouragement & motivation to live the best life you can. I applaud the many family & friends I've known that have taught me so much about how to survive & enjoy life to the fullest despite the use of a limb or their sight.
My own experience of just briefly not having use of my writing hand (which I do everything with!) made it ever so clear that I hadn't been thanking God enough for ALL that I have. I have the use of all my physical body ..even if sometimes those parts are in pain, I still have use of them. And that should be enough to rejoice! I recently had to rely on others in a mighty way as I was put on bedrest for the second half of my pregnancy. I was not allowed to get up for anything. I couldn't assist my four year old or come check on the classwork at the computer that my teen was working on. I couldn't answer the door if the doorbell rang, or even attempt to do laundry, dishes or cleaning bathrooms. There was no opportunity to go out for appts, shopping, or library or church visits, until suddenly it was like God had sent his angels among us here on earth & inspired friends & neighbors to go out of their way to assist my family in getting to their dr appts, church activities, shopping done, & many other necessities of life we take for granted that we can always do on our own. The reason I share this is to open some eyes to the fact that life always changes. Pay attention to what needs your attention now..while you have the physical opportunity to meet those needs on your own, & look around for those dear friends & neighbors who are always there for you & may need you some day when their life demands a lending hand. We should always be striving to reach out to others in our community. Look for ways to be a blessing to someone else ..somone you may not even know. It can be very helpful to someone in any condition whether they are elderly, in a wheelchair, blind, deaf, or just have a back back or on bedrest from pregnancy like I was. They will rejoice in your company (to keep their sanity in their distressed condition) and will greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness to come to their aide. God bless your efforts.

Gifted Education: Parent support group -FREE ebook resource

Finding the time to invest in your child's life more than just the everyday norm can be quite challenging. It becomes especially difficult when one or more of your children require special attention for their needs as a gifted child. Gifted & Talented children have a fascinating rate of growth in their individual talents & learning processes. This acceleration of interest in numerous subjects & hobbies can take its toll on the child & the child's parents if they don't have a support group or specific resources to help them through this process. The child needs challenge & acceptance and the parents may need guidance in developing the child's ability & raising such a clever & speedy learner.
Today I'd like to introduce you to a free resource made available through the joint publication efforts of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) and Prufrock Press.  Its titled: Starting and Sustaining a Parent Group to Support Gifted Children. This ebook is available to you through the NAGC website at http://www.nagc.org/  The book was designed to help parents develop effective parent support groups.The book is filled with info presented by parents in the NAGC Parent Advisory Committee and the Parent and Community Network as they recognize the power & passion of parents that come together to advocate with schools, districts & governments about supporting the needs of their gifted & talented children. The advice & examples given in this ebook resource come from direct experiences of  families with gifted children. May this resource be a useful guide to meeting the daily needs of your gifted student. Here is the direct page link to access this wonderful FREE resource. http://www.nagc.org/parentgroupeguide.aspx

As a gifted child myself, I remember the endless hours of practice in all kinds of hobbies & from musical instrument lessons, to drawing & painting, to video production & photography. School was important to me and usually is to most gifted students. They can strive to express their inner self through English papers or extensive research for reports in a given subject. I find my love for languages especially useful in meeting the needs to be challenged. Arts & crafts, science projects & other hobbies ruled the summer amidst learning to swim specific strokes or dives in our pool. Fishing, video games, gardening & cooking topped the list for additional challenges that peaked my interest to succeed & enjoy the final outcome of what I was doing. Take a good look at the idea of parent support groups for the possibility of helping your family with its current areas of need. Please also consider your active involvement in a support group to be a blessing to the hundreds of other families out there that may not know which direction to go with this new form of learning & nurturing, & could greatly benefit from somone like you sharing with them about your own personal experiences on raising a gifted child.
*info on ebook from NAGC