: Life is hard. God is good. We need each other.
You can tell a lot about a person based on what makes them cry. I don’t mean crying when you get hurt, or when someone you love dies. Everyone cries then.
I mean when something happens, and for some reason you may not even be able to explain, you start to tear up.
A number of years ago, I began noticing and paying attention to this. These teary moments are clues into our hearts.
So that’s why, when I found myself weeping in the theater watching Wonder Woman, I knew something was up.
You don’t need special equipment to make homemade ice cream. This easy recipe can be customized to make your favorite flavor. It’s the perfect summer treat!
What are the lengths to which you will go to enjoy your favorite ice cream? My husband, being from the south, is a big (BIG) Blue Bell Ice Cream fan. We don’t have Blue Bell here in Minnesota. (Boo, Minnesota!) When we visited my mother-in-law in Texas, we toured the Blue Bell factory. And can I say, touring an ice cream factory is a great way to spend a day.
Visiting Tennessee in April allowed us to indulge all week long. (And we did! At one point our freezer had 5 containers.) We even packed a cooler full of ice and Blue Bell to bring home…no kidding. In case you’re wondering, Pecan Praline is our favorite, and the kids would probably say Birthday Cake.
And while it’s no Blue Bell, I’m here to tell you today how you can make homemade ice cream in minutes. Minutes! Well, minutes is all the time it takes to mix it up…of course there are a few hours of freezing time.
I made a huge mistake with my son’s graduation party. I forgot to take pictures! This shames me, not only as a mother, but as a blogger. Before the party started, I took a few. The weirdest thing is, that at one point during the party, I looked out the back window and thought, “I love seeing all of these people enjoying each other’s company.” And I actually went out and took a few pictures.
But did it cross my mind at that point to take other pics? Noooooo. No standard picture of my son with his cake (doughnuts, in this case). No pictures of my son at all.
Here’s what I attribute it to: I lost my mind temporarily due to outlets.
But the party was great! Let me tell you about it.
The craziness of our society has been filling my newsfeeds this week, so let’s just lump all of these together. (We’re ending with something encouraging, so take heart!) Have you heard about these goings-on? I feel it’s important to share stuff like this because I think that a lot of us would prefer to live in our little bubble of like-minded folks. (Not slamming the bubble…I love my bubble). But the truth is, from inside our bubble it can be hard to really believe that society is becoming what it is becoming.
Here’s what I’ve been reading:
Parenting changes so much when your kids become teens. But that doesn’t mean you have to abandon them to figure it all out on their own. Apprenticing our teens into adulthood is the real goal. Be sure to scroll to the bottom to catch the link to my interview on this topic!
Listen to my interview with Vicki Tillman on the Homeschool High School Podcast on this topic.
Did you see the article going around recently about parenting teens? It implored parents to stop doing things for their teen in order to grow independence and maturity. Maybe you even shared or ‘liked’ it. It made some valid points.
But it also kind of broke my heart.
Don’t wake your kids up. Don’t pack their lunch. Don’t bring them things they’ve forgotten or fill out paperwork for them. Don’t ‘meddle’ in their academics.
Here’s the thing, parents… as our sweet babies grow into smelly, sassy teens, we do need to change the way we parent. We need to be intentional about developing that independence and maturity. And that can mean hard lessons, consequences, and ‘tough love’. But there are a few major problems I see with advising parents to stop doing these things for their kids altogether.
Cooking rice is messy! This easy, no mess, baked rice will completely change dinnertime for you. No sputtering. No babysitting. Just fluffy, perfect rice.
Cooking rice is messy. No matter how large of a pot I use, it boils over and leaves a starchy, sticky mess on my stovetop. I even tried a rice cooker. It sputtered the same sticky splatters and had parts that got coated in the muck that I had to wash each time. Gah!
Then I started reading about baked rice. Baking rice in the oven eliminates all the mess. It sounds too good to be true, I know.
But it’s not!