Therese!

Thank you to everybody who entered!  It was SO much fun reading all of your comments about all of the random facts about yourselves

If you didn’t win and want one really bad…run over to Mudlove.com and see all of their lovely, lovely bands

ONE HUNDRED!

Can you believe it?!  We’ve hit our 100th Treasures post!  In honor of the occasion we are giving away a MudLove bracelet with one of our favorite words…smile! :)  Fill out the Rafflecopter form below to enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Quote of the Week

 

Every problem comes with a provision and a promise.  The devil wants you to focus on the problem, but God wants you to turn your back on the problem, look at the promise and step into your provision.

-Graham Cooke

 

The Bookshelf  

These are the Generations

I thoroughly enjoyed this book!  It is follows the true story through three generations of the Bae family, and how they became Christians and stood strong, without having contact with Christians outside of North Korea.  I wasn’t able to put it down for very long :)  You can read more about it at the Voice of the Martyrs website :here:.  -Jessica

Videos of the Week  

Cute Ukelele Kid

32 Car Names & Their Meanings

BYU ‘Vocal Point’ Sings a Medley from ‘Newsies’

Note:  they did this all in one take!  Be sure to watch the ‘behind the scenes’ afterwards!

The Recipe Box  

French Bread & Cream Cheese Spread

via It’s Always Autumn

 Charissa made this for us a week or so ago and it was DELICIOUS!   Warm french bread with a yummy cream cheese spread…ooooohhhh it’s so yummy!   If you want to see step-by-step pictures on how to do it, see her post :here:

French Bread

1 1/2 T instant yeast

1/2 C very warm water

1 1/2 T sugar

2 C water

1 1/2 T oil

2 1/4 t salt

6 C flour

Combine the yeast, 1/2 C warm water, and sugar, and let proof for ten minutes. (She says that she has skipped this step and thrown everything into the mixer at once, and it’s worked fine.) Then add remaining 2 C water, oil, salt, and 3 C of flour. Mix until flour is incorporated, then add remaining 3 C flour gradually. Knead about five minutes, then turn out onto generously floured surface. Every ten minutes for the next hour knead two or three times. Form into 4 loaves. Brush with beaten egg white. Slash 3 diagonal lines into tops. Raise until double or 30 minutes. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes, then at 375 for 20 minutes.

Boursen Cheese Spread (aka Garlic Herb Spread)

1/2 C butter

8 oz package cream cheese

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 t oregano

1/2 t basil

1/8 t each dill, marjoram, thyme, and pepper OR 1/2 t poultry seasoning

Let butter and cream cheese come to room temperature, then stir all to combine.

Farmgirl Favorites

A super-duper good  encouraging post on singleness

(click on the picture)

 Miniature Humans with Life Sized Food

Click :here: to see more!  via 22Words

Cute Quotes

One night, Leah was reading the story of Noah in the Bible to Noah and Isaiah.  One of them asked how Noah knew what God wanted him to do, so she was trying to explain how God talks to our hearts.  Isaiah, trying to understand it, asked, “So basically, it’s like you’re thinking, but God is talking to you?”

One day we got a message that one of the llamas we had shown, Kricket, had died.  That evening as Leah was getting ready to go out to do chores, Isaiah came into the garage with Cricket (the cat) on his arm and said, “I thought Cricket was supposed to be dead!”  Apparently he overheard us talking about the llama and thought we were talking about the cat!

Once we heard Isaiah in the bathroom coughing and coughing, and then he said, ‘I would not recommend eating soap!’

The Seven Sisters Treasures started out as a weekly post…and is now is posted whenever we get the chance…in which we share some of our favorite things. ~the Farmgirls

Click here for ‘Guatemala Part 1′

After our little ‘resting’ time, we headed to the Orphanage, and riding in the car in Guatemala can be very interesting.

1. You don’t have to wear seat belts
2. The older and bigger cars get right of way..so if you’re in their way, you’re going hear some honking
3. If you’re stopped, people on the street will come and knock on your window trying to sell you their goods, and
4. You could get robbed by people on motorcycles. You’re stuck in traffic and can’t go anywhere…perfect time right? Thankfully that never happened to us!

I hardly know Spanish (does Hola count? :D), and they hardly know English. They know enough to communicate a little, and it was a bit difficult at first, but you learn. But just because you can’t talk that much doesn’t mean you can’t play and smile at each other! I was suddenly all the little kids friends when they learned I like to jump on the trampoline, and when I started getting into playing soccer! Lol! But since the air up in the mountains is a lot thinner than I’m used too, I got tired real quick.

It was funny when there would be two of us ‘gringos ‘ as they called us, and two Guatemalan’s, and they would say ‘ you two on a team, and us two on a team’.  I think they knew we were gonna lose anyways ;)  But it was still lots of fun. I think I played way more soccer there than I ever have in my entire life!

We were down in the babies house ‘Casa de los Angalitos’ which means ‘House of Little Angels’, and they were little angels! They were so cute!  It was kinda one of our ‘assignments’ while we where there to go and help with the babies, which I didn’t mind at all

Haha! Alana didn’t really like smiling for the camera

One of the sweetest feelings when they hang on to your hand♥

Sweet Miranda and her little friend! 

I wanted to take her home! Ok, I wanted to take them ALL home Before I went, I was warned that I would leave a piece of my heart there, and I though, ‘Ok’. But when it came time to leave, I realized just how much of my heart I was leaving there!

Alana was kinda my little buddy! Always there to say hi when I came in the gate!

It was so sweet when you would take walks, they would always be hanging on to your hand!

Whenever I laid her down for her nap, I gave her a kiss, and she would give me a kiss back♥ Just those simple little things that melt your heart (which happened often)

One day they all got suckers for their snack, that kinda turned into a sticky mess!

Alana was getting everything stuck to her fingers!

One day I took both of them to swing, and so I’d give them both a push, then try to hula hoop, which didn’t work too well, but it made them laugh!  I was glad I could entertain them, and was thinking ‘I probably look really weird right now!’

A friend of ours recently got married, and all seven of us girls got to help with the wedding. I made the wedding cake, and then all of us helped put together the appetizers before the wedding.  We also served the food along with more friends at the actual reception

The bride made the penguins from polymer clay for the cake topper…aren’t they adorable? Flowers added a nice splash of color

I made 12″, 10″, 8″ and 6″ cakes, covered them in buttercream and put different sized polka dots all over the cake Each tier was slightly turned.

The groom loves minions, so the bride bought a little minion to put in the back to surprise him when they went to cut the cake

“Hello!”

The cute little penguin couple

I started getting excited when the cake came together…stacking them, adding the flowers, and the little penguins…just so cute! I got nervous when I actually started stacking them the day of the wedding, and I actually smashed into the side of one of the cakes when I was trying to lift it up. Thankfully I brought extra icing and we hid the imperfection under the flowers

I didn’t have different sized round cookie cutters to cut out the fondant polka dots, so I ended up finding a ketchup lid, a cup, a Cracker Barrell maple syrup cap, and a wide straw to get my different sizes

Leah was my cake helper She helped me stack the cakes and then cut the cake when it was time. While we were serving the cake, a man asked me, “Which kind is the best, Jessica?” and I thought, “How do you know my name?” When Leah said that chocolate was, he asked her, “How do you know, Leah?” and she thought, “How do you know my name?”

Then we remembered that we were wearing our names on our aprons, hehe!

 Cheesecake bites…ooohhh these were yummy!

Oreo cream cheese bon bons

Cucumber sandwiches…these were good, too!

  After we set up the cake at the reception location, we headed over to the church across town to put together the appetizers.  We put the sandwiches together, dipped bon bons, and put fruit on the mini cheesecakes.

We started out kind of quiet, but we got louder as we went :D  When we’re all doing something together and we’re all in a good mood, we can get really slap-happy (which makes for lots of fun!)  And we definitely had lots of fun ;)  We teased, told stories, just talked, and laughed a lot.

  (almost) everybody…Anna’s taking the picture

Once we were done with the appetizers, we had an hour to kill before it was time to bring the food over to where the reception was being held.  So we tried resting underneath the kids ‘playsets’ in the preschool area, but that didn’t last long, because the sisters who weren’t resting were laughing at the ones who were :D  Then there was a cartwheel competition, and then Cassia started playing piano while some of us ‘danced’

I say ‘danced’ because we just make it up as we go

  I don’t know if you can tell…but we had fun

  At the reception, acting like dignified people again    The friend who got married is in charge of the 4H llama club, so all of the ‘llama girls’ got to help in the wedding with serving :D  Our friend got everybody an apron with her name on it (Anna got a camera strap with her name on it)…and they were so cute!

  Anna’s main role was to be the ‘macro photographer’ :)  She took lots of lovely pictures (all of the pictures in this post are ones she took…except the ‘dancing’ ones…I took those )

Lovely, lovely, yes?!

One of the tables reserved for the ‘llama girls’

Anna also took pictures of the rings…I think that was her favorite part!

  While we were putting food together in the basement of the church, Anna was off with the shoes and the rings taking pictures.  Once the mother of the bride came down and asked if we knew where Anna was…she had the rings and the shoes and had disappeared somewhere!  They found her eventually, taking pictures over by the piano.

The dress detail

Aren’t the pictures just amazing?

After the wedding we helped clean up at the reception, throwing away trash, packing up decorations, dumping out the vases of flowers (and saving a bunch of flowers to bring home with us!).  By the time we got home it had been eleven hours since we had left and we were tired…but we had so much fun that day :D  Thank you, April, for letting us help at your wedding…we had a blast

p.s. if you’d like to see more of Anna’s amazing photography, go see her photography blog :here:

It’s hard to believe I’ve only been home a month, seems like I was just in Guatemala! But for now, we’ll start at the very beginning (a very good place to start )

I’ve wanted to do missions work for a while–a long time–and I had been talking to my parents about doing some kind of missions work. They wanted it to be for a month, with a family, and no shots.

So I started searching, and not 2 weeks later a friend of mommy’s was talking about how she and her family were going down to Guatemala for a month to work at an orphanage and there were 2 seats left! (plus I didn’t have to get any shots) And Mommy is  texting Daddy saying “how serious were you about Anna going on a missions trip?”

From there, it was crazy awesome to see God work! For example…I needed luggage, because what we have wasn’t really going to work And you know that luggage can be kinda expensive–well one night Mommy was going through her e-mails and found a super good deal on a set of luggage, pretty much for more than half off!!! Wow!

So February 9th came way sooner than I had ever expected! lol! I left on a Sunday, got to go to Church that morning, and I had no idea this was going to happen, but they prayed over me before I left!♥ Talk about feeling loved

Once I was dropped off at the hotel with the Howe family, we went to bed pretty early, because  that next morning we had to leave the hotel at like 3:35 am!  And that happened with not much trouble, got checked in (with what seemed like a hundred pieces of luggage!) and we were off! Let me add too…this was my first time ever flying (unless a short helicopter ride counts ) So it was a little nerve-wracking going through security and such, not knowing what on earth I was doing…thankfully I was with other people!

And let me tell you, I think flying is one of the most epic feelings you can ever feel in life But I know a few people would not agree with me on that one!

I seriously took 1500 pictures, but don’t worry, I’m not gonna be posting ALL of those But it’s still going to be a lot of pictures, so hang tight!

Volcano and mountain…

It was pretty cool seeing Guatemala city from above!

After arriving in Guatemala around noon, the orphanage bus came to pick us up. We unloaded our luggage at the orphanage, spent the afternoon with the kids, then went to stay with lady D. in her home, just to relax and recuperate from our trip! And she is such an inspiring woman. She told us her whole story one night, and she talked about when she went down during the war, and towns were being destroyed by the guerrillas, and once they came into her home to rob her. The guy told her to give him half of her money, and she could keep the other half for her kids, she told him “look, I’m not going to donate to your cause. If your gonna rob me, then rob me.” He proceeded to take half of her money, then told her, “you need to close your back door, someone could just come in here and rob you!” Before they left, she told them she wanted to pray for them, and after she did he told her “you know next time we come, we’re going to kill you.” and they never did come back!

Just stories like that how God protected them, and provided for the orphanage at just the right time!

This little cutie was, well, a cutie lol! 

The town was known for making boots, so there were a lot of boot shops. 

Sooo many colorful buildings…made me want to paint my house colorful too!

The lady here was making fresh corn tortillas…that were yummy-lishis! Not anything like the ones here in the States. 

I think they had the best coffee ever!

I thought the ‘omelet of ham’ was funny!

I’d have to say that the plantain and re-fried beans were my favorite food! And my not so favorite food was the fresh papaya! lol, I told my sisters it tasted like dirty diapers smeld Haha!

Hope you enjoyed my first post on Guatemala! I hope to get the other posts coming sooner than a month in between, but it just depends on how life decides to go!