Torah Life

Thanksgiving

Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving!! Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays it so rich with traditions, family and food!!! What is not to love?! this year my parents were wonderful enough to come up for thanksgiving, with a few surprises!!!!  I had told my mom and dad that My PC wasn't working properly and while they were here I would have my dad look at it see if he could do something  ( dad is a programmer) none of the games we had on the pc would work OY !! and instead they brought me there old PC complete with games for the kids and some for me too (wink, Wink!!)

 

I know that this will not become a habit when my pc is not working but Very cool!!!! The pc is newer, the speakers are JUST COOL and CLEAR!!!  and it is just so fast compared to the last pc. I didn't know what I was missing!!!!  thank you daddy!!!

Then as an added bonus  Mom got a new Kindle with her amazon credits which means that ..... ( you guessed it) I got her old kindle!!! this was not a surprise we had been talking about it earlier since she had to have her old kindle replaced  just as she was looking for a new kindle  ( keyboard letters were wearing out) they sent her a new one and she had called me asking what skin I wanted for it.  so for a month while she decided what new kindle she wanted she used .... ( MINE). she also made me a sleeve for the Kindle SO COOL!! I am so spoiled I know!!!!

 The girls were excited too!!! cause Mom fixed the labtop so that we can play the games on the Laptop also so they don't have to wait for mom and dad to get off the big pc. they can play there games on there  well all but one but soon we will get that game put on there. 

 

back to thanksgiving.......

we had a wonderful visit with my parents unfortunately me and the girls were still getting over being sick so that was a bit hard on all of us, we were overly tired.  but all and all, great time, can't wait til there next visit in January or ours ( if we can swing it in december). 

Dinner: we had so many wonderful dishes for thanksgiving  here is our menu with links to the recipes cause they were just too good not to share.

Turkey 

Make ahead potatoes : Make ahead potatoes is commonly known in our house as MOMMY's famous mashed potatoes, I have been making these potatoes for awhile, you add cream cheese, sour cream, butter, salt and pepper to the potatoes and if no gravy we add ranch dip mix and chives. message me for full recipe

Sweet Potato : add butter, cornstarch, brown sugar, cinnamon  message me for full recipe

Green bean casserole

Broccoli salad ( My kids favorite) I don't like raw onions so I use dried and I add shredded carrots. 

Turkey Gravy from scratch: easy to make 

Stuffing from box  - no need to do it from scratch this year

For desert:

pumpkin pie  thank you coco's, last year I made it from scratch didn't feel up to it this year

 

Coconut cream pie

no bake cookies 

So much GOODNESS!!!!

G-d Has blessed us with so many things to be thankful for, a wonderful family and friends. a wonderful home and food on my thanksgiving table.  Praise be to YHVH my Elohim who has blessed me with a wonderful thanksgiving 

Shalom 

answer to the question - Torah scroll

I know Simcha torah was last week but we are running late so we were talking about Simcha Torah this past week for school and we also caught up on the torah portions as well. Simcha Torah means litterly Joyful Torah. the feast is just about taking joy in the word of God who can go wrong with that?  the answer is you can't. so we did a torah craft talking about the pieces of the torah. 

the kids had to make each piece to look like the real thing. lets see how they did?

the Yad is to represent the finger or hand of God It is  also intended to prevent anyone from touching the torah scroll itself , which is considered sacred. normally made out of silver ( silver representing justice).  let's See how the girls did, Jackie is the one who made our yad.

This is the Belt that keeps the Torah together. it is commonly know as the belt of Truth The first piece of armor Paul mentions in Ephesians 6:14 is "the belt of truth" Our belt was designed by Kat and here is how she did it

The Breastplate of Righteousness

The second piece of armor Paul mentions in Ephesians 6:14 is "the breastplate of righteousness." also to remind us of the breastplate that the high preist wears. 

Tyna made our lovely breastplate 

a crown of royalty, to show that the torah is KING, just as our Messiah is coming back to be king, Messiah said that he was Torah made flesh.

Abby was the creator of the crown

Torah cover or the royal robes, the torah cover is always made of velvet and is always in a royal color again a sign of royalty to the word and to give the word reverance.

Tyna made the Torah cover

 

and of course we have to see the scroll itself so we decided to make a scroll for each book in the torah. 

we delight in the the word of God and what instruction brings to our lives. 

we even unrolled the scroll to see how far we could go.......

Shema even got in on our torah study....

Shabbat Shalom!!!

Sukkot disappointment and Blessings!!!

Well to say that we had a great Sukkot would be a lie, we had some wonderful blessings this year but I think we missed the mark for what we should be doing. Sukkot is one of the most fun things that we do and I normally do so much for it but this year was not good. Is it anyone's fault? YES,   MINE! I forget sometimes that MY Family needs to come first in all things that we do.  Life happens but I need not let that effect my kids and my family. things that are important still need to be important and celebrated weather I am tired or not. but I digress.... 

let me share with you some of the wonderful blessings that we had this year. 

first our sukkah was just so cool. I wish we had done more out there, but it was really cool!!!

 

We put out the baby Messiah and the little sukkahs out in our sukkah and we did play with them. the girls love getting them out and talking about Messiah's birth. 

anouther blessing we had this year was we had our very first Luluv 

It was so wonderful to have a luluv this year and the girls to get to hear the teaching behind the luluv. THank you Mike and Vicki and the congregation of Beth Emet for this  most wonderful blessing.

another blessing that we had was our Ushpizin, our wonderful Sukkot Guests, The parkers, we were so happy to spend the weekend of Sukkot with them up in the Huliapai Mountains. we had such a blast camping and hanging out. 

I am hoping that now thing are calming down that I can do some of the things that I had set out to do with the girls. but we will see how this works.  all I know is that I need to take a look at what I need to do and stop trying to fit in with what others do and start doing what  MY family does best.  Shalom.

Yom terruah 2011

Chag Sameach everyone, I am a little late posting this but it has been a hard week this past week and I really had no time to post. On thursday night was my favorite feast of Yom Teruah, I love this feast for so many reasons, First I love that it is the first of the FALL feasts meaning I can decorate for the fall. then we get to eat wonderful food like apples and honey, round Challah and honey cake

but before we get to the eating we blow the shofars after we find the new moon (Rosh Chodesh)   here is us at the service for Yom Teruah.

after spoting the new moon then we went inside for some feasting.......

after the food we had a small service at MCF, where Pastor Ken Did a message and prayed for the people in the congregation.

On Shabbat we did something a bit more traditional and did a Unconventional Tashlich service.....

after the Tashlich service we ate lunch and played around

Rosh Chodesh

Yeah it is a new month and we got to celebrate with friends the spoting of the new moon. Praise YAH.

 

It is always a blessing to gather together with friends to look for the moon and fellowship. 

thanks everyone who came we had a great time.

Shalom

 

Shavu'ot 2011

Shavu'ot or the feast of Pentecost.  Shavu'ot is the feast where we commemoratethe giving of the TORAH and the HOLY SPIRIT.  this is a beautiful feast, rich with tradition and meaning to us as Believers in Messiah Y'shuah. Messiah is our word made flesh, the giving of himself at Passover and the raising from the grave at the feast of First fruits. He told them that he would send a gift at Shavu'ot, a gift from the Groom to his Bride.  We accept his gift  on Shavu'ot the gift of the Covenant and the gift of Holy Spirit.  

Isn't that a beautiful picture? If it doesn't make you feel loved by Y'shuah and YHVH, I don't know what else will. This is one of the few feast that we share with ourbrethren in the Christian Church as they Celebrate Pentecost, Pentecost a greek word meaning fiftieth.  Shavu'ot means "Weeks". interesting how they mean verysimilar things. 

Shavu'ot is rich with tradition, here are some of the traditions of Shavu'ot  and why ( my definition) also I will include how we kept this tradition.

reading the story of Ruth- Ruth is the symbol of a "Godly bride" to Boaz ( a Hebrew Groom)  also she is the Grandmother of David.

we read the book earlier this week and then we painted a book of Ruth.

 

Eating dairy- there are many reasons why, I like it representing the promise of Milk and honey in the promise land, showing how YHVH always keeps his promises. 

we kept this: dinner we had alfredo potatoes and for dessert we had ice cream. lunch the following day we had sandwiches ( with cheese) and our Commandmentcake (carrot Cake- because of the harvest decoration) with cream cheese frosting. 

  

Another tradition is to put flowers all over your home because of Mount Sinai being green and lush. we did do that.

       

Pretty. I love flowers so I surely love to decorate my home with flowers. they will be up all through the summer. 

all to make ready for the feast........

we celebrated the feast with fellow believers, Good friends!!! 

Here is the girls all pretty for the picnic

 
 

There is Cindy and Mike, waving the bread. 2 loafs to represent the  believer and Unbeliever

 
Fred blowing the shofar, because a feast is not the same with out blowing of theshofar. 

 
Joe and Mike both did a teaching. and they both did a great job.

 
 
 
 
the kids playing in the tubes.

 
Nap time for Heze.

here is some other pics 

Heze Fred and Dianna  Jim and Carla

 

Happy Shavu'ot!!!!

 

 

Shavu'ot week before.........

this is the girls favorite Shavu'ot song!!! Some one sent me this link this week just in time. this is a cute video and the girls have been playing all week. I love when the girls go crazy for bible songs.

For home school this week we have been doing fun things. well other than monday that was a regular day. Tuesday we did headbands

They got these done just in time for us to fellowship and celebrate with our friends at Emet Et Torah we broke bread with them and listen to a great teaching by Rael. 

The girls had a blast playing with there friends and Kenzie got a helper for the night this is Kenzie asking Tyna to blow on her food cause it is TOO hot!!

 
I took a few more pics, I didn't take alot cause we started the teaching and I didn't want to be rude and take pics durring his teaching.

 this is all the all the girls eating YUMMY food that Mrs. Pam made

Liz and Jennie hanging with Abby ( pam's Abby)

Pam lighting the festive lights right before we did grace after meal. 

Like I said it was a great time!!!! I am so happy we got to fellowship with them, we have been meaning to for awhile but never having time to get out there, So I was so happy to make it and so where the girls. 

Back to homeschooling for a minute. we also did this week for home school commandments string and commandments train.

this is the older girls doing the commandment strings, They had to write one commandment per tablet and draw a picture to reminded them what the commandement ment. 

here they are done

 

the little girls had a different project, the Commandment train I got this worksheet from a wonderful blog here is the link you are looking for the commandment train you need to go to the month of June and go through til you see her talk about shavu'ot and click the link to her copy work and there is a picture of the worksheet and you click the picture and you download it. 

here is the little girls working on that worksheet

here is the finish projects

we hung them up in there room ( they were so proud) 

for the house we decorated as we do every year with flowers.....

that is it for now I will post more in the next few days!!!

Shabbat Shalom

 

 

 

Unleaven bread is almost over :( so sad.

I know that is sounds funny but I am sad to see unleaven bread over. I enjoy the feast even when I crave bread beacause I can't have it;)  we have a feast coming up this sunday that I thought I would quickly share about. for those of you who sit there and read this and think that we don't do anything you do like celebrate Messiah's birth or resorection  I wanted to assure you we do. This Sunday, the first day of the week after a sabbath, in the week of unleaven bread is the feast of first fruits. now what we do on the first fruit is we are suppost to go to the temple and wave our first fruits as an offering to YHVH. But if you haven't notice there is no temple so, what do we do? well I can't tell you that yet cause I want it to be a suprise but I will say we are doing something with our family and we are very exsited.  But the one thing that we do, do is we start counting on that day, 50 days  ( 7 sabbaths) til we reach Shavu'ot or Pennitcost. Most Christians know Pennitcost as the day that YHVH gave us the gift of the Holy spirit. But in the Yeshua's time it was a celebration of the blessing of the gift of the ten commandments from mount sinai. So we celebrate both and we start counting this on First fruits, this year I made a wall hanging for this  here it is

So what do you think? I have to say I am very happy with how it turned out. not bad for my first wall hanging I think. 

 

Chag Sameach, Pesach!!

the Big  Passover sedar was on monday and it was a blessed time. we had a few minor mishaps but nothing any one did, or could have any control of.  I want to take a few minutes to thank some great people for all they did,

The Kloepfels, the Mcbrides, the Nobles, the Fimbres, the Woodsides, the Hammonds, the Shelleys, James, the Hailey families, and the Martains, 

It was so great to get everyone together and we had such a blessed time, even with all the work I would do it again in a heart beat. thank you. And most of all, thanks for helping me CLEAN UP, other wise I would still not have furnature in my house. 

anyways I didn't get alot of pics of the event but what I did get were these, I hope that any of you who want them will copy them and off of here or let me know and I will email you with them SHalom, Crystal

Getting ready for thanksgivng week and Birthday party suprise!!!!

well it is here one of my FAVORITE weeks of the year!!! the week when the house smell like fall, which for me it means Cinnamon and pumpkin. Today we will  start this week with Decorating for  thanksgiving.  we will be working on our thankful turkey today and every day this this week until thanksgiving. we made the turkey last week and this week each of us will come up with something that we are thankful for to write on the turkey. I would like this to be a new tradition in our home that I hope to continue every year. I will keep the turkey and scrapbook it or I  put this one in our thanksgiving lap book.  we will see.  I have a week long agenda of activities and crafts to do for our thanksgiving lap book.  it should make for a wonderful week.

Today: decorating. color turkey for lap book, color boarder around handprint turkey.

Monday: Turkey hand prints,thanksgiving story and Popsicle puppets

watch  SNOOPY thanksgiving!!!

Tuesday: painting indian corn, pumpkin day!!- how to make  pumpkin pie wheel, how does a pumpkin grow book, making words with the word pumpkin 

Wednesday:   thankful day, what are we thankful pocket and poem book. writing funny turkey poem.

Thursday:  Thanksgiving!!!!!!!  menu is turkey, stuffing, MY MASH POTATOES!!!, sweet potatoes, Corn, Pumpkin pie, stuffed mushrooms, and salad.

should make for a GREAT WEEK!!!

 

Last night we were able to go to Trinity's first birthday party it was a fun and interesting night since Tara, Trinity's mom went to in to labor at the party.  So we got to take trinity home with us, unfortunately Baby boy decided not to come after all. Most likely he will be making his first appearance some time this week. So Trinity will be coming back over very soon. the girls are very excited.