Cookie Baking Night 06/24/19

Tonight was Cookie Baking Night. In attendance this evening: Ethan, Carissa, Allison, Rylar, and Enzo. It was Carissa's birthday choice tonight (in a week, she'll turn 14 years old). For supper, she chose macaroni and cheese, berries, and tator tots. For her "cookie" she chose Dirt Cups (a long standing favorite for her).

Summertime is a time for walks through the neighborhood and ice cream treats. 

Okay everybody, say it with me now: "Awww". 

We continued with our walk through the Bible with 2 Samuel tonight. 

We ended the evening with a lively game of Zingo. 

Another Cookie Baking Night has come and gone and, as usual, a fun time was had by all. 

Cookie Baking Night 06/10/19

Tonight was Cookie Baking Night. In attendance this evening: Ethan, Carissa, Allison, Rylar, and Enzo. Tonight we made Scotcheroos (cereal, peanut butter, sugar mixture with melted choc chips and butterscotch chips on top).

Tonight, we learned about the book of 1 Samuel in the Bible. This book starts out with the life of Samuel but mainly focuses on the life of David. David was chosen by God to be king over Isreal because he had a heart for Him. As God was instructing Samuel who would be the next king, each one of Jesse's sons walked before him. As he saw each one taller and stronger than the next he was sure that God had chosen that one to be king, but it was the youngest and least likely in appearance to be chosen. "But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart." 1 Samuel 16:7

We ended the evening with walk to the local gas station for a treat. 

As usual, a fun time was had by all. 

Cookie Baking Night 05/13/19

Tonight was Cookie Baking Night. In attendance this evening: Allison, Rylar, and Enzo.
Toinght we made peanut butter pretzel bars.

Crushing the pretzels is the probably "the most fun part"

It was a beautiful spring evening, so we went for a walk through the neighborhood (and picked up a few sticks along the way). 

The most exciting part of the evening was watching Uncle Greg repair a few sprinkler heads in the yard. 

He even let us help. It was the thrill of the evening. 

Allison said, "Uncle Greg is so fascinating. I could watch him all night." 

Agreed. 

Another Cookie Baking Night has come and gone and, as usual, a fun time was had by all. 

Cookie Baking Night 04/08/19

Tonight was Cookie Baking Night. In attendance this evening: Ethan, Carissa, Allison, Rylar, and Enzo. For our "cookie" tonight, we made a Cookie Baking Night classic, "Spring Bird's Nests" with chocolate/p-nut butter coated chow mein noodles and candy eggs.

The favorite part is putting on the candy eggs. 

The finished product 

The snow has melted from this long, long winter, and it's a beautiful 65 degrees. Rumor has it snow is on the way later this week, so we decided to seize this opportunity and get outside for our first neighborhood walk of the year. 

Aww, friendship

In our journey through the books of the Bible, tonight we learned about the book of Ruth. As we read through verses in Ruth, we saw language all through the book that reminded us of Jesus. 

Words that stood out to us were: 

 "Bethlehem"  Ruth's husband and mother-in-law were from Bethlehem 

(the place where Jesus was born)

"Redeemer" Boaz was the family redeemer for Naomi's family 

(Jesus is the great redeemer of the world)

"Father of David" David was the great king of Isreal. 

Jesus was born into his family line and is the King of Kings.

We were reminded in the book of Ruth that God weaved a story of redemption from our sins all throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, all pointing to Jesus. 

Another Cookie Baking Night has come and gone and, as usual, a fun time was had by all. 

Cookie Baking Night 03/11/19

Tonight was Cookie Baking Night. In attendance this evening: Ethan, Carissa, Allison, Rylar, and Enzo. We made a classic cookie tonight, the M&M cookie.

The secret to the M&M cookie is that most of M&Ms don't go inside the dough, you put them on the outside so that you can still see them once the cookies bake. The kids like deciding how many candies go on a cookie and just where they should go. 

The finished product

In our journey through the books of the Bible, tonight we stopped at the book of Judges. 

This is what we learned about Judges:

--this book is not giving a prescription of what to do and how to do it, it is giving a description of what happened at that time

--this was a time when there was no king or ruler in the land

--the dominant phrase throughout this book "everyone did what was right in his own eyes". 

We talked about what it looks like to do only what is right to us and ignore the ways of God. We talked about what that looks like today in our own culture and how we can do what is right in God's eyes.

We ended the evening with a game of Pit (the favorite part for the kids is to yell out how many cards they need all at the same time). 

As usual, a fun time was had by all. 

Cookie Baking Night 02/11/19

Tonight was Cookie Baking Night. In attendance this evening: Carissa, Allison, Rylar, and Enzo. We made the classic "Peanut Blossom" cookies with a twist for Valentine's Day. Instead of adding a chocolate star to the middle of the peanut butter cookie, we added a chocolate heart.

First, we unwrapped the chocolate hearts. 

Next, we made the peanut butter cookie dough. 

The finished product. Yum!

We're continuing our fast walk through the books of the Bible, and we're up to Joshua now. Joshua is an exciting book, so we had a lot to talk about. We stopped for awhile in chapter 6 to read about the battle of Jericho. But the verse we focused on the most was in chapter 24 (verse 15), when Joshua said the Isrealites had to choose who they were going to serve in this new land. Would it be the gods of the land or the One True God, the God of Israel?. That's when he said, "As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." We talked about how even today in the land that we live in we have to decide if we're going to serve the "gods of the land" or the one True God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. 

Tonight's Cookie Baking Night was filled with much activity and a lot of fun. See you next month!

Cookie Baking Night 01/14/19

Tonight was Cookie Baking Night. In attendance this evening: Ethan, Carissa, Allison, Rylar, and Enzo. Tonight was Ethan's birthday choice. He turns 16 year old in just a couple days. For supper, he chose everything pizza and peaches. For his cookie, he chose chocolate chip cookies.

Well, the sink wasn't aware that it was Cookie Baking Night tonight. Clogged sinks know no special days, so it was Uncle Greg to the rescue. 

He was fascinating to watch, as you can see. 

Tonight we continued our journey through the Bible by introducing the book of Deuteronomy. It's the last of the five books that Moses wrote, and it's written right before the Israelites enter the promised land. Moses spends most of the book recounting the interactions between the Israelites and God. We talked about how serious sin is to God. When the Israelites sinned against God by making a golden calf to worship, Moses pleaded before God on their behalf by laying on his face for forty days and forty nights without eating or drinking anything. He prayed to God that whole time (Deuteronomy 9). Moses was pleading that God would spare their lives, and He did, but they did not get to enter the promised land because of it. 

We look forward to learning more about the book of Deuteronomy at the next Cookie Baking Night. 

We ended the evening with a lively game of Telestrations (Ethan's choice). It's a cross between "Pictionary" and "Telephone". Throw in family members under the age of 10 drawing pictures for you and trying to guess what others have drawn, and you have the makings of a pretty funny scenario. 

We're grateful to God for Ethan, his 16 years on this earth, and the 13 years he's spent at Cookie Baking Nights so far. He's growing into a sweet young man. 

As usual, a fun time was had by all. 

P.S. In 2019, we've adopted a revised schedule for Cookie Baking Nights. We'll have Cookie Baking Nights once a month during the school year and two times a month during summer break.