Sunday Celebrations

If you have been reading my blog recently, you know I have been talking about how our family spends our Sundays.  Today is a special Sunday though.  We will be attending church and Sunday School this morning as usual.  Then we will come home to prepare for our company that is coming to dinner.  Our youngest three have all had birthdays in the past two weeks.  It began on October 14, continued on the 20th and finished on the 23rd.  If you want to read about their births and other things I shared about each on their own birthday you can go to the posts for those dates.

So we tend not to do regular birthday parties.  Since we moved to Pennsylvania, I have tended to have special family dinners.  So today we are having friends of our family over to eat.  We are preparing Bar-b-cue Pork (thanks to my father-in-law for the awesome sauce we will be using), boneless pork ribs, greens trio sauteed in olive oil, potatoes, green beans, and corn.  I may make some homemade bread to have as well.  For dessert we will be having cake.  I love opening our home to friends and family.  Tune back in on Monday when I will be sharing pictures of the food that we created and ate.

I hope you have a restful and wonderful Sunday afternoon.  Please feel free to comment.  I look forward to reading what you have to share.

Sundays

We have three children who share the same birthday month, which happens to be this month (October).  Two are sons and one is our only daughter.  When they were younger and we lived in North Carolina still, we would rent the local rollerskating rink and have a huge party.  The nice thing about that was we could invite a lot of people without it costing a lot of money - beyond renting the rink, getting the cake and things.

Now they are older (my youngest just turned 12) and we live about 12 hours away from our immediate family.  So we have to try different things.  This year we will be attending church this morning as we always do.  Then we will be having friends over for dinner.  To me there is nothing like spending a Sunday afternoon with family and/or friends.  

I really enjoy cooking, so this gives me a chance to do this for more than just my own immediate family.  Today we are having Bar-b-Que Pork that I am fixing in my Ninja cooking system (I love this machine).  Plus we are going to have ribs cooked on the grill.  We will have a salad, vegetables and some type of potatoes.  Actually I think I am going to have my oldest son and his father make their special oven baked bacon cheesy potatoes.  This is their new creation and it is fantastic!  

So what are you doing special today?  What are you having for dinner?  I look forward to reading what you share!

What Happened to Sunday?

Well it is day 12 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge and I am still going strong.  Today I want to talk about Sacred Sunday.  I can remember growing up as a child and there being blue laws, where most businesses did not open on Sunday or holidays.  Those were days to spend with God and with family.  You typically went to church, came home, ate and spent time with your family or friends.

After I met my husband, I spent most Sundays at my in-laws' house.  We would get up Sunday morning, go to church and then come back to their house to eat and spend the day together.  As we had children the tradition continued.  It was so nice to know exactly what we were doing.  But over the years, we have moved twice thanks to the military.  We now live in North Central PA while my in-laws live in southeastern NC.  So we don't get to spend many Sundays with them.  While living in PA (and we have lived here for almost 6 years - 4 years in the western part of the state and 2 years where we are now), we don't always succeed at keeping the Sabbath as I would like us to do.  

However, I want to get back to it.  It makes for such a better week to take one day and devote the day to God and what He has given us.  All too soon my children will be gone.  There is no telling if they will live close by or live far away.  Which means, I don't know how often I will get to see them.  So I want to instill in them a sense right now of spending Sundays with God.  Oh I am not saying we should just spend Sundays with God and forget about Him the rest of the week.  We need to focus on God all the time, but Sundays should be a day of rest.  After all if God took the seventh day to rest, why should we be different.  Also in the Bible, it continually points out how Jesus went and took time for himself in prayer.  We need that time to focus solely on God so that we can focus and understand what He would have us to do.  

So I pray you take time on whatever day your Sunday is to focus on God and your family.  Focus on what really is important.  I realize everyone may not have Sunday off, but devote one of the days you do have off to God and family.  See if you don't have a better week for it.  Share your thoughts and results with me.