As many of you know, on the 8th of January I was very blessed to have seen my nephew, Adyn brought into this world. Today, I’m asking that each of you please keep him and his mama and daddy in your thoughts and prayers.

Last night, as I was cuddling my sick little man Hunter and starting to get sick myself with a sore scratchy throat, I received a call from my brother. Needless to say, things got put in perspective and our measly colds no longer mattered as much.

After receiving some test results yesterday from his doctor, little Adyn has to receive a blood transfusion this morning to replace blood cells that his spleen are attacking because of a hereditary blood disease. So, if you’re the praying type please send up a prayer or two for my nephew and his parents today.

Get Your Sweet Tooth Out Ladies!

What You’ll Need: 

 Cake Ingredients:

3 eggs
3 c all purpose flour
2 c sugar
1 TBSP baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 c (6 medium) bananas, mashed
1 c canola oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 c sweet potatoes, peeled, shredded and uncooked (about 1/2 lb)
1 can (8 oz) crushed pineapple, drained

Caramel Topping Ingredients:

1 c butter
2 c packed brown sugar
1/2 c milk
6 c powdered sugar

Fool-Proof Directions:

Cake:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place wax paper in the bottom of 3 - 9 inch cake pans.  Oil and flour pans including the wax paper.  Allow eggs to come to room temperature about 30 minutes.  Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cloves. Slightly beat eggs and add to flour mixture.  Stir in bananas, oil, and vanilla until most and thick.  Add sweet potatoes and pineapple.  Stir well.  Pour into prepared cake pans.  Bake 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Cool slightly.  Remove from pans and remove wax paper from cake.  Cool completely.

Topping:

In large saucepan over medium heat melt butter.  Add brown sugar.  Bring mixture to a boil stirring continously.  After mixture begins to boil continue to cook 1 minute.  Allow mixture to cool about 4 minutes.  Add milk and stir until very smooth.  Add powdered sugar and stir well. 

To frost cake place one layer on cake plate and frost only the top.  Add second layer and frost the top and thrid layer and frost the top and slightly down the sides.  Be sure to use frosting immediately.  Once cool it hardens and is impossible to spread.  

Have you ever given your testimony? You might ask, “What is my testimony?” Dictionary.com defined testimony as a “public declaration of faith.”

This morning at my church it was Baptist Men’s Sunday. We are Southern Baptist and the men in my church have a group that they formed called Baptist Men. It is a mission’s type group that supports missions projects and missionaries monetarily and they meet once a quarter I believe for breakfast and devotional time. This morning however they were in charge of the whole service and the men, led in music, played the instruments, we had an all men’s choir, etc. Plus, three men gave their testimonies. Each man’s testimony I noticed was very different.

Please visit me over at my ministry blog Beauty by Design Ministries to finish reading today’s article…..

On of my favorite Sanity Saver Topics is about dealing with stress. Stress plays a huge role in why a lot of moms are just tired, fed up and really feel like they are at their wits end.

Here are a few quick tips on how to deal with situations that commonly stress us all.

1. Organize yourself - Sit down with a notepad and pen, and list all your commitments. Write them into a spreadsheet if necessary. The sheet isn’t big enough? Maybe your load of commitments is. Prioritize the important and essential things in your life, and decide how much of you there is to spread around. And don’t forget to save some for yourself!

2. Avoid putting pressure on yourself – Don’t have unreasonable expectations for your life or career. When setting goals, take into account that Man’s best plans can often go awry. Don’t count yourself out as a failure if you’re behind schedule. Remain dedicated to your plans, while remembering that all things take time, and may require adjusting of the outcome or approach.

3. Remove yourself from confrontations - Kids or co-workers, the principle is the same. When your stress is at the point where you cannot be coherent, or deal with the other person, no matter how big or small in a reasonable manner, then you need a break to cool off. Explain that to your child, regardless of how young they are. Toddlers will be reassured that you still love them, and older children will gain an appreciation of the stresses of parenting, if you simply say that Mom is tired, and needs to think about this and come back to it when she’s calmer.

If you are looking for a breakthrough program that relieves the symptoms of stress and eliminates the causes you will truly be impressed with this program: http://www.reallifesolutions.net/Stresstips.HTML

This week’s Friday Free for All is for those who sell kid’s products.  Lisa at Picadil’s Bargain Finds is offering free advertising on her blog. 

To get the details and submit your ad click here.

And…if you’re in the market for some great deals, be sure to check out all the current deals at her site too.  She finds some awesome deals for kids products, like shoes and clothes.  

Thanks to BusyMom at Career & Kids for posting this video.  I got such a kick out of some of these, especially considering I’m infamous for saying “I’m throwing this darned computer out the window!”

 Although today is not a bad day for me (hope I didn’t just jinx myself), I still got a good laugh out of this video and hope you do to.  Not to mention I love this song.  :)  Happy Friday everyone!

For some reason I couldn’t get the video to embed in this post so here’s the link to it on You Tube.  Bad Day

It’s time for this week’s Tell Me Thursday so here goes!

We’ve been hoping for snow all winter and this past weekend we finally got it! The pictures from yesterday’s Wordless Wednesday were from our fun in the snow on Sunday.

Although they don’t do the beauty of the snow justice because I was the last one out and by the time my camera and I made it out the boys and dad had already devoured the front yard of most of the snow, they do show just how excited the boys were to finally get to play in the snow. Our side yard was absolutely gorgeous and luckily I was able to get some video of that later in the day as the boys ran around having a ball.

Hunterman loved the snow and cried when it was time to come in and waited at the window until it was time for our next venture out later. We ended up going out about 3 times due to the fact that we couldn’t stay out too long because the wind was blowing like crazy.

Zach had a ball trying to get hubbs with a snowball…needless to say there was a lot of chasing around the house and slipping and sliding through it all. Even Sierra got a few snowballs thrown her way.

The second picture is Hunter’s first snowman. Zach had been on the back deck attempting to build a snowman for Hunter, but the snow was just too powdery to stick and when we came around the house Hunter saw him and wanted to build one of his own so there is Hunter’s NOman in all it’s glory!

By the way…if you participate, head on over to the Tell Me Thursday site and learn how you can have fun with this too!