I promise, you'll like this one!

O.K. I have found the fountain of youth!! Well, not really. But I have found the best chocolate cake recipe you will ever eat! It's located on the back of the Hershey's Cocoa box. I've made it many, many times and every time Daron comments that it tastes better than the box kind. It's so easy to make and it's well worth the extra effort to make your cake from scratch. And the good news is that you probably have all the ingredients on hand so you can make it tonight. All you need to buy is some icing. I rarely make a chocolate cake from the box any more. Try it for yourself, you will probably agree!

A bit of advice: I tried the frosting recipe on the Hershey's box and didn't like it. It has a strong cocoa flavor. Also don't try and cheat and use self-rising flour. Tired it, it turned out gooey. Yuck!

Here it is:

Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake

2 c. sugar
1-3/4 c. all purpose flour
3/4 c. Hershey's Cocoa
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1-1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 c. milk
1/2 c. vegetable oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 c. boiling water

1. Heat oven to 350 deg. Grease and flour a 9in.x13in. pan or two 9-in. baking pans.
2. Combine dry ingredients in bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla: Beat on med. speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour into pan.
3. Bake 30-35 min. or until wooded pick inserted comes out clean. Cool 10 min. Remove from pan. Cool completely. Frost with icing. 10-12 servings. Enjoy!!

A Work in Progress

This is a typical conversation between Brianna and me:

Me: Brianna I need you to go pick up the toys you were playing with.

Brianna: Noooo, but mommy I’m busy right now, and I'm not done playing with them.

Me: Sweetheart, You haven't been playing with them for some time now.
I need you to obey right now and do as I ask.

Brianna: But, mommy I don't feel like it right now.

Me: Brianna, if you won't obey right now I'm going to have to spank you because you are disobeying me and the Bible says you have to obey mommy. That means you have to obey quickly and quietly.

Brianna: (With a sour look on her face, she gets up and slowwwwwly begins picking up her things.)

30 minutes later…….

Me: Brianna, it’s been 30 minutes and you have only picked up a few things.

Brianna: But, mommy I'm soooo tired.

Me: You just got up. How can you be tired?

Unfortunately, this is a constant reoccurrence in our home. She is a work in progress, as are all my kids and I should clearly add, myself as well. As I was thinking about this daily scenario, I couldn’t help but think how similar this sounds to my conversation with God.

This is a typical conversation between me and God:

God: Erica, I need you to go invite Mary to church.

Me: Nooo, but God I’m really busy and besides she’ll probably say no.

God: Sweetheart, you will never know what she’ll say unless you ask her.

Me: But, God I really don’t feel like it right now.

God: Erica, if you won’t obey me right now I can’t bless you. I want to bless you and you need to understand that delayed obedience is still disobedience.

Me: (I walk away from this conversation irritated because I’m asked to do something I’m not comfortable with.)

Several months later:

God: Erica, it’s been several months and you still haven’t asked Mary to church.

Me: But, God….

Sadly, I have had one too many conversations like this with God. Lately, God has been probing my heart about obedience. So many times I have excused disobedience with procrastination. It doesn’t matter how you look at it, but the truth is that delayed obedience is, and always will be, disobedience. That stings!! It amazes how my kids can be the perfect picture of how I response to my Father. Their typical excuses to me are my typical excuses that I give to God. We all do this. And what is crazy is that we don’t usually like to call it what it really is, disobedience. We prefer to call it everything else: procrastination, fear, laziness, insecurity, lack of time, distraction ect…

I have made an observation recently, that when my eyes are on myself the tasks God gives me are overwhelming and impossible. My weaknesses and inabilities are magnified and drown out my desire to obey the Lord. But when my eyes are on my Father, the task is doable and possible, because He has promised me that He will never give me more than He gives me the grace to do. He sees me as an instrument He can use to carry out His work. But the humbling reality is, that if I am not willing to carry out the work He desires for me to do, He has no problems finding someone else to do it! Wow!

We all desire to be blessed by God. But, I wonder how many blessings we miss out of because of our unwillingness to obey our Father. My eyes have been opened today and my heart pricked by this truth. This is something I will be thinking about for a while. The next time I am given an opportunity to obey Him (which will probably be any minute, since my kids are calling me as I write:) ), I will be reminded of this. I am a work in progress. But thank the Lord he has lots of patience which I know I need when I'm dealing with my own kids disobedience. Well, I thought I would share a little about what the Lord is dealing with me today. What is yours?

Jewels in the sky!

I have been learning how to be a bird watcher. I used to wonder what you actually do? Just watch them? How boring! Now, I'm learning it's much more then just watching. You listen, trying to distinguish bird calls from the others. You observe their feeding rituals, you learn what they eat and how they eat it. You study how they look and read about their behaviours. You take notes about when they arrive in your area and when they migrate. Where do they go when they migrate? I just learned that hummingbirds can live up to 10 years and they come back every summer to the same location year after year looking for food. Also, I just learned that my own hummingbirds in my backyard fly down as far as lower Central America and Panama every fall to migrate. How fasinating is that!

One of my favorite memories is when I was visiting my grandparents when I was about 10 years old. They lived at the base of the mountains in Alamogordo, New Mexico. One morning as I was getting ready to eat breakfast I observed the most wonderful site! My Grandma was outside hanging clothes on her clothesline. She began singing and all of a sudden, from no where, about 15-20 hummingbirds flew in and perched themselves on the clothesline right in front of her! They were just sitting there quietly enjoying the serenade. This went on for about 30 minutes. Come to find out, this was a morning ritual for her that had been going on every summer for years. I love this memory! Since then hummingbirds have been a precious reminder of my grandmother. They will always be a special bird to me. So, I decided to mount a hummingbird feeder in our back yard and what fun it has been. This is when my bird watching endeavors started. It has allowed me the excuse to just sit, watch and listen to all that goes on around me each morning. I love it! I have slowed down some and started just enjoying life going on around me. I'm on a mission now to soak up as much as I can.

Those love birds!

One reason I love to homeschool my kiddos is that I get an awesome opportunity to learn right alongside my kids. Today we were having a nature study time on Cardinals and discovered some very neat things about them. Like, did you know that during nesting season the male cardinal feeds the female. BTW: the red ones are male, females are brown. It's a beautiful site to see. The male works very hard to gather food for her and then walks over to the female and spits it into her mouth. How romantic! Well, not really. But for bird romance I think it ranks right up there for the most romantic things to do for your bird mate.

Well, I got to witness this today with the kids and this started us on a mission to learn more about them. If I wasn't homeschooling I never would have given this transaction between these birds a second thought. But because I had three inquiring minds asking me questions that I could not answer, we began on a quest to find out. One very neat thing we found on the Internet was a recording of bird sounds and calls. We were able to hear what a Cardinal sounded like. We also read that they are very territorial birds and will chase away any other Cardinals from the area. This information got us intrigued. We figured we would find out how territorial they really are. So...We flew open the back door and cranked up the computer speakers full blast and pressed play. Oh! What fun we had! It took the Cardinal about 30 seconds to come flying right up to the back porch ready to charge this other bird away. We were all laughing and having fun with this bird. Of course, he probably didn't think it was so funny. Then he began repeating the sounds from this other bird on the computer, and before long the female bird was in on it too. This went on for about 20 minutes. The kids had so much fun, or rather I should say, I had so much fun today learning about a bird I didn't know much about before. Next week's nature assignment is Blue Jay's. I can't wait! I wonder what they will do?