ALS Part One: Benefit

Ok, so it may not seem like we've been very adveturesome, but actually we've been so busy being adventerous that we forgot to post! Ok, that and we were being a little lazy...
But here's what we've been up to:

Lately we've been busy on the weekends working to "Strike Out ALS". ALS is also known as Lou Gherig's disease. It's a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. Frankie's aunt, Chita, has been living with this disease for over 6 years. She's strong and inspiring and it's great to be able to help out and raise money to fund research and find a cure! Over the past couple months we have participated in a Benefit Dinner and Dance, a Softball Tournament, and the Walk to D'feet ALS! Here are some of the pics from the benefit:

The Family

We made cupcakes for the bake sale!

Buc-ees silent acution gift.

Candy Basket silent auction gift.

The outcome for this was great this year! It's always fun to get together with all the family and half the town of Devine and all together we raised a lot of money for a good cause!

Check out the rest of the cupcake pictures on Taylor's Facebook!

Mystery Can

Out of all the food we received, one can stood out from the rest.
One can was just a little too plain and had us scratching our heads.
This can was large and had no paper label, instead printed on the side were the words Pork in Juices.

I think that the fact that it was meat, and not tuna or chicken, made us grab it. But what we would do with a can that looked like it could have a whole snout in it, was a mystery. After pushing it aside for a week, we decided it was time! We looked online for something to make and found a recipe for BBQ pork. We opened the can to find a solid chunk of meat (about the size of a snout, lol!) and forked it out in clumps into the pan. It actually turned out to be like pulled pork sandwhich meat. :) I made some BBQ sauce from a few things we already had and also some rice and beans. When it was all done the scariest can in the pantry turned out to be the best dinner we've had during our Food Pak inspired eating!

Week 2

This is our second week of our Food Pak inspired eating, thanks to the free surplus we found at Grandma's house.

Lunch today is tuna and crackers... yum!

Water for Christmas

Wanna help others and give cool gifts? This Etsy shop does just that!!
Awesome people have donated their totally cool talents and creations to sell and all proceeds go to clean water projects!!

"All proceeds from items sold on this shop go directly to building fresh water wells in Liberia, West Africa! To learn more about Water for Christmas, visit http://www.water4christmas.com/."

Why didn't I think of that?! It's just too cool! Check out the shop: Water For Christmas Etsy Shop!!

Free Food

Here's all the freebies we collected from Grandma Lita's house! Mom also helped out by throwing in the two boxes of pasta! Thanks!

This is the basis of our meals for the next two weeks...

Advent Conspiracy

As the Christmas season is drawing nearer and we begin to be bombarded by Christmas ads, we thought we would share this option with you. For two years we have participated in Advent Conspiracy. For those of you that are not familiar with it, the basic concept is this:

Worship Fully
Spend Less
Give More
Love All

Instead of buying gifts for Christmas spend time with your families and friends, quality time. Make gifts, volunteer, sing carols, do something to create memories. Then take the money that you would have spent on the gift you would have bought and put it to better use. Show love to the people that need it the most. For $20 (the same amount or even less than that sweater you were looking at) you can give a person clean drinking water for 20 years, through Charity Water. I bet that sweater wouldn't last as long...



Last year Journey Fellowship teamed up with CHF and their Menu: Meals Served With Compassion. Through this you can buy just about anything to send to people in need- Bibles, shoes, bikes, toys, beans, pasta, seeds, first aid kits, small cars, and Food Paks (that cost about the same to pack your self but go four times farther). Last year, our parents all got either beans or pasta sent in their names to feed people who could use the help. Taylor even received 25 pairs of shoes sent in her name! This year we are taking the money saved from the free food we received and we are buying gifts from the Menu.



This video says it all! Enjoy and be inspired.

Back at it!

While we were home in Devine for the weekend, we discovered Grandma's pantry stocked full of tons of canned food products brought from the visiting Arizona family. They recieve mass amounts for some reason and brought it along to share. So we stocked up! Today marks another two weeks of Food Pak inspired eating!

This time around we are limiting our eating to what we grabbed from Grandma's and what we already had at home in the pantry and fridge (which is not much, just some random odds and ends of things.) We will be saving our grocery/eating out money to go towards our Christmas gifts that we will be buying through CHF's Menu - Gift Catalog, featuring "Meals served with compasion". (More on this later.)

Read along as we update about new food explorations and our past adventures (that we have neglected to post about over the past couple months. :P sorry!)

“In this life we can’t always do great things,

but we can do small things with great love .”
-Mother Theresa