Mango Power Bars

So, last Saturday Savanna and I, and Chloe got to go and see the new movie Divergent!!

Many of you know that this is based of a novel written by Veronica Roth a couple years ago, if you didn't, now you do! Chloe just recently introduced the books to me, and I've read the first one (Divergent) and I'm waiting to read the next two! 

Okay, now to my topic.

Today you get a recipe! (i'm sorry about the lack of pictures... Mom and I ate it all up before Savanna could get out her camera. They really did look good:) 

Mom and I  have recently been collecting some more grain free recipes, or just higher-in -protein-than-in-starch recipes. In my search, I came across several recipes for power bars. These are either in the form of little balls, or in bars. The recipes all boiled down to just a few key ingredients. (I'll bold them in the recipe) I substituted a few things that we don't have in out kitchen, so it's more likely that you'll have these ingredients too!  

Also: I just wanted to try out blogging about food, so this isn't going to turn out to be a food blog:) 

Okay, so these bars are great for a high-protein snack, and can be super energizing for  an after work-out snack. They don't have any processed sugar, and are obviously Gluten-free and Dairy-free:) 

Mango Power Bars

1 c. Blanched almond flour

1 TBSP. Unsweetened coconut flakes

2 TBSP.  Flaxmeal(If you want to make this thoroughly gluten-free, use gluten-free flaxmeal that was produced in a certified gluten-free facility.)

2 TBSP. Coconut sugar

1/2 tsp. Baking soda

1 tsp. honey

1/4 tsp. Sea salt

2 eggs

1/2 c. Mango (you can play around with this one, I would suggest that you use a fruit that it more squishy, and has more moisture:) 

1/2 c. Chocolate chips (If you don't want processed sugar, don't use these:) I don't know exactly how it would taste if you used it, since I didn't, but go ahead and try!)

Preheat oven to 350º

Combine the dry ingredients together. (Except for chocolate chips) Blend together. 

Stir the two eggs together so that the yoke is mixed in with the white, and add to the dry ingredients. Add the honey.

Cut your mango(or other fruit) into small bite sized pieces. Mix the fruit and chocolate chips into the batter, and spread into an oiled 8x8 pan. Let bake about 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. 

 Eat right away, or freeze it for later! 

Thanks again for reading:)

~Avery

Lies of The World

                   This week has been a battle inside my head!! God has really been revealing how many lies I have allowed to rest under the surface. I don't know they are there, but by my reactions to circumstances showed that something was there! I spent some time just listening to God pull up each lie one by one, kinda like carrots:) Here are some of the lies I thought might be applicable to all y'all, and even if they seem really silly, I'd invite you just to evaluate if you really do believe the lie, deep down inside.
             What the World says about you:
               
                   • You'll be happy if you're 'skinny'
                   • You have to look photoshopped to be 'noticed'
                   • To be noticed means to inspire jealousy or awe in others
                   • You are worth as much as your appearance
                   • Flaunting yourself is the only way to get attention
                   • Intelligence only matters if you are beautiful too
                   • Your life is for your pleasure
                   • You can be as mean as you want, as long as you're nice to whoever matters
                   • Your worth comes from other people's affirmation
                   • You have to dress like ( ), and act like ( ) to be 'okay'
                   • Being popular makes you feel content
                   • Patience is overrated, everything needs to be fast or it's worthless

(This could go on and on, but I don't want you to be overwhelmed!)

Have you noticed a theme in these? I didn't, until just now! Here is the lie that sums all of these up:

You need the attention of others. Your goal should be to get attention. 

Whew. I don't know about you, but this sure caught me off guard. I'm pretty sure that you've wanted  attention at least once! But let's try and find the root of this 'attention need'. Why do we thirst for attention so much? We think that attention=value. It doesn't. What does God say about your value?

    What God says about you: (and your value:)  

              • You are not someone to be measured
              • Your worth lies in Me, and I never fail
              • What you look like on the outside matters nothing to Me in comparison to the spiritual beauty inside of you
              • Inspire hope and joy in others, not jealousy
              • Praise Me with your beauty
              • Your life belongs to Me, it is not yours to waste
              • I love to spend time with you
              • Fill your mind with things that are pleasing and perfect
              • Your beauty cannot be measured by someone else's standard

Worship God, your creator!! He loves you more than you could ever hope to imagine!

~Avery


                 

Choosing Joy

Father Daughter Dance, 2012

Savanna turned eighteen this week! I can't help remembering when she turned sixteen, after the last Father Daughter Banquet, I though the world was ending because she was so old! Now she's an adult!

Anyway, on to the subject.

Joy is a decision, joy is a battle. Joy is a conscious choice every morning. Joy takes the strength of God, and you willing to go along! When I wake up in the morning, and my mind unconsciously runs through everything I have to do in the day, where I have to go, and how much time I have to do it all, joy does not bubble out of me. Sometimes, I let the joy go, I don't try and find it. Trust me, I'm sure you all know those are how you make days go badly. Joy is not something that you have to wait for to find. (I'm not speaking literally, that was mostly figural) If I want to embrace joy, I've got to stretch my sleepy self a few feet to reach for my bible, and read. I'll be honest, sometimes I don't find anything groundbreaking.
I don't fall to my knees praying and worshipping. But when I acknowledge the presence of God inside me, I am able to choose to fight off anything that would hinder me, and choose to rejoice in my day.
Sometimes I don't hold on to the joy, and that is when I get grumpy, and my siblings walk a wide circle around me:) But be encouraged! Even if you've gone the whole day ignoring God's gift of life itself, He's always waiting for you to turn around and ask him to guide you!

This subject didn't go on for very long, so I guess you guys get an excerpt from Mermaid's Tears!

This is part of the scene where she is convinced to turn into a mermaid:P

               I close my eyes and remember, all the cold nights, all the hunger, despair. I remember how much the people of the town have hurt me, how much they abused me with their words.  I think of how I’ll never be loved, how I’ll never find anyone who could love me. I want the tears to come, but my eyes are just stinging. I squeeze my eyes, and I feel one tear fall. The mermaid catches the tear and blows on it, causing it to whirl up from her hand, glowing like a pearl. She stares at in in admiration, and holds the oyster shell up to it. The tear solidifies and drops into the shell.. It looks just like a pearl should, dully glowing pink and blue at the same time.  She pushes the oyster into my hand.

                        “Whatever you do, don’t let go. This is your life.”

 She pulls the fish up and slits its neck with her teeth. She spreads the blood on my feet, then puts her hands on my eyes and slides them down to my temples, using the blood to create a pattern. She continues the pattern on the side of my face and my neck. Slick, wet blood itches my neck. She is massaging the pattern into my face with her hard thumbs. It hurts, oh it doesn't, shouldn't feel real. With her shriek, pain tingles and swirls up my face, plowing through my legs. Agony. Why am I alive? Something pulls me into the water.

Maybe some more will come later:) 

~Avery

Small Steps

 Random/Interesting fact: J.R.R Tolkien himself did the art for this cover of the Hobbit!

I never thought of myself as a morning person, I never really have been one! I guess in truth I'm an in-betweener:) Today I felt very much like a morning person. I got up at 5:55, got ready for the day in about five minutes, and was upstairs by six. It wasn't as awful as I thought it would be! Mom and I went to the Rec this morning to run, and I ran a lot slower this time! 

Okay, now I have reached the subject I wanted to talk about:) 

Running. So I did go with mom this morning, and it was so much fun! Normally I run with my Dad, but I really wanted to go more than once a week (even though that requires me to get up early...)

So I would have to run with mom. I don't normally run with her, because we've both learned that I run too fast. This may seem weird, but I have been trying to learn to run slower. (That's what mom was teaching me this morning:) My natural stride is more like a sprint, so a mile is about as far as I can go without taking a walking break. Sure, I absolutely love sprinting, but I also want to be able to run longer distances too! 

It's hard for me to shorten my stride, but when I have someone to talk to, our time goes by so fast! 

Off to another topic, to avoid rambling on and on about how fun running is....

I love my family! It's so awesome to have a family who loves a lot of the same things:) Like LOTR, the Hobbit, anything written by J.R.R Tolkien...

Olivia and Sam still like to exercise with me, which is a miracle... It was super fun during the Olympics, because I would be working out as I watched, doing crunches and weight lifting stuff, and Olivia would do it right next to me! 

I'm a little bit hesitant to think about what it will be like to be the oldest child in the family....:0 

Anyone else getting excited for the Father Daughter Banquet? EEP! It was so amazing last time, I can't wait to dance with my Dad again!
I hope you all have a good week, just two until spring break remember, don't give up yet!
~Avery

P.s- Read Divergent!!! Chloe has a picture of the book on her blog if you want to see one… but seriously, this is an awesome book!!

nameless

Whew, this week has flown by! It seems like the Olympics just started, but they finish tomorrow! Anyone else enjoying the warm weather? It's a little bittersweet to see the snow leave, I don't know if we'll get it next year:( It was fun most of the time while it lasted! Sam, Olivia, and I all worked together to build a big snow fort in the pile in the street! We went outside and worked on it everyday after school, and after a day of numb bodies, we hollowed out the pile. Then we of course had to revise it and make it bigger… I am proud to present to you Fort we-didn't-name-it!

Inside

Olivia in one of the entrances

What it looks like from the middle of the street:)

                   Also, I'm sure many of you know I decided to do Biology on my own so as to learn it better (although slower...) I actually have some fun with science when my Dad explains it to me! He helps me see a real reason to learn Biology. For example, what if you wanted to know if the genes that made a hamster's coat black were dominant or not, or needed to speculate what color children a black coat hamster and a white coat would have? Dad and I practiced our pedigrees by drawing hamsters and and punnett squares! (I also drew mutants cause I wanted too…)

our pedigree

Okay, I wanted to share what God has been teaching me this week! The older girls of our family and Deborah started the Esther bible study by Beth Moore two weeks ago, and it's been so good already. In  this week's lessons, she was talking about how in Persian beauty wasn't something you were, it was something you did. It really got me thinking about how I see beauty. Sure I know I'm supposed to have inner beauty, but recently I've been hearing God talk through many things (people, scripture, his own voice) how much he wants me to grow in him, how he has amazing plans for my life. About the beauty thing, it's convicting to think about what beauty is to our culture. It doesn't matter if you are patient or loving, or forgiving. Our culture tells us that no one will ever love you if you don't look a certain way, talk a certain way, dress a certain way. I am so in love with how different God's message is!

He says that he created me, and thinks I'm beautiful, He doesn't care about stylish clothes, hair, He says that my physical body will fade away, but my soul will last forever. I need to be way more worried about my inner beauty, because that is what will last! Isn't the knowledge that He even cares about what you wear, and He pays attention to what you think so amazing! Thank-you Jesus for saving us! Thank-you for giving us mercy when we deserved hate! 

Remember to look outside today! God made sure every detail of nature is beautiful, even if not everyone notices:)

~Avery

{Family}

                                                            {Family}

• A person or people related to one and so to be treated with a special loyalty or intimacy•

• a group of people united in criminal activity•
        I like the second one best:) It certainly describes my siblings and I! So this week, while getting together every evening to watch the Olympics, I've been thinking more about what it really means to be a family. The dictionary defines family as related to one, and so to be treated with a special loyalty or intimacy, but I think there is something more there. Sure, you do have a very special bond that you can't simulate, like the irony of how much you can hate your sister, and still love her to death, right? How do you describe the way you can communicate without speaking to your sibling across the room? I think that God designed the family as the perfect incubator for children to learn what it means to be a young man or woman, to learn how to grow strong in Jesus! I can't imagine how much joy it brought God to create a family! (Sorry this is going to be a "ramble post") I cannot even begin to imagine how God can create such beauty even when  He can see all the stressed, angry, broken families in the world? Oh the infiniteness of God! 
I just love how all families have a choice: To depend of themselves and not spend time together, or to cultivate the unbreakable bonds of a family, to let their weakness be turned to strength with God! 

We memorized Hebrews 11: 1-2, 16, and 32-40 last week, and one of my favorite parts ( I don't know the exact verse number, probably 33:) says: [talking about the prophets] "Who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength…"

Even if my family does't always get along, even if we have our bad days, God is using our weakness to show the power and might of His strength! 

                                                ^^Our fancy dinner when Mom and Dad were gone:)

                                                  Olivia, the runner! ^^

                                             Daddy and I:) (I just broke another arrow:P)

                                            Collecting the arrows...

Sam shooting...

And… because I put that picture of Beth up last week, I thought I would make her feel better by putting a 'not-so-flattering' one of myself too:)

~Avery

Savanna

(Sorry Beth, but this picture is too good not to show people:)

Today's Topic: untitled 

So lately, a lot of people have been blogging about siblings... I'm not trying to copy you! I just thought it was about time I tell you what I feel about Savanna leaving for college. 

Of course, every adult has to ask where she's going, and when they find out she's chosen Cornerstone, they always ask how I feel about that. My standard answer has just become, "I haven't had enough time to think about it, really." 

But the truth is, I don't want to think about it! Sure, it's not like she's never left before, with all her CYIA's and Summer Workshops, and Michigan trip, but it's different now. I always knew she would come back, that she would have new experiences, but she would still be the same. I guess I'm afraid of her growing up. When she goes to Michigan to stay, she'll be a real grown up! It's frightening to me to think that her childhood is almost over. Plus, the closer she gets to grown up life, the closer I get... That's the fear side, but there is a good side about what I'm feeling! 

I'm excited for Savanna! I think she is going to have the time of her life being challenged and stretched out of her comfort zone with God! 

I'm also glad that she's grown up. She's a wonderful  big sis, because she listens. Olivia is in for it, because listening is not my strong point. That's something Savanna has taught me, plus how to live with an introvert with out squishing the fun out of them by talking to them all the time! (She and I should right a book... you hear me Savanna? Congrats by the way, you get a whole blog post to read about yourself..:) Like the important fact that sitting next to each other in silence counts as friend time?!??!?! What.... (Makes no sense to me)

                              Doesn't she have a cute dimple??  ^^

I'm so glad that she's the oldest, so she gets to experience all the scary stuff first and tell me all about it:) Plus she's got the funniest sense of humor, you just have to listen closely, it's definitely NOT slapstick... :P Thank Heavens for Savanna!! ( I accidentally typed savvana there, reminded me of the word 'savvy' there's your new nickname Savanna!)
                                                                       ~Avery