Please Read and Pray for this family

I am working in my head on a new post but in the meantime....if you get to read this in time, please pray for this family. This could happen to any one of our families.

http://medicalkidnap.com/2014/11/25/breastfed-homebirthed-babies-taken-away-from-parents-for-not-using-hospital/

The hearing is in about an hour and a half from now so if you do read it in time please pray for God's justice and protection of the children.

A Wedding and a Confession

Our oldest daughter is getting married in 11 days and I am not going to the wedding. I guess I keep thinking that if I keep admitting that to people then I will be okay with it. I am not okay with it but that is just how it has to be. You see she is getting married 1900 miles away from us. There is no way for all 11 of us to fly there and driving that far would take more time off of work than DH even has available to him. Someone has to stay home with all of the children and we decided that dads don't always do so well for 5 days straight with all of the children so Dad is going to go to the wedding and I will stay home. B#4 is also going. So at least I should end up with lots of pictures, I hope.

She has a very godly mother-in-law-to-be helping her to plan the wedding so I am sure it will be well planned. It's funny...I felt pretty removed from the planning of my son's wedding but figured that is the way it is when you are the groom's family. We immersed ourselves in planning the rehearsal dinner. And now I find that I am removed from planning my daughter's wedding by such a distance. Not at all how I envisioned it all to go but I guess things just aren't always as envisioned.

So in 11 days our family will grow to add a son-in-law. I hope to be able to post some pictures afterwards.

Late Night Ramblings

It is 12:03 am, before the time change....and I can't sleep. Pregnancy insomnia maybe? Not sure but while I can't sleep I read. Sometimes that means Scripture, sometimes a fiction book and sometimes it is Pinterest.

Tonight as I couldn't sleep I was searching for Thanksgiving things to do with the kiddos and I ran across a wonderful blog that I wanted to share with you.

In our family we have 6 boys, only one of those boys has left home so that leaves 5 boys. Four of whom are under the age of 7, with lots of energy. So when I found a blog about boys I started reading. Now maybe you are thinking that since the blog is about boys and maybe you don't have boys at home then you have no need to read it. Well THIS particular post is applicable to almost everyone. It was definitely convicting to me and I am planning on printing it out so I can re-read it often to remind myself of what it says.

I have blogged one of my favorite poems before, HERE which talks about my children mirroring my attitudes and behaviors. It is a subject very dear to my heart, I suppose because it is something I struggle so much with. I tend to feel that I am entitled to be grumpy and speak rudely because I am the mom and I have a lot on my plate. But that isn't what Scripture says. As the blog author mentions in her post...

A busy house is not an excuse to talk unkindly to my children.

“There is one who speaks rashly like the thrust of a sword,

But the tongue of the wise brings healing.”

Proverbs 12:18 

“A gentle answer turns away wrath,

But a harsh word stirs up anger.”

Proverbs 15:1 

“Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.”

Colossians 4:6 

“Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it may give grace to those who hear.”

Ephesians 4:29

Anyway, these are my late night ramblings. I hope that if you read her blog you will be encouraged by it as I was. And if you happen to be the mom of boys, she has lots of great posts on raising boys. Enjoy!

Call Me Crazy

Ok folks, I know it is only November 1st, and you can call me crazy but I have Christmas music playing today while I work on Christmas gifts for the family. I don't usually get the Christmas bug this soon. We typically wait until after Thanksgiving but for some reason this year I am ready for it early. I will have to be sure to turn it off before DH gets home.

Making Pumpkin Spice Playdough

Beautiful Cookies for a Beautiful Young Lady

 

 

Our talented daughter, B#4 made these beautiful flooded sugar cookies.....

 

 

For our beautiful, smart B#3 after she passed her EMT Basic test.

 

Let the Birthdays Begin

September starts our birthday rounds for the fall season. In the first 7 months of the year we have 7 birthdays but in the 3 month span of September to November we have 6 birthdays...then the holidays(Whew).

It starts out with B#3's birthday...she turned 19 this year

 

Then comes B#7's birthday....He turned 7 this year:) For his birthday this year he got a big boy bike and some art supplies. He loves to draw! I can't tell from the picture who actually blew the candles out, him or B#10.

 

 

Then we had B#10's birthday yesterday...He turned 3. He is quite a ham and was most happy with the light-up Spiderman shoes we got him for his birthday, oh, and the socks. He is an easy to please kind of guy! I was thinking today about his birth. I love the OB that has delivered most of my last babies but we didn't use him for B#10's birth and the mid-wife who we did use had sent us to a specialist since his umbilical cord only had two vessels instead of three. In the end, knowing that God is in control, I realized that on top of other things that happened with his birth, God knew that if we had used our usual OB, Noah might not be here with us today. We probably would not have been sent to a specialist who was doing so many growth ultrasounds since many regular OBs don't do anything different with a two-vessel cord baby. So it wouldn't have been caught at the right time that he was in distress in the womb. I praise the Lord for all of the wonderful testimony that we have surrounding B#10's birth.

 

 

Birthday breakfast!

 

 

The Batman PJs were a pretty big hit too!

 

Still to come....B#5, dad and B#4

 

Is There Anything Better

Apple Cider Doughnuts from Roths, hot chocolate and cool, rainy weather. Oregon brought in the fall weather right on cue. Is there anything better?

It's Official

Well guys...it is officially FALL now and our Mulled Cider candle is burning in the window. The weather is cool and it rained a bit tonight. I love Oregon! And Fall!

Still around

Always good intentions to sit down and blog...always pictures that I could add if I took the time. Adding pictures takes a long time so while I am sitting here and I could post about several things, I just wanted to take a few minutes to at least say I am still around. Been very busy around here...my mom, dad and daughter flew in for B#4's graduation party so we were busy visiting and working on projects around here.

One such project was a new wood stove...so excited to try it out...courtesy of my parents. I have high hopes that it will heat our whole house, not just 1600sf like the old stove was rated for. I will post pictures as soon as I take some.

Now our oldest son and his wife are here visiting. We had a baby shower for her today and I will post pictures of that soon too(hopefully).

Also had our first baby appointment with an ultrasound so that was good. Baby seems to be doing well with a nice strong heart beat. Other than that I hardly feel pregnant yet.

Will try to do a real post soon, with pictures.

Road Rash

Even tricycles can be dangerous...

To a two year old...

My Sentiments Exactly

I just read THIS blog post entitled "Pregnant? Again! and thought she did a good job at presenting a couple of my thoughts. Enjoy it if you have the time.

Cheaper By the Dozen

 

Blessing #1 and wife

 

                                                                            Blessing #2

                                                                        Blessing #3

                                                                   

                                                                      Blessing #4

                           Blessing #5                                                            Blessing #6

Blessing #7

                                                               Blessing #8

                                                                  
                                                                      Blessing#9

                                                 Blessing #10                                                             

 

                                                                   Blessing #11

AND

 

Baby #12 Due April 2015



Woo Hoo!

My family in heaven just by grew two people!! My parents came to trust the Lord Jesus as their Saviour this past Sunday! I am so excited to get to go to MS for their baptism in a week or so.

As I told my mom...you never know when you are gonna go so you better know where you are gonna go when you go.

You can know for sure that you will go to heaven if you acknowledge that you are a sinner and believe that God sent Jesus Christ to take the punishment for your sin and accept the free gift of salvation in Jesus that He offers you.

I recently heard a neat analogy of Jesus as our Judge and our Saviour...imagine you are a convicted prisoner, sent to stand before the judge. The judge stands up and walks down from his stand to take your place and you are free to go.

If you died tonight where would you go???

Happy Birthday Auntie M!

Happy Birthday Auntie M! Thanks for always being so encouraging to our family. We love reading your comments on our blogs!

Tea for Two

 

A friend and I went to tea yesterday!

                                                        Such a lovely home it was in...

 

My sweet friend

We chose the small tea sampler but there was plenty on the menu...we started with lemon scones. I love scones but had never had lemon before or lemon curd. I loved both. They were also served with raspberry jam. A very yummy combination.

 

Then we had chicken salad on croissants and cucumber sandwiches on multi-grain bread. I love cucumber sandwiches but always thought they had to be on white bread. It was a nice change to have them on something else. The hostess also served mini tarts filled with apricot pepper jelly.  I am not a very adventuresome eater but the combination was surprisingly good. I am not sure it is something I would rush home to make, unlike the lemon scones that are patiently waiting on my counter to be eaten during nap time.

Isn't that a pretty tea cup? I was actually given a whole set of that pattern of china many, many years ago by someone from church who didn't want it anymore. I didn't appreciate having nice dishes back then and regret that I got rid of them. I do still have one lone tea cup in the cupboard, though I didn't remember having it until B#6 showed me.

 

Dessert was heavenly...lemon cake with TayBerry jam. Never heard of a tayberry?? We hadn't either. Apparently it is sort of like a raspberry and blackberry. Both of which I love. She topped it with whipped cream and toasted coconut. It was very rich and I was getting full but I decided to finish it anyway and not even think about calories.

 

It was a fun day and I am looking forward to going back with the girls for a card-making tea day.

Birthdays!

In a span of 17 days we celebrate 3 birthdays...

 

B#11 turned 1...I think he wants to share his cake with you:)

                                                 I think he preferred the gift bag to the gifts...

 

B#9 turned 4. She was so funny. It cracked her up that we were all singing to her. I honestly don't think she knew what to expect when we kept telling her it was her birthday. She is such a simple, happy little girl that I don't think it even registered with her that birthday equals presents.

 

We bought her a "Stuffie". If you aren't familiar with these, they are stuffed animals with lots of pockets. The mouth unzips, the tongue has a pocket, there is a pocket on the back and all of the feet have little pockets. She is kind of a hoarder, she loves to collect stuff and keep it in her bed so we thought this would be perfect for her. She also loves little animals so we bought her a few and wrapped them up to hide in the pockets.

                                                       I think she was happy with her gifts!

                                        She wanted a purple cake for her birthday so B#4 made her a yummy 4 layer

                                                    purple and pink cake with whipped cream frosting.

And last but not least, B#2 turned 22 on the same day as B#9. I don't have any pictures of her as she is still in MO. But I was so pleased that her host family's mother agreed to make her favorite birthday cake for her as a surprise from us. She always has white cake with Raspberry filling and whipped cream frosting. Tastes just like a Zinger! Yum! If you have never had a Zinger go to the store and buy some! We missed having her here for her birthday but we know that this is life with grown children. And we are so very thankful that she has a godly family who has taken her under their wing.

Breakfast Outside

This morning I actually got up "early". DH would laugh at my definition of early. But anyway, I took the baby outside with me to read my Bible and drink my coffee. It was so nice and cool that I decided it would be fun to eat breakfast outside. So I woke up B#6 and she and I got everything ready before waking up the kiddos.

California

We just got back from California, visiting with B#1 and his wife.  We had a good time and hopefully didn't overwhelm them too much by adding 11 extra bodies to the mix.

 

It was a tiring ride for the kiddos.

 

Our first day there after traveling we went to church with them. It was a nice little church. The pastor is a very genuine man who loves the Lord. We were excited to meet him, knowing how much he prayed for Mark before, during and after his surgery. As a matter of fact, he told us he is still praying for Mark. The Lord must have told him that although Mark is mostly better he still has some bad days where he feels like he hasn't made much progress. It was amazing to know that their pastor was awake before the sun was up on the morning of Mark's surgery texting us to let us know he was praying for us.

 

 

We went bowling while there. The kids really enjoyed that and I got to bowl using bumpers since I was on their lane!

 

 

The day after that we went to tour the Jelly Belly factory. I really enjoyed that. Maybe it is the homeschool mom in me but its great when you can learn something and eat candy at the same time.

We enjoyed having a picnic lunch outside. The Lord blessed me by taking away the 106 degree temps of the previous week and giving us low 80's while we were there.

 

 

After leaving the Jelly Belly factory we decided we still had enough energy to go see some of Old Town Sacramento. The guys went to the California Railroad Museum which they thoroughly enjoyed while we girls(and B#11) walked around the shops.

 

 

While we were walking around we spotted Danny's Mini Doughnuts. Can you say Yum??? So of course we decided we needed to stop in. The young man making the doughnuts made the experience fun for us and they were very yummy. We bought 48 mini doughnuts!

 

 

 

B#6 got to put the sprinkles on the chocolate doughnuts.

 

B#3 got really into shaking some doughnuts.

 

B#1's wife got to do some shaking too!

 

 

I liked this sign..if you are going to go to a saloon it should be a coffee saloon!

 

Our last day there was spent packing, shopping for food for the trip home and visiting a fun park with places for the kiddos to play in water. As you can tell B#11 loved it. He is a little waterbug.

                                                                             
                                                                     B#10 loved it too!

                                       These two thought they were just too cool to get wet!

And then we headed out...bright and early. Our first rest stop of the day had this Rattlesnake warning sign...Ugh! Kids stay close!

 

We decided to take a detour on our way home to visit Crater Lake. It is the deepest lake in the United States and the clearest in the world. Which, I think, is what makes it so very blue. It added a bit to our trip home which made it a little harder for the kiddos but in the end I think everyone thought it was worth it to see. Apparently it is a volcano, boy I didn't realize that when I committed to the side trip. Heights and kids make me nervous. But we all survived. Isn't it beautiful?  Our God makes amazing things, doesn't he?

                                          How's your summer going so far?? Any great plans?