Ch-Ch-Changes

In the next few days I am going to figure out how to archive all of my old posts and start over. I don't want to switch to a new blog name so I'll be doing some experimenting.
I want to get back to the original purpose of this blog AND hold myself accountable to things I want to change around here.
I'm hoping that I will be able to keep this updated more as well.
Anyway, just an FYI! :)
Be Blessed!

Cleaning up

I have been thinking for awhile of cleaning my blog up some. I have been blogging for awhile. I love looking back and seeing how I have grown and changed. It's also been a source of serious conviction in some areas. This past winter as I was dealing with being allergic to winter I read through some posts and realized that what was missing in my life was my passion. I used to be so passionate about my duties here at home.
I feel that passion coming back and I am so excited!
I don't yet know what I'll be changing around here.
I guess we'll all just have to wait and see!

Be Blessed!

I heart these videos!

Raising Homemakers is having another GREAT giveaway. I have looked at most of these videos and wanted each of them at one time or other. They are giving away all of them! *Sigh*
What a wonderful addition to our DVD library! It's almost like a Home Ec Course in a box!
Check out this amazing giveaway.

Happy Homemaking

As the mother of three, soon to be four, young ladies I am so EXCITED about this new website. How many of us lived with mothers who worked 40-60 hours a week and just did not have the time and energy to teach us how to be proper homemakers?

The description of their blog says it all:

Raisinghomemakers.com is dedicated to inspiring, teaching, and blessing mothers who have an interest in raising their daughter in godliness and preparing them in the arts of homemaking to the glory of God.

I went into this whole homemaking thing thinking that it would be easy. Add in three little girls who I am now responsible for showing the way and it is very overwhelming. It's hard to teach something you have NO experience with.

These past few years have been learning experiences. Tough ones. We are learning and failing and learning and succeeding every day.

I am thankful for a website that will seek to educate other women in this wonderful area.

Please rush right over and check it out. They have an awesome contest going on!

33 Weeks and GROWING

Well here I am at 33 weeks. We took the kids to the beach and had a nice lunch. They enjoyed playing in the sand and running around with daddy. I did not do any running around. I did manage to waddle a little bit down the beach. It was nice. I cropped out my ENORMOUS feet. I doubled my water intake and they have definitely shown improvement. Of course I was already drinking almost 5 bottles of water a day. 10 is going to kill me for sure. Instead of peeing every 30m I now just wear Depends. Just kidding. LOL

Remember me just a few short weeks ago at 26 weeks? I can't believe how much we have grown in the last 7 weeks. I remember at one point fretting that the belly would never push through the fat. LOL Well, it pushed and fought and has come to live.

Baby did wonderfully at her last growth scan. She went from the 76th percentile down to the 61st. YAY! My OB was rightly impressed. He did not even mention the C word at my last visit. He usually mentions it every visit. He claims he wants to go the other way but he keeps saying I am at a high risk for a C-section. I keep telling him he is at a high risk for a punch in the nose. :) He loves me.

I don't know what makes me so high risk. My A1C is great. My blood sugar is great. My placenta is great. My fluid is great. My baby is measuring well. My blood pressure is perfect. Yeah. I don't think I am going to take the C-section talk lying down. Pun fully intended. :)

In other news I updated my sidebar. If you look over there and think for a minute that I read all of those blogs every day you are sadly mistaken. There are a couple I hop to as often as possible for various reasons, but some of them go a month without being read. They are nice when I want to just chill and read for awhile. I like having the categories now so I can read my foodie blogs when I want and my homemaking blogs when I want. I love the Young Ladies at Home category. I am so inspired to read about these young women making such wise choices. I am hoping to glean wisdom from their lives to share with my young daughters.

I tried to break up the homeschooling, homemaking, motherhood category a bit but nothing worked so yes it is loaded down with all sorts of goodness.

Biblical teaching was made just for Rev. Voddie (he did not fit the other categories) but Ms. Patsy snuck in there. She is just so cute! I love her. If you have suggestions of other blogs of sound Biblical teachers I would love to know.

I love to read blogs. I always come away inspired to try harder. No, I don't want to be just like those people but I am a wisdom taker upper. I will gladly glean what wisdom I can from people who have shown wisdom. I don't always agree with everything I read in those blogs, but I see things that I can use. And use them I do! Oh yes!

I did have some problems switching some blogs over so if you see yours in missing please don't think it was on purpose. Just let me know. I will fix the situation.

Be Blessed!

FYI

I am doing some cleaning up around here. If you see all the blogs in my sidebar disappear it's only temporary.. I promise! :)
Nesting on the blog.
Be Blessed!

Announcing a New Blog

My wonderful, smart husband has started his very own blog. You have to check it out. He is very grounded in his beliefs and I have been trying to get him to share some of his insights.
Here is it boys and girls.

Living In the End Times.

Cooking with kids

I have been eating up these videos lately. She has even more at her website Greenlitebites. Some great cooking videos with Ryan and they are always taste testing new fruits. It gave me some great ideas for not only cooking with my big kids (ONE AT A TIME!) but also with little Jonathan.

I hope you enjoy.

Be Blessed

Spring Cleaning

I know I have not been around a lot lately. Even my IRL friends are wondering if I dropped off the face of the earth. ( I did not by the way!) :)

We are busy putting in our new floors, decluttering, and getting ready to open our home for God. We have Life Group starting Sunday, I'm also looking forward to inviting people in for lunch on Sundays, game nights on Fridays or Saturdays, and just overall fellowships with more of our friends. It's an exciting time. New opportunities have presented themselves to my husband that I can't even bear to think about because I get so excited I'm sure I will burst! So our home is being spruced up and paired down.

I am also getting ready to spring clean my blog. I have many blog links that no longer work that I need to take down and some new ones to put up. Also, as much as I love the picture of my kids I'm ready for a new one.

As things start settling down here, I will be back to more regular blogging. We only have to finish the great room floors and then we can slow down a little. The bedrooms don't have to be done by Sunday. LOL

I hope you all are doing well. If I have not stopped by your blog lately, please know that I am slowly moving down the list and playing catch up as time allows. :)

Be Blessed!!!

So much....

To be thankful for! My posts here lately have been a little on the... well, opinionated side! ;) I just thought I would balance it all out.....
I was reading somewhere recently, I think at A Holy Experience, about a Thanksgiving tradition.
It involved picking a verse of thanksgiving for the year, decorating a box with that verse, and then filling the box throughout the year with thoughts of thanksgiving and gratitude. The family contributes to the box as well as any guests who feel led. Sometimes people drop an offering of thanksgiving into the pot. At the end of the year (or the following Thanksgiving) all of the words of thanks and read aloud by the family. The coins are collected and put in as an offering to some charity or the church. Then the notes are burned as a tangible offering to God. Or least that's how I understood it.
What a beautiful tradition.
When we think of what we have to be thankful for every day it completely blows my mind.
God does not have to give me times of laughter amidst the struggles, but he does.
He does not have to wake me up with the song Jesus Loves Me as preformed by my 2 year old at the top of his lungs, but he does.
He does not have to let me find a pack of meat in the back of the freezer just when I thought it was all gone, but he does.
It's the little things. The hugs of a child, the sweet moments when everyone is getting along, the secret smile of my husband that lets me know he still loves me, the email from a friend to encourage... the little things.
Be thankful.

Be Blessed!

You must go...

and see what Mrs. Laura has up at her blog. It's fabulous! I am so excited.

It is worth the few minutes it will take to click over there... I promise! :)

Hint: What girl does not want her very own vanity to dress up and maker her own?

Still Playing...

I am still playing with categories. I had so many posts.
I will tell you that reading back through my older posts has really given me a sense of where I have grown and where I have trailed off the path. I guess that's one reason I love blogging so much. Who I was in 2005 is so different from who I am now. THANK GOD!! :)

For those of you who have blogs, how have you changed since you started blogging? I am very interested to know.

Sprucing up

I am in the midst of updating all my posts with tags for the topic area. All the way back from Feb 2005. Then I will clean up the topic categories. Until then feel free to browse but it's a little sloppy over there. ;)

You like me.. you really like me! :)

My friend Rachelle, sent me this award! She is so sweet. She has a whole passel of kids and we are so going to get all of our kids together one day. I think we should go to a restaurant or something so people can really gawk. I can go in first with all of them and then she can follow a little later. How funny would that be? A side note: I love being gawked at for having five kids. I try to make sure I am smiling and happy as my duckling follow me and people count. What a wonderful reason for people to stare at me and my family!

Here are the rules:

A. come get your award (just copy and paste it)

B. put it on your blog

C. pass it on to seven other blogs, that you enjoy!!

D. put there links in your post and let them know you gave them an award!

I have so many blogs I LOVE! If you are in my sidebar.. I pretty much love your blog. I put everyone over there so I can go down the line and read them as I get a minute.

But here are 7...

1. Candy at A Pretty Home. Her blog is beautiful. She is a lovely person. I love going to her blog for inspiration to make my home a more lovely, inviting place!

2. Mrs. Laura, at Decor to Adore. Another inspirational blog in the way of making my home more lovely and inviting. She is a wonderful lady. She leaves the most gracious comments even when she does not agree with me. :) We are still friends, right? LOL

3. Dawn, at A Quest for Plain Living. She is a new favorite for me. I love hearing about all that she is learning. She is a very great example of a wife and woman. Her blog is always fun to visit.

4. Mrs. Mobunny, at Rabbit Trails. She is so wise. I love learning from her. She has raised some wonderful children and is in the process of raising some more. Her blog is so much fun. I always find something to smile about there!

5. Kim, at SAHM, I Am. She is smart, funny, and a great blogger. We almost met once. But I was gone. Maybe another day. I love reading her blog because I know I can find something over there to inspire me or make me laugh out loud. Sometimes both!

6. Sweet, sweet Angela, at Our World. I love her.. let me count the ways! She always makes me smile no matter what. I am going to meet her. It will be my birthday present. I have already decided. If I have to get a second mortgage, Im coming girl! She has been so encouraging the past few days with all we have experienced. Oh yeah, and her blog is great too. Very funny stuff over there!

7. Laura, at Becoming A Godly Woman of Vision. She lives in Australia and has a beautiful baby boy. She is a wonderful young mother and I enjoy reading her blog and the things she learns.

Phew, that was hard. I love all the blogs I read. I take something different away from each of them. I read them to be encouraged and to learn.
I hope you will take some time to visit these lovely ladies!

Be Blessed!

Cleaning up..

I am going to be doing some tidying up around here. Please let me know if you would like to be added to my blogroll. I have some sitting in a folder waiting to be added. There are also a couple of links that people have either stopped blogging or have not blogged in a good long while that I will probably remove.

Be Blessed!

Blog worth mentioning..and a contest..

So, I don't know if you have ventured over to my new friend's blog. Her name is Laura Ingalls Gunn. YES! I wandered over there one day upon finding out she was related to THAT Laura Ingalls. I stayed there because her sight is so beautiful. She is an interior designer and I am always getting great ideas over there.
She is hosting a fun summer giveaway. Run over right now to enter the giveaway. Stay to enjoy her other posts!! :)
By the way, I can call her friend because she has commented on my blog a few times. That makes us friends! :)

Two Exciting Things in Blogland

First, Mrs. Connie at Connie's Thoughts from the Heart presented me with an award. ME??? I am so blessed. She is such a great encouragement to me. She always has the best stuff on her blog. If you have never been there please go check it out.

She presented me the Brilliant Weblog award. She looked up the word brilliant and found out that it meant: 1. very bright; 2. striking, distinguished. Not words I would have associated with my blog, but I'm glad she could. :) This is my web journal. This is where I chronicle my day to day life in hopes that someone out there can smile and say, "Hey, I'm not so different after all!" I love blogging. I don't expect many people to care about what I have to say, but I do enjoy saying it. :)

Thank you Mrs. Connie, this is a special award, mostly because someone I admire and respect so much bestowed it upon me!

Now according to the rules I have to:

1) Put the logo on your blog;

2) Add a link to the person who awarded you.

3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs

4) Add links to those blogs on yours

5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs

Easier said than done. As I look through the blogs to the right I can find something wonderful about all of them. But... here goes... just 7.....hmm...

The first goes to my lovely friend, Lori, at Beyond the Garden. She makes me so happy when I read her blog. She definitely shines!

The second goes to, Michele, at Cherish the Home. I always, always learn something at her blog. She shines God's light through her writings.

Thirdly, I believe will go to, Rachelle, at Mama's Little Bears. She encourages me daily with her ideas for raising godly children. She is a great mama shining into her little one's lives.

The fourth award goes to, an old friend, Lori, at Michigan Momma. I have actually cyber-known Lori for awhile and sometimes I am convinced we were separated at birth. She and I have so many of the same ideas about raising children. She shines through her love of her children and her husband!

For the fifth award, I think, sweet, sweet Bren, at Pieces of Me. She has really shown me how to LOVE my children this year. I have laughed and cried over at her blog these past few months. I am so grateful for the light she shined in my life!

I would like the sixth award to go to, Amy, at Sonshine Cottage. Supermom! She is a great example to me of a homemaker. She makes me laugh. She's a great mom! She shines through her blog in her little house!

Last, but nowhere near least! Is my new friend, Shaunta, at Step Into My Chambers. What a godly young wife and mother she is. I always giggle at the babies in her sidebar floating around and crowding each other out. She is the happy mama to a beautiful little girl and expecting, not one, but TWO babies in a few months. She is glowing and shining all over the place!!

Everyone in my sidebar is worth clicking on. All of those blogs inspire me in some way! The above blogs are the ones I am particularly drawn to in this season of life. I adore all of you!

The second bit of news comes from, Amy at Sonshine Cottage mentioned above. She posted today to let us all know that Jewels is back. From Eyes of Wonder! OH how I love this blog! She is the sweetest mother! I just want to be her when I grow up. Click over there and be amazed!!

Be Blessed!!

I had to share!!

You have to go to The Vintage Housewife's Blog right now and see what magic she preformed on her Vintage Travel Trailer. Its a miracle!! And oh so fun!

To the doctor...

I forgot this pretty lady had a checkup today. I will be back a little later with our home ec update and laundry pictures. I know, I know I keep saying that, but this time I promise... I think!

For your enjoyment here are some links to blogposts I found quiet enjoyable this weekend.

The First Year At Home

Hospitality Can Revive the Heart

Chair Make Over

Of course there are more, but thats all I have time for. See you later this afternoon!

Be Blessed!

P.S. I seem to be updating my blogroll every day. Lots of good stuff out there!

GRR

Blogger won't let me upload pictures...stay tuned for day 1 of the laundry challenge!