November 9, 2012

• I’m Grateful For:

  • Baby Owen was the only one to have gotten the flu this week.  It would’ve been BAD if seven of us had been sick.  And I’m glad he mostly slept thru it.
  • The Lord taking scrapbooking out of my hands.  See, I’ve had a problem with going to scrapbooking.  They aren’t ready to be unplugged, and being there is an issue for me, as a result.  I… don’t do ignorance well.  But now that the time change has made the world darker earlier, Friday is our Shabbat meal instead of Saturday… which means I won’t be going scrapbooking, anymore.  Lydia says, “Well, we can just do a Saturday afternoon Shabbat meal!” … but that’s not how it works for me.  What’s more important – scrapbooking, or obedience?  The WHOLE rest of the week is open to us – I’ll just look for Saturday crops, somewhere else.  But I’m not going to be gone Friday night.
  • The Lord taking the dog thing out of my hands, too.  See… I had a conundrum:  a dog showed up Monday afternoon.  It’s a short, VERY fat chocolate lab.  It was a beautiful dog, and we hooked it up, hoping that the owner would come looking for it.  But nobody did.  So we went inquiring… and nobody was missing a gentle, pretty chocolate lab.  There were no tags on the collar, just a shock box with a burned out battery.  She/he ws such a lover, if you get close, she wants to lick your eyeball.  Brian wonders if she(?) wasn’t pregnant.   Anyhow, we took her to the shelter, but we had ten days to decide whether or not to keep her/him.  And I wouldn’t, but people on my FB said it’s possible the Lord gave us this dog for a reason.  And honestly, it was THE nicest dog…  I didn’t know what to do.  But yesterday I was in town, and stopped by the shelter to find out if they had any information (was he/she chipped?  Pregnant? Sick?), but the owner had called looking for a chocolab, and so it was returned to its home – and I don’t have to have two dogs, after all!!
  • Selling Brian’s old truck.  We listed it on Craigslist Sunday night, and it was gone Monday night!  We’re very happy it happened that fast.  The $$ goes right on the principle of his new truck, and that will be good.  I’m just glad it went smoothly and quickly and we don’t have to worry about it, anymore.  In ONE day!!  The Lord definitely handled THAT for us!!!
    
  • Good news – Brian has needed a heater for his barn, for when he works this winter.  They’re EXPENSIVE.  But we got that check from the side work last week, and then the bonus from his work… so we went pricing them Saturday.  Then yesterday he was talking to a coworker, and his wife’s dad passed away/mother is moving in with them, so they’re having a 4-day estate sale to clear out their farm… and they’re SELLING A BARN HEATER!  Complete, working, in good shape… and at a fraction of the cost!  So Brian asked them to put a sold sign on it, and we put down money, and we’ll be going to pick it up this weekend!
  • Answered Prayer.  As you know, three days ago (or so) on this site, I said that I hadn’t heard from the Lord, and I was having issues with that.  Well, He changed ALL of that, yesterday.  So much so, that I’m REELING from everything handed down to me that I need to process!  Should keep me busy for a few days, anyhow.  I’ve heard, and I’m working hard to respond in obedience!! 
  • “At just a few centimeters long, hatchling loggerhead turtles may seem powerless to resist being swept around the Atlantic Ocean by powerful currents.  But researchers have shown that the tiny turtles can influence where they end up with just a few hours of paddling a day, using the Earth’s magnetic field to orient themselves.”  I’ll let you divine the message I got from that.
  • The Ice Cream Lady.  Yesterday while in town, we had lunch at McDonald’s.  I sent the kids to the table while I got the food.  We have kind of a thing worked out – Isaac gets napkins, Aaron gets straws, Lydia gets the drinks, Ethan gets the high chair, and then they all go and sit down.  When I got to the table, everything was ready – Owen in his high chair, the drinks, the napkins spread out… and we were at one of those wall-length booth-on-one-side/chairs-on-other things, with an internet couple on one end, the Ice Cream Lady and her friend on the other, and us in the middle.  We ate our meal, and she came over and said, “I have to tell you, I have never seen children so organized and well behaved.  Five children and just one adult, too!  It’s amazing – when I saw them coming, I thought, ‘There goes our meal’, but they’re so GOOD!  So I have ice cream coupons for each of your children, if that’s okay.”  That was SO nice!  So the kids got a surprise treat, and it was very affirming. 
    ((NoTe:  My kids aren’t always ‘so good‘.  They’re kids.  They kick each other in the face, given the right setting.  They’ll jump off furniture and make a Thor hammer out of Duplos and conk someone with it.  They’ll beat on their chests and shout ‘Ooga-booga-ooga-booga!’ at each other in the middle of schooling.  But I’ve worked hard to teach them how to behave when we’re in public, and I think it’s paying off.))
    
  • I’m grateful I stopped reading that silly paper about the calendar being a fraud early into it.  I’ve come to some conclusions: even if the christian/catholic church might have screwed everything up with their Gregorian replacement to Yehovah’s calendar… the Jews in Israel would NOT have changed what they had.  They have tried to adjust for discrepancies that came about due to the Great Flood knocking us out of whack (our axis is off, the moon’s orbit isn’t perfect, anymore, etc)… but even having said, every month begins with the new moon, and I can’t hope to calculate differently.  We serve Him to the best of our abilities, as closely as we can, and trust in Him from there.
  • Italian!  This week, the kids and I are learning ‘O Sole Mio’ in Italian, based on this video:

    It’s so funny, all of us singing at the top of our lungs, trying to sound like them.  But ever since we were in Frankenmuth with the accordion woman, I’ve wanted to learn the REAL words to ‘O Sole Mio’.  Amazingly?  It’s very repetitive and fairly easy to learn, considering we don’t speak Italian!

  • NINE QUARTS of honey!!!  That’s how much we got from our hive, this week.  It took a while to strain and can all of that, but… wOw!  I’m really geeked.  Because (being a tea drinker), I tend to put the hurt to the honey.  That and I found this AMAZING chicken recipe that calls for half a cup of honey (and as you know, honey ain’t cheap!)… and now I can make it more often.
  • Brian has two vacation days left to use up before Thanksgiving… and put in to use them this coming Monday and Tuesday.  He works Saturday mornings, so that gives us a three and a half day weekend instead of a one and a half day one.  I’m so excited!!!
  • This is going to sound ridiculous to be grateful for, but… I’m grateful for all of the people who have spat in my face over the years.  Who called me vile names laced with profanity.  Who threw my friendship away and rejected what I’ve had to say with derision.  Wanna know why?  Because I don’t fall to pieces anymore when that happens.  I don’t lose it and become depressed, with a dark cloud over my head for days, anymore.  When someone screams ‘F*** You, B****!!!’ at me, I blink, and then shake my head at their hair-trigger and immaturity.  I can walk away and let it roll off.  I can value patience and logic/reason and people willing to discuss things rationally, and not worry about those who lack these qualities.  It may not seem like it, but since I’ve opened this blog, I have grown.  A lot.  Amazingly so.  And occasionally, He shows me just how much.  And I’m grateful for that growth.  I remember all too well that feeling of stunned horror and then utter humiliation and depression and hurt… and I don’t have that, anymore - if I’ve only learned one thing, it was to give all of that over to Him.  It’s freeing to have let go of all of that.
  • I’m grateful that Obama got the presidency.  I know I probably just shocked you, but I’d rather have a man in charge who believes in one god than a man who believes in millions of gods (and that he’s going to be one, too).  There’s something about THAT ego trip that is absolutely disturbing.  For some reason, that seemed worse than the possible Muslim factor.  And as my friend MountainMama says, “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t”.   I’m beginning to agree.  Even if he’s anti-Israel… the scriptures say that ALL nations will turn against Israel in the end times.  It is completely possible that Obama IS Yehovah’s will – so that prophecy can be fulfilled.  I’d wager it’s true, and if it’s Yehovah’s will, how on earth could I not be grateful that His will was done?
  • Guess what!????  I lost another pound this week!   I’ve broken into the 80s!!!  I’m so excited!!  And there are only FIVE weeks left of my New Year’s Challenge… and my goal was 185.  From 200.  I’m 189.  That means there’s a chance I might actually achieve my goal.  Not only that, but when I started, fifteen minutes on the elliptical was… homiGAWSH, I thought I was going to be sick.  My legs shook just getting back upstairs afterwards.  But now?  I’m actually kind of bouncing on the thing.  I may have to turn the tension up a little!  That’s progress!!  Makes me so happy!!
  • I’m grateful that I have SO MANY things to blog about that I’ve got SIX in the works, and haven’t been able to do a LEGO challenge in two weeks!  Isn’t that crazy?  What with political stuff and now His direction…?   I’m busy!  And having said, I really ought to scoot – there’s numbers to crunch and things to look up, and Truth to be discerned.

  • 8:25 am
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