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.

What’s To Come

I know… I really wanted to post a ‘Thankful Thursday’, but I… have things to talk about.  Mostly all of these projected global collapses I’m reading about.  Someone posted a link to an interview with people post-election, and the Obama supporters were giddy because the re-election means ‘the destruction of Israel’.  All of the Jewish blogs are up in arms over that one.  All of them are announcing that Obama’s win means the end of the world – enter, please, Mosiach. 

Then there’s George Ure, who is projecting complete catastrophe by… March, is it?  He’s got figures and facts on the economics, with pending layoff lists and something about a proposed ‘carbon tax’ that is going to drive the remaining companies overseas?  And then there’s some dude named Patrick Geryl has a quake timeline that works off the planetary alignments, and he’s predicting doomsday via terra event.  Clif High’s wife is sick, and he sees that as a smaller scale of the ‘true reality for our planet’.  Oh, and don’t forget that Age of Desolation dude who claims to have cracked Nostradamus’ code.  According to him, the election will be contested, resulting in civil war, resulting in financial/economic collapse, etcetera, etcetera, yadda-yadda-yadda…

You wanna know what’s to come?  I’ll show you:

“We’re So Screwed!!”

All over my Facebook feed this morning, people are crying out, “Oh NO!!  Another four years of Obama!!  We’re screwed!  God help us.” 

And there are people replying, “Shut up, stupid.  Obama is the only way we can stay on good terms with the other nations.  Romney would take us back into the dark ages.”

Me?  I’m laughing.  Seriously, the drama is killing me.  Here’s my reply:

The truth is, we woke up today to no change, and that’s all. Just more of the economic, financial, and technological downslide and implosion. Which would’ve happened with Romney, too… just at a different rate with a slightly different spin to the fall.

It’s not about what’s good for the people for either party – it’s what’s good for the people and businesses with the money and the power. It’s been that way for too many years in America. There will take a civil war to make a change, and I don’t see that happening – people don’t want to fight, can’t afford not to go to work, and don’t want to be arrested. So nothing will change. Not until something drastic triggers it (EMP, quake, homeland terrorist act on par with 9/11).

Today? We just wake up to more of the same. Which is a mixed blessing. It means more time to target practice and build up a well-stocked pantry, to learn what we can about the political system and how to thwart it. It also means we’re getting just that much deeper in an unsustainable reality that WILL come to a head, and sooner, every day.

Romney wouldn’t have been a deliverer.  He’s a businessman.  He’s about money.  There is no money, and don’t think for a moment he would’ve stopped Obama’s deficit and turned off the printing presses.  There’s no way he would audit the Federal Reserve or take any burden off ‘we the people’ – it’s our spending that keeps the merry-go-round turning, after all… and the revenue from tax is just too great.

For the record, Romney wouldn’t have sent us any further back into the dark ages than Obama, either.  BOTH of parties (and don’t think this is about a man, the man is just a puppet) are taking apart America, piece by piece.  We are so behind the other countries, anymore, it’s laughable.  If you don’t believe me, read one of the articles about the now defunct American space program (here or here or here), or about how we’re worrying about putting calories on McDonald’s drive-thru menus while Europe ‘has spent the last decade working to reduce acrylamide levels in food and collecting annual data on member states’ acrylamide vulnerable edibles’ (link) while rejecting the GMO foods we’re dishing out here that cause tumors in lab rats globally (link).  You think Romney would’ve fixed these things?  Don’t kid yourself.

It was Ron Paul that wanted to audit the Fed, stop the genetic modification of crops, and re-allocate funds in order to help the people, not Romney.  And you will recall that it was the REPUBLICANS that changed their own rules in the eleventh hour so that – even though Paul had enough backing to be on the ballot – he could be thrown out as a viable candidate.  It’s ROMNEY’s people who did that.  It’s not a better team that lost, last night.  It’s merely another corrupt team.  Both teams are bad, and both need to be thrown out.  I found this graphic a while ago, but it is so fitting… and so true.

What am I going to do?  I’m going to not sweat it.  It’s just another day.  It’s just more of the same.  It’s just a continuation of the last four years – because Obama has already set the stage – he’s not about to pull it all down and engage in a re-dressing of it.  If we’re lucky, he’ll just play more golf and things will just slowly slide into catastrophe.  If we’re not, he’ll hit the gas and we’ll fly into it.  Either way, it’s not like we don’t know where we are headed, Democrat or Republican in office.

I’m still waiting on the SMS.  I have heard NOTHING from Him in two weeks.  I hate the periods of silence.  I am lost… clinging blindly to what I do have, which feels like precious little.  But that’s okay – it just makes me hang on tighter, and that’s a good thing.  It’s easy to have faith when you see fulfillments, not so much so when you don’t.  And this SMS period (the fulfillment of Rev 7:9-end) isn’t over until December 31st.  So by my calculations, I have 55 days left in counting down.  After that, the SMS is over, for better or for worse.  And hey – maybe the Mayans are right.  Either way, that’s more relevant and pressing to me than Obama/Romney.

Story of the World — Chapter Twenty-Two

Still working on Greece.  This week, we study the differences between Sparta and Athens… and the best way to compare/contrast the two city-states is to do a Venn diagram.  It looks something like this:

borrowed from WaltzWorldHistory

Another SotW Lesson Twenty-Two Site:

http://runofthemillfamily.blogspot.com/…sparta-and-athens.html
http://creeksidelearning.com/hands-on-history/story-of-the-world/

(Tardy) Thursday Thankfuls

• I’m grateful for the bigger than average bonus Brian got this week.  VERY nice… We’ve got money for X-mess, now!  And we finally got a check for all the work Brian’s done August thru October out in our barn, too, so… when/if he deposits that, that will be nice, too – we need to have the driveway grated before the ground freezes, and Brian would like a heater for his barn and new work boots, so that’ll take care of those big expenses!
• Jupiter/Pleiades/Moon conjunction today.  EarthSky has the article (LINK), but – and I hate them for this – they NEVER tell you more than a few hours ahead of time, and NEVER give specific details (times/degrees).  Still… 17 Cheshvan isn’t over until tonight, and that Yehovah/His Chosen/The Earth are lining up so spectacularly at the tail end of it.  You know I geek over this stuff…!!!
• There is THE MOST AWESOME free .pdf file this morning.  It’s even awesome for grown-ups… it’s how to tell what angle something is by eyeing it, using the face of a clock as reference.  I am SOOO impressed with this!!!  The link is here (LINK).  You have GOT to see this!!!
• Sunshine!  It’s sunny this morning, and that is SO NICE after so much overcast weather.  Not that I don’t like overcast weather, but we need a few clear, bright days to get winterized around here.  We need to hang the rabbit tarp, put away kid toys, pull down the laundry lines, take the boat back over to grandpa’s, do one last mow (and a FIRST leaf clean up!), and pull up stakes/trellises in the garden.  I pray the sun lasts thru the weekend!
• Birthday cake.  Did I mention my second littlest guy turned FIVE yesterday?!  ((Well… I did on FB, and posted a picture, but..))  He was so cute about it, too.  And Daddy took the day off yesterday, so that made his birthday EXTRA special!!
• Honey Harvest!!  We’re in the middle of harvesting our honey!  It’s only the second time we’ve done it (blog about first time in 2009 HERE), but it’s going much more smoothly (but slightly messier) than last time.  So that’s good!
• Costume Clean-up.  I’ve been in the throes of making costumes for two weeks straight – felt, styrofoam, hot glue sticks, markers, needle/thread, shears, RIT dye… it’s been everywhere.  So hey, guess what?  I’m grateful that I can put it all away, now!! LOL!!!
• Aunt November!  I have been reading (for a few months now) a Finnish blog called ‘Badut’.  It’s not written in English, so I have to read it via Google Translate, but I really like this woman’s site… she’s whimical and interesting.  Anyhow, her post yesterday called ‘Welcome Aunt November’ was beautiful… it really stirred my love of this season!  The link is HERE.
• This morning, I was sent by a friend to view a video that said if you don’t vote Romney (as in, writing in Ron Paul or not voting at all), it’s like you’re ‘standing by, watching a mugging’.  Um… no, IMHO voting for Romney is joining mugger group A, and voting for Obama is voting for mugger group B.  And it made me angry to see crap like that being touted.  Then my friend MountainMama said, ‘ If 5% of the population votes for Gary Johnson then the Libertarian Party will finally be considered a “major party” by the federal government and will receive federal funds next year…so, if you really truly want your vote to count, vote Libertarian/Gary Johnson’.  Now I hadn’t thought about Johnson much… I was going to write in Ron Paul.    But she has a point.  And while I don’t know Johnson, I do know the Libertarian viewpoint (thanks to Ron Paul)… so I may have to rethink my vote and cast it so that there AREN’T just two recognized parties. It’s a small change to fight for, but it’s a start.  So it appears I’m going to fight for Liberty by voting Libertarian.  Should we be here.
  
• Going thru and getting rid of TWO boxes in our closet.  I was hoping to put away more maternity stuff, but mostly I just got rid of dumpy things and re-organized to make it more compact.  So that’s good.  Brian says I should get rid of ALL my maternity clothes, but… you just KNOW when I do that, there’d be a miracle baby, and I’m too prepper for that!  Anyhow, I found a bunch of stuff that I can wear that doesn’t float around me, so that’s good, news!
  
• Lydia and I getting our mp3 players loaded.  I had dug in my heels SO LONG on getting anything like that (I don’t want my kids ‘plugged in’ all the time), but for scrapbooking, it’d be nice to have tunes during crop nites.  So I’ve spent a LONG time putting my CDs on my laptop so that I could download them to the mp3 players.  Whew!  All done, and now we have little gadgets!
• Superhero teaching lessons.  We had a GREAT behavioral comparison this morning over my half cup of coffee.  I told them Captain America is a man of hope and trust – he’s a glass half full kind of guy.  And IronMan is on the same team, but he knows the world isn’t trustworthy and there’s not much hope of goodness manifesting around us, so he’s a glass half empty kind of a guy.  It’s not a bad thing – he was right: Nick Fury (symbolic of gov’t) was a bad dude making weapons the way he was supposedly keeping people from doing.  IronMan was like ‘DUH!’ and Cpt. America was like “GASP! The HORROR!”  Just two different ways to look at life.  Then there’s Black Widow, who doesn’t give a crap about the coffee cup, she’s going for the pot.  She’s crafty and thinks out of the box.  Then there’s Hawkeye, who doesn’t need coffee, he just watches to see what will happen, and makes sure if it’s bad, it doesn’t cause collateral damage.  Hulk?  Hulk doesn’t know what a coffee cup is – if it’s there, it’s gonna get smashed.  Period.  Then y’got Nick Fury, our friendly government liar, and Phil Coulson, the ‘sheeple’ representative, who simply does what he’s told, thinking he’s a good guy.  See?  Betcha didn’t know there was such a large spectrum of views/behaviors!  Superhero movies make for GREAT lessons…. LoL!!
• I’m grateful for losing the weight I put on last weekend.  I was down 10 pounds to 190, then my mom… KFC… double chocolate brownies with fudge icing… Mexican & a Movie… and Monday I was up to 192 - egads!!  But I am happy to say I lost two more pounds this week, so I’m BACK to 190, again.  What sucks is that if I hadn’t indulged last weekend, it might’ve been two NEW pounds, not the same two I took off last week.  Still… I’m not gaining, I’m 10 lighter, and can move on from here… and I’m grateful for that!
• Conditioner.  I’m thankful for conditioner, because you have NO idea what a MESS my hair is at the moment.  The curls… they’ve intertwined and become a labyrinth of knots so complex… I need conditioner.  If you hear squeaking that sounds like someone’s in pain?  That’ll be me, pulling tangles later this afternoon.
  
• Is that all?  Can that be all?  Cuz today’s bill day, and I have to go get at the bills, and it feels like I should be done on-line now, for a while.  I’ll talk to you another time, k?