I'm not stressed...

It's been a crazy month. This is our last night at our seasonal camper that we are planning on. We have it up for sale. Yep, that's what I said. It's for sale. We're hoping it sells really soon. Three weeks ago as I was sitting in the same chair I am now on our seasonal deck, I wrote up a list of pros and cons of continuing to own this versus a lake home. Not a cabin...a lake home. I proceeded to show my hubby the list. He looked at it pretty seriously and said "let's do it". I was stunned. I had had the same plea since well before we even considered purchasing this place.  I am not sure why he finally changed his mind, but I was super thrilled! Fast forward to today, we are waiting for Monday to come so that we can contact the inspector to go and check out the home that we signed a purchase agreement on in a town 20 minutes from where we live now. It's on a nice lake with 2.75 acres of our own property. I am still sitting here stunned that this has taken place. We looked at a total of 12 homes. Some of them were nasty for the price they were asking. One had absolutely gorgeous views, but the house was too small and there was no way to add on. The particular house we have chosen is not as big as I had hoped, but there is room for improvement. If all goes well with the inspection and appraisal from the bank, it will be ours by the end of July. I'm already dreaming and posting pins of what I want to do to the house to make it "ours".  We're praying it will be so.

In between now and then we have so much other stuff going on. On Tuesday of this week I start training for a new position at our church. I've been volunteering twice a week in the office since November, and one of the assistants is cutting back immensely on her hours so she can babysit her grandchild, so I'm taking over some of her responsibilities. I am looking forward to learning something new, but wishing it all wasn't happening right now! 

One week from today we are renewing our vows. It is 20 years this year, and we are celebrating on a tour boat in Duluth, MN. It has been exciting (and frustrating at times!) to prepare for this event. It will be so much fun, though! After the weekend is over with, we head home to prepare for the following weekend...hubby and I are going on an 8-day cruise in the Southern Caribbean. I cannot wait - after the craziness of everything going on over the last several months I am praying I can just relax and not think too much about everything back at home, especially since there's going to be so much to do when we return. The kids are spending the time with Grandma, so it will truly be a vacation. 

When we get back, even more craziness begins. We're hoping that all the paperwork will be ready to sign on the house, and we should be preparing our move. Then we get our old house ready to put on the market. Our daughter will start PSEO/homeschool mid- August, and our son will start preparing to head back to a private school for another year neat the end. The MIL wants to visit one weekend, hubby has two concerts to perform at, and we're also hoping to fit a rummage sale in there somewhere and get rid of stuff we don't want to move. 

I am praying nothing else comes up that will be added to our list of things to do, as we're feeling the stress already - at least I am. My health has not been doing very well over the last month, either, and it's been hard to keep up with everything most days.

All in all, we're truly excited for everything going on, and it's all good. I just never expected to have to prepare for so much all at once! But God is good, and He's watching over us. :-)

Three Long Years

Today I had a bit of time to myself while I'm sitting here at our camper. Hubby, the kids, and a friend decided to go into town for a movie because they were tired of the rain. I read for a while, but got restless. Then I sanded our deck floor a little bit until my knees got sore. Then I tried reading some more but couldn't get into it very well. My mind started wandering....it's actually been wandering a lot lately. Then I remembered my blog and thought I would check it out and see what kind of crazy things I used to write about. Yep. Crazy. I will probably write more non-sensical stuff, but I feel like writing today.

Life has changed drastically since the last time I wrote. First, my mom ended up with cancer. Squamous cell lymphona of the tongue. During her surgery and treatment, I basically lived in the cities taking care of her while we 'lived' at the Hope Lodge. Then we got her well enough to go home. A year later hell broke loose again. My oldest brother was diagnosed with colon cancer, and my dad had a heart attack with triple bypass surgery. My brother went in for surgery and my dad was on the road to healing, only to find out months later that he had cancer. AMML (acute myeloid leukemia). Non-curable. Again, for a month at a time I stayed with my dad in the cities while he went through treatment, going into remission twice, but not staying there for long either time. This last November we discovered that the leukemia had come back for the second time, and even though we tried searching for other options in vain, there was nothing we could do. The horrible, hateful cancer took him away from us on a beautiful Saturday afternoon less than a month ago on April 18th. I started grieving for him the moment I got the call from my sister a year ago February telling us the diagnosis. I hurt for him; I ached. I cried; I became angry. During his last couple of days with us I couldn't even stop crying. I would cry in front of him, I would cry with others, I would cry by myself. Now that he's gone, I don't know what to think or feel. Most of the time I feel like I'm making it through, that I'm handling things well, then something reminds me of him and I re-live those last few days with him. Then it all becomes so fresh and raw again, and I have to try so hard to think about something else. I keep trying to tell myself that I am not the only one to ever lose their dad and that they have been able to continue on. My father-in-law passed away only two years after we married, so I know my husband has gone through it. It's a fact of life. But it just doesn't make sense.

My mom is doing well now, health-wise. She is missing my dad and posts things to his Facebook wall often. I know it's her way of dealing with losing her husband and I'm okay with that. His months away from home going through treatment taught her well on how to live alone, but it's still a hard adjustment for her. She says that she wants to FaceTime with him often and then remembers he's not in the cities.

I know The Lord will help my family through this and the pain of losing my dad will fade, but the memories thankfully will always be there. He was a special guy and always made me smile.

Wow....over a year?

Well, today was the first snowfall of the season. We were out in it, but I didn't think to take any pictures. I am not one to remember to take pictures, and I need to get better at that because I regret it later on. We spent much of the morning and early afternoon doing errands out in town. Our daughter was at babysitting training, so it was just our son with us. We stopped at the post office first to get the package to our orphan girls in Kenya sent out so hopefully they'll get it by Christmas. We were later this year than I had hoped so I'm praying it will get there on time and not be missing any items!

After that we headed over to Menards to get the laminate flooring for the main floor. It was snowing so hard when we got home with all 35 cases (almost 500 sq. ft. worth!) that we left them in the truck for a warmer, unsnowy day. We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed back out in our other vehicle to go to Best Buy and pick up our microwave. When we got home, my hubby took a bit of a nap before heading out early for a Husky hockey game in the cities. The roads were so bad it almost took him double the time to get there! Our daughter got home from her babysitting class shortly after he left.

This evening I have been getting a lot accomplished, too! I finished up my laundry in the new washer and dryer (we had them installed yesterday), and I showed our daughter how to wash clothes in the new machine. I am so thrilled with our new washer and dryer! They are working very well so far and I just love them. After that I made up some craft clay to make little buttons for the backing of our new chore system we will be implementing as soon as I get it all prepared. This is the idea I am working off from, and the only thing I need now is mod podge to affix the chores to the buttons and the metal magnetic panels for them to hang on. I expanded a bit more and am using color coding for different days and types of chores. If I remember when I'm finished I'll post the final product!

Now I am off to make some special cookies for our family meeting and fun night tomorrow night and get some stevia sweetened cranberries made. After that I'll hang out with the kids for a little bit before they head off to bed and then maybe spend some time on pinterest figuring out all my ideas for my dad's 70th birthday party coming up in December. Or crochet. Or do some reading. Or just go to bed....it's been a crazy day!

Amen.

I just noticed that I haven't written anything here in a month, so I started thinking back through May to realize that I cannot put into words all the changes that have happened in me during that time.

My writing interests were very dry over the last weeks. I didn't even write any articles for Examiner.com (I hope that I am still 'employed' there!), but I can see now that my focus on life has changed and again the good Lord has been working on my heart as I strive to be ever more like Him. Almost every morning over the last 5 months I have eagerly gone to Him and spent time with Him learning how to pray and learning from His Word more and more about Him. On Sunday mornings my heart yearns to worship Him at church (although health issues cause me to feel absolutely terrible while there) and to sit under the teaching of my pastor who has a fiery love for God that encourages my heart and makes me want to spend even more time with the Father.

As I have shared in previous posts that I have been reading more, I am finding my thirst for Christian books to be insatiable. I want to become more and more like Christ, and the more I read and the more I spend time with Him, the more I want! I find my hunger for the Lord to be so strange, yet so wonderful that I just can't describe it. I pray that my love for the Lord will be seen by all and that others will be encouraged to want the same thing, too. Break my heart, Father, for what breaks yours... Everything I am for your kingdom's cause...show me how to love like you have loved me. Amen.

Life...something to be thankful for....

It's been pretty quiet around here as of late. We had a very nice spring, and a lot of nice days to sit outside and read some great books. We even started digging a spot for our new vegetable garden, and it's coming along. We are about half-way done digging, but the weather has now turned rainy, cold, and windy, so we've had to put the rest on hold while we wait for it to warm up a bit.

The kids are doing well in their school work. We just finished the longest time span of five weeks before a break and the week off went very fast. We're now on our normal four-week stretch but after this we'll go down to three weeks for the summer months. In mid-August, we'll take three weeks off before we move up to the next grade for both of them. It will be interesting to see how that goes since we have only taken off three weeks once before and we were extremely busy during that time helping friends move, but this should be a little more relaxing so we'll have more time to get in each other's hair!

One of my favorite books that I just finished reading from the last grouping is The Forgotten God by Francis Chan. If you have not read this book, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy and make sure you have a nitch of time set aside every day to read it until you're done. It's a book I intend to read at least, oh....a dozen more times. I am still in the process of reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and Captivating by John and Stasi Eldridge. I have about 52 books in my wish list right now, so I think I'm going to need to get motivated if I'm going to read them all before I add a whole bunch more. It's kinda funny, but I used to hate reading. It was very difficult for me because I have a learning disability in reading comprehension and retention, but I have learned over the last several years how to work beyond it all and reading has now become one of my pastimes I really enjoy. I just thank God for that because without Him being in control of that I doubt if I would have ever picked up another book after college.

I am still writing for Examiner.com, but not as often as I'd like. I did pick up another examiner title, too, so now I am also the Minneapolis Natural Health Examiner. They've gotten very picky about articles being local, however, which makes it a bit difficult to always keep natural health local as well as debt examiner(my other title). My writing "well" as dried up a little because of that, and I don't write as much as I should be.

Well, I am off to spend an evening watching a movie with the kiddos. It's rainy outside and only 40 degrees, so not much else to do tonight!

More exciting news...

Yes, more exciting news! My daughter, who accepted Christ as her Savior back in January, has chosen to get baptized, and it will happen this Sunday! We are all very excited around here...not only will she get baptized, but a dear friend and her whole family as well! This friend has also asked me to help our pastor baptize her, and I feel so honored. I cried the day she asked me if I would, and I'll probably cry all of Sunday morning -- tears of happiness and joy. My hubby will help baptize our daughter, and we have invited many friends and family to come and be witness to her public profession of faith. It is going to be one awesome morning is all I can say! God is good!

My pastor's blog

Today I'd like to highlight my pastor's blog. His insight has always been encouraging if not convicting, and I enjoy checking in there often. You'll also find it over to the left and in my first grouping of blogs. It has been a joy to be under his teaching over the last year and a half, and I must say I have learned more in that time from him than I have during my whole Christian walk. Pastor Matthew deeply loves the Lord and he does not keep it hidden for anything! He also posts his weekly sermons on his blog. I guarantee you'll be blessed if you watch them.

New year outlook, one month in...

My brain seems to be on overdrive lately, but in a good way. I just wish the bleak, dreary days of winter wouldn't be so, well, bleak and dreary, making my S.A.D. seem not so, well, SAD. But I still have a positive outlook and waiting and watching for the first signs of spring that will happen in just a couple short months. To bide my time, I have many things I am working on to get more organized and feel like I have a handle on a few things.

Over the last couple of days, I've been working on my kids' homeschool lesson plans for the next nine months, and I'm about halfway through...it's at times stressful, but I am liking the feeling of having it all organized and done so I won't have to do it again until the fall. I'll work on the other half next week.

To help me from going stir crazy and fight off cabin fever, I've been snuggling up in blankets and doing a lot of reading over the last month, and just finished Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller. Before that I read Crazy Love by Francis Chan. Both outstanding books, and both very convicting. My heart and soul are thirsting for more God-glorifying books like these, ones that grow me and encourage me to be more like Him every day. Mr. Keller has opened my eyes to just what I value, and it wasn't what I thought it was. The Lord opened my eyes to see that there are many distractions in my day that keep me from Him, and I have been working to change that in my life so that I can be spending more time with God throughout my day...not because I am 'supposed' to, but because I want to.

I did also read another book during the last month that was a good read; Glenn Beck's Common Sense by Glenn Beck. I got it for a Christmas gift and it was quite thought provoking.

In my attempt to be reading a lot of books about getting out of debt, I just recently borrowed from our church library Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University CD's to listen to. I haven't started listening yet, but I hope to fit it in somewhere in my already busy days. There are 13 lessons, each about an hour long. That's a LOT of listening!

On the positive side, our debt picture is stabilizing, and we're starting to work our way from negative to positive. I have a spending plan in place and I am keeping track of every single penny that leaves (or comes into) our bank accounts. I am also preparing to sell a lot of homeschool books and other items on ebay within the next week or two. It will be nice to have that extra cash to put toward our everyday expenses so that we can focus on getting rid of debt. In a few months we will have a loan paid off that will help our debt reduction immensely and hoping to be completely debt free (barring no complications), including mortgage, by June 2015, Lord willing. In the meantime I've really tried to put a limit on our spending. We're eating from the pantry as much as possible this month since I have a nice amount sitting on the shelves and in the freezer, and hoping to eat out very minimally if at all. We did eat out the first of February, but we paid less than $1.50 for a meal for all four of us at Burger King with free kids meal coupons. The young man who waited on us was nice enough to let us adults have free kids meals, too! We splurged and I got an apple pie since I don't eat the fries and shared them with Jeff and the kids.

The only setbacks we've had so far this year is our dog Asia (standard poodle) had her ears act up again and had a yeast infection in one of them, and some appliances. Four of our appliances are acting up, but we're going to try to get the parts ourselves and see if we can fix them. It should save us about $150-200 to do it ourselves, and according to my brother, all of the problems are easily fixed...just need the parts. The vet visits and meds have been pretty spendy, so that has taken a nice chunk of change.

I am also still freelance writing to try to bring extra income in. Hopefully I can set a day aside next week to write several debt-related articles for examiner.com so all I have to do before I post them is one last edit. That would help out a lot so that I can feel less time crunches to get articles in.

Overall January hasn't been too bad. We did spend a little more in some areas than we wanted to, but we're working on doing better this month. I got a lot of reading in and it is helping prioritize things better, and I am starting to feel that February should be an okay month, and time to start planning for more spring and summer things like gardening and camping...ooooooh.........camping...... :-)

Wonderful news....

My daughter came to me tonight and asked me at what age I accepted Jesus into my heart. I told her I did when I was 31. She asked me if it would be okay if she beat me to it...my heart skipped a beat...did she mean now??? I asked her if that's what she meant...YES!!! SHE DID!!! We talked....we prayed....we cried. What a joyful day - knowing that she will be going to heaven too!

I have been silently praying since the moment she left the room that I can be a good discipler to her, and that my life can be even more Christ-like than before so she has a good role model. The song from Phillips, Craig, and Dean keeps running through my head now..."Lord I wanna be just like you, because he wants to be just like me, I wanna be a holy example for his innocent eyes to see...Help me be a living Bible Lord, that my little boy can read, I wanna be just like you, 'cuz he wants to be like me." I of course am singing with she in place of he, but I also pray, pray, pray, that my son will realize his need for the Savior as well.

What an awesome day! What a Savior! God is good, all the time.

Lurking on my own blog...

I apologize for not being around in a while. I've been here, but only to check up on other blogs, so yep, I've been lurking on my own blog! The holidays have kept me extremely busy, and I have just not had time to consider writing (other than for examiner.com, and even that's been limited).
We started back to school today after a nice three-week break, and the kids actually did pretty well. My son wanted to buck the system a little bit, but once he realized Momma wasn't going to budge he decided to do what I was asking. This evening he gets to play his dad's xbox360 while big sister and Dad go on a date. It's nice because it gives me a bit of breathing room, too, and I can catch up on a couple of things I've let go by the wayside.

Things are going alright here otherwise. I will try to update my health blog with the latest on me as there have been some developments on my longterm health issues, but the doctors are still trying to come up with a diagnosis. I've also been very busy updating our spending plan and preparing to upgrade our old Quicken to the 2010 version. I still am smart shopping and our storage room and freezers are looking good as well.

A fun thing my daughter and I just did before the new year is do the Pantene Beautiful Lengths for Cancer hair donation. I had 11 inches cut off, and she had 8. You can see the pic below. It's been taking a bit to get used to the shorter hair, but it was for a good cause, so more than worth it.

Life is never boring...

A couple of major things have happened in our household over the last few weeks. I've already talked about one of them...my new job, and that's been a lot of fun already. I have 3 articles published, and hoping to get in a pattern that I can be writing 4-6 articles a week. That is the hard part because between homeschooling, smart shopping preparation, smart shopping, chores, doctor appointments, and life in general I don't have a whole lot of time left. I'm hoping that once the holidays are over and there's a lot less going on in January I'll get myself into a pattern.

Anyway, other things that have been going at our house: first my son got sick with a cold, then my daughter, then they so lovingly shared it with me. During that same time I became VERY ill and had to have Jeff bring me to the ER at 4:30 in the morning a couple of weeks ago. I had nasty stomach cramping caused by something going on in my gut which caused other problems as well (I won't mention how really bad it was because to me it just sounds gross!). They did a lot of testing, but all the tests came back inconclusive. I still seem to be having some issues in my gut, but for the most part we're all back to healthy here.

Along with the new job and writing about debt reduction, these last few weeks (when I wasn't in bed sleeping due to my health issues) I have been putting together a plan for eliminating our debt. I am so excited as I work on it, and can't wait for us to start implementing it. I started some of it already, but we won't have everything in place and all the kinks worked out until after the holidays. How good it will feel to watch our debt amounts go down!

I cannot believe that we are already coming up on the holiday season. Christmas will be here before we know it. Next week I need to plan our homeschooling for the three weeks in December...we always do a lot of more fun-oriented things and a lot less bookwork during that time and the kids always look forward to it.

My new job

Here is where you'll find me at Examiner.com. So excited!

I got it! I got it!

I got the job! I get to do some freelance writing for www.examiner.com! The pay might not be much, but it will be worth every penny. I can't wait...it will be so exciting! I had to send in my pic and bio today, and then I go through some background checks and setting up 'my page'. I have the title "Debt Examiner", and my expertise will be in debt reduction. I thought it was perfect for all that I've been learning lately and trying to do to reduce our debt. It should be up and running with my first article by early next week! I'll be sure to post. :-)

Sigh of Relief

I just applied for my first online writing job! As excited as I am, I feel huge relief that my first article is written (that needed to be included with my application), and that the nervous jitters are now over with as well. It took me several hours and constant rewrites, but it is done, and I feel very good about it. Now the waiting part has come, however, and that could take up to a week! I am excited about the possibility of doing this kind of work. I think it will be rewarding, and the extra income will be really nice. I just hope they like my article and my resume is acceptable! I will be sitting on pins and needles until I hear from them...

Honey, I shrunk the grocery budget!

If you've been following my blog at all, you'll have noticed that I have been working on becoming a smart shopper. Since June I have been keeping track of any grocery/household purchases and set them up on a spreadsheet. I have great news! These are the percentages saved since June:

June: 28.43%
July: 40.46%
August: 45.84%
September: 49.57%

I am very excited about that! It went from very minimally saved to almost 50% savings in 4 months! I never would have dreamed I could cut our spending in half, let alone do it in such a short time.

Our next goal is to cut electrical usage. We've been doing a lot of things differently over the last couple of weeks already and hope to see a drop in our utility bill by the end of December. We've switched the majority of our lightbulbs over to LED and florescent, turned off all computers at night (we used to have 3 up and running 24 hours a day), and have been keeping lights off that we would typically leave on in the evening. I would love to hear other ways to save on electricity if you'd be willing to share!

I am still looking for ways to bring in income, and have been researching companies for at home work. Hopefully I will find something soon that will be a good fit.

Beginning the road to debt free...

I am extremely tired of seeing our debt. I want to know what it feels like to be debt free, and to know that we are not tethered to a bank or company because we owe them money! I also want to be a good steward of what God has so generously given us, so it's important for me to do all I can, but I am realizing that I have no idea how I can make income from home to help supplement so we can start paying down our debt faster. Smart shopping has been helping immensely - I am SOOOO thankful that I can help us save money this way, but I am convicted that we need to become debt free as soon as we possibly can, which means more income sooner. Herein lies my biggest problem, however! I am limited as to what I can do because health problems make it difficult for me to work outside the home at this time. So what am I to do? I don't like sewing, and I'm not a craft-type person. The most I can do is crochet granny squares, and that only gets you so far!

I would absolutely love if anyone who has work-from-home experience would share with me what they have done, so I could try to come up with some ideas of what I could possibly do. I would appreciate your input!

Make ahead party menu

I just threw a birthday bash for my honey, Jeff, who turned 40 last week. I was so excited about the menu...not only did I not have to buy anything full price (I used coupons and watched sales for everything!), but the whole menu was prepared a day in advance, so I didn't have to worry about a thing come the day of the party. I must say it went rather smoothly, and the guests had a great time! Below is the menu, and how I did it.

Bbq pork sandwiches - I bought 3 roasts ahead of time and froze them. On prep day I threw them all in crockpots and turned them on low to cook ALL day. I purposely start them out frozen because they seem to get a lot more moisture that way and never dry out. I've cooked them at refrigerated temp before and was never happy about the outcome. After they are done cooking and shredded, I added barbecue sauce and some of the juice I had taken out of it and chilled it for the night. The day of the party I put the crock back in the pot and turn it on low about 4 hours before the party.

German Potato Salad - I've always found that if German potato salad is made a day in advance and chilled, the vinegar and sugar do their job. Makes for better flavor when serving. This also needs to go in a crockpot and on low about 4 hours before.

Chicken salad - this was soooo easy to make up ahead of time. I just put an extra amount of mayo in because it always seems to dry out by the next day. It was perfect by party time.

Jello - All I had to do was spread some cool whip on top, and it was ready to go.

Rice krispie bars
O Henry Bars
Brownies
Veggie tray
Chips/dip
soda pop/bottled water
birthday cake/ice cream

All I had to do was plate the bars and put the chips in baskets before the party! It was so simple. Later on in the evening (since the party had started at 2 p.m.), we started a campfire in the backyard and I brought out hot dogs and buns and makings for s'mores. The hot dogs were a huge hit!

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Rummage sale...

This last weekend we had the biggest rummage sale we've ever had at our house. We had two other families put their unwanted things up for sale with us, and we were all amazed as to how many people were out rummage sale-ing on Friday. It was busy ALL day. By Saturday evening there wasn't much left to go through and figure out what we wanted to do - craigslist, ebay, used bookstore, keep, donate. Each pile was relatively small, which was a great feeling, because we had had a LOT to sell! I was even more excited about what our garage looks like now after all of our unwanted stuff is gone! We even have room inside our garage for our grill, which used to sit on our front stoop - now I can put a chair there and maybe some plants to enjoy!

Today I am off to getting caught up on household chores and getting a schedule plan done for the kids' school. We have been taking a break now since the first week of August, and that's the longest the kids have had time off in several years since we started doing year-round homeschool. They've enjoyed the time off while we helped our friends move and get resettled and finished the rummage sale, but I think we're all just about ready for some normalcy around here. I can't believe our summer is just about gone, however! One more camping trip and then it's time to shut down the camper for the winter...oh to start dreaming already of next year's trips!

Everything

I wanted to share this video today. I have seen it several times and every time it makes me cry. I hope you enjoy it. It's by Lifehouse, called Everything.