Oh, how I love blogging!!

Ok…I have to ck out all your wonderful blog posts from yesterday  as my modem decided to drop its drivers and my son used the back-up disk as a hockey puck….but that isn’t what is so WOW about today.

My twin girls LLOOOOOOVE Hilda Van Stockum books…you know, like the Mitchels Five for Victory…etc?  Well, in May I wrote about it here:
Oh for the love of…

How would you feel if you went to her official site and found this?: http://hildavanstockum.com/books.asp

Did I tell you how much I loooove blogging?!!  My dds only wish they could have told her how much they loved her books.  This beloved author died on All Saints Day…she is in our prayers…may she rest in peace!  Here is a wonderful tribute to her.  Read even more about her here.  (I won’t even comment on this article as there is so much to discover about her…oh just READ it!!)  I LOVE that she lived the Liturgical Year!  We are trying hard to do that here too!! 

Thank you, God for sharing this precious soul with us to brighten our hearts!  She certainly colored God all through the world around her!  What a GIFT she is!

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Overheard in the Kitchen

DD#2(12) is mixing pumpkin bread.
Sunshine Boy(3), all smiles,  climbs up on 2 grain buckets and happily observes her every move.

Sunshine Boy…can I ask a question?
Dd#2 …Sure!  What do you want to know?
Sunshine Boy…can I spit in the bowl?
Dd#2  Umm…eew?  Why would you want to do that?
Look at it this way,  Spit is special and it doesn’t go in our food, or on people or in the house.
Sunshine boy….Spit isn’t special.  It’s just spit!

Child’s Prayer
Danny Hahlbohm

I find boys to be very interesting creatures.  I never know what to expect!

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Thanksgiving Tree

We are a bit late in posting this because of being sick…but!  We wanted to share our virtue theme of Thankfulness!  Following Karen’s lead we made our own Thanksgiving tree!  (Sorry no pics…someday that darned camera will behave for me!!)

Each child cut out his/her hand prints in their favorite fall color and wrote their names on them…(for the branches) and then made leaves the same color as their hand prints and they wrote on them the things they were most thankful for.  While I was hanging up the tree trunk, ds(3) came skipping along and chimed in…"Mommy!  You are making a tree?!  That is soo happy!!" 

Among the selections:
I am thankful….

• That my tooth finally came out last night!
• For Mommy teaching me
• For God’s rules telling us what NOT to do…like pinching like THIS and hitting like zap! and taking someones toy! Yeah…if He didn’t make them, THAT would be baaaad!!(from  3yo ds)
• For Mommy making me learn (yikes!)
• For the accident with my arm because I am more conscious of being modest.(12yo twin #2)
  
• Race cars (7yods)
• Good books
• Christmas lists!
• For funny faces and sound effects and happy feet (6yodd and 3yods)
  

 

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Oh, how I can relate!

I love the Domestic Church comics found here!

We pray the family rosary and I know as they say perfection is God’s business….our’s is just the trying…?

HT: to Julie!

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Oh the Glories of GOOD Coconut Oil!!

In my research for better living, I have come across some great information on Coconut Oil.  Here are some articles on the glories of using it!  I know some people that will give up everything in order to keep it in their diets.  There was one elderly gentleman in particular who told me that he has a higher quality of life since using it.  It HAS to be a good quality one though.  I love patronizing Wildernessfamilynaturals.com for the centerfuged oil.  We buy in bulk and it lasts for awhile and it has a long shelf life.  We eat it raw for maximum benefits starting at 1tsp at first and working our way up to 1tlbs for the kids per day.   We also use Palm Oil.

Pure Virgin Coconut Oil
Cocoounut Support for Health in the 21st Century
Why Coconut Oil has a bad rep
Nutritional and Health Aspects of Coconut Oil
Coconut Oil a food filled with Good Health Benefits
Quality Fat not low-fat is the secret to weight loss

Certified Organic Coconut Oil
Coconut Oil Resources

 

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Life at the Funny Farm

Note to self:
Be careful what you tell large motor boy(7) to do unsupervised.  hmmm…do you think a pressured garden hose and some soap are a recipe for disaster?  I mean…i just wanted him to rinse out the shop vac quickly.  How long do you think it will take that half-filled bottle of dish washing detergent to stop foaming up and running off down the sidewalk to the corner?  Looks like lots and lots of fluffy white snow…  The shop vac has never been so clean!  I think my patio will be foaming till April! 

And the other thing…
A bubble bath..   
in the yard … 
..in NOVEMBER?!

Creativity at its finest (says this ds)!

I know God has something great worked out for this boy and …

BOY! I can’t wait to see this kid’s kids!!!

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Looking for the Beauty in the Little things

One pudgy toddler finger in my cheek and in the twinkling of her little eyes my dd pronounced the name "Mop"
The other pudgy toddler finger in her cheek and in the twinkling of her little eyes my dd pronounced the name "Me"
With one set of toddler arms wrapped around my neck, she pronounced "Ah luf u Mop!", and my heart grew.
So I am a Mop?!  I always likened myself to Our Lady’s Broom as St. Bernadette once called herself.

"a broom which Our Lady used, but now I have been put back in my corner."

Our Lady’s Mop perhaps?  hmmmm… well…that sure would explain a lot! Life is a bit messy…isn’t it? 

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The beginning of a diary of a dieting family!

It has been so long since I posted that I almost don’t know how…LOL!  We have been going round and round with illness here and just when I thought we were all healthy again …here comes a cold.  I pray I am immune THIS time!

I am about to embark on a brand new adventure.  My fall house cleaning projects have taken an inward turn.  I am sweeping out the inside of my family now…dusting out all that doesn’t belong so that the goodness in them can shine.  What in the world am I talking about?!  Well, my entire family is going on an anti-Candida diet and some of the dc are going to be on a special and safe regime to rid their bodies of heavy metals.  I can’t tell you how happy I am to do this…and I mean that.  My one son has been showing signs of a vaccine reaction for years and I never knew I could actually do something to help him.  That vaccine that he had at the age of 3 has been holding him prisioner for years.  It has gotten in the way of his understanding of things.  Now I know better.  This new diet is a direct answer to prayer and I feel so empowered to do good things for and with him.  I was told that his weight gain of late, and his inability to lose it goes hand in had with the Mercury that is in his system so as he loses the Candida, it will also help him with the Mercury and the protocol that we are using for that.   

Please keep us in your prayers.  I  know that I am very excited to be able to do this, but I am working on the practical side of the house, the lists of food and how to use them efficiently as well as what kinds of menus to concoct.  We will be eating a lot of raw foods as part of this diet too.  I am even going to dust off that dehydrator that is in my basement and experiment with some "raw cookie" recipes that were handed to me.  I never used the darn thing but I have always wanted to know how, especially as I moved that box from one end of the basement to the other…lol

Contrary to the popular joke, the root word of diet is not ‘die’…haha  We want to put LIVING food into our bodies so we can do greater things.  When the body is out of balance, there is more illness and more moodiness and slower response times to the call of God in the heart.  I want to let Jesus in our hearts in every way…holding nothing back.  The time we have here together is too short, the moments too few.  I want to get the most out of each shared moment.  I want to live fully and deliberately.  The thing that is inspiring me is that this is all a deliberate act of love.  It is hard.  Change is hard especially during the Holidays.  When things like this are done with love I know that we will see great things happen in just the trying of it.   I kinda hesitate to post about any of this, but if it helps even one other person out there, that would be such a blessing.

So, stay tuned to the diary of a dieting family.  We are all doing it together.  Maybe this extra baby weight will finally depart from my body..LOL…here’s hoping!

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When Life Hands You Lemons…

Well, I knew this wouldn’t last…

…
The washing machine died…
 

It died while I was soaking diapers. 

Very dirty diapers….
It is leaking out of the bottom and it won’t go on at all….

Can’t drain it,
Can’t spin that icky water out… 

What is that saying about God shining through our weaknesses?

I would love to see His shining face in the chrome of a brand new extra large capacity washer.  A large hotel model would be great…how about 2 of them?  Heck, while He is at it why not throw in a new dryer too?  And if He gets a bulk discount, maybe he can get me a new fridge?   AAAAnd if He really wants to make me giddy with joy, we can remodel the whole house! But hey!  I am flexible!  We can get a whole new house…a bigger one! 

See, a broken washer gets my dh nothing but trouble!

…so we better get a new washer fast!

Well!  It doesn’t hurt to ask impossible things from God!  Right?! ;o)

Please pray for us to find the means of paying for a new washer….sigh!  Sometimes I think these things happen so we can watch God do His work without us getting in the way…I mean, there is no way we can claim credit for it! 

~Motherhood~  It is NOT for the faint of heart!  ..LOL

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Poetic Fridays

My children love to memorize poetry.  For years to come I know that our favorites will include poetry from Robert Lewis Stevenson because we started with him.  He got us hooked on the beautiful rythmic beauty that poetry possesses and the sweet artful images that are contained in each line.  The first time I picked up a copy of his work, A Child’s Garden of Verses,  I was afraid to read it aloud.  I mean, what IF I did it WRONG?!! LOL…  Now I am afraid how empty our lives would be if I didn’t share the music of poetry with the dc!  Boy!  Have I come a long way or what?!

It is funny how the things we do influence others.  I know that when my children push my grandchildren on the swing they will be chanting as we do the words to his poem The Swing.  I feel so good inside that I was able to make it such a regular part of life that we gravitate to it like a sweet song or a delicious dessert…it holds much for us to discover and re-discover  as we grow and life’s experiences change our outlook on things…It is kinda a way that we measure the passage of time now…time that is passing waay too quickly as it is!  What few days we have to hold little children and snuggle with them over such things.  I love the fact that these fleeting moments are blessed with things that are truely living like poetry.

Today we went to a fellow homeschoolers home for poetry and book sharing day.  We gather in their diningroom with a good group of our friends and the children both young and old share their favorite books and poetry with each other.  For my kids, it is a way to show off, socialize and discover that sharing what we have loved here is a wonderful experience.  It is so much fun to find out what kind of poetry and books motivate others…in it we find many new persepectives.  They truly move each other to reach for more, reach higher in their appreciation of some of the finer arts.  I mean, I saw the look on my ds’s(7) face as he watched an older friend that was 12 recite a piece of Shakespeare.  My son had a look of the deepest respect for his friend and Mr Shakespeare too.  His friend, without knowing it just lit a fire in my son to dig a little deeper…to find out what kind of magic Shakespeare must posess to make another older boy who he respects want to read and share Shakespeare with others.  …"you know Mom, I don’t think we discuss Shakespeare nearly enough.  I think you need to make it more of a priority" …LOL!  The love of  living things is very contageous!

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