My sister left for Washington on Saturday and while we greatly miss her I mist confess I am truly enjoying having a room now! We have all the children in here with us and a bathroom. We are spending lots of time up here together and it makes it easy to relax. Lesson learned? If you live with people you need to make sure they have the room for it because things can become strained especially when you need a cool down period or space and there is no where to go. We did have the camper but once you put the kids in there with us we might as well have stayed where we were because it was not relaxing. Once again I am happy to have a room! When get a room when we move to NC too except only Pumpkin will be in there with us so that will be nice. I can't wait to get started. Ps we are now moving on the 16th of October so only nine more days yeay and yikes at the same time!

Randomness leading to character

It's been a long tough year for us as some of you know. I am really excited because of the move. I am hoping we will get to start over and refresh ourselves. Moving brings about all sorts of new challenges though especially when your moving two combined households. Money is always the number one thing to begin the arguing. Who is spending what where and who spent the most or saved the most. It can become quite draining. Money as the root of all evil? I would say it's quite true. Whether it be lack of, want of, or having to much it all causes problems. I would like to know why we went with money and did away with bartering. It seems so much better when I look back. All I would need is a trade of some sort and I could barter it out and feed and clothe my family. Yes times were hard but I also think that they understood that and helped each other a lot more back then than they do now. All my struggles that I encounter in my life I hope God uses to touch someone else and show them that they are not alone and no one is perfect. I know I'm jumping around here but we'll just have to call this post random thoughts of an over worked mind :). I really feel overworked where my head is considered. I barely have time for processing and so I end up doing it in my sleep or rather when I am suppose to be sleeping. I haven't had a good night sleep in about a week now.

I haven't been using a very nice tone in about a year now. Sometimes I feel like my old angst filled self from high school that I had thought was ling gone. I realize now that my old self is just me being overwhelmed and not understood. I get that way when I feel like nothing I do is ever good enough or seen and when my feelings are not validated no matter how right or wrong they are. When I get this way I have found that I begin to treat other people like how I feel. Since I now realize this I have been trying to change it. There is a verse I read about being slow to speak and quick to listen and it really is something I need to work on because when I feel unheard I stop listening as well and the arguing starts not very biblical huh? There is also the one about being slow to anger yes I need to really practice this one. Living with others can really tax our reserves of all our good qualities and values. Some examples kindness, goodness, patience, good listener, loving, caring, hard working, speaking uplifting words, etc. All things I need more practice in. I have often wondered why I ended up living here with my parents and siblings and why my husband became ill all to no avail. I didn't need an answer what I was really looking for was something to work towards or keep my spirit up well I have finally found it...ready for my answer...ok I already told you in many more words but it's character training! Yep that's it. How can I train the characte of my children if I am so faulty? Yes I will always be faulty because only God is perfect but I should always dhow improvement and be willing to admit when I have done wrong. I want my children to be men of honor and they can't do that without having good character and they can't get that without a good example phew. Ok so here I am completely messed up and imperfect and here I go to reach for my goal because with God as my lamp on my path I cannot fail.

Ok so here is my completely random mixed up post typed up on my iPod while trying to get the children to nap lol. I hope it atleast helps one person out there one day.

North Carolina

So some interesting news we are moving to North Carolina!!  Shocking for us for sure.  It all began last Sunday my brother was taking a shower and God spoke to him....what that sounds kooky?  Well it's the truth.  He felt that God was telling him that the family needed to move to North Carolina...he also told my brother to read John chapters 4 and 5.  We went to church without him saying a word about NC but telling us about the chapters he read.  The sermon that morning was on John chapter 4 and 5....weird we all know.  Josh has never talked about God telling him things before this is all after he went to a christian camp for a week and it was there that God began the work in him and began telling him what He wanted with Josh's life.  So after church Josh announced to my family that they were to move to NC.  It was the first state that my family heard and were open too.  For the past couple of weeks they were talking about moving but nothing at all appealed to them and they didn't act on anything.  My mom said 'really North Carolina?  Hmm'  We began researching it and looking at the houses, jobs, areas, crime, and weather.  It all looked so appealing beside what did they have to lose?  The next day my mom asked my husband what we planned on doing since we live with them.  I said I don't know we'll figure something out.  It was on Tuesday that my mom asked if we were going to come with them or not and my husband said yes.  We hadn't really talked about it together at all.  I had thought for sure he would say no as a California born and raised never really left the state except to WA and Ne so yeah I was surprised.  The next few days were me asking him over and over if he was sure and he said yes there was nothing to hold him back and maybe there we could finally improve on our lives.  So my mom told my dad and he told his boss and the date was set for Dec 3rd to later be moved down to Nov 4.  On Thursday we went and cleaned out our storage it took us all day we didn't get home until after midnight but we were done and down to about 1/3 the stuff we had before we began.  The next day we began packing our house....why you ask?  Because someone was already interested in coming to look at it and wanted to be here on Monday....fast  I know.  So within those few days we had my families house packed.   All thats left here is the basics of everyday life and enough homeschooling stuff for the two boys for the next two months....the problem is now we don't really know what to do with ourselves....the house stays pretty clean....hmmmm.   Yes so now we have two months and not much to do lol.  Anyways a man came and looked at our house and loved it....only problem was he was one man and there is a lot of house here.  He couldn't believe that 12 people live here even though the realtor kept telling him it was the truth.  He was going to ask his brother to come live with him here if he got the house and we are still waiting to find out what is going to happen with that.  Meanwhile we are waiting for more potential buyers and trying to find homes for our animals (anyone near us need to cute outdoor cats?  Or a momma goat?  Or a purebred male Shitzu?  How about to horses?  One is older and needs his teeth floated the other is a bout 12)  Anyways....I am so excited and although I was nervous as a little dog at first I am now calm and excited....can we move already?

This post is written with just some quick thoughts on the loss of my uncles I did not write to deeply because I had written out a great and long post just after the funeral and it was erased never to be seen again.  I also believe that most of a funerals going ons are private and not for display but I wanted to acknowledge the loss and my feelings see here is my quick run down of my loss.

I lost my Uncle Dean and it was awful.  I went to Michigan to his funeral at the end of June.  I was a three day race to get there before the funeral.  We stopped one night and slept for three hours the next night we slept for one and then we were off again.  We arrived exhausted and yet still ready to see our family.  It was an emotion roller coaster ride.  I was so happy to be seeing my family that I hadn't seen in so long and yet so sad to have to say good bye to my uncle who was so young.  He was only 54.  This was all coming on the heels of losing my other Uncle Dean who died in a motorcycle crash a few years ago.  I wasn't able to go to his funeral because of money and I have regretted it ever since.  I felt the holes as I looked about my family and in a depressed manner wondered at who would be gone before I got to see them again.  Although I know that our family has not always gotten along with each other or seen eye to eye on lots of things I do know that I love them and I do want to spend some more time with them.  I looked at all my cousins and aunts children and wished that I knew them and felt comfortable around them.  When I say roller coaster that's what I mean.  There didn't seem to be a let up of emotional changes.  The actual funeral was the worst I could not stop crying all I could think of was what it was doing to his family and what they were all going to do.  You can't fill a whole that's as big as a family member it'll always be there even when the edges get softer it's still there.  I watched my cousins children sob and cried for them too.  They are going to miss their grandpa and previously I had never really thought to much on how it would affect them I should have.  The loss of both of my uncle's is not a small one they were great men and deeply loved.  I was blessed for having had them while I did and wished that I could have spent more time with them.  May you both rest in peace and I hope to see you on the other side.

A Wonderful Habit to Form

I am in love with this idea please click the link and enjoy...I love her blog also follow her while your there I don't believe you will be disappointed I have never been :)

A holy Experience

Updates and Our New Diet

For some you know that my husband became ill and was unable to return to work.  We went to an alternative doctor that said he was toxic and vitamin deficient.  So we went on a strict diet, yes the whole family if it's healthy for one then it's healthy for all I do not want my children toxic by the time they are grown, and began buying special vitamins.  The specialness is just that they are vitamins pulled from real food sources not made up by chemists.  The results?  He is much better and looking for a job so I can say this stuff is real!  I can't share in the details because it is my husbands illness and not my own but it is all true your diet affects every part of you.  Eating is not just to not be hungry or get a few vitamins it is essential to our bodies and overall health.  So that being said now I'd like to share with you some of our adventures in cooking with a few of our cheats oops (hey it was Easter).  Hopefully by the time the next holidays come along I will have learned enough about substitutions that we can still have fun with food and keep it healthy.  (I will be cheating with stuffing though!  It's my fave.)

The diet we are on is pretty simple word wise we are avoiding gluten, dairy except for goat things and butter, dyes, preservatives, soy, and most processed foods.  Now that the words are out there you can see that it's a little harder to think of what foods that leaves us with especially with three small children so now I will tell you what I have switched to eating and yes there are still some processed foods because I am busy so until I figure this all out they will have to stay.  We first switched our milk over to rice milk, hemp milk, and almond milk which is our favorite the least favorite being hemp milk.  Mr A is allergic to rice milk because they have barley in it and he is super allergic to barley.  They longer put it on the carton because the amount in it is so small they say it doesn't need to be labeled...I disagree because my son gets so sick on it within minutes he looks like he has been sick for a long time.  Foods should have everything labeled on it that's my opinion.  The one thing the children really miss is cheese.  We have been buying goat cheese and giving them that but they still miss the other one quite a bit and to be honest we adults do too we were big cheese people.  I bought some gluten-free flour mix from Bob's Red Mill and we use that to make pancakes which we all like and thickening soups.  We even made a chicken dumpling soup with some gluten-free Bisquick the verdict was good.  We were a little confused on what to do with lunches.  The doctor told us to make extra dinner and eat that but with so many people that is extremely hard to do around here so I came up with a new plan.  We bought the stuff to make sushi.  I have some nori wraps, brown rice, salt, and fish we roll it up and slice it and we are good to go.  This works really well for my sons baseball games and practices too because they are always around dinner and lunch times (what were they thinking?  Hungry boys trying to focus and play sports?)  My boys all love these I still need to find something that would replace the soy sauce so if you have any ideas I would love to hear them!  Recently my family has been eating bread with their soups and my boys were drooling so I had to find them something they could eat at the same time so we bought some brown rice bread and we really like it.  It's expensive to me at $3.99 a loaf and it's so small so it's only for those moments when they are seeing everyone else eating bread.  A big thing in our family are burritos but we couldn't eat tortillas anymore so I found some yep brown rice tortillas!  They don't seem to roll up well even when they are warmed up but it satisfies the need to have one and doesn't taste bad either.  I also found a homemade recipe for refried beans that I made and it passed with flying colors.  We separated the beans and froze them so that we could have some on hand for when we don't have anything for lunch or don't have the time to make dinner.  I have been buying a lot of different vegetables for us to try too because there are so many out there beyond the usual and I have never tried them.  We have had rainbow chard's, turnips, parsnips, rutabaga, collard greens, mustard greens, and a  Chinese radish called something like a diakon.  Most of these we have actually really liked.  We did not like the mustard greens or the diakon although I thought that the diakon wasn't all that bad even though I hate radishes.  We have also for those emergency feeding moments bought some rice noodles of varying types.  Most of those have also proven themselves to be quite tasty.

Those are all the changed foods I can think of right now.  It's been a challenge to come up with dinners on some night there for awhile we were living on mostly rice which with their high glycemic index value, isn't all that good for you either.  I am hoping that as things go we get even more creative and come up with some great meals. 

During the last month Pumpkin came down with bronchitis again and we had to take him to the hospital.  A few days after that he came down with a stomach flu and could not even keep a sip of water down so we took him back into the ER at 8pm.  We did not get out of there until 3:30 am!  When we got out to our car exhausted with a sick 2 year old who at least was no longer throwing up because they gave him some nausea medicine because he was dehydrated, our car would not start!  It wouldn't even turn over, nothing.  We called Hubby's brother because he's the one that figured out last time what was wrong with our tricky, finicky car.  He tried to talk us through it but we couldn't find the wires he was talking about.  At four I took Pumpkin back in and sat in the Er with a blanket they gave me.  At four thirty Hubby came in to tell me he couldn't fix it and I texted a friend of mine who lives in that city (an hour from home) but there was no answer so we went back to the car to sleep.  At about five thirty I called my mom but she had to take kids to school 45 min's in the other direction so she couldn't help either.  It was around eight am that my friend called and she came with breakfast for us and around ten my father in law showed up and took us to get Pumpkins med and then home.  He went back with Hubby to fix the car and they came back later in the day with it working again yeay.  Apparently the starter is was was broken this time.  It made for a long night and an even longer day.  A few days later I got the flu and so did Mr. A.  The next week Hubby got it the only one who didn't is Monkey thank goodness.  I am so glad to be better and have the children better I can't even tell you enough! 

Mr. A's last day of official school is this week.  Official because he still will be doing some schooling through the summer in math and reading he's a little behind in those areas.  He's pretty excited though.  On Friday he gets to have a pool party with other homeschoolers in our area and Monkey is pretty happy to be swimming finally.

Yesterday I worked in the roses because they have been neglected just like this blog only they are growing wildly out of control!  I found some really beautiful roses and put some in the vases.  There were also a lot of dead roses and they looked like they would have been beautiful had they not been left to there own devices.

Monkey cuddling with George in the morning

Mr A measuring for math

Pumpkin helping me cook in the messy kitchen

Mountains in the front yard after it snowed

A lizard Monkey caught

Mr A's math homework

Mr A doing math

a veggie dish I cooked

Monkey

Monkey

some tadpoles we found

The moon one night (I love my camera!)

a moth we found on our front porch area

some chard greens

the chard stems

Aren't they pretty?

A soup I made yummy

the chard's cooking

My boys at the Easter egg hunt decorating sugar cookies

Our Easter Barbecue

some carrots we soaked in water and then juiced for Easter

Our hard boiled eggs to dye

the dough for our Resurrection Bread

the cinnamon and sugar mix for the bread

the finished Resurrection bread see how the marshmallow is mostly gone

The boys with their eggs

Pumpkin with his

Mr A made a snack for his brothers which they gobbled up

Pumpkin loves his new bike since his old hand me down one broke

cooking up some gluten free pancakes

This is the monster one lol I'm not an artist

A sunset near our home we caught it coming home from baseball one day

Pumpkin sleeping on his daddy

A very cool pic of the moon one night

My brother looking very handsome for his prom I can't believe he's gotten so old!

My mothers bed on Mother's day she says she needs a bigger bed for next year lol

A bird on our clothes line

a pretty rose from our garden

a smoothie I made

the simple ingredients to my smoothie

plus the milk we used and that's it

the sky in our front yard

Pumpkin saying the Pledge of Allegiance it was his turn to hold the flag

Mr A has been making me a heart with an arrow on it all over the place how cute

We went to a baby shower for rescue animals and that's what some of the following photos are about this one is of Bella the Red fox

This is Snow.  Did you know that the color of a birds wings are actually their strength?  With out that color their wings are too weak.

This is Skunkie

I don't remember this ones name but he's a Gopher Snake

This is Curly he's a barn owl I think he's so pretty!

Monkey got Oreo the snake on his face...I think the artist is not a very good one so below the pic of Oreo

See he is not blue lol

Mr A asked for Fire on his face...he got the word lol

Pumpkin got a snake too

Isn't this one pretty too

Here is Hopper he is a Raven...did you know that Ravens can say words?  I did not.  He says 'whats up' and a few others

A hawk

Fizzle the Ground Squirrel

   

 

A tired Pumpkin

These next ones are of our garden that we worked in yesterday

I am so glad to be back and hopefully things will not get crazy around here again!  At least for awhile.  I hope you all are doing great!