I love that girl.

Here is just one of the MANY lists, my sweet girl writes. When I say lists, I mean, if we have a job to do, she first sits down and writes a list of things before she can do the job. If I say we need something from the store, she writes a list. If she wants to teach little "J" something, she writes him a list of things to learn. In this case I was feeling some pain in my left side (I get it often, but not usually that bad), so she made a list of my symptoms and a list of her "recommendations". TOO CUTE!!! She came up with all of it completely on her own.

A post on all things personal

OK, just an FYI this post may be filled with TMI. For those of you who may not know, that stands for TOO MUCH INFORMATION. If you are looking for a fun post on homeschooling go to Raisingolives.com, or posts on great adventures in traveling across the states go to blogginbridget.blogspot.com, and if you love learning more about scripture and theology, and creation, Celee has some awesome posts lately on that at http://miscellaneousmusings-x.blogspot.com/. But alas, today I only have my little dilemmas and small revelations that God has given me about some personal things I have been going through lately, so if you are interested, here goes.

Update on growing our family. No,I am still not pregnant. I will talk further on my thoughts on that in a bit. But for now I would love to share with you that we had our first homestudy visit last night. The "homestudy" is the next step in our process towards adoption. It is kind of a scary step in the sense that a person comes into your home, asks you a TON of personal questions, judges your answers, inspects your home, investigates your background, your history, your family, your friends, and basically just freaks you out a little bit. At least that's what I had been told. Our lady who is doing our homestudy however, was awesome! I had heard horror stories on the homestudy people being aloof and taking up to a year to get the work done. I don't think that will be the case with her. She was efficient, fast moving, kind, personable, and I am almost certain a Christian. So we have one more homestudy visit left, and 27 hours of classes to go. Either way, we are starting, and that is exciting.

How I feel about not being able to conceive for the past year and a half. I think I feel differently every month actually. The first few months of trying, were disappointing, the next few months of no conception was when I foolishly allowed myself to become bitter. The few months after that I was sad and disappointed, almost to the point of depression and still held on to a bit of the bitterness. Now I think I am at a point that I need to be in. A point of honesty, with myself, and with God. A point of forgiveness with myself and my husband for what we had done. No more bitterness, no more anger. The greatest part of all though is that I am at a point were I truly realize the power and sovereignty of God, and rest in that. I can write a whole post on just the subject of what God is revealing to me about decisions, consequences, grace, forgiveness, and how He makes ALL things new again. But for now, I will just say, this is where I am at. I love Him, and I love my family. Yet still I grieve for the opportunity to have a child within my womb. I probably always will.

Physical issues (this it the TMI part). I had an ovary removed and year and a half ago due to a large dermoid cyst on my right ovary. Since then things have gone a little down hill. Within the last 7 months my hair is changing, my cycles are changing, my sleep is changing, even my skin is changing. I have been spotting before my cycles now for 6 months. As of this last cycle, I am now spotting before and AFTER my cycle (see I told you this may be more than you wanted to know about me :) On top of all of that, for the last 3 weeks I have woken up EVERY night drenched in sweat (in the middle of winter, may I remind you). I am 28 and having HOT FLASHES PEOPLE!! So I went to my primary care physician, and told her what was going on. Two things were discussed, both of which I already suspected. My thyroid possibly being out of whack, and the possiblity that I am going through perimenopause. Are you shouting at your computer "wait Valerie, you are only 28, its impossible to go through menopause that early!". Actually it has been known to happen to women who have had an ovary removed. It usually happens within the first two years. Which is exactly where I am at. Thyroid is another possibility and would explain a lot. Anyhow, my doc sent me to the lab to do blood work. She ran tests to check hormone levels and thyroid. Both came back normal. This should comfort me, right? No. Unfortunately for myself I sort have a sick addiction to self diagnosing sites like WebMD. I have learned that even if you are in perimenopause (perimenopause meaning you are starting menopause, but not fully in Menopause) your hormone levels will stay "normal" on tests. They will only register "abnormal" when you are IN menopause. So no comfort with that at all. As far as the Thyroid is concerned, unfortunately I have been told by several people with thyroid issues that it is incredibly hard to pin point your exact problems with thyroid. So I sort of feel back as square one. I am OK though. I hate that things are going a little wacky with me physically, and the thought of my one precious ovary shriveling up at the age of 28 makes me want to crawl in bed and cry. But at the end of the day, this is my life. What will I make of it? Will sit around depressed over things I cannot change? Certainly not. Will I have remorse for what I have done (Jake and I deciding to get he vasectomy)? Always. But for now, I will praise my God, that He has given me so much that I do not deserve already. I am reaping SOME consequences of my decisions, but not near as many as I could have. God has been gracious and merciful to me. He has always bestowed such great blessings on me. So do I doubt Him now that He is not giving me what I want? No. I did for a while, but not now. I am learning so much about this great God I serve. So for now, I leave you with my personal issues, of life, learning, hot flashes and periods.
Oh please do come again after this post! :)
p.s. if you are a doctor or nurse (or have gone through this) please post some info for me! I am always on the lookout for free advice!

GREAT DEAL!!

Are you like me and have hundreds of digital prints sitting in your computer and NOT in a photo album or scrapbook???? Well today I think I have used one of THE best deals ever for prints. BUT it expires TODAY!!!! So go to www.shutterfly.com sign up (its free) upload your prints (do a lot of them) and then when you got to checkout go to the coupon code box and put in "75free" (without the quotation marks). It will then give you 75 of your prints for FREE!! That is not all, after that coupon code has applied, then go to that same coupon code box and put in "shipprints" and it will take off the $9.99 charge for shipping. So not only are you getting 75 FREE prints, but also FREE shipping! you just can't beat that. Also shutterfly is always free to use. There is no minimum amount to use, but obviously use at least 75 so you can get them all free. I uploaded 155 and ordered them. I got 75 of them free and free shipping, so my total for 155 pictures delivered to my door is a whopping 12 dollars! hurry up!!!
hope you guys check this before it expires, I would have warned you sooner, but I just got to some of my old emails that have been waiting there lonely in my inbox to be checked. :)

making bread

I am not a baker. Let's just open this up honestly. My Mom and Sister can attest to that. While I may be able (finally) to whip up a pretty good meal, baking is where I severely lack know how. I read a cook book and the directions make sense. If they don't make sense then I wing it and it usually comes out pretty darn good. A recipe on baking however reads like something in my sisters insane "bio-something-or-other" text books. The funny thing is though in baking, you just can't "wing-it". Things don't come out quite the same if you don't knead the full "20" times, or if you add just a pinch more or less of this or that. However, the other day, was truly a miracle. It took an ice storm penning me up in the house for days and a little bit of begging from my kids, but I did it. I Baked. I Baked lots actually. And they didn't turn out half bad :) Well to be honest the bread was a little on the heavy "dough-y" side, but there were yummy. I wont even attempt to explain how bad the molasses bread turned out, so lets not even go there(I will just say I added a little more or less of this or that). But at least we had fresh baked warm bread and I received bookoo amounts of "mommy brownie points" from the kiddos.

ICE STORM!

Check out our crazy ice storm. no fun. These are pictures of our trees at our rental. The one that is completely split is in our neighbors yard, right next to our house. The other picture is of our GI-NORMOUS tree in our front yard. It is lingering above our roof and cars, so we are kind of on pins and needles. Every creak makes us jump. We hear a lot of those too because trees are breaking all over the place. Have I mentioned that I cannot wait until Spring???
OK now I am off to listen to my handsome hubby play his guitar---rarrrrrrr (that rarrrr was my attempt to make the sexy growling sound...ha)

Go girl!

I am loving this new stage!!!!! This is Ireland making herself an egg "McMuffin" for breakfast. We have sort of become health freaks recently so we don't go to McDonalds, but try as we might, we can't let go of the egg McMuffin. So this is Ireland's version of it. Its an organic wheat English muffin, with a farm fresh egg (that we actually pick up from a farm) topped with a little cheddar cheese and some all natural organic strawberry jam. YUMM!
When I posted last week about my girl starting to cook, I thought "Oh how cute, this is going to be fun". Now I realize this is more than fun.
This leads me to another subject. The subject being that of how to we raise good adults? These big girl steps that Ireland is taking are a symbol that I no longer have a kid to "train", I have a young girl to raise into a Woman. Its crazy how that sort of freaks me out. Not because my daughter is getting older (although that does make me sad) but because there is so much more responsibility in raising Godly, sweet, selfless, women, then to teach a little child to obey. To teach my children to obey was a constant battle of being consistent, delving out spankings, and lots of prayer to the Lord for Patience. When it comes to discipline however, I am entering this next faze of "older children" and my thoughts go from "what toy can I take away?" to "how do I handle this situation in a way that will best effect their heart?". I am realizing now, that I must be an example more than ever. I am not saying that you don't need to be a good example when they are young, because obviously you do. It seems though, that at those early stages, their life is more of cause and effect. Toddler hits another child, same toddler gets a spanking for being unkind. Young child steals, same young child gets his/her toys given away to the salvation army :)

Cause and effect.

Now though, things are changing. She is looking more deeply at how "I" handle things. How do I respond when things go wrong? Do I argue when I do not get my way? Am I taking the time to explain the greater reasons of WHY do we not do things? Am I always completely honest, as I train her to be? Am I "training" a child in the way they should go so that when they are old they will not depart from it? YIKES! Talk about responsibility. Its hard enough to keep them from being totally spoiled and immoral, which is the way our natures bends. But to train them to be good, and noble, and courageous, to stand for what is right and against injustice. MAN!! who can do such a thing?

I can.

You can too. How do I know this? God says we can. He says He has given everything we need for the challenges in our life. In Acts 17 it states....

24"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'

And again in 2 Peter 1:3

"3His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness."

It also says Deuteronomy several times that we are to train our children, to teach our children, to talk to them, to raise them right (I wrote more on that subject in this post)

Sometimes though, its just plain HARD. I see so many of my failures in how I parent. So many failures in who I am. I can be very impatient and rude. I can easily choose time on the computer over time with my kids if I am not careful. So where do we go for strength when we feel this job is not only hard, but never seems to end! ha ha. Well once again, His Word gives us encouragement in this when it says in Galatians 6:9 "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

We are in it for the long haul ladies, let's do it well.

update: 90 day challenge

Can I just say again how much I AM LOVING the 90 day challenge? Well its my blog so I can say it anyway :)
I am especially loving being in 1 Samuel. It's a wonderful book filled with surprising twists and turns throughout every chapter. I would love to delve into some awesome DEEP theology, because there is A LOT of opportunity for that in the book of 1 Samuel. But I am not going to because the only thing I can think of right now is HOW MUCH I LOVE JONATHAN! After seeing almost every man and woman so far, Jew or Amalekite, lie, steal, backstab, gossip, cheat, and basically commit every other sin known to man, it was so refreshing to read about Jonathan. I mean I am supposed to be riveted on David at this point because besides God, David and Saul are the main people in 1 Samuel. But my heart kept going back to Jonathan. His words of love and friendship to David, his heart for God, and even his loyalty for his Dad. When he hears that his dad, Saul, might be trying to kill David, he is shocked at first. "How could this be?" he thinks to himself. In almost soap opera like fashion, he decides to test whether its true or not by seeing his dads reaction to Davids absence. When it is confirmed to Jonathan's heart that his dad truly has become wicked and wanted to harm an innocent young man out of jealousy, his heart breaks. But, as I just read a few moments ago in chapter 31, he dies in battle fighting loyally with his dad. Now I am fully aware that Jonathan sinned in his life because the bible is clear we all have sinned and we ALL fall short of the glory of God. But wow, up until this moment I had not found someone who had inspired me or moved my heart the way Jonathan did. As I read a few moments ago about his death, I grieved. Not a lot, but a little. I closed my bible and thought about how sad I was to read about his death, I thought to myself, "maybe if I have another son, I will name him Jonathan after this man". Well most of you know that we have been wanting to conceive for quite some time now, so it pained me a little to think about it. But I truly meant it. If God does so choose to bless us again with another gift I really think I want to. So I got on my computer and decided to look up the Hebrew meaning of Jonathan and wouldn't you know it.....Jonathan means "God has given, or Gift from God". God is good either way, but I think I will dare to hope there may be a boy in my future and he may be named Jonathan.