I love thrift stores. It started when I was teenager in southern California trying to find fun and "interesting" clothes for my my very specific fashion wants. For instance one of my very favorite shirts was my "He-Man and the Masters" shirt. I wore it all the time. It was a little boys shirt and I was teen girl, so you can only imagine, I was not a very modest teen. My son now wears the shirt to bed, which just makes my husband and I laugh.
Anyhow, my love for thrift stores has now carried into my adult life. My frugal budget of course loves thrift stores. However, nowadays I am not really looking for fashion as much as I am looking for your average household needs. Some things I have found recently have been very helpful finds.
As you can see below, my kids found Legos out our local Goodwill for 1 dollar! Why is that a big deal you say?? For one, my kids are obsessed with Legos. Secondly, that particular box of Legos runs about 25 dollars. Thirdly, it was in perfect condition with most of the parts still in their individual bags. It was an awesome day in our household when we found that. Check out what my daughter built with it.....pretty cool huh?!?
Another awesome thrift store find lately has been "Addition Bingo". For a buck forty nine, it has added tons of fun filled learning in our house. And "fun" learning is always good learning in a homeschool family. :)
The last thing I want to show you is my new purse. I have a tendency to throw everything under heaven in my purse. Finding my keys in my purse while trying to get into the car and out of the cold weather is my daily enemy. So I finally bought a purse to end my battles. I had not purchased a purse in 2 years, so it was a pretty cool day. At only 2 dollars, why not?? This purse has a sum total of six pockets, now I "have a place for everything and everything in its place" :)
Thrift store finds!
where have I been?
So where have I been? Traveling exotic Islands? Visiting family in another state? Nah, just here in my home. Where I love to be. But emotionally....I have not been able to blog. I have been talking things over with God. As I announced a couple weeks ago, I have been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Its nothing life threatening, or even debilitating. But none the less, it was not a fun diagnosis. There is no cure, and it is progressive. Meaning I am only at the beginning of this and things will probably get worse. I sort of didn't understand the diagnosis at first so I did not really get worried about it. Then the next day I talked to some women who had it and looked it up on the Internet and realized "CRAP! this is not good". One woman I know has a very severe case, and it does worry me I may get some of the severe symptoms of it. That led me to cry for three days straight and once again, pour it all out before my heavenly Father. He is so good to always hear me. I asked questions, told Him how I felt, asked him to calm my spirit, told him I was confused......and on and on it went, for days. Finally, thanks to kind words from my husband, my sister in law, and several friends, I accepted the fact that waiting was all I could do. Nothing is certain. This does not mean it will end in permanent infertility. With God all things are possible. But that does not mean that His will is the same as mine. So I wait. I wait for His revelation. I wait for His plan.
On the upside.....
I saw a great OBGYN in my area who specializes in infertility. She is going to help me figure out how to stay on top of the PCOS. I HATE medications, the majority of the time, but I am very optimistic about the one my doctor put me on. It is to help with the insulin issues that PCOS causes. PCOS tends to make all sugar you eat turn instantly into fat instead of using it as an energy source. Which would totally explain my tiredness and weight gain. WHEW!! glad I have something to blame that on..lol But it PCOS can lead to diabetes and obesity, if you are not extremely careful, which I am trying to be. I have completely cut sugar out of my diet, so I am hopeful that will help.
One good thing about the medicine is that it "can" also help some of those nasty ovarian cysts go away. I have been blessed in the fact that my cysts don't seem to be very painful. I know many women who were doubled over in pain with theirs, and so far mine have not been that way.
Another thing is that the medicine I am on typically causes side effects of nausea and diarrhea, neither of which I have been having. I am praising God for this, as I know things could be a lot worse.
So although my baby-making wishes may never happen, and my health may not be "ideal" God shows over and over, that although we are not in Heaven yet, we shall be one day. What a glorious place Heaven will be, with no unfulfilled need, no sickness, so sadness, no pain. God is good. In total contrast to this world that is dying day by day and crying out to God under the weight of sin.
Anyhow, all I can say, is that its been a rough week, but God is making it a whole lot better. Day by day I am encouraged. Day by Day, I am renewed. But I have a long way to go. That is why I have spent so much time away from blogging. I am needing more time with my family, and His word. Plus homeschooling, baking, cooking, cleaning, bible study, church, grocery shopping, sewing classes, tend to take up my time as well :)
So what have you all been up to these days??
A garden perspective.
I LOVE LOVE LOVED this post on children. It also answered the question of "are homeschool children sheltered?". Hop on over to blog "If only everyone thought this way" and read it.
Hope everyone is having a great Sunday! My Sunday is definitely better than my Saturday. Praise the Lord. Yesterday was rough. But as the Word says..."weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning."
I wept last night, but Joy has come this morning. :)
with kids, nothing is guaranteed.
I have heard it said by many (myself included)"If I feel like having kids later then I will just have them in a few years. I will decide when we are ready."
There is only one problem with that......we are never guaranteed tomorrow. I know some who read this are not Christians, but I am going to primarily deal with Christian themes on this issue. You see Psalm 27:1 says "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth" He is not just talking about death. He is talking about everything. More on that in a bit.
When it comes to having children in this country, it is often viewed as a plague. A curse. If you are having your first child, it is told by most, "congratulations!". When you are having your second some people start to say "oh well I guess its nice to give your first a little brother or sister" or even the old reason of trying to get a boy if you just have a girl, or vice versa. Have your third child, and just wait for the funny looks and the "Oh wow, another one??" Have your fourth, and people straight out say the rudest things possible. Yet it is somehow now deemed normal to say to a woman...."you are done right?!!?!". Answer that question with "actually I would love more" and watch them laugh about your insanity or walk away in disgust.
No wonder we are scared of having more children! Its more work, more time, less sleep, and often times you are the brunt of jokes in the circle of moms, or even at church. I know that has been the case for many of my friends with 4 or more kids. They have been persecuted for having children. People stay away from them as if they have a weird disease. I have a friend who is pregnant with her fifth and is terrified to tell her friends and family. I have another friend who, when she got pregnant, people said "Oh I am so sorry" As if she got CANCER or something. What a shame.
I know that when some of my "church" friends found out we were getting our vasectomy reversal, decided they could no longer be my friend anymore. One woman, whom I was very close with, said " I am not sure that is a good idea, and I cannot support you in that". She never called again. What is happening here? REGARDLESS of how women feel about having children themselves, why do christian women, in large, not support women who do want children? Please hear my heart, I am not saying Christian woman HAVE to have children, I am asking people to look inside and ask themselves "how do I treat women who have more than 2 kids? DO I joke about her? Do I avoid hanging out with her because she has too many kids? Would I ever consider babysitting for her? Did I ask her if she was crazy when I found out she was having another one, or did I say congrats? If a woman with lots of kids looks tired and worn out, do I ask her how I can help or see if something is wrong, or do I assume that just what she gets for having that many?"
To be totally honest, I have thought ALL these things. Not recently, or in the past two years, but I have thought those things. I regret that heart attitude deeply.
Since I am addressing this to Christians, I will use the bible as my source for our heart attitude. The bible speaks on having children in this way...Genesis 1:28
God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it."
And again....Genesis 9:1
[ God's Covenant With Noah ] Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.
And again....Genesis 17:6
I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.
By the way, how was God supposed to get those "kings" he talked about in the above verse, if not by someone having to have children?
And again and again.... Genesis 35:11
And God said to him, "I am God Almighty ; be fruitful and increase in number. A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will come from your body.
Genesis 41:52
The second son he named Ephraim and said, "It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering."
There are more scripture on this, but I wanted to point out that it was assumed throughout scripture that we would HAVE children. One of those reasons was practical, it is a result of a sexual relationship, and since God wants Married couples to be together physically (as shown in scripture such as 1Cor 7:5), its obvious we will have children. It was also obvious in the bible we would WANT children
Genesis 33:5
Then Esau looked up and saw the women and children. "Who are these with you?" he asked. Jacob answered, "They are the children God has graciously given your servant."
I could go on and on on Gods heart for children. There are several scriptures that show God giving children as blessings and rewards, but I cannot seem to find ANY scriptures where children are viewed as a curse. Some verses on children being seen as a blessing (right up there with wealth and health, which we cannot seem to ask enough for)....Deuteronomy 7:13
He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you.
And again....Deuteronomy 28:4
The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
And AGAIN....Psalm 127:4-5 (New International Version)
4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one's youth.
5 Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
I close in saying this...
We may be putting off having children, and saying as I said in the beginning of this post "I will wait until I am ready" or in some cases (And I have been told this by a Christian friend) "I really want go on vacation, so I can't plan a child this year, and then I have my sisters wedding next year, and I don't want to be fat in the dress, and then I will be graduating college, so WHO KNOWS when we will fit one in".
If you are may I say to you... we said similar things. Then those thoughts turned to wanting to end our fertility altogether. After our second child was only 2 weeks old we had a vasectomy. Four years later, we realized the mistake. God led us to get a reversal. After a year and a half of trying and no pregnancies, we have found out through tests, my husbands reversal was a complete success, and yet now I have been struck Barren. I have been diagnosed with PCOS which is the leading cause of infertility in woman. My one and only ovary is covered in cysts, and my body is lacking the hormone to tell it to release an egg (even if it could get through all the cysts.)
Fertility, is not something to be mocked, nor something to be taken for granted. Yet we did,and so do many others, at the support off our christian brothers an sisters.
My diagnosis is hard to swallow. But I am still hopeful in a miracle and still thankful for the change that God has made in us through it.
Tired of homeschooling your little one?
I don't know how you answered that title question, but my answer is a resounding YES!
My son is five, so I don't do an "official" curriculum. We piddle around with this and that, but mostly do Saxon for math and little workbooks for phonics. So here is something simple, and "out of the box" (out of the box= anything outside of what we normally work on, i.e. writing, math, phonics workbooks) we did lately.
This is something I did to help encourage my son to read. He is not a big fan of trying to read at this moment so anything that encourages him to do it, is a bonus in our house.
I took colored linking cubes (you could use anything you have that has lots of colors) and laid them out. Then I took index cards, cut them in half and wrote a different color on each of them. When I was finished with that my son had to read the card himself so that he could place them under the corresponding color linking cube. He loved it, he read them, and it cost me NOTHING! yeah, I love, free, simple, and non-time consuming ideas.
Could you come up with something better? I am certain you could. But from one mom to another, I know I always appreciate ideas, no matter how small and simplistic the idea might be.
Reasons I cry.
There are many reasons I cry these days. One reason, and probably the most prominent is my hormones. I have cysts on my poor little ovary. It is causing some hormonal imbalances. Not too bad, but there is a lot of crying over silly stuff. Movies (especially No Greater Love!). Bible passages. Text messages. Stress. Songs on the radio. Wanting to conceive.
Another reason I cry is feelings of inadequacy. I so want to serve God. I want to truly train my kids in the way they should go. I want to be a great cook of healthy yummy foods. I want to be a good housekeeper. I want to be the best homeschooling mom and teach my kids allllll kinds of cool things. I want my daughter to continue with violin lessons, because she loves it so much (and she is soooo good). I want to be a good friend. I want to be a great wife. I want to catch up on the challenge of reading the bible in 90 days. The thing is though, I just cannot do it all. There just isn't enough time. I'm not strong enough either. I need help. I need God. Why do I forget this so often?? Praise the Lord He speaks to me, and cuts through the junk in my mind. Luckily I serve a King who does not expect me to do it all. Just Love and serve. To lean on him.
The last reason I cry......when I hear this song (lyrics are typed below)
Savior, please take my hand
I work so hard, I live so fast
This life begins, and then it ends
And I do the best that I can, but I don't know how long I'll last
I try to be so tough
But I'm just not strong enough
I can't do this alone, God I need You to hold on to me
I try to be good enough
But I'm nothing without Your love
Savior, please keep saving me
Savior, please help me stand
I fall so hard, I fade so fast
Will You begin right where I end
And be the God of all I am because You're all I have
Hallelujah
Everything You are to me
Is everything I'll ever need
And I am learning to believe
That I don't have to prove a thing
'Cause You're the one who's saving me
Dads.
My babe works hard. Most of his work days lately last between 12 to 18 hours. He spends little time at home. This is temporary because my husband would never allow this to be permanent. He takes his role as father and husband too seriously to ever work that much. But for now, this is our life. WHEN he is home though, you will not find him on the couch watching t.v. (he may if we had t.v. but we threw that out a while ago). You will not find him working on "his" hobby, or playing "his" favorite sports, you will find him doing what he is doing in this picture. And a million other ways he chooses to spend with us, rather than alone. I am so thankful to God for him. I am so glad that God said no when I asked His permission to divorce this man, years back during some hard times. God knew what we would become. Praise God. To even think we could have missed all this because we did not want to suffer a few short years in a hard marriage. Now, what a marriage God has made it! I love that man.
