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.

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)