I'm still here.  Life's been a bit crazy though.  I'll give you a run down of our days since I last blogged.

Monday 11th - The girls 10th Birthday we had a party with friends at lunch time.  I made spaghetti and homemade pizza and cupcakes.  The kids and Mom's decorated journals.  Lots of fun, but lots of work.  My parents came over for supper that night as well.

Tuesday - I think we were home.

Wednesday - Left home at 7:30 a.m. to take care of my Pappaw.  Then church.  Home at about 9:30 p.m.

Thursday - Co-op at 8:45 a.m. Errands in town. Home.  Got a phone call at about 7:30 to let us know that my in-laws had decided to come up for the girls birthday and they would be here in two days!!!!

Friday - House cleaning and packing.  Delivered the kids and dogs to my mom's.  Hubby and I went out to eat and then spent a night away in a chalet at a local state park. 

Saturday - Walking and driving at the state park.  Had breakfast buffet at the park and went to a local tourist area with antique shops and such and had lunch there.  Picked up our children around 5:30 p.m. and headed home.  When we arrived we were greeted by Mother and Father-in-law and 2 nieces.

Sunday - Get up and prepare lunch in two crock pots for family birthday dinner.  Headed off to church.  Then back home with a houseful of people for lunch.  We had taco soup and white bean chicken chilli along with a cookie cake and birthday brownie.  It was a huge hit!  I think we had about 18 guests. 

Monday and Tuesday - Home trying to return to normal.  Then Tuesday night we went to some friends house to help them get some stuff done and took them a meal.

Wednesday - Pappaws and church again.

Thursday - Co-op, Errands and a visit to my friend Brenda at Wisescrappers.

Today - HOME!!!!

So, as you can see things have been so crazy around here.  I'm sad to say that it seems when our lives are so busy that what suffers the most is my time with the Lord.  I'm going to be working hard to get that back in order.  I'm also missing spending time with some of my dearest friends.  Hopefully, I will be blogging a little more often as well.  I pray you have a truly blessed day!

It was 10 years ago today that my sweet little girls made a very unexpected, very early arrival at only 27 weeks.  The Lord has had his hand on them always.  He lined so many things up that needed to happen for them to not only survive, but thrive.  We were told they would weigh less than 2 pounds; they weighed 2 lbs. 8 oz. and 2 lbs. 6 oz.  We were told that they wouldn't be able to breathe without a ventilator, so they wouldn't cry when they were born; They both cried.  We were told they would spend 13 weeks in the NICU; They came home after only 8.  I would love to say we've had no long term effects, but I can't.  The fact is that the issues we have are so minimal especially compared to what could have been.  We are so grateful.  God is so good!

Thank you Lord Jesus for finding us worthy to be the parents to these sweet precious girls.  Thank you so much for having a plan that is so much better than our own.   Thank you for not always giving us our own way.  For if we had it our way we would only have had one of them and she would have grown up in daycare and public school with a Mommy who had a career.  I can't imagine not spending each of my days with them.  Thank you for seeing in me what I never could have seen in myself and for preparing me for this amazing call that you have placed on me.  Help me Father to prepare them for the call that you have on their lives.  Help me to teach them how much You love them and to live each day for You.  I praise you Lord for you do give us abundantly more than we could ever wish for or imagine!!!!

Yesterday at the end of our church service our pastor had the praise team and choir come back up to sing "Moving Forward".   As we sang that song we fell into such a state of worship.  The presence of the Lord was so heavy.  It was AMAZING!!!!   I didn't want to leave.  I'm going to challenge myself to worship Him that way throughout this week. 

Also, does anyone have any family friendly Daniel fast recipes?

First off : HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!!!!!

The holidays were good, extremely busy though.  We just returned home form 4 days in Mobile with my husbands family.  My step-son was able to come this year, for the first time in a long while.  We so enjoyed his company.  God is really doing a work in him right now and we are so thankful.

Also, I have finally gotten my categories and links back up on my side bar.  I also have my music player back on.  It's at the bottom of the page.  I think it's all fixed now.  If I could just get back to blogging on a regular basis, all would be well here in my little blog world!

I'm headed out for a day of baking and making Christmas goodies with my mom and sister-in-law.  I'm excited.  This is the first time we have done this together.  It'll be fun!

Also, plese pray for my niece.  She has had an ear infection and been on antibiotics for 10 days.  They had to take her to the quick care clinic the day  before yesterday and to the ER last night.  She now has the beginning stages of pneumonia.  They gave her a couple of shots and I would assume some prescriptions to take at home.  She is 14 months old.  Please keep her in your prayers.

Be Blessed!

Ok, so I got most of my shopping done yesterday.  I still have a few small things to get to but I feel a lot better with what I accomplished yesterday.

Tonight we are having company over and will be exchanging gifts with them.  So, today I have to clean, finish decorating, wrap presents and cook supper.  I guess I bettter get busy.  Pray that I will be motivated today and that I will be a good motivator of my children.

Be blessed!

P.S. Thanks for all the comments about my kiddos pics!

I'm going shopping!!!  My wonderful sister-in-law is coming over to watch my kids all day long and my friend and I are taking a road trip to do some outlet shopping and have a bit of a girls day out.  Hurray!  I'm really hoping to finish the rest of my Christmas shopping today.

Also, I have a toothache (I think it's really an infection in my gum).  It was extremely bad last night, so please pray it doesn't give me any trouble today. 

Ya'll have a blessed day!

I'm going to tell you a very abbreviated version of my birth experiences, before I tell you about my dream.

1st - Before I had my girls, we tried for 8 months to get pregnant then I lost that baby to a miscarriage.  Two months later, I found out I was pregnant again.  Things went really well, but due to the holidays, my ultrasound came very late.  I was 22 weeks when I had my first ultrasound and found I out I was expecting twins.  At 25 weeks I realized I was in labor.  I spent one night in the hospital and went home on meds to stop my contractions.  Well, the meds didn't work for long, so about a week later I went back into the hospital for approx. 1 week and then delivered twin girls at 27 weeks.  They spent 8 weeks in the NICU and one of them was on oxygen and had an apnea monitor until she was 10 months old.  I was 21 years old.

2nd - For obvious reasons we waited a while to have another child.  One of my girls had some developmental problems and just with the nature of having twins things were very difficult.  So when the girls were 3 we decided to try again. We spoke with the doctor and he did not believe that prematurity would be an issue again.  He thought that I only delivered prematurely the first time because it was a first pregnancy with twins.  After 3 months we were expecting.  Other than my iron being low and morning sickness things went really well.  Then at 25 weeks, here we go again, I was in labor.  This time they tried something different.  They put me on a terbutaline pump, bedrest and had home health come to my house once a week.  The pump was the size of a pager and it kept the medicine at a constant level in my system via a cathereter that was in my thigh.  I had to change the cath out twice a week.   It was attached to something that looked very much like a thumb tack and I had to take the old one out, then in the other leg very quickly put this thumb tack like thing in (OUCH!!!).  Then when you took the tack out, it left a plastic tube (cath.) in.  I also had to put on a monitor twice a day and send a reading to the nurse to let them know if I was contracting.  This worked most of the time, but I did have to stay in the hospital 7 times before I delivered him at 37 weeks, very healthy.  I was 24 years old.

So, after all of that trauma with much discussion, we decided that we should not have any more children.  Besides all of the prematurity issues, after each pregnancy my problems with my cycle became much worse.

Fastforward a while.  My problems became so severe that I was constantly anemic and in pain 3 weeks out of the month.  The only two options were hormones or a hysterectomy.  I decided to just wait it out as long as I could.  When I got to the point that I was so anemic all I wanted to do was sleep and evrything felt like and extreme chore, and the pain became so much more severe, my husband and I decided together that it was time for the hysterectomy (I was 30 years old.) This was a very difficult decision, but it has changed my life.  I feel better than I have felt in many, many years and am able to enjoy doing things with my family so much more.

Ok, so now the dream.  I often (every few months) have a dream that I am going to have another baby.  I can feel it moving in my womb, sometimes the circumstances are different.  Last night in my dream I  was scheduled for an induction (go figure) and was having another girl.  We were all so very excited.  These dreams seem so real to me, so when it is time to wake up and I realize it was all a dream, I am so saddened.  I don't know what all of this means.  We had peace about the decisions that we made under the circumstances we were in.  But, I feel so tormented by these dreams.  I just wish I understood them.  I don't know why I am sharing this really.  But, maybe I'll feel a little better since I typed about it.  And maybe it gives you a little more insight into who I am.

Be Blessed.

Just wanted to share with you a finding about how Disney is presenting homeschooling to their viewers.  Check out what MotherJoy has to say about a recent episode. Read it : Here

Yes, I know, I totally messed up my blog.  I love Christmas and wanted to do something to make it look Christmasy (sp?).  But, I messed the whole thing up in the process.  My music player is on the bottom.  The words around my avatar are not placed properly.  My friends list and categories are no longer on the right hand side and no I did not save my old template.  So, I really messed up!  The really bad thing is I don't know how to fix it and I really don't have time to read through the message boards to figure it out.  UGH!!!!!  Help, someone, anyone!!!!!

Update: I've stayed up way to late tonight, but I think I've fixed most of my blog problems.  I do still need to add pictures of my children, but I think I'll wait until I load some new ones. 

I was tagged by : Jes @ Joyful Journey

 I have to write seven weird things about myself.  The rules are as follows:

Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.

Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.

Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.

Let each person know that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here we go.  (Although, I must say this is soooo dificult cuz I happen to think I am extremely normal.)

1.  I don't like for my food to touch on my plate.  Divided paper plates are the bomb.

2.  I eat one thing at a time off of my plate.

3. If i hear a word that is in any song, I will imediately start singing that song. 

4. I am 31 years old and have just visited a state that does not touch the one I live in for the very first time.

5.  I have never flown. (I'm afraid of heights)

6. I just rode my very first train. (The subway in Washington D.C.)

7. When we had a jack russell terrier several years ago, I could sing a high note that was guaranteed to make her howl.

I am tagging : AbundantBlessings

                      CrossView

                      RhondaMama

                      NikkiSimcox

                      MotherJoy

                      Momofboyz

                      mmcfrancis

Yes, I was away.  Thank you to those of you who sent comments.  We went on vacation and I didn't want to announce to the cyber world that we would be away for a week.

We went to Virginia with some really good friends and had a blast.  We spent one day in Washington D.C. at the zoo and did some nighttime sight seeing.  I'll try to tell you more and add some pictures soon.  Right now I need to rest, I'm tired from vacating!!!

Our new mortgage funded today.  This means the old one is paid off and we have gotten our money.  So, after I tie up just a couple of loose ends the only debt we will have will be the mortgage and a vehicle payment.  HALLELUJAH!!!!!!

Thanks again for all the prayers.  Be blessed!

I just wanted to let everyone know I am still here.  Just super busy as usual.

We closed on our refinance on Friday night.  Saturday was so nice.  It was the first time in the three years we have lived here that we didn't feel like we just needed to be working on the house.  Hubby wore sweats all day and the kids stayed in their pj's.  They laid around and watched TV most of the day (a rarity around here).  I went out and hung out with a really good friend that I haven't been able to spend time with for a while.  We made handmade cards and she shared lots of scrapbooking paper with me.  It was sooo much fun

Yesterday I went and helped a homeschooling friend do some decluttering.  Her hubby is deployed in the Middle East right now.  Our church is getting ready for a huge HarvestFest (we had 1500 last year and they expect double that this year) and I haven't gotten to go help.  I feel kind of bad about that, but I'm serving in other ways.  Like yesterday at my friends house and tommorrow staying with my Pappaw (that's every Wednesday).  He's hanging in there, but definitely not improving.  He's 93 and all he does is sleep.  He has a hospital bed and recliner (lift chair) in his living room and he just goes back and forth between the two.  He has had a cathereter for about 2 months now and has home health coming to the house about 4 times a week.  Twice it's for his bath and the other two times it's the nurse checking on him and doing blood work.  He was having physical therapy, but they decided not to continue because he was not improving.  He also was walking to the bathroom with his walker and some help from my Aunt and Uncle and fell this week.  Not good.  So, as you can see he's in pretty pitiful shape. 

On a happier note.  I had another confirmation tonight on how much the Lord has changed me.  I am making pilgrim costumes for my girls and an Indian costume for my son for a Thanksgiving feast with our homeschool cover.  The patterns for the dresses are overly complicated, especially for a costume they probably will not wear again (except to play dress-up) and in the past I would have been freaking out and proably would have given up.  It is so not bothering me.  I've just been chugging along with it.  No big deal.  I am so thankful.  It's so nice to feel like I can do things for my kids to make them feel special without losing my head in the process.  The Lord has brought me so far, it's truly amazing.  Oh and my hubby is noticing, too.  God's really been working in that area, too.  We've been having so much fun together.  Just lots of playfulness and silliness.  Back to our oldselves I guess, now if I could just be back to my old body.  Oh, well, baby steps.

Sorry for the ramblings, but maybe now I've caught you up on the happenings around here.  Have an awesome day!

Thank you so much for the prayers.  Our appraisal came back over the amount that we needed it to.  Hallelujah!!!!!     We should close tonight or tomorrow.  Keep up the prayers and I will let you know how it goes.

Blessings!

We had our appraisal today and I'm really unsure how it went.  Please pray really hard that she comes back with the number that we really need.  I'll let you know as soon as we find out.

Add In :  The appraiser said she should have it in by Wednesday, but no later than the end of the week.  The mortgage company says she is required to have it in by tomorrow (Wednesday) or she could get in trouble with them.  They require 24-48 hours.  He has sent the appraiser a message reminding her that she is required to have it to him by tomorrow.

I've been given the Nice Matters Award by NikkiSimcox at www.homeschoolblogger.com/simcoxhomeschool .

This is my very first award, I'm sooo excited.  I'm not sure exactly what the rules are so, I think I'll make up my own.  I'm going to choose four people to give this to.

Southmsmomof4 - My first friend here on homeschoolblogger.  When she says she's praying for me I don't doubt it.  Plus she's so open to share what God has done and is doing in her life.  She's so uplifting to me.

Motherjoy - I love how open she is to share her opinion.  God did not call us to complacency, we should be willing to speak up for what is right.  I also love how willing she is to share her faults.  It's nice sometimes to know I'm not the only one.

Crossview - She's so great to leave me little comments.  It never fails that when I feel like no one is reading, I'll get a sweet little comment from her.

Indexcards - She hosted a give away and I won.  I got her chore organizer and I love it.

Check out my friends section and click on their names to see their blogs.

Well, we've been locked into our loan.  The interest rate is great.  We will be borrowing more money than when we bought the house, but our payment will be a few dollars less a month than it was back then and all our debt will be paid off (except for house and van).  A large majority of the debt has been incurred by fixing up the house and as a result of the huge house payment.

This is still dependant on the appraisal.  It is scheduled for Monday.  So, thank you for your prayers so far and please continue to pray that we will get enough done and that the appraiser will be kind and honest.  We had one at our other house who was very hateful to us and that house was much newer and we had done tons of work on it.  Seems like all she saw was what hadn't been done and none of what had.  I will put a reminder on here Monday to be praying about that.

Thanks for your comments and prayers!

We are in the beginning stages of refinancing our home.  Just so you know, we don't have a choice.  When we bought this house we had already closed on our old house and moved into this one, and our mortgage fell through at the last minute.  My husband's ex-wife (They've been divorced for 13 1/2 years)  filed bankruptcy and something of hers showed up on his credit.  It was a mess.  They had been divorced for 10 years at the time and her bankruptcy was a few years old, but it still made it look like we had bad credit.  We had really good credit other than this problem.  So, our options were find something to rent or take a horrible mortgage.   We took the bad mortgage.  It's an adjustable rate and the payments are increasing rapidly.  So, we must refinance.  His scores look much better and that end of it seems to be ok.  During this process we must have an appraisal.  We have done a lot of work on this house, but we have a lot of finishing that needs to be done and a lot of cleaning.  It seems pretty clean until you think of some one coming in to critique every nook and cranny.  So, please pray for us for the next couple of weeks.  Pray that the Lord would work everything out perfectly and that we would accomplish much.  I'll update you on our progress and maybe soon I can show you som before and after pictures.

Sorry, I haven't been on here in a week.  I've just been so busy.  It seems like I am never home anymore.  I think it might just drive me crazy.

We just started having a choir at our church and practices are on Thursday nights.  So, that is one more night to have something to do and we have to be at church an hour earlier on the Sundays that we sing.  We also have co-op classes on Thursday morning and sometimes Bible study Thursday afternoon.

I have also started staying with my Pappaw for about 11 hours on Wednesday and then going to church afterwards.

I've also been going to church two Tuesday nights a month, one for women's ministry and one to cook for men's ministry.  So, that's a third day gone from home. 

Add to all of that, field trips and Dr.'s appts. , I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

Sorry, it's been a while since I've been on.  We've been so busy this week.  I will try to post something good in the next couple of days.

Love Ya'll!!!!!

Tomorrow is my 31st birthday and my husband took me shopping today for an MP3 player.  He got me a pretty nice one.  It's a Sandisk Sansa c200.  So, I wanted to know if any of you subscribe to any really good podcasts or if you have any good mp3 info.  I am not very technical and this is all very new to me.  My head was swimming by the time I figured out how to put my cd's on there and then I accidentally deleted them all.  Send me any helpful info you have.

Thanks!