It's been quite an interesting week this week. It has been filled with lots of emotional time, crying, heartache along with growth, healing and blessings. I'm not going into all the details, but I do what to share of the Lord's blessing through it all. So sorry if this is vague.
It began toward the beginning of the week. A misunderstanding, an expectation that was not met and a dream that was shattered. And then through the emotions, the ups and downs during those events, feeling, hurts and emotions from my past came back and compounded things. At a point during it all I was mad, mad at the person with the misunderstanding, mad the situation and mad at God. Yes, I was mad at God. I felt like He allowed a dream to start growing, just to pull the rug out from underneath me. I felt like He was a mean God. I was mad at Him, and I told Him so. Through this pain and anger I prayed, not just angry prayers, but hurt prayers, confused about the situation prayers, needing comfort prayers.
On Thursday night I went to bible study. Nothing really settled, actually things had gotten a bit worse. This is when I was dealing with the issues and hurt from my past that seemed to come up. I was still angry at the situation and feeling the Lord did this all just to hurt me, as I went to bible study. The bible study was good, the Word encouraging. My friends prayed for me and it was sweet. But most importantly the Lord blessed me there. He blessed me with something I had wanted that I never thought I would get. He blessed me because of Him, not because of me. I was still angry, I was still hurt, and yet even though I didn't deserve it He blessed me.
I know that salvation is by faith alone, that we don't deserve it, I understand that. But I still have this thing in me that feels like He's only happy with me when I do things "right" (which in my perfectionist mind means flawless). That He'll only bless me when I'm in good standing with Him. That for Him not to be disappointed with me, I have to be perfect. But last night He showed me His blessings on me have absolutely nothing to do with me. He doesn't bless me because I'm doing things 'right' and He doesn't take things away because I'm doing things 'wrong'. He loves and accepts me despite my sin, and gives us things we don't need, just because sometimes.
I would love to say that everything is perfect and worked through. And I will say there has been some great growth and healing that has taken place through all of this. There is still an 'issue' out there that might flare up, though I pray it doesn't. But for me, most importantly, is that I have seen a part of God's love and acceptance of me I've never seen before. Thank you Lord for that and for your blessing that you've given me. I pray I will always remember what you have taught me when I use it.
OK, so what was this blessing He gave me? Well if you remember from this post I wanted to set up a reading area in our bedroom. I had priced gliders and they were all well out of my reach financially. Truthfully the whole reading area was a wash, I just couldn't afford it. So at bible study I casually asked if the ladies new of anyone selling a glider cheap, would they let me know. I thought maybe I could put things together bit by bit, though truthfully I wasn't to optimistic about it. After I say this to the ladies, the leader says, "Come here. Do you mean a glider like this?" She points out this beautiful glider sitting there. I'm like, yes exactly, how much do you want for it? She responds, "Oh nothing, you can just take it." Then she says do you need a little table too? What?!?! Of course I do, oh here's one you can just take too. That was my facial expression, along with some tears. I just couldn't believe it. The Lord had given me my reading corner. Just given it to me, in the midst of my anger at Him, not because I deserved it, but because of His love for me. It still brings tears to my eyes. OK, here are the pictures of my new reading corner.
The before pictures (I didn't think of taking them until I started emptying the drawers )
Do you ever have so many creative things you want to do and yet you just don't know how to do it or where to start? That's where I am right now. I have graphics I want to make, but not sure what exactly to make. I have a web page to work on, but I can't visualize how to set it up. I have an idea on how to change and set up another blog of mine, but can't quite decide how to have it look. I have cards I want to make, but not sure how to put them together. I have so many ideas swimming around in my head and yet I'm just wasting my time and not getting anything accomplished. So I thought I would go ahead and write an entry about our last Woman's bible study on Thursday night.
Thursday night was the last study of the book we were doing. The whole book was on encouraging one another. It was an awesome book and I have learned a lot of different things about encouragement. So the lady that teaches the study decide to give us some parting gifts of encouragement. Also, another lady who is in the group made cards for each one of us.
The night itself was a sweet night. We opened up to each other in an even deeper way than we had the whole other 11 studies. I got to know these women in a way that the Lord is truly bringing us together, and I am so blessed by it. We will be starting another book soon, in about two weeks, and I so look forward to that. I have no study right now to go to, and that is a bummer, but it's nice that it won't be that long until it starts up again. So here are the pictures of the encouraging gifts we received.
The first thing she let us pick was what kind of pastry we wanted. I picked this very yummy eclair.
Then she gave us a sweet card, a serving plate and a box with lots of things in it.
Here is a close up of the serving plate that has a house, church and sheep on it, a journal with a letter J on it and a little gift box of chocolates.
And here is a close up of the two personal cards I received, a magnet, a small book and a box of blank cards that I can use to encourage other women.
So there are my gifts. I am so blessed by the all, and I will always remember our time together when I use them.
Tonight is our graduation/swim party. Sarah is feeling much better, thank you Lord. Just a slight cough. So we are all going to be able to go tonight. I will try and take lots of pictures to share.
We had such a great day. We did get rain today, but that was the only bummer. We relaxed a lot in the morning and early afternoon. The kids got to play outside with their friends for a bit before the rain came in which was nice.
We headed to our new friends house later in the afternoon. Oh, what a blessing it was. This couple is so very sweet and their kids are so nice. The guys grilled some burgers and hot dogs in the rain and the oldest son made a great apple crisp. The food was awesome, but the fellowship was even better. We had such sweet conversations and the kids had fun playing with their kids. Sarah is getting really good at playing with girls younger than her, and she had lots of fun. Paulie and the boy are near the same age, so they got along great. We just felt such a closeness with this couple. Truly, I can't wait until we get together again. I'll be seeing her and the kids at playgroup tomorrow, if it doesn't rain. Otherwise we'll see them at church on Wednesday night. As nervous as I was, I am so blessed we made the plans. It's always so good to get know new people and see what the Lord has planned. The wife and I had so much in common, it was weird. Her and I are near the same age, and so are our husbands. Which believe me is odd if you knew all of our ages. And other different things were very similar. It was so sweet. We'll have them over sometime soon. And her and I and the kids will probably try and get together for a play time some time too.
Now we are home and I'm doing some VBS work. No school tomorrow, our first week of summer break. It feels refreshing just thinking about it. Now if the rain would just stop so we can enjoy the outside more.
Today is homeschool playgroup so I'm trying to get an entry out quick before we have to leave. But I have a few updates I wanted to let you know about. First, yes my sink is working again. Thank you all of those who asked. The plumber didn't get here until 3:00 in the afternoon yesterday, that was a bummer. But he had it fixed within 30 minutes. It is great to have the use of our sink and dishwasher again.
But since I don't have a lot of time to blog right now, I'll give you the biggest update of all. Look what I got today
And look what I'm doing with it already.
I am so excited. And yes, I'm currently typing this entry on my laptop. It's so nice, Paulie is finishing up his school work on the desktop and I'm on my laptop. We will have to wait and see the exact cost because they sent us a new power cord too, the other one was broken, which like I said I was worried about that. They still haven't given us the exact amount yet, but supposedly if it was anymore than their original estimate they were suppose to let me know before hand. So we will just wait and see.
Well, like I said, we are getting ready to head out the door. We need to go to the library, run some errands and then get to playgroup at the park. I do hope that I will be on more often now, and able to check things more. Maybe even another entry tomorrow.
I have a few minute window while the kids are finishing their breakfast before our lessons begin that I thought I would try to squeeze out a quick entry.
First, thank you all for your encouragement on my last post. I have since made it private, because truly it was a sad and depressing post, but something I needed to get out at the time. If you read it, thanks for your encouragement, if you didn't, don't worry about it, you didn't miss anything.
I am doing much better. I had been dealing with some other spiritual issues and beliefs and last night it all came to a head. Paul and I sat up and talked and prayed until 1:00am, and I feel like a break through happened. I won't say everything is great now, but I do feel like I got some things talked out and worked through. Now I am tired, but the Lord is my strength and He will carry me through. As we were falling asleep last night, well early this morning, I said to Paul, "I wish I could wake up tomorrow and all my issues would be gone." He said, "Yea, I would like to wake up in heaven too."
Through all of this, I have been quite excited about a couple of things, first, I have stepped up with a few different ministries, and so far all of it has involved the computer. I am just such a computer geek, and I love to work on the computer, hence the reason it's so hard to be without my laptop. I'm going to be taking pictures during the whole week of VBS at our church and making a slide show from them. Plus I am working on some other computer related things too with VBS. And, this is still in the beginning praying, lets see what happens stage, but I might be working on my first web site. Yep, helping to build a website for our homeschool group. Well, the site is being built by someone right now, very simple. Then I will probably take it over and add and continue to build on to it. I am so very excited and nervous about it. But it's something I've always wanted to try, and I'm excited I might get my chance. I so wish I could put the link out on my blog so you can all see it, but our town is small, well Idaho is small. And I think it would be to much personal info out there. It's not like I can say I live in Chicago, which is so big no one could find me anyway. So unfortunately you won't be able to see my work, good or bad, but I will tell you all about it, if it happens.
And finally, as I can hear the kids finishing cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast and I have to get moving, laptop update. They have fixed it and mailed it out yesterday and we should get it around the 21st. Yes, I feel all of those emotions. And I still won't be excited and say, "Yes, it's fixed and I have my laptop", until it's in this house and I'm using it. Mainly because I had to mess with the plug for so long that I wonder if I messed up the plug itself. And that even though the power box on the laptop works, the plug itself might not. And if we have to get another plug it's around $100. Yes, I know, expensive, but I have to make sure we have the right voltage plug so it doesn't ruin the laptop. And if the plug is messed up, I don't know where we would get the $100. So, all that to say, I am curbing my enthusiasm until it's here, I have tested the plug, and know it all works.
OK, well, I went a few minutes over and it's lesson time, so I need to get going. We have a very busy day planned today, so I don't know when I'll be back on. But I'll try to catch up on blogs sometime today. Thanks again for you encouragement and love.
OK, so lame title, but I'm running out of ideas. I don't want to keep using 'My Ramblings',
I've been having a good week. I'm still mulling over all the Lord showed me at the conference over the weekend. And He's been showing me some new things through that too this week. Not always fun when going through it, but I see the Lord in it all. So I'm a bit tired this week, lots of emotional things, and that always makes me physically tired.
I have woman's bible study tonight, and I'm looking forward to that. It's so the Lord, our study this week is about God's love, exactly what we learned about over the weekend. I love when the Lord puts things together like that. So it's truly been a growing in God's love kind of week. It will be nice to be with my friends again. I am so blessed that the Lord is bringing different ladies into my life. And it's nice that I look forward to our times together. I haven't had that in a long time. Thank you Lord.
Plus I have to share what He showed me this morning. Now, I've 'heard' this for years, my whole Christian life, but it never really sank in until this morning. The bible is the Lord's love letter to me, and I read it to get to know Him. Deep down, I've always viewed it as a 'to do and not to do' list. You know, I need to learn how to act, be, do, I need to learn how to look like a 'Christian'. It truly had turned into reading the Bible just so I knew what to do next, and that the Lord was a task master. In my head I knew that wasn't true. I mean, I've been a Christian for quite a few years, and the Lord is love, right? Of course, I knew that, but it never got into my heart, until this morning. The Lord showed me the Bible truly is a love letter from Him to me and that I read it to get to know Him more. Will I 'change' and start 'doing' things differently, yes, I guess so, but that's not the reason I'm reading it. I'm going to read it to find out more about my Lord and the love of my life. I'm going to try to go into it with an attitude of Him wanting to show Himself to me. It won't be a 'natural' thing for me, by any means. But the Lord is my Lord, and He is my strength and He'll continue to get me through these 'task master' thoughts and realize His love for me. Thank you Lord for never giving up on me.
OK, on to other things going on with us. School has been going better. Attitudes are changing, learning is happening, and seat work is getting done (yes, we are a seat work family and like it ). Though we are flowing nicely, we are still looking forward to summer break. We 'should' school into the 2nd week of June because of the medical issues and the move. But I think we'll probably stop at the end of May like usual. I still, at times, feel rushed. There was never a real free time when we first moved in. So it will be nice to have a few months this summer. We'll start up again in early August.
I'm working on crocheted bookmarks still. I'm making one for Paul now, and I want to make some for some friends of mine. I really like this pattern, and I have fun with it. I just have to find a better 'tail' to make. You know the part the hangs outside the book. Anyway, I don't like the way they say to make it, I want to find another way, then add that tail to this bookmark.
So that's what we've been doing lately. I made more cinnamon rolls this week, and tried making lemon bars, though they didn't really turn out. Well, Paul and Sarah really like them, I don't eat much with lemon so I haven't tried them. But I do know how they are suppose to look, and mine are brown. Yep, the lemon/egg part overcooked bad. I was going to just throw it out, but I know my hubby, and he likes to try everything I make. So I saved them and him and Sarah really like them. I will try them again sometime and try to make them right.
I'm throwing together a non-dairy pizza tonight. We've had to cut way back on dairy, which believe me, for me is so very hard. I use to have cheese in everything, with milk to drink. Not anymore. The Lord is faithful, and He's given me some creativity with changing meals (especially since pretty much all my meals had dairy in it). Plus, He's taken away my desire for it, really. I feel so much better, and less congested. I never knew I was congested until I got away from dairy, anyway. So I'm making some pizza dough in the bread maker, it makes two pizzas. I have some chicken breasts cooking in the crock-pot all day in chicken broth. I'll put some salsa on the pizza dough then cut up the chicken and put that on too. On one of them I'll put some green onions too. There is still a part of me that is crying out for cheese on top of it, but I won't do it. We don't even have cheese in the house anymore, so it's not an option. I do hope it turns out, but either way, I know my hubby, he'll eat it.
Oh, my where do I start? My weekend was so blessed and such a time of growth and fellowship. Let's see if I can do it justice in writing about it.
We had a nice dinner with my mom on Friday night, and then her and me headed off for the conference. Our church is literally about a two to three minute drive from our house, so we were there pretty quick. We got there early because we like to sit toward the front. If I sit too far in back I get distracted with the movement and such of people, I do better up front. We got a nice new book bag, bible study notebook, pen with a highlighter, a small devotional, and some candy mints. I got to introduce her to all of my friends, and they were all very nice to her. I had my friends from my bible study praying for how my mom and I would be together (just like I asked you ladies).
They had a guest speaker, a pastor's wife from a Calvary Chapel in Texas (Calvary Chapel is the church we go to). I had heard she was very sweet and loving, but wow, I couldn't have even imagined. My mom and I were just sitting in our chairs, chatting waiting for things to start and she came right up to us, having never met us before, gave us a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Stared right into our eyes and said hello. I'm not doing it justice, but the love she showed and the acceptance of us was such a blessing. It still brings tears to my eyes. She chatted with us for a few minutes, then went and said hi to other ladies. The conference started and we had such a blessed time in worship.
The topic of the conference was God's love for us, and believe me, I needed to hear every word of it. The first night she was talking about Jesus in a way of us wanting to show Him off like we do a new boyfriend or husband. It was so very sweet, and such a great visual way she described it. The Lord had started to show me months ago that my walk with Him wasn't out of my love for Him, but out of obligation. I read the Word because I was a Christian, and I was 'suppose' to. I prayed because I was a Christian and I was 'suppose' to. Things like that. Well, after the great teaching on God's love, I knew I needed to go up and have some prayer with the ladies that were available for prayer. The issue was, my mom was there. And it's always been a kind of attitude that you don't need to go up for prayer and make things 'public'. I will tell you ladies, I was physically shaking, I was so nervous. I knew, I mean KNEW, the Lord wanted me to go up for prayer, but I kept thinking "What will mom think?" And will she want me to tell her since I told someone else (she doesn't like friends knowing more about me than her). But I also knew the Lord wanted me to go up for two reasons. I needed to make what He has been showing me 'public' in the sense of getting it out to someone else and having prayer over it. And I needed to get past this fear of what my mom thinks. So, shakingly, I stepped past my mom, out into the aisle and went up for prayer. The prayer with the woman up front was so very sweet, and I felt such a weight off of me after that prayer time. Things were fine with my mom and me when I got back to my seat, and she never gave me a 'look' or asked any questions.
We had a great time of fellowship after Friday evening's session, with some desserts they had prepared for us. We also went to the bookstore our church has, and my mom bought me a couple of new books. I always like new books. We also got to talk one on one with the conference teacher after most ladies had left. It was such a blessed time and she encouraged me greatly. Plus I met the pastor & assistant pastor's wives that night too. Then I went home and shared all of it with Paul.
Saturday morning was an early one, and surprisingly my family was up before I left to say goodbye. This time I met my mom at the church, and I got there before her. They had some different breads out for us to munch on. Plus we had met up with one of my friends on Friday night, and she sat with us on Saturday morning. Again, a nice time of fellowship before the conference. The two sessions that day were so great and encouraging, I can't even put it into words. We had a blessed communion time, and truly, I sat and cried for such a long time. I'm not sure why I cried, just a cleansing I guess, but I cried and cried. It was so good and refreshing.
After the whole conference ended, my mom and I were sitting there just chatting a bit. I brought up some of the things the Lord was showing me (that I 'knew' she might have issues with) and how I need to not worry what others will think (not saying her but included the word family). She agreed with me completely!! Yes, I was shocked (though I didn't show it ) but completely blessed at the same time. Though at that point even if she didn't agree with me, it wouldn't have changed anything. The Lord had brought me through some things by then, and her agreeing with me or not, wasn't going to affect me anymore.
Mom decided to stay one more night and hear the teacher's husband speak at church. So we all went out to lunch. Then my nephew, who just moved up to our town, stopped by, and Paul and him did some work on his car. Mom and me went out and did some shopping then she went back to her hotel and rested. We all met up at church that night, and had a blessed evening. I got to introduce my family to the speaker and she just kept encouraging me with all the words she said. Plus we met her husband, who is a great teacher. So all in all it was a great weekend.
I know this entry is so very long already, and I didn't do the conference justice. But just know that the Lord touched me in such a mighty way there, and I am so very blessed I went. Thank you for the prayers. I'm sure I will talk about it more off and on throughout the week. But now it's time to get caught up on all of your blogs. Thanks for sticking through this long entry.
It's been a good weekend. Saturday was real fun with our friends coming over and church in the evening. It wasn't nice enough for the kids to play outside, but they had fun on the Wii system after lunch. Everyone liked the food I made, and I was actually trying to encourage my friend about cooking more things from scratch. Which I think is just too funny since I've had such an issue with it. I started to feel bad actually because she would say, "Oh did you make this yourself too?" Not in a bad way, but would always follow it up with, "I'm just not good with that. I would like to make more things myself, but I just get so busy." I let her know not to beat herself up about it, and that I would help her if she ever wanted it. But the whole thing was just so ironic to me, since I was feeling like I was so bad at not making things by scratch.
After they left we had about an hour, then we had to go to church. As usual, church was awesome, and the Lord used our Pastor's message in my life again. I am really starting to like our church more and more. I really needed to give it more time.
But, this is the main point of my entry, and the reason for the title. I brought up on my last entry about the germ fear issue I deal with. I haven't had it a long time, it only started about a year or so ago. I've never understood why things that never bothered me before has bothered me so much lately. I won't go into lots of detail, but the fear was keeping me out of the kitchen because my fear of germs getting everywhere. I was washing my hands to much, I wasn't believing my husband when he said things were clean. And, sadly, I was starting to insist that my kids wash their hands when it wasn't really needed. I have been praying about this since it showed its ugly head about a year ago. My husband has been such an encouragement to me through this, and has always tried to show me the misunderstanding I've had in certain areas. The Lord also brought a great friend into my life to help me with the truth about germs and my fears in general. Again, I've been working through this with the Lord for quite a while.
On Friday night we went stock up shopping for meats, so of course there was a lot of 'fears' going on that night, though I did do pretty good. But then I woke up Saturday morning at 6:30am thinking of a possible germ thing, so goofy I know. Both my husband and friend has told me for months how this is distracting me. But as I'm thinking about things that morning I was going through the last time we were at a friends house. How the way she handled meat was so different and nothing has happened to them, but, then I thought, 'Yea, but my house is cleaner than hers." I finally fell back to sleep, and later in the morning I was having my devotional time.
My devotion was talking about pride's corruption. As I'm reading this slowly thoughts creep into my head about the germ issue. I push those thoughts out of my mind. They list some characteristics of pride: self-promotion, no regard for boundaries, its driven by competition and comparison, it's critical of others in effort to elevate self and fifth it's unteachable. But then it asks questions to help you delve deeper, and one of the questions was, "In what areas of my life do I feel I know all there is to know?" That's when it hit me, and hit me hard, in the germ area. See, no matter what people told me about germs and how inaccurate I was with my thinking, I didn't believe them. I would think, "Well, I know better then them, I'm in the 'know' and they aren't." "They will learn from me how wrong they are."
Those thoughts then really got me thinking, could this 'fear' actually be 'pride'. And I remembered what I had thought earlier that morning about my friends house. That I thought my house was cleaner than hers. I truly started looking at some of the deep thoughts I have during those fear times and I realized, a lot of it is pride. This just hit me like a ton of bricks. I really started going through things and realized how many times the thought of my house being perfect and the 'best' went through my mind with my fears. I never noticed that in the midst of my fears, I just saw the fear. But now that the Lord was showing me things, it was just so shocking. Not shocking that I'm prideful, truly I know I am. It has always been a struggle with me, and my 'knowledge' of things has always been the biggest area of trouble. I'm such an 'know it all' type person, and I've never liked that about myself. But what surprised me was the fact that this pride manifested itself in my life as fear. But then as my friend pointed out to me, fear is linked with pride. We think that the Lord can't take care of us (the fear) and so we have to take care of things (pride).
It was such an eye opening moment, truly. I would like to say everything is great now and I don't deal with those thoughts anymore, but that would be a lie. My thoughts have become habits, and it's almost automatic for me to wash when I don't have to. Or obsessively clean when I don't have to. But I am trying to remind myself, when those times come, that it's just pride. And that if my house turns out to be a bit dirty, then so be it. (And I will say I'm not slacking on cleaning, and my husband can attest to this. What I'm talking about is obsessive cleaning). So I keep giving it to the Lord, and asking for His strength to get through these times. I can't make it through this without Him. And though this has been an ugly thing to see in myself, and quite embarrassing to share with all of you, it is something I feel to do. I need to give God all the glory for not giving up on me in this area. For showing me things, even when I didn't want to see them. For showing me areas that I haven't given to Him, and to show me my continual need for Him. One of the things the Lord showed me at church yesterday was another pride issue in my life. And that I still need the same amount of His grace now as I did before I gave my life to Him. It was so easy for me to see me bearing fruit, or 'maturing' in the Lord (as some people call it), and the thought slowly creeping in that I don't need as much grace as I did because of my growth. But the Lord showed me what a lie that is and that I need just as much of His grace now as I did then. Lord thank you for showing me these things, as hard as they are to see in myself. I give you all the glory for these things that you have shown me. I love you Lord.
I went to a new woman's bible study starting up at our church. First, I need to explain, at any given time, there are 2 to 5 different woman's bible studies going on at our church. So this study has none of the women that were at my other study. It's at a house, not the church, and there's a different lady leading it. So it was all completely new. But it was great! The woman leading it was so warm and welcoming. There were three other ladies besides her and me, and two more that should be there next week, they just couldn't make it this week. Since we all just got the book, it was more of a time of chatting and getting to know each other time. I felt so welcomed there, way more than I have in a long time. There was an awesome time of prayer and encouraging each other. Which is what we are going through, learning to encourage others. I am so looking forward to next weeks study. Our church is big, and has 4 services, three on Sunday and one on Saturday night. We choose to go on Saturday night, as it's smaller and we are hoping we get to know some of the people there more. So of course, none of the ladies at this bible study goes on Saturday nights, it's so hard to get to know people that go at the same time as us with 4 services. But they knew some people who go on Saturday, so hopefully we'll get to know some more people that way. I do think it was funny though, out of the 5 of us ladies there, 2 were public school teachers. But they were very sweet and didn't have an attitude or anything. I thought it was sweet though, the lady leading it, after one of the ladies talked about her and another lady being teachers, it was my turn to introduce myself. So after I said I was a homeschooler, and I was done with the introductions, the leader says, "Wow, we have a lot of teachers here tonight." Wasn't that nice? It really put me at ease. There were other things too that went on that night, but hard to put into words, without making this a real long entry. But it was a great night, and I'm so looking forward to next week already.
We found out today that friends of ours from where we use to live, up in the mountains, are going to be in town tomorrow. So they will be stopping by for a nice visit. But my friend also told me they have friends who go to the Saturday night service at our church too and she'll try to introduce them to us next time they are at service with us. All of this is the Lord just blessing us with meeting new people and getting to know more people at church. It's such a blessing and answer to prayer. I know we will eventually get to know some of the people and actually make some more friends there. The Lord is just awesome in all He's encouraged me with the past few days.
School has gone exceptionally well today and tonight we get to do our grocery shopping. We all go together, including hubby. We have a great time being together and shopping, and Paul and I don't have to push the carts. .
I am thankful for the awesome days the Lord has given me these past few days. I hope you all have a great rest of the day, and a nice weekend.
Well, we got our tax refunds, and we've been having some fun. I will say that over half of it, well pretty much most of it, went to pay off bills. And we are blessed by that. With the way the year ended and the fact that we took a pay cut, we had to use our credit card again, and get a small loan for the moving, we had some bills that needed to be paid off. I am blessed to say, those have been paid off. And we were blessed that all of Paul's medical bills were paid off last year. So though we didn't get to play much with our money this year, I am blessed that we have gotten rid of a lot of debt. But we did have enough to get some 'toys'.
One thing I ordered yesterday, but it won't be in until next week. I got Paint Shop Pro V9. I am quite excited about it. I've heard real good things about it, and the things you can do with photos, graphics and such. It will be fun. I mainly use the laptop and I wasn't looking forward to doing extensive photo editing with the little mouse pad thing on my laptop, so I got to get a new mouse for the laptop.
It's a simple, basic one, but it's nice to have. It's optic, so I can just use it on my couch. Plus, I like the fact that I can still use my laptop mouse pad too.
But one of the biggest toys we got was our cell phones!!! I am so excited. We got to pick them up yesterday and I had them activated yesterday too. I had a couple of issues with mine, but they have been worked out and they work great. We are so blessed to have them. Here they are, our toys.
And because they look exactly alike I put some stickers on the back of mine.
I don't know if you can read it but it says Jo, and it has a picture of a ball of yarn. That way if we put them next to each other by mistake, we can easily find out which one it is. They are nice phones, and we are blessed by them, but I was being selfish right before we bought them. I started getting selfish and prideful when I realized we really were getting phones, and all I wanted was the more expensive flip phones. It felt like more of a 'status' phone for me. I didn't want people to think we really couldn't afford 'normal' phones and/or plans. I went back and forth and finally realized that I was being selfish and prideful. Thankfully Paul was solid through it, and knew we should get the cheaper, non flip-phones. So instead of feeling blessed that we could even get the phones at all, I was feeling selfish wanting more. So sad. But the Lord helped me through it, and I'm back to feeling blessed, which we truly are. When we gave up cell phone a couple of months ago I never really thought we would get them again, ever. So I am blessed. We had fun today playing with them today and text messaging a little (we've never text messaged before). We won't be doing that all the time, but it was fun at the beginning. It felt good to have it when I ran to the store today. So, thank You Lord again for blessing us with cell phones.
Well, that's about it. We are having a fun, lazy day. So I'm off to enjoy it more. I hope you have a great day.
This blog is so I can share my journey with the Lord, my journey as a wife and mother, and my journey as a homeschool mom. I pray that you will see the Lord in my life through happy and sad times, and that this blog glorifies the Lord.
This is an award and tag free zone, thank you.
She points out this beautiful glider sitting there. I'm like, yes exactly, how much do you want for it? She responds, "Oh nothing, you can just take it." 
Then she says do you need a little table too? What?!?! Of course I do, oh here's one you can just take too. 
)
So I thought I would go ahead and write an entry about our last Woman's bible study on Thursday night.
I am just such a computer geek, and I love to work on the computer, hence the reason it's so hard to be without my laptop. I'm going to be taking pictures during the whole week of VBS at our church and making a slide show from them. Plus I am working on some other computer related things too with VBS. And, this is still in the beginning praying, lets see what happens stage, but I might be working on my first web site. 
Yep, the lemon/egg part overcooked bad. I was going to just throw it out, but I know my hubby, and he likes to try everything I make. So I saved them and him and Sarah really like them. 
We also got to talk one on one with the conference teacher after most ladies had left. It was such a blessed time and she encouraged me greatly. Plus I met the pastor & assistant pastor's wives that night too. Then I went home and shared all of it with Paul.
