Please Live With Jehovah's Day in Mind
~ Jun 25th ~Not much going on but I've been knitting and clipping coupons. I will try to figure out how to keep you all updated on my progress ~ really want to get to using only one blog but for some reason its not working. LOL You can read more of my recent adventures here and I'll be back soon. Off to visit some of my friends ~ been awhile since I've done that. Hello Again!Hello friends! It has been several months since I have updated my blog. I hope that all is well with you and yours. Its been awhile...Happy New Year to you ~ it has been a very long time since I've blogged here. There are some wonderful changes I see too and don't know how I managed to stay away so long. Though it has become increasingly difficult to maintain several blogs, I will keep this one open so that I can visit from time to time and post. However, you are all welcome to visit me over at my other blog for the details of whats happening in my world. I've decided to have one main blog from now on so I can have more time visiting my friends instead of trying to post everywhere. ;D With the New Year, I'm looking for ways to cut costs, start a garden and live simply. So what better place to go then to our wonderful community here. I'm hoping to get some needed advice and start plans so my family and I can have the lovely things I've been dreaming about. I'm off to read and leave a comment or two. Talk w/you all soon. prayers for my nephewToday I thought that I would write a post and request prayer for my nephew. He is 9 months old and recently he had an accident and now has two skull fractures. He is doing fine and seems to be fairly normal other than the crack in the side of his skull which I find to be worrisome. The neurosurgeons have assured us that he should heal properly. There is a slight chance that he would require surgery if the fractures were to widen or not heal correctly. We will take him back to Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis in about a month to have another CT scan to check his progress.His accident happened when my sister went to visit family in KY. Her dad was taking my nephew out of the Johnny Jump-Up (which I have since been informed these are a pediatricians nightmare!) when my nephew pushed out of his arms and landed on his head on a hardwood floor. At first he had a swollen hematoma on the side of his head and it was not apparent at first that he had a serious injury. Two days later when my sister came back to Indiana we took him to the emergency room (due to the hematoma) and the physician felt as though it was a standard head injury. We waited a few days until the swelling of the hematoma lessened and then we could feel a distinct crack in his skull. We took him back to the emergency room this past Saturday and after giving him a CT scan the emergency room staff (I do not think we even were seen by a physican but rather an assistant) informed us that he had "open places" in his skull which were normal and would close up as he grew older. Our family did not agree with this diagnosis one bit. While we realize that an infant's skull has fissures and fontanels that will close in time, they do not have cracks in the skull that appear overnight! My nephew was released from the emergency room and we immediately went to the library to research infant skull fractures. While my daughter was viewing skull fractures on the internet and I was reading medical journals on infant head trauma, a local nurse came up to us and introduced herself. She briefly looked at my nephew and recommended that we take him to another hospital for a second opinion. After talking with a few friends we decided to take him to Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis. I did not realize until this point that you can visit the Riley emergency room. I thought that children were referred to Riley from hospitals when they needed specialized care. We took him to Riley and we brought a copy of the CT scan with us. He was seen by a team of neurosurgeons, physicans and medical professionals. We were very pleased with the thorough and professional level of care my nephew was able to receive at Riley. We spent one night in the hospital and then we were able to come home. After reading the same CT scan given by our local emergency room and examining his head the neurosurgeons were able to determine that he had two skull fractures on the side of his head. One of the fractures is a slightly wide crack. On the CT scan they observed a density on the image at one of the fractures which could indicate a bleed in the area but they assured us that this was not a major concern. He should not have any damage to his brain from this injury. Thank goodness! I know the Lord has been watching over him. My nephew is eating, sleeping, playing, and generally behaving as a normal 9 month old would and he does not appear to be experiencing discomfort. We are praying he will heal completely and that he would not require any surgery. Please be praying for him if you do not mind. I would feel more comfortable if we had a little helmet that he could wear to protect his head until his skull fractures heal completely. The neurosurgeons said that this is not necessary but that we need to be extra careful with him. He is at the age where he is crawling everywhere and pulling up on furniture and trying to stand up by himself. He is a little explorer for certain! Thank you for your prayers! It has been such a blessing to have my sister and nephew with us. I gave up my office in the back of the house so that they could have their own bedroom. We turned our dining room into our homeschooling area and office which I happen to like better. From our big picture window in the dining room we are able to look out on the patio and see our cats playing, view our garden across the lawn, and watch the rooster down by the barn. Frequently the horses are grazing in the front pasture and we can watch them as well. Early in the morning we watch the sunrise over the barn and it is a beautiful site. Our hearts are content living in the country! It is alot of hard work and sometimes it is hard to fit all the tasks needed to be done in one day. We wake up very early in the morning to take care of the animals and then we are busy until the evening. It is very satisfying although I am not sure I appreciate my rough hands. I suppose that I have officially earned the rank of a farmgirl now that I have the hands to prove this. I have recently discovered Badger Balm which has helped quite a bit in softening my hands. We used to stay up late at our other home but now that we live in the country, we find it very difficult to stay up past 10:00pm. It is hard to believe but even on the weekends we go to bed early. We get up with the chickens and tend to go to bed at sundown. During the long summer days we often would get sleepy before it was even dark. I think being outdoors and the hard work taking care of animals, gardening, hanging out the laundry, and mowing two or more acres with a push mower have been good for us! I have some pictures that I hope to post very soon. They are on a picture cd and so I am going to try to figure out how to load them on my blog. At the very least I will try to put my Flickr badge back running on my blog again so that you can see a bit of our Country Living. Many blessings to you and yours! Sharra Too Much Excitement!This past Monday we brought home two pure bred Quarter Horses. A very generous retired couple gave our family and a neighbor friend our pick of their ten Quarter Horses. At first we were going to bring home Nancy, who is an eleven year old registered Quarter Horse. She is a gorgeous horse and has been trained but it has been six years since she has been worked with on a regular basis. She was the lead mare of the horses and she was too powerful and headstrong to be our first horse. We decided to bring home Sassy, which is a two year old and the neighbor boy chose Poco, who is a yearling. We are allowing our neighbor to keep his horse in the barn and he will care for her needs and help around with the upkeep of the barn. Sassy and Poco are full blooded sisters and they are good companions for one another.We will need to send Sassy to a professional trainer before she can be saddled. We may try to halter train her if she continues to make progress in letting us work with her. Shaiya is feeding her sweet feed as a treat everyday and she is really warming up to her. Michael loves her and she was his first pick of the horses but for some reason Sassy nips at him sometimes and lays her ears back whenever he pets her for too long. Hopefully this is something that will be worked out during the training period. I consider these horses a blessing from the Lord and I am very thankful the Lord provided this gift for our daughter. Many years now she has dreamed about owning a horse and she has been preparing for this time when she could have one. It is such a blessing that the couple decided to offer her one. I am excited about this and I love going outside each day to visit with them. Even though this makes me very happy, I do worry about gathering the provision we need for the horse. We will need to buy and store hay for the winter and we will need to send the horse to a professional trainer which is around $500. Hay prices have been astronomical with the drought conditions since May but last week it began to rain and so this may allow for the hay prices to drop a bit. I would like to find hay at $3 per bale and Shaiya has been calling around and hay has ranged from $5 to $7 a bale. Friday afternoon we experienced too much excitement around here on the farm. It all began when I decided that the oldest rooster needed some fresh air and sunshine and that I would chase him out of the barn. I did not really have a good reason other than I can hear the rooster cock-a-doodle-doodling from the barn each morning and that I thought it would be nice to have the rooster outside so that we could hear him more clearly. After a half an hour of chasing the rooster around the barn, I decided to see if Shaiya would help me out. Much to her chagrin of my wonderful idea, she decided to help me out by cornering the other hens while I ran after the big rooster. The hens were having a tizzy at us running all over the barn trying to chase the rooster out the door. Finally we decided to give up but not before one of my Rhode Island Red hens decided to run frantically out the door and into my garage where it hid the rest of the afternoon. Thankfully Konecko, our very lazy cat, decided to leave the poor bird alone while it hid in a corner of the garage, until Michael could come home and return the hen back to its quarters. After the rooster chasing expedition, my friend stopped by that lives a mile up the road. She was visiting with us out by the pasture while we gave Sassy and Poco some sweet feed in buckets. The wind was gently blowing and we began to hear some creaking sounds coming from the dog yard. We all began looking at the large tree (it is a big tree but I am not sure what kind it is) standing in the middle of the dog yard and then all of a sudden a scary cracking sound thundered through the air and Shaiya yelled out “run girls, run!” My friend took off running up the hill and our little one Briyah followed behind her. I ran after Briyah and all I could think about was if the tree was going to fall down that I had to protect her so I slammed Briyah down on the ground and covered her up. I was scared silly. We looked up and the tree did not fall but an enormous branch cracked off the tree and thankfully it did not hurt our dogs at all. The branch fell inside of the fenced dog yard and did not fall anywhere near us and so we were not hurt either. Briyah’s wrist was sore since I pulled her to the ground but other than this we were all just fine. My poor friend was so scared too that she thought we were going to have a tree fall on us. I hope she will come to visit me again! Yesterday our neighbor who owns this property came over with a chainsaw to cut the large tree branch and carry it off with his tractor. It took about 3 tractor loads to remove the tree branches and now a significant portion of that old beautiful tree is missing. Heirloom Garden Update: -the pole beans are really flourishing -little bell peppers and banana peppers are starting to appear on the plants -the heirloom tomatoes are producing quite a bit of fruit -some sneaky little creature is digging up my watermelon plants -the sweet corn is looking weak and yellowing... I did not realize that you need to add nitrogen to sweet corn and so we may not have a successful corn crop this year Things I am learning: -weeds can be difficult to manage but mulching seems to work the best -you have to go outside and pick Japanese Beetles everyday so they will not eat the plants -I strongly dislike Japanese Beetles -feeding manure tea to the plants every two weeks really makes the plants more productive -I am supposed to pick the leaf lettuce before it grows into an enormous plant -I am supposed to harvest the cilantro before it starts flowering Blessings to you, Sharra Horse DreamsYesterday our daughter Shaiya began riding lessons at a local farm as she is trying to prepare herself to properly take care of her horse when she is able to get one. She also has a thoughtful friend from our congregation who is giving her riding lessons on a periodic basis. What is ironic is that her new teacher lives a mile or two up the road from where we just moved from and we had no idea that she was a riding instructor. We lived at our previous home for 2 ½ years and I suppose had we known about this instructor then Shaiya could have taken lessons before. I am very pleased with the teacher as she is knowledgeable and friendly and what is really great is that her tuition is $15 per hour or $20 per 1.5 hour and this is an affordable rate in our local area. Shaiya has not taken riding lessons previously because they were simply out of our budget. Sometimes basic tuition could be $30 or more each week and we just could not fit this into our budget. Yesterday something arose out of the blue that has surprised us quite a bit. Shaiya’s new instructor gave her a phone number for a local couple who breed Quarter Horses and desired to give one of their horses away to a good home. Shaiya called them yesterday to inquire about the horse and last night our family went to visit this couple for around 3 hours. We are prayerfully considering bringing one of their horses home. This retired couple owns several beautiful horses with good breeding and excellent confirmation and they are a gracious Christian couple. They welcomed us into their home and were very friendly. I am continually amazed at all of the Lord’s servants and how kind believers can be to one another. They seemed to be pleased with Shaiya’s knowledge and love of horses. She asked many questions and spent quite a bit of time pondering if this could be a good fit for her. The couple was very nice and at first they were offering one specific horse but then they let Shaiya have her pick of the horses on the pasture. Once horse seemed to really like her and it walked up to her and followed her a bit. My husband also spent some time with the horse and he thinks it is a wonderful horse. For a moment, I thought it was very surreal to be standing with my family after listening to Shaiya’s dreams for so many years and that God may open this door and hand her one freely. We still need to pray and really consider this offer but our hearts are filled with thankfulness that this kind couple would be so gracious to give our daughter a registered Quarter Horse.
So if I can say anything to encourage you today it would be this... Here is a blessing from God’s Word: Psalm 128 A Song of Ascents. How blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, Who walks in His ways. When you shall eat of the fruit of your hands, you will be happy and it will be well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine within your house, your children like olive plants around your table. Behold, for thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD. The LORD bless you from May the Lord bless you today and everyday! Farm Livin' is the life for me...Well, I should be original and write a completely new post for my homestead blog but in order to get my blogs caught up, I am just adding the same post here as I have on my Heritage Homeschooling blog.Wow, it has been a long time since I have written on my blog. I would say that I have taken an extended break from my computer but that is not the case. Since I work from home in my office I do have to work a few hours each day on my computer. Here in the country we have a slow-speed dial-up connection. Gone are the days of the wireless high-speed cable internet around here but it isn't so bad really. I suppose that I have taken an extended blogging hiatus until I could get things caught up in our family’s daily lives. It has been over two months now since our big move and I am just now beginning to feel like we are getting settled. Michael is enjoying his new position working for a local non-profit social service agency here in town. It has been an adjustment for us to get used to him working outside of the home as he had a home office and worked at home the past 2 years. However, it has been a great blessing as we do seem to have more quality family time. I sit here now and my heart is filled with thankfulness at the Lord’s provision. A few months ago, my heart was filled with worry, fear, and even though I trusted the Lord completely, I did have anxiety at what lie ahead. I did not know what doors the Lord would open for Michael’s employment. I did not know where we would live. For a short time, it was a scary place to be as we do not have a savings account or emergency fund to rely on and if the Lord did not open the door of provision for us then we would sink. It was not easy and times were hard for just a bit but our family kept praying, hoping, and trusting and we knew the Lord had a plan for us as a family and that He would make all things work out according to His perfect will. We are just so thankful and each day we are amazed at the awesome love and mercy of our Lord. This is what we have planted in our pole bean plants planted in front of the first row of sweet corn Heirloom Tomatoes – 45 plants Heirloom Bell Peppers – 30 plants Strawberries 9 hills of Yellow Squash Cabbage Eggplant Celery Radish Buttercrunch Lettuce Mesculun Lettuce Romaine Lettuce Zucchini 7 hills of Cantaloupe 2 bean pole teepees Carrots Bush Beans Cucumbers Basil Cilantro Parsley Oregano Habenero Peppers Banana Peppers Pumpkins Watermelon Sunflowers Green Onions As a side benefit, I am beginning to lose some weight and gaining muscle strength by working outside each day. I hope and pray by the end of summer that my health will have improved and that I can lose the weight that I have been struggling to lose for the past few years. We are also praying that if it is the Lord’s will that we can have another baby in the near future. I am 33 now and Michael is 36 and we figure that we would like to have at least 2 or 3 more children, Lord willing. I have known for some time now that my health just is not what it should be and losing weight is one important step that is needed. Michael and I are also mowing 2 ½ to 3 acres with a push mower and so this is giving us plenty of outdoor exercise. This week a local homeschooling mom offered to give us a used riding lawn mower and we may just have to take her up on her offer. It usually takes us 2 days to mow the property with a push mower and by the middle of the summer, this is going to be a difficult task. We are also happy that our barn is no longer empty. We recently obtained 7 laying hens that are 4 months old, 2 roosters, and a beautiful Cayuga duck named Mr. Frank. They are living in our big barn until we can build them portable chicken pens to put out on the pasture in the daytime. We thought about letting them free range around the farm but we have noticed an abundance of hawks in this area and the hens are a bit young yet so we are going to try to keep them safely penned out on the pasture. We hope by July we can have our pens built and then we can raise 25 broiler chickens so that we can have our own pasture raised poultry. A friend of ours just took 80 of their broiler chickens off to processing and so they will have organic pasture raised chicken to last them all year in their freezer. We are also exploring raising our own turkey for Thanksgiving as soon as we can find a breeder in our area that sells turkeys. One of the other favorite things about our new home is that we have pheasant that lives on our street. There is a pheasant habitat right up the road and this pheasant is in our yard each morning. It is a beautiful bird and in the evenings if we go to town it will run beside our car like a dog would chase a car. It is a very unique experience indeed. Sometimes the pheasant will trot through my garden and since I do not know much about pheasants, I am just praying it will not eat any of my vegetables. We just love living in the country! It is a lot of hard work but it is good for the body and spirit. Fresh air, sunshine, and being surrounded by God’s creation sure can bring a weary soul some contentment. I love hanging the laundry out to dry and walking outside and seeing our neighbor’s goats play in the pasture. We are renting this property so it is not permanent but hopefully one day we will be able to purchase our own little homestead. I guess our ultimate dream is to have a homestead in Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget none of His benefits; Who pardons all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases; Who redeems your life from the pit, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion; Who satisfies your years with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle. The LORD performs righteous deeds And judgments for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of May He bless and keep you and yours, Sharra 
~ Happy Mother's Day ~
May each you have an awesome day. I'll be off line today, enjoying the peace of my family, some knitting time and then off to work for a few hours.
Be blessed!
~ Spring Look ~I changed the layout ~ so what ya think?! Pretty springy, I'd say. Well, I'll be back to move things around and add my links, buttons and stuff back. But this will do for now. Good night! Homefront....things are a bit quiet here for sure now that the storm has seemed to pass. I am working on my blogs, reading some blogs I've missed and changing things. I'm considering changing the layout of this blog though I really like my template. I did manage to update my avatar and get it to work again. I used to be able to change my avatar and it would automatically change here but when HSB had the system changes it stopped working. Its working now though and I'm happy. I've been doing my FlyLady cleaning assignments. I like how they have started giving sneak peeks of the weekly assignments so I have them all at once now. No more logging in daily to get my assignment and I can plan accordingly if I will miss a day due to work. We are in the kitchen and I feel like I've been in the kitchen for a long time. Those 17 mos of working really put a dent in my home organization and my motivation. LOL Things are getting back on track, one day at a time. I hope you all are doing well. I will be making my rounds this week to catch up on my fav people. More spring cleaning to come in the house and the blog. I may have to get a new look so that it looks fresh and inviting around here. Stay tuned ~ never know what I may come up with. Have a wonderful evening! { Last Page } { Page 1 of 5 } { Next Page } |
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