Thunderwolf Ranch

I wrote a post on how we will not be able to buy used clothes or toys anymore. I received a reply from "Anonymous" Here is what "Anonymous has said:

I think its a great idea. I think buying used clothes and toys is nasty and cheap. Do you know everyone single person who get them from. You have no idea what kind people sell this stuff. Do they smoke live on a farm with dirt and animals? Why not just buy stuff at the store that is lead free and made in America? Look for sales and buy it then.

1. is I am dirty and nasty! I make my children dirty and nasty because we buy some used clothes!

! Are you dirty and nasty too? Ok , hello wake up anonymous! Used close is NOT nasty and dirty. Have you ever used or even heard of soap? It is a neat thing you can CLEAN with it. We buy new also, but like to find great deals. God tells us to be good stewards. Saving money is being a good steward.

3. Is I am a dirty yup, I will admit it!

! I love to play in my garden, to feel the dirt , dig holes, put plants and seeds in! I own a FARM I am getting dirtier!!!

!! I raise hogs, poultry, beef, goats,we have have horses and so many animals it will make your head spin! We run bare foot most of the time on our farm, Even more dirt!! We live in California and we just do not wear shoes unless we have too. I know this is a bad habit . but we do it.

My daughter Kristi was verry sick on summer she had pneumonia and Shayna and I along with a hired man where building a barn. So we set up a tent with a bed and a air cleaner for Kristi. I went to go check on her and I found her in the pig pen curled up in the pigs bed of straw with her 500lb sow wrapped around her , she kept Kristi safe. So my family is odd.

But guess what all the dirt washes of in the shower/bath. There is a wonderful new invention called a washing machine. You add your clothes and SOAP and it washes them

, Amazing I know. Check them out!!

This FARMER is proud to be a FARMER. I was not brought up that way. I was brought up a rich *B*. My dad is a famous singer, guitar player. I was raised with singers, movie stars and more.

But you know what makes me happy?? My life as a FARMER , growing thing , animals. When I am done at the end of the day I take a shower and use SOAP to get clean. When I am done I slip on my Guess jeans & shirt, la mystere bra.

ok some habits are hard to break

I do look for jeans that someone bought and they did not fit , or wore a few times to buy. why pay $79.00 for my jeans when I can get them for about $20.00 on ebay?!?!?

Did you know you can find brand new clothes at thrift stores? Yes, it is true. We find them all the time. We like some brands. I love Guess, the girls love Bongo and Candies, Roxy, but we buy them at a way lower prices than we could ever dream of getting at a regular store on sale.

Anonymous get real ! My friends keep looking and buying used. The other people do not know what they are missing!!

A MUST READ FOR ALL OF US

Do You Buy or Sell Pre-owned Clothes and Toys for your kids???? As of FEB. 10 2009 you will not be able to ANYMORE!

In August of 2008, important legislation passed that was intended to protect children from harmful lead in toys, equipment and clothing. Although the intention is good, the bill that was passed is poorly written. Thus, it will prohibit the resale of ANY used clothing, toys, equipment for children unless you can PROVE it is lead free. This means that stores such as Goodwill, Salvation Army, Kid to Kid, Once Upon a Child, any thrift store, all children's consignment sales, Ebay sales, Craigslist and GARAGE SALES are prohibited from selling children's clothing, toys or equipment after FEB. 10, 2009 unless they have had the item tested for lead and can provide verification that it is lead free.

This is SO detrimental to young families who depend on buying used clothing at consignment sales or thrift stores. This is also a problem for middle income families who sell their children's outgrown clothing at garage sales, consignment stores or ebay to provide the funds for the next season of clothing. Also, take into consideration what this will do to our landfills!!!! Can you imagine everyone throwing their toys away because the government says you are not allowed to sell them??? That's crazy! Anyway, below is a link to a news story in the LA Times regarding this new law that will take effect on February 10, 2009. Also, there is a BOLD HIGHLIGHTED link to a form you can fill out (takes less than 1 minute) and it will automatically send it to your state representatives regarding rewriting this legislation.

Thank you from all the parents who buy and sell used kids stuff!!!

Please forward this on to your friends and contacts!

Contact Your Representatives by copying and pasting the link below. It is a super easy way to do it. Just fill in your name and contact info (email and address only) and they will do the rest!

I think what some people are missing is that there is soap in the world, use it. Our landfills are going to be so full of stuff that can be used by people. What a waste. Buying used is not a crime nor is it gross. What is going to happen to all of these organizations who help support things like , cancer, shelters, homeless,people in need. They have thrift stores to help them help others.

My mom made me laugh , then think!

I come from a family of smart butts. We all have it in us. I get it more from Bubba (my grand father) and my mom loves it.

Mom sent me this email on bras and it made me laugh and think here is the part that made me laugh.

Have you ever wondered why A, B, C, D, DD, E, F, G, and H are the letters used to define bra sizes?
If you have wondered why, but couldn't figure out what the letters stood for, it is about time you became informed!
(A} Almost Boobs...
{B} Barely there.
{C} Can't Complain!
{D} Dang!
{DD} Double dang!
{E} Enormous!
{F} Fake.
{G} Get a Reduction.
{H} Help me, I've fallen and I can't get up !

It also got me thinking. Are we just a size or are we just us ?!?!? I hate it when I am introduced to my husbands employees because they always look at my chest before they even look at my face or eyes!! Hellooo I am up a bit higher! Yes ,I am a female and I bet you mom , sister, aunt , grandma has a chest with breast too.

I do have a large natural chest. I always have. I wear a size 36 E to F. But I am more than just *****. I am a wife, mom and so much more than what they see. Please look at my face when you meet me not my chest. If you are my family or friend then you can joke with me at my chest. Like my mom, daughters , friends do, they will say I saw a cute dress or shirt that would look great on you but it will never fit over those. That is ok because I complain about the same thing. Try finding a bathing suit!! In high school and after I used to have them custom made to fit me. I had a 34 top then and a 16 inch waist, the good old days.

I love my sons they never look or make fun of me, I am just mom! But here I will share a picture of one of my daughters making fun of my over the shoulder boulder holder:

I hope this make you laugh and think. We are the size God made us, we are female with female parts, just as God made. We might be numbers or sizes to buy clothes that fit us. But most of all we are just as God made us, his perfect work.

Home schooling info for all, I fixed the link

Kristi has been board with her school books, so I took out of storage the Far Above Rubies unit study based on Proverbs 31:10-31. I was looking for things to use for this unit study like books, web info and so on.

This site has soo much info for each of the 20 unit studies in the set. But it also has a ton of pages for parents not using the study on every subject. I found that most of them are Christian site and Christian info.

I had to stop looking at it for a few minutes to share this amazing place to you all. Some of the pages are no longer there, but look around and see all the stuff they have. Who ever did this did a ton of work looking up hundreds of web site for us all.

We finally decided on the decor for inside the house!!

About 1.5 years ago when we were going to sell this house and move to our ranch I packed up so much of the house. I then broke my leg and it is STILL broken a year later, yup a year!! I broke it on 12-27-07. Any way due to my leg I did not unpack. I have done some but need to do more. Hubby is going to help next week, thank you God. I can not move the heavy boxes any more and he stacked the boxes too high for me to reach.

So hubby and were talking about redoing the decor in the house again and we could not agree, Husbands

! I have leaning towards cowboy decor, hubby was wishy washy about it. But he saw his friends house (his mentor) Pat (uncle pat) and his house was cowboy decor and he loved it

!!! Finally we agree on it.

So we are going to redo the house in cowboy decor. I loved a rug uncle Pat has in his living room. I asked where he got it? He told us the national finals redo. So we talked about that and now we are going with him to the next one in December 09, ( can you believe it 09??). I have found a rug we like on ebay, so we will get that. But I am going to save up a few thousand for the decor for the home at the finals.

As I have been shopping on line hubby is sitting next to me watching his hunting shows. I hate it when the hunt turkeys! The dumb turkeys answer back when they are called and then get shot. I think hubby love to put turkey hunting on because I yell at the turkeys, telling them to not talk, hide, what are you doing??

. But do they listen noooo.

We have had 3 pet turkeys. Whitey even went to a turkey dinner at church one year (alive). We also had Wanda and Waddles. Waddles was a 65 pound tom that was a blast to play with. As for Wanda well she was funny to watch because she like to fight the chickens! We laughed so much watching her fight because when she was done she sat on the chickens

. We all pulled out feed buckets and sat on them watching her. No one ever got hurt or killed, we would never let that happen. They all have passed on but the stories we have.

Puppies are here

The puppies are here

!! Gracie started having them about 7:30 this morning. She had 2 girls and then she stopped for a while. She then had a boy and another girl, we thought she was done, then she had another boy. Kristi and I and Shayna all thought she was done we went to take a nap. We woke up to another boy and girl. !!!

We are so happy she had 7 puppies. There are 3 families in our church who are hoping that these puppies can help with with their special needs children. Gracie (mom) is a service dog and so is Alex (dad). We have hopes that we can get 3 service dogs out of this litter. Time will tell.

Michelle dropped the babies off this morning for us to babysit while she went to the Dr. When she came back she said she wants one of the puppies (there was 2 at that time). I told her no. That she goes threw dogs like kleenexs! I already gave Jeffie on of my golden puppies right before Jeffie was born. Last year she gave the dog away. She has gone threw 4 other dogs since then!!.

Christmas V.B.S

Tonight was the start of our Church's vbs for Christmas. It was fun and hard at the same time. The hard part was we had to teach all of Matt 1 to Matt 2:23 and Luke 1 to 2:7 in 35 minutes! I read the 4th grade class I am teaching part of each, then we talked. They loved it when I talked to them about what a manger was really. So many of the children thought it was a crib of some type. I told them that it is a food bowl for animals. I got them laughing and gross at the same time by telling them that animals ate out of that manger , they licked the manger, maybe had snot from their nose in there, they loved it (it was fun) Next I read from " The Adventure of Christmas By Lisa Whelchel". I read about tradition ask about some of theirs (this was fun). I also talked to they about the best gift in the world, Jesus. How He gives us the best gift ever and how some people never even look at the gift from Him. How would they feel if they worked hard to earn enough money to buy someone a really special gift and that person never even looked at it or took it and then gave it back unopened ??? How would they feel??? How do you think Jesus would feel?? I left that being the last of the bible study. But ofcourse got a few groans when I told them that is their home work

, how would Jesus feel???

Are We old yet ???

This is funny because age does that to us. Do you feel like a number or just you?? I feel like just me , not a number. My mom tells me when she looks in the mirror she wonders who that is.

Help

We went to Disneyland to have our annual Christmas pictures taken of our babies and grand-babies. We had a blast but the pictures did not come out as we hoped. We are hoping to re-take them if Michelle will let us have them again.

This one is cute but you can see a bit of Kristi's bra! and Jeffie is looking down.

Michelle is going to let us have the grand-babies Thursday so we will retake pictures in front of the tree. I hope this time they look good so we can send the out.

My menu of dinners for this week

I have read other blogger menus. It really made me want to try again on making a menu and keeping it.

Next weeks meals are going to be kinda hard as we girls are serving at Christmas vbs and it is at night. We will not get home until after 9:30 pm and hubby will get home a bit before 8:00 pm. Any idea's ?? You may notice that there is only green beans and corn for our dinner most of the time. Hubby does not like too may veggies. We girls eat most of the veggies during the day when he is at work or we make two veggies for dinner. We love veggies. Have you even seen children fight over the last Brussels sprouts? Mine do.

Child Labor, what Shayna did to her sister

We had our our yard sale today we did good. We made $150.00 today. About 1pm I was very tired from going to bed late and getting up early. Did you know the sun is up at 6:30 in the morning ? LOL, I did not! We girls are night owls and we tell people the sun does not come up at our house until NOON.

Back to my story at 1pm I was tired and wanted to put away the sale but Shayna and Kristi wanted to keep it going for more time. (they made $13.00 more)

Shayna is the master planner. She made her sister dress up and wave a sign on the wall next to a major street, Child Labor.

I fell bad for Kristi. Tomorrow Shayna is going to dress her up as a dog or cat and make her wave her sign. Can you feel the sisterly love??

I am trying to sell off my ebay stock and the million home school books and sets of home school books we have, as well as the bju satellite. Kristi will be a senior next year

Yard Sale

We are having a huge sale in the morning. We have a ton of home school books we are no going to use. I have soooo many books it is not funny. We also have so many brand new clothes we are selling.

Surgery

How things work out some times is such a pain in the tush! On Monday I got in the mail the ok from our insurance company to have more surgery on my still broken leg , I was so happy. The key word is WAS. Why was?

Well...... last night Shannon brought home the paper work for the up coming year on our medical insurance. Guess what ? They changed insurance companies. UUGGHHH. I am glad we went back to our old insurance company, but did it have to start on 12-01-08???

Now we have to start all over with getting the insurance to approve for my new surgery. I want this over and done with. My leg has been broken for a year on the 27th of December.

I have been tagged!!

Rule~5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their Blog.

5. My husband never know if we will have a new critter in our house when he comes home,

Here piggy ,piggy, Kristi and Ee

I am sharing pictures of Kristi and her pet sow Ee. Ee is from our old sow Tuna. Kristi picked Ee out as soon as she was born. She told us with her cute little smile and batting her eyelashes " this is my baby". With that cute look how could we say no. Her brother begged Kristi so much to let him have her, but Kristi held firm on it, NO!!

Kristi hurt her knee one day and the Dr told her no horse back riding for 2 weeks. So what does she do??? See for your self :

A real piggy back ride!! We took a picture to show her Dr. her "New ride". Our Dr. knowing our family ( a bunch of smart butts, Dr. is also one) just laughed and went around showing the nurses and other Dr.'s her new ride!!!

We still have Ee and Tommi , but we sold Heffa to a neighbor. We did not have enough room in our freezer for her.

Thanksgiving funnies

Christmas gifts, I saved a bundle

I found a great deal on a few Christmas gifts. The coupon mom sent an e-mail out to people about a dinner deal. The deal was you had to pick out as many restaurants as you would like and buy gift certificates to. The normal price is $10.00 for a $25.00 certificate. But the sale price was $2.00 for a $25.00 certificate. So it ended up that I paid $24.00 for $300.00 worth of gift certificates. What a deal. We got them for a nice steak house.

We think it is a nice gift. We got 2 for Michelle and Gill cost $4.00 for $50.00. We got 2 for my husbands brother and his wife cost $4.00 for $50.00 . We got 2 for my sister and her husband cost is $4.00 for $50.00. We got 1 for our 4-H horse leader as a thank you for all her help, cost is $2.00 for $25.00. And we have 1 left for $25.00 that cost $2.00.

You guys might want to look into this site of the coupon moms. We think it is a nice gift to give. What parents does not like a nice dinner out for free???? And what a deal. Today we all are trying to save money and still have a nice Christmas. We did that for a few people. We need to keep our eyes open to great deals that the family we love.

Grandma is dying

We are going to go see Shannon's (my hubby) grandmother in the morning. We went to see her about 2 weeks ago. We did not think she would make it this long but she has.

Grandma will be 82 years old on Monday. She has been going down hill for the last year. Only 5 % of her heart is working.

I am going to miss her. I love to hear her tell of the good old days. She talks of the times when her and her hubby grew food to feed the family because they could not afford to other wise.

To hear of how the went from town to town picking veggies and fruit. To the lessons her mother taught her. How they survived all this hardship and still helped other out.

We all feel blessed to have her as long as we do/did. The start of this year the Dr.'s told us to see her because she will not last much longer. Grandma is still here. We are even more blessed because we got a picture with grandma and 5 generations!! Our grand babies made the 5th generation.

Mom called us to tell us she is much worse and passing out today. So we will go see her. Mom says grandma will be here for a few more days, she thinks.

The world is a much sadder place when we lose people with such history that they can and do share with us. When the world was a nicer place, people cared and helped each other out even when they had nothing them selves.

I miss my grandparents. My grandfather went home almost 14 years ago and my grandma went home 6 years ago. I loved to sit a listen to them tell me about the good old days.

Our eyes were opened

Hubby and I talked last night about the girls and how spoiled they are. How it came about was we had the roof repair man come over to look at the leak. He asked why we wanted to build a large house at our ranch. I told him the home that is there is only 1082 square feet and this house we live in is feeling smaller to us because we would like the grand babies to have a room just for them. How many square feet is this house he asked? 1500 square feet. He said his family of 4 live in a 865 square foot home. ( I feel bad for looking at a 4200 square foot home).

Then our daughter Shayna drove up, he asked if that was her truck? I looked at him and said yes. He just looked at me. He then asked if Kristi will be getting her own car? I said yes ,as soon as we can find the truck we are looking for. Then the girls started talking about what kind of 2 horse trailer they want because our 4 horse is to much from them to haul just 2 horse or pigs. The man asked me if we were going to buy them a 2 horse trailer? I said yes. He then had a look on his face that said they are spoiled.

It really open my eyes!! They are really spoiled!! Most children in a family do not each get their own trucks or a horse trailer. They would use mom and dads. They will share a horse trailer though. We do need a two horse trailer, it is not just for them. When we go to horse shows it is a waste of gas to haul a huge 4 horse trailer with just an Arabian and a pony.

So last night we talked and it was really an eye opener for us both to see that our children have never wanted for anything. My husband has worked very hard to give us what we need and more. But we realize we need to change some things. To see it through some ones else's eyes was the opener. We are going to change some things. I am not bragging or anything like that just sharing my growing some more. It was just a real eye opener. I mean a real eye opener !!

Thanksgiving Trouble

Do you think a husband should talk to his wife about who is coming to Thanksgiving dinner before anyone else(his mom)?? I found out from my mother-in-law that my husbands cousin , her hubby and 3 children are coming to dinner. I asked hubby why did he not tell me me? He told me I was making a big deal over nothing. I said no ,but as your wife I should find out from you not your mom leaving a message as to who is coming to dinner. As it is his mom is telling me when she will be here staying in a hotel , for how many days and when hubbies grandma will be here(our house) and how many days she will stay with us for me to care for !!

I can not care for his grandma by my self, the girls will have to help. My leg is still broken after 11 months, I have to have more surgery, I walk with a limp and am not anywhere near as strong as I was. How am I to pick up and carry his grandma in and out of the tub to giver her a bath and pick her up when she falls?? I love his grandma , and will do my best.