A busy season

This is such a busy season. Not only because it's Christmas soon but also because of the intense season of life I am in right now. It's very interesting and I am never bored but get sooooooooo tired and often "sick and tired". However I do not want to dwell on feeling "sick and tired"!!!!! I can waste so much time wishing to make things slow down or different but I just know it isn't going to for a while. About 5 years or so before I can say it's going to be a tad easier. But you know what? Instead of wasting those 5 years or whatever number of years dwelling on how insanely busy life is and stressing out about how complicated it is to run this home I am going to just embrace this time. Let this be my public announcement to that end!! I WILL enjoy my life. I WILL enjoy my children just the way they are and I WILL enjoy my hubby too!! The purpose to my life isn't that I can do everything perfectly. I do not want to beat myself up about not having my life just so.....................

And in the meantime I am simplifying!!!!!!! Christmas is one area that can be totally overwhelming. I am buying the kids one gift each and we picked names so each of them will buy for one person in the family. The older kids use their own money for this and for the younger ones I pay. This way they get 2 nice gifts each from our immediate family. Today I took my 3 and 6 year olds to pick out the gift for their sibling that they are supposed to buy for. Then when we got home I helped them wrap the gifts.  Then they got to find a spot to hide the gift until it's time to put it under the tree. It was such a nice time to just take some time to do that  and not doing it last minute before Christmas! Hubby said I can go shopping tonight without the kids so I'll for sure buy a few presents then as well. I bought some frozen tart shells and will just fill them with something simple. Grandma will bring lots of baking anyways.

I'm just so happy that I can just chill out and give up my expectations on life and just go from there, thankful for the many blessings that are in front of my nose but would otherwise have missed!! Complaining robs you of joy and I've done pleanty of that even if unspoken!!! God has chosen to ENTRUST me with extra busy children. It's not that God has cursed me with BAD children. It's that He has ENTRUSTED me with these children knowing that he will also supply my every need to raise them and point them to Him. So many times I just marvel at how busy they are and wonder why me??? Just the other night it just came to me. I've been ENTRUSTED with a precious treasure. 9x!! How lucky am I??? That kind of thinking sure puts a different spin on things. I will pour myself into blessing these children instead of thinking of myself. There is a crushing in the inner man that takes place. God knew exactly what he was doing for I would otherwise most likely remain the same selfish person I always was !!

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Lavender Mint Goat Milk Soap is Ready!!!

Attention Stargazers!!

Got this from my Farmer's Almanac e-newsletter...

Sky Watch

The planets and the Moon are putting on a show! For a few nights, brilliant Venus, bright Jupiter, and the crescent Moon blaze in a striking conjunction. They first formed their brilliant triangle last night, 15 degrees high, in the southwestern sky. The three celestial objectives will continue to stay close together as seen from Earth even though the planets are millions of miles away.
Read more Sky Watch! We provide the current and upcoming months free for our Almanac.com readers.

Vanilla Granola

Help, problem with blog

Something weird is happening today.  When I go to my blog, I get a password popup:

The server www.blenza.com at Restricted Area requires a username and password.

I click on cancel and my blog loads just fine.

Any idea what's going on?

Energizer Turkey... It keeps going and going,lol

So originally this was going to be an update to the "Rubber Turkey" ya know because it stretches and streches like rubber, but I like "Energizer Turkey" better because it keeps going and going, lol

Tonight will be day 3 of Turkey for dinner, I am wondering how far it will stretch to feed us.

The first night we had

Turkey
Mashed Potatoes and gravy
Stuffing
and green beans

last night  the kids and I had the same thing just reheated but dh wanted to make a sandwich so he had 2 turkey sandwiches.

Tonight  dh will probably want sandwiches again since those are his all time favorite way to eat leftover thanksgiving turkey, I think I will  make hot turkey and gravy sandwiches for me and the kids,  however I think they may opt for something else as they weren't as thrilled with turkey again  for dinner last night like their dad was, but I have plenty of stuff for them to choose from, They will probably want grilled cheese sandwiches with hm applesauce on the side.

So there ya go, 3 meals so far from a free turkey, I wonder how long it will last?

The World's Best Cornbread~

A God Thing

A God Thing.

I am seeing more and more of his hand work and ways.  Last night we discovered that our one female golden Gracie is pregnant!!!  We are so happy.  She was breed to our new golden male Alex.   We want this so bad.  You see both dogs are service dogs.  We have 2 families we want to help out with their puppies.  The both have children with special needs, where a service dog can help out.   My daughters and I train service dogs. 

Last night Tammy and her hubby one of the parents prayed that Gracie was going to have puppies.  That was night we discovered she was.  See a God thing.

Another was they were looking for a new place to have the children with special needs to ride horse.  Another God thing, because we have been praying about that for over a year.  See another God thing.

God sure is a great.  He puts us together to help one another.

God Bless, mj

Things I did today....

I really didn't do too much today. I did go through my file card system and made some changes. I got my Christmas cards ready and took them to the post office which was rather busy, but I did get them mailed out today. That is one thing checked off my list of things to do this week.

We are still waiting to hear when our new stove will be arriving. Right now I have a microwave, a crock pot and an electric griddle. If I get real desperate there is a side burner on the BBQ.

Oh I did finally remember to take a picture of the Christmas tree after I had gotten it all decorated.

Here is what it looks like with the lights on,it's not that great of a picture but it will have to do~

As you may notice there are no presents under it yet, that's because I haven't wrapped any yet, don't have all of them bought yet but the ones I do have are just sitting here waiting to be wrapped.

It's been getting really foggy here the past few days, some nights down to less than a quarter mile. I really don't like Roger having to drive to Livermore in the morning. If it is too bad he will have to go later, or maybe just stay home all together.

I have a few more quotes from my Bible Study (A woman's walk with God)

This one really hit me, I am certainly guilty of not doing what this says you should do

"Love means that no matter what a man may do to us by way of insult or injury or humiliation we will never seek anything else but his highest good....never...seek anything but the best even for those who seek the worst for us."

"Our life then bears the mark of God because only He can enable us to serve the very person who insults, snubs or hurts us. In fact, such injury makes us far more dependant on God as we seek to obey His command and love the unlovely."

Both of these statements remind me of what I have been going through with a person I met through a message board online. I have known her for over 2 years and even went and visited with her while we were on our summer vacation. We were going to Missouri and she lives in the Southern part of Illinois. She met me in Cape Girardeau where we had a hotel room for the night and we went out to eat and had lots of fun. Now for some reason she won't tell me because she has decided to stop all contact with me we are no longer friends. She has accused me of things I have not done, she has even gotten another person on the message board to ignore me too. For these reasons I have stopped posting. At first I wasn't going to let them steal my joy but then I realized that it wasn't joyful to go there and post anymore. It was very hurtful and made me sad. I know everyone has told me to just let it go and get on with my life. So far I am still dealing with it. Maybe if it were someone else on the board someone I didn't consider my good friend then it would be easier. This is the same person who used to call me daily just to see what I was doing, she would call when she had a bad day, we were there for each other... With God's help I will eventually work this out, but right now I am just so hurt by it...and to top it off this is what she has as her signature for her posts

  Treat people in a way that should someone speak badly of you others won't believe it.

This is a very fine and dandy statement but strange when she is the one who had treated me badly and I guess she thinks others won't believe it. Well they don't know the real person~I DO and I don't care how Christian you want to make yourself seem on a message board, nobody really knows you.

I have some work to do in these areas as you can see but at least I admit that I don't do everything right and that I have things to work on . This Bible study will be a blessings in so many ways..

Blessings,Joann

Laundry helper

My adorable laundry helper! She is a CLIMBER!!! Sje wants to do everything mommy does and is into EVERYTHING!!!

Ok I'm off to clean up the dinner things!