Folks, Treasure your babies!

OK, I ended my previous blog with this post and a number of events have occurred that remind me I cannot stay silent about what's happening to our children. We're in a major health and spiritual crisis in this country and every single person out there is responsible. If you see a young mom or a pregnant woman, every thought you think has the opportunity to bring life or death, just as every word you speak to her does. Folks, the youth of this nation are dying from cancers, crazy illnesses, and neglect and it doesn't have anything to do with poverty, we were the wealthiest nation, but our lack of Biblical values has turned the tide. Choose LIfe and encourage moms to raise their own babies in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

A tribute to a precious little one I knew:

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Last entry - Death by Pharmaceuticals and lack of mothering

Thanks folks, it's been fun to share this space for a season. My life has changed, and I'm moving from Glory to Glory.

Driving back from doing town errands yesterday, it hit me that my last post needs to be about a sweet little girl who is no longer with us. I first met this child via her pregnant mother as the grandmother was a neighbor of ours.

I was very happy to meet her because to me every pregnancy is to be cherished and nurtured with great gratitude.

The grandmother shunned my gift of some copies of Above Rubies, saying it would be condemning to this mom. Within 6 weeks of delivering a beautiful baby girl, the mom went back to work and shuffling baby to daycare and grandma and the doctor visits and pharmacy visits were in full force. Of course she didn't breastfeed because that's too inconvenient, formula is so easy. The entire family smoked, and so of course baby girl had breathing problems and was given 'breathing' treatments.'

One Friday night fellowship at our home, baby girl came with grandpa and grandma and danced and danced before the Lord and us as people played guitar and sang praises to the Lord. Thank you Lord for this sweet memory of this babe who came before you just as she was.

At age 3, the mother found her body in her crib one morning. The autopsy said it was a brain aneurism, and nothing could have been done. I choked when I heard this and choke now writing it. Folks, this is another case of death by pharmaceuticals and a mother who preferred working and letting someone else raise her children. The mother Could have bathed her baby girl in love and the Word and breastfed her and stayed home with her and NOT given her baby toxic medications.

May those of you with girls to influence give them a vision for MOTHERHOOD, it saves lives and brings JOY. And those of you with young men around, teach them the importance of providing for and encouraging women to raise their babies in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Children are an heritage from the Lord.

Lord forgive us

New Seasons of life - homeschooling transitions

My children are now 21, 16, and 12. When my oldest was merely 3 (I had made a stupid choice in marrying a man I thought was 'spiritual' when in reality he was one the Bible tells will always be like a wild donkey) and I prayed for the Lord to bring me a 'Christian' husband, I had no idea what a journey I was beginning. It's a journey that I do not regret, going from glory to glory is never dull and yet I've had peace that passeth understanding through a series of trials and come out singing still I will say "blessed be the name of the Lord!" His Word endures forever and He is the way, the truth, and the life.

My oldest daughter recently thanked me for raising grown-ups. At a time when most don't have a clue what they want in life, she pays her own bills, works 2 jobs, goes to school, has her own young living business, and still manages to prioritize family gatherings. DD#2 started office computers and multimedia classes at vo-tech and is really excited about the program. both girls are amazing self-starters, something I think is good fruit from the way we lived our homeschooling days using Charlotte Mason ideas, praying, letting the anointing teach.

So, now my job changes again as primarily my homeschooling job is now a matter of working more with my son. He's quite different from the girls in his interests and already reads fluently and can for the most part be reminded to do his penmanship and math lessons. I want him to grow in the Word and skills with tools and to find a few more areas of interest outside of computer gaming. I'm thinking we'll make the aquaponics project his to manage, if he shows more interest in it. He has enjoyed our goldfish in the livestock waterers.

The Lord's timing is so awesome and perfect. As my younger children are so close to leaving the nest, I've entered into new fields of healing studies and business ownership. As usual, learning all the time how much I don't know, but thankful I don't have to know it all, I know the ONE who does. I wake up excited to see what the Lord's going to bring next!

Young Living Free Lavender Summer Essentials Kit

Young Living Free Lavender Summer Essentials Kit

Young Living has awesome specials each month, so easy to get your own account and business with them! (my member # 941653)

Night bloomers

These are bush moonflowers that I've grown the past 9 or more years, since falling in love with them at a friend's parents house and the mistress of the house sharing the abundant seeds with me. Last night there were 59 blooms open, they're beautiful and smell so heavenly.

Sunflowers - Hopi Red

The sunflowers are really beautiful this year, I'm growing more and the birds are happy! I had quite a few sunflowers re-seed themselves from last year in the front yard, and so I've transplanted about 3 dozen to the main garden. I attempted starting some mammoth gray from older seed, and I think only one has come up. The petals on this one are long and beautiful.

new landscaping :) uncluttering continues

yesterday's work was very productive as 3 men took out the cattle corrals and a section of old perimeter fencing (the new perimeter fencing was completed last month, but the old section was still in need of taking down so the kids and I helped take off t-post clips and roll up the fencing while the stronger guys pulled up the t-posts and one on a tractor pulled up corrals and any posts too stubborn to pull by hand.)

I've wanted this done for a while. When we bought this place the 2nd owner back had been a welder and had collected a lot of scrap metal, the previous owners cleaned up some and then we also had a man come haul off a LOT of remaining odds and ends metal. Now with just another couple hours work, there will be 3 nice sized and now beautiful clean pastures to rotate my sheep through. We have one small section of fenceline that we still need to move, but for now the fencelines are much cleaner and the sheep aren't down at the neighbors every other day where they feed their cattle!

garlic, onions, chives

This first rather messy looking photo has lambsear, moonflower, horseradish, onions going to seed, and parsley going to seed. I love parsley and have never seen it flower and go to seed, so thought it would be fun.

I pulled up the elephant garlic today and am happy with the production I got for the limited effort. This garlic was just plunked into the beds I created by just putting a shovel in the sod, planting something, then mulching around it. My rather OCD gardening friend just can't believe that I can do that and something will actually grow and produce -- he's got perfectly tilled, perfectly lined up, perfectly labeled, perfect rectangle gardens. My gardens are sort of like island jungles a lot of the time, I get one under control and then forget about it till harvesting something brings some order again.

After pulling up the garlic, I clipped off the onion tops/seeds and chive seed heads. The chives are starting to bloom a second time. I love growing things that I don't have to re-purchase seeds or starts for the next season.

Welcome to The Raindrop Room!

Our houseguest of 5 weeks just moved out this past Saturday, so I took over her room for my raindrop room! I decided that the existing curtains look pretty royal and some of us have a dream of working together to run a 'Castle Spa' retreat, so the decor is pulled together from stuff I already had and not complete yet, but I'm very pleased thus far. The children helped me move and clean things yesterday and we got it done before 3 showed up for raindrop instruction and 2 raindrops. Perfect.

Meet Chloe and Balloo - the new LGD's

Since losing our 1/2 Pyrenese 1/2 sneaky neighbor dog male guard dog recently, I've been worried about simply raising lambs for coyote bait. In praying about what to do and not wanting to spend money on a guard dog that could potentially experience the same fate, I began looking at craigslist postings for potential replacement guard dogs instead of ONE guard dog.

In just a few days time, these were available and free. So far we've lost two chickens to the larger male 1yo's curiosity and I may have to pen my chickens back in the garden coop to keep them safe. So far so good though as the female isn't interested in the chickens at all and is routinely patrolling the exterior fenceline. While I would like for the dogs to stay with the sheep, they're unrelated and young, so I should be able to get some good pups that will be raised with our sheep and chickens. These dogs have such a wonderful peaceful presence and have settled in with our bordercollie/aussie and tiny Cricket already nicely. Cricket is daunted by their size, and tucks her tail and stays out of their way for the most part.

Chloe is too thin, looking like she recently had pups (the man we got her from said she'd been with his sheep and they'd let her raise on litter of pups which they sold), so I picked up some drumsticks and am transitioning them to a raw diet. Balloo basically inhaled his first 2 drumsticks without chewing, Chloe acted like she'd never had a raw meal and was quite cautious at first, but then was happy for seconds. Balloo came covered in cockleburs to the point I'm going to have to give him a haircut to clean him up and keep him from skin issues. I tried picking some of them out, but they're too numerous and matted in spots. Balloo wants to herd the sheep back into the barn, so for now the dogs are fenced OUT of the sheep's pasture. Chloe is a houdini and will climb, dig under, or simply go through any openings in a gate or fence. Balloo's head is too big and not as bright, but learning quickly from her. We attempted penning them at night in a cattle panel area in the barn till they knew this was their new home, it was merely a suggestion to her. She's out there watching everything, laying where she can eye my daughter working in the garden, and the sheep in the pasture and beyond. Every so often she gets up and they both go round the property line again. Cool dogs, thank you Lord!

irises in bloom

My Grandma Jessie always had irises surrounding her yard, and those I brought with me from the old house have survived and multiplied nicely.

weeding and mulching

We've lived here now almost 3 years and the things I planted have done well multiplying and growing. Since we had so much going on when we moved, I would simply stick a shovel in the sod, plant something, mulch around it and go on. I created some beautiful garden beds in this manner and now they're really filling in so there's not much open space in them. This makes it very easy to pluck something in without any chickens or dogs really knowing I've been there.

Today I was able to transplant 6 gorgeous Hopi red sunflowers to a new bed. If they're happy, pics will follow later. These sunflowers happily seeded themselves from last year, only I've decided that this year since they're so tall I want them down the hill closer to the larger summer garden instead of in the front yard. I'll probably let a few go ahead and grow in the front yard to the side, it's amazing to me how many are coming up freely.

I mulched the 4 earliest potato plants well and discovered lots of freebie sage babies coming up. Took 4 of the sage babies out and potted them up for transplanting elsewhere. DD#2 picked out some pink yarrow seeds, so I sowed a few of those in some pots and planted a few fennel seeds in pots also. Dill is coming up in abundance now, I can be seen grazing on it, walking onion, and parsley now, and if you see me doing this, pray with me that the dog hasn't been there since the last rain.

Homeschooling Musings

I haven't talked much lately about homeschooling because for us it became just a way of life quite a few years back. I thought some of you might enjoy a short "day in the life" post about this though. First, my early bird used to be our son, and the one sleeping in was the middle child. Now, that's flip-flopped and slightly bizarre as things are even more quiet in the morning now.

My son detests handwriting and that includes signing his name and dating math worksheets. He detests being laughed at even more though, but sometimes we just can't help it. This afternoon for example when I asked to inspect his math sheet, of course, it had no name and no date. I've tried to tell him that at the least he must know how to efficiently sign his name and write the date on things. He tried to tell us first "I can't figure out the calendar" then says "I'm not stupid." which promptly brought up belly laughs from his sister and myself....it might have worked as an excuse if he weren't almost 12. Even he had to laugh though when he realized how ridiculous that claim was just after attempting to claim he couldn't read a calendar.

Katie rather seemingly spontaneously got in the kitchen and started whipping up a cake to which I had to inquire "what's up with you in the kitchen?" Her response with a grin was "well, you said you would only give me a 'B' in home ec." laughter again from me. She's working on a high school transcript to turn in with her application to the computer/office skills program at the vo-tech and trying to earn a better grade. I even saw her doing math on her own again.

We're reading aloud from Around the World in 80 days and enjoying that together, finally traced the journey on the world map in the kitchen. Interesting thinking of travelling around the world using the ocean so much. This morning we had a morning 'shout a long' that really wasn't much shouting using some marvelous I Am confessions. This afternoon I picked up dd#2's very own violin from the music store, where they very kindly and affordably re-strung and tweaked things/rosined those knobs, and tuned it. This was really a fab bargain from ebay and I was scared it would sound like a bargain from ebay, but it actually sounds decent! It's beautiful, black, came with a nice case, brand new bow, and straps and chin rest too! DD#2 had taken lessons for a season or two on a borrowed violin, then gave it up for a bit and took painting lessons, and just recently decided she missed violin after we got the piano. Now we're set to attempt some piano/violin stuff, just as soon as I get that piano tuner back to fix the middle C that went quite sour shortly after he tuned it.

Some older friends of ours stopped by around lunch with some beautiful and tasty potato garlic bread, fresh green onions, and some beatiful red potatoes and garlic. They enjoyed walking out to the pasture to see all the baby lambs and seeing my flowers, roses, apple trees, and cherry trees in bloom. The cherry trees came from their garden, so it was nice for me to have them see the nicer one in full bloom right now. They took home a couple sage plants from my garden as sage really likes my garden and has multiplied nicely. My thyme has really taken off and is covering about 3sqft now! The mint would take the whole yard over if I let it. We've got our first large asparagus stalk up out there too.

Now on to the rest of the evening with a ham in the oven, bread dough to set out to rise for rolls, 2 to take in to TaeKwonDo practice, and I might just squeeze in an hour or two of knitting on these two at a time socks for dd#1's birthday that was back the end of Jan.

Spring Flowers!

Valentine's Day - cherishing the time

Every day is a gift. My hubby bought me a new phone, mine was several years old and thus a tadbit outdated, though functional. For just a few bucks and a few bucks more each month, I have a much better phone from which I can access the net and email. Now I just have to learn how to use it :)

The women in the new testament were the first hospice workers, I've decided, bringing emotionally cleansing oils to those men on the cross helping them to confess and repent and showing them such compassion and love, before meeting the Lord, what more merciful act could there possibly be? I read a book of things that Mother Theresa said and about her life that changed my life when Cassie was very little. She said something to the effect that she saw Jesus in every person that had been basically dumped on her doorstep and despised and neglected by their own loved ones. Mother Theresa's unfailing love for whoever was put in front of her is still an inspiring example to me and her thoughts on the ill helped me to take care of Cassie even when I was exhausted and spent.

Someone close recently wrote to tell people to cherish their marriages, as her husband life fades away, she's processing and feeling the guilt of perhaps not relishing the time enough that they had, knowing it's coming to a close. May the Lord help her to list and praise Him for the Good Good times they've shared and release him back to the Lord.

Thank you for the sun and your son, Lord!

Lambs 4 and 5 of the season

The white one is a little ewe and the black with white is a little ram lamb.

First Lambs of Spring 2010

Twin boys were out there this morning, both already dried up and walking around mommy!

Off the Needles

Made over the last few weeks for dd#1, on size 1 dpns borrowed from dd#2's knitpicks sock needle collection with superwash wool/nylon blend sock yarn from our LYS - Unwind in Claremore, OK.

I used the toe up generic sock pattern and these fit her feet exactly.

Sprouts day6

We've eaten most the sprouts already, so I definitely still need to work on my ratios of seeds to jar size. These were delicious and the seeds came from Azure Standard. Most of the sprouts we ate on raw hummous with olives and pita bread. I'll serve these in a salad today. The dark area is the hulls plus a few late sprouting seeds.

Sprouting with Mason Jars

You're looking at a wide mouthed quart sized mason jar with a small-sieved plastic lid upside down resting in a funnel, balanced in a coffee cup. In times past, anytime I tried sprouting, I would inevitably think too many seeds and end up with a musty smelling mess in the middle or too many sprouts for my family's taste buds to tolerate. I finally got it that with sprouts, you don't need a mega-meal of them to get the nutrients you need. So, for this batch, I used one rounded tablespoon of alfalfa and one rounded tablespoon of broccoli. I soaked them last night in filtered water, drained, rinsed, and have them sitting now on my counter.

According to the Azure Standard website directions for sprouting, I may need to move them up to a larger sized jar, but I think they're ok for today in this one. I'll rinse several more times today.

Long Neck Squash - talk about food storage!

We think this squash is actually two years+ old now, but even if it is just one year old, it's still in excellent shape and I'm cutting into it today to make some pumpkin pies and Garbanzo Lamb Stew (recipe from my favorite dinner menu cookbook: Extending the Table). I've got organic chickpeas soaking. I love this variety of squash not just for its excellent keeping qualities, but it's taste, and ease of preparing as well. The seeds are in the small round cavity, and the entire neck is solid flesh.

I kept this squash and others in the basement on shelves and then moved it to the garage when we had company living in the basement for 5 months last spring and completely forgot about it until looking for some pumpkin to make dinner with tonight.