Just for My Mom

This picture was taken from a window in the loft.

You can see, of course, the screened patio area,

but you can also see the two car garage and carport,

which extends out in front of the garage.

Oh, and the HUGE backyard... that, too. ^_^

A GREAT Blog!

I hope you will check out this blog. It's really cute. You can also find it on Facebook. If you do, push the LIKE button. He's going for publishing it as a book and the more "fans" make a "merrier" publisher. :)

We Are Officially Homeowners!

Okay, so this is a weird picture...

and from the BACK...

but it's the best I have right now.

Pretty neat, right??

It has SUCH an interesting floor plan.

It's just a REALLY unique house.

But, of course, it would have to be...

to house THIS family! ;)

A Writing Contest, But Not

I love the concept of this contest. It's a homeschoolers' writing contest that rewards the child who makes the most submissions! As most of you know, I love to write. (Look at the blog! Few pictures, MANY words. ^_^) I am, admittedly, an aspiring author. Would you have EVER guessed. ;) So, I love this contest because, as an aspiring author, I've read in so many places and put in so many different ways the basic idea, "The more an aspiring writer makes submissions, the more likely they are to become a published author." I just think this writing contest is awesome as a way to encourage excitement about submitting writing in our homeschooling kiddos! The fact that it is especially FOR homeschooling kiddos is just that much more awesome to me, as a homeschooling Mama! ^_^

Yikes! and more

"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when Medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of Men and deny equal priviledges to others; the Constitution of the Republic should make a Special priviledge for medical freedoms as well as religious freedom." -Benjamin Rush, MD., a signer of the Declaration of Independence and personal physician to George Washington


Ummmm... comments? I sure could spew a few! But I'll forebare, and, instead, share... and few more quotes:

"The doctor of the future will not longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will Cure and prevent diseases with nutrition." -Thomas Edison

Smart guy.

"One of the biggest tradgedies of human civilization is the precedents of chemical therapy Over nutrition. It's a substitution of artificial therapy over nature, of poisons over food, in Which we are feeding people poisons trying to correct the reactions of starvation." -Dr. Royal Lee, January 12, 1951

Yes.

"The human body heals itself and nutrition provides the resources to accomplish the task."
-Roger Williams, PhD. (1971)

Do tell.

"When you are sick of sickness, you are no longer sick. -Old Chinese Proverb

I think I'm there!

I could go on. But I'll conclude for now. If you want more, check it out.

Much of What I've been learning... in a video synopsis!

"What we're dealing with is really some kind of operating system that can be hacked using words." The precedng is a quote from the movie. It is really nearly perfect as a synopsis of the YouTube if you prefer not to invest the mere 10 minutes it would take to watch this amazingly informative YouTube. It is SO true! AWESOME stuff!!! I have been experiencing the truthfulness of these things.

More Good News and Miracles as We See 'Em

Wanna know? Wanna read? Go on... you know you DO! Click HERE and if you're not invited, comment with a request and your email addy!

Things continue to proceed well.

The nugget: even trials will be turned to good/benefit to/for those who love the Lord!

Jessie's Miracles

HERE to read about them.

If you can't get there, know that we are well and things are going well for us. And, the nugget is: ALL things work together to good for them who love the Lord. And we are experiencing the truthfulness of THAT!!!

Difficulties

If you would like to read about my day, go HERE.

If you don't have permission yet, feel free to share your email with me in a comment. I will NOT publish that comment. ^_^

Some Pictures

Check them out HERE.

If you're not on the invited list... Well, sorry.

No, seriously... let me know with email addy. I will not post the comment in which you leave it for me. You could ask one of my friends about that... but then I would be listing her address after I erased her comment in which it would've posted! Conundrums!!!

We are well and happy and life is progressing nicely! Come check us out! (See link above.) ^_^

SO SWEET!

Yesterday, at two different times, Ria spontaneously said to me, "Mama, you're looking really thin!" and then, "You really are looking thinner, Mama!" Then, later that night, as she's off to bed... she's hugging me goodnight. She repositions herself and attempts to hug be around my back. She stands up and says, "I can almost wrap my arms all the way around you! Pretty soon I'm gunna be able to!" I respond, "Yes, maybe a combination of your growing and Mama losing pounds, huh?" She said, "YES!"

SO SWEET, right? I felt it was just so wonderful I had to share. ^_^

Hope this tidbit from Tori finds you full of Joy on the day we celebrate: He is RISEN! What joy and hope there is in that TRUTH!!!!

And, if you have been invited: GO HERE to get a more detailed update of our goings on, if you'd like to know, of course. ^_^ If you have not been invited, but would like to read there, let me know here, in Favebook, or via email and I'll make you one of the "elite." ;) Just kidding, of course, about that particular choice of word.

An Apology

I'm so sorry if you've been looking for me in the blogging world.  I've been busy and feeling sort of like blogging was scarry.  I'm over it and am going to try to keep up more.  More often in my private world because of the scarry parts... but I'll try to update more there.  If you've already asked to be invited, I am in process of making you able to follow me there AND post something worth reading about!  ^_^

I DO plan to let you know if I've posted anything new in my private blog HERE.  Probably with a little taste of what the other blog will contain.  You're just SO lucky, aren't you!??  heehee  ;)

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things!

If you would like to read this entry about a few of my favorite things with my sweet daughters and good hubby, please let me know! If you send me your email address, I can add you to those able to access my most recent posts!!

There comes a time in some people's lives when they just don't know who they can trust. That time has come in my life, so I've decided to only post in a very limited and minimal way here. I'll definitely keep links coming to the new things I write in my new blog. I would love for you to follow me there. Just let me know of your interest, make sure I have your email address, and I'll add your email addy to my invite list and you'll get access! Hope to see you there!!

Waiting on the Lord

I know I've already shared my sense of dreading the drive north. Perhaps dread is too mellow a word. hmmm Well, I think that dread may be correct for the drive north... but there must needs be a stronger descriptor for the return trip since we'll be doing 12+ hours without much break (so we can go to the temple the day after we get home, of course! as per our standing plans at this point).

Well, I was sharing the good news of the trip with a friend from the homeschool PE group. She immediately asked if I would like to borrow her portable DVD player. At first I said no because I was worried about borrowing such equipment, but the more she talked about it, the more I thought it really might be helpful... especially on the return trip. So, I agreed to happily and thankfully borrow it.

My friend brought the equipment over a couple hours later with a bin of a bunch of DVDs (among them many we haven't seen). I felt overwhelmed by her generosity of the offer to let us borrow the DVD player alone, but then when she brought movies too... well, I was tickled, for sure. As we were talking about things, my friend's daughter said something like, "We hope you'll enjoy your new system." (Or something really similar.) I corrected her and said, "We will certainly enjoy borrowing YOUR system!" Then her Mom, my friend, said, "Oh no! Jesus told me when I was packing it all up that it was yours. So, it's yours!" That alone is pretty amazing and wonderful. But there is more.

Jessie came home and I was excited to show him the family Christmas gift from one of our PE friends. He was well pleased and reminded me that the system we'd been given was the same one he was looking at and wanted to buy for the girls for Christmas last year. I had COMPLETELY forgotten about that, but totally remembered it when he reminded me. There is someone else who totally remembered without a reminder! And HE gave it to Jessie/us in His own due time. I told Jessie, "All we have to do is wait on the Lord." And it's completely true. I know it. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ know us as individuals. They know what we need temporally and what we need spiritually and they give us that which they know we need. I'm so grateful for this knowledge and another testament of it in a joyous miracle! I hope you will rejoice with me in knowing, especially, that Tori is less likely to arrive completely off her rocker to her multiple destinations. ;)

Bummer

In our short sight, it feels like a bummer to have learned a couple days ago that the house with which we were under contract will not become ours. It is certainly for the best. You see, our mortgage bank will not approve the loan because of two factors. One we could fight. The other we are glad to know about now and leave off pursuit of the property. What would such a factor be? Well, the land on which the house sits is surrounded on three sides by a farm... which we, of course, knew. What we did not know is that said farm's owners use the method of crop dusting to disburse herbicides and pesticides. While I was well aware that the farm probaby used those chemicals, which I did have some concern over... there is absolutely NO way for crop dusting to be done selectively (especially to try to avoid a measly 5 acres in a huge farm like the one surrounding those 5 acres we hoped to own)!

Thankfully Heavenly Father is guiding and protecting us in this our pursuit of happiness by way of buying a home (which we believe is that path Father would have us travel at this time). I'm certain there would have been plentiful physical (negative) repercussions of living off of crop dusted land... not to mention living IN the dusting! YIKES!!! :( So, though we are disappointed to once again begin the process of searching out our place, we are relieved, too. I was actually thinking the other day how totally windy and convoluted this path to buying a house feels/seems to me in my regular perspective of forward looking, ground level, not always with spiritual eyes wide open. But then I looked at the whole thing (of course looking back) and trying to have my spiritual eyes discerning through the process and it seems as if I'm standing in this path and looking back at a totally straight path, but then I turn around to face forward once more and it seems that the path disappears again around a corner of some sort. But I believe that if I could see from Heavenly Father's perspective, looking down on us where we stand in this path, that I would see a perfectly straight way to the house Father has planned for us. What a comfort! I'm so thankfuly that Father has been changing me and I hope (only?) that I can do better than run in place along the path He has in mind for me and my family!!!

In other news:
My girls are getting more and more excited about the impending road trip! They are giddy about seeing some of our extended family, especially cousins... both those they do know and those they will meet for the first time. I told Ria a while back that her Aunt C. had mentioned that her cousin K. was dancing around the house because she was so excited that Ria was coming. Since then Ria has danced around the house and said, as she's dancing, "I wonder if cousin K. is dancing right now, too!?" So fun. Additionally, they both pray about our trip each night and sometimes each morning (as does Jess!). It's so very wonderful that they are so completely excited. Hopefully it will make the driving easier (and I hope they are so excited to return to see their Daddy to make THAT drive easier!). ^_^

I receievd some compliments from our Story Time ladies this morning. :) As I entered the children's books area one of our ladies said, "Look at how skinny you're becoming!" Now... skinny is NOT a word I would assign myself, but I certainly did feel some warmth of gratitude for the lovely compliment (which both of our awesome ladies said to me)! I received another glorious compliment a couple hours later when a dear friend told me the way her husband summarizes me. And it went something like: "You know, Tori is a good person. She's just a really good person who is REALLY trying." I actually cried (which, believe it or not, I rarely do much of any more unless I've eaten wrong in the recent past!) because I was so touched by that glorious compliment.

Just some random commentary about me:
I still have a problem with not thinking about what I say before I say it... and putting things in not the most gentle or tactful manner. I did that this very morning and I fear I may have hurt a lady I just met and I totally did not mean to and DID try to apologize just in case I had. Anyway... there are a few people who think I believe I'm better than them... or believe that I think I'm better than others in general. This is really truly NOT true of me as I am now. I still have very strong ideas and/or opinions, but I also believe (and always have, but am able to sort of express it better now) that everyone else has the right to their own position/beleif/feeling as well!

While I may yet have some problem with thinking that "my" way was the one right way... and probably did to some greater extent in the past... I know I surely seemed to others to think my way was the only way ALL the time... I'm ever and increasingly having much less problem with such feelings/thoughts (and have had much LESS of a problem with such thoughts since we came here). Currently, I believe the only one right way is the Lord's and I try to determine what His way is and then change mine to be in accord with. I actually have had to change one position I had/took on a pretty big subject because I believe that I was standing on the side of the philosophies of men rather than the Lord's side. It was very difficult to come to the point that I could see the reality of that and then change my stance! Anyway...

I've actually begun to see my own problems more compassionately when they exist in me, which is such a treasure trove, really.... As a result, when I see those same problems in others I can SEE that they are mine as well and since I feel compassion for those problems in me I feel it for those who are dealing with them, too. If that makes sense. There is actually a hymn that talks about that sort of thought process and it has come to mind regularly lately, but I can't think of it right now. How annoying. Well, anyway... if you're a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints you'll probably know which one(s) I'm talking about and perhaps may be so kind as to comment about it!? That would be lovely. Thank you, in advance!

Back to the House subject:
I'm feeling more and more that we are unlikely to remain in this county once we move. When we first started this whole process, I actually didn't mind either way (staying or moving out of the county), but now I'm feeling mournful over moving out of this county. Having said that, though, I feel the desire/need to say also that I'm working on maintaining an accepting and joyful attitude about the whole thing so that I will be more like Nephi and Sam in this moving experience than I was when we moved here a bit more than 3 years ago... I was definitely a Laman or Lemuel in attitude at that time (and totally thought I was doing so well to simply DO what the Lord so obviously wanted us to do)!!! Isn't it wonderful to see personal progress!!! ^_^ I'm so grateful for the glimpses!!! ;)

So you'll have to come visit us after we actually move... especially cause it's likely to be a bit removed from where we've been! And we might actually end up with more land than we've been looking at. What an awesome thing THAT would be!! More land equals more ability to live off of it!!