My Green drinks!

Mark and James enjoying their spinach!

I've been making these great drinks lately.
This one was made with a frozen nectarine, ice, orange juice concentrate, a scoop of powder called brain link, and a big handful of spinach.
It tastes really good. I've made them with strawberries, but then the color is brown. Jon and Monica can't seem to get past the color. But you don't taste the spinach. It's amazing. One time I tried leaf lettuce, and it wasn't bad but you could taste it some. The spinach only has color, no taste.
I've gotten really into this lately. Buying a big bag of spinach and broccoli at Costco every month, and the goal is to use it before it goes bad.
This month with my drinks it's going fast. I also love spinach salad with cheese, sunflower seeds and some bad for you dressing like thousand island or ranch.
One reason I am seeing how important this green stuff is, is because I'm beginning to notice a great difference in the health of placentas, the strength of Amniotic fluid bags and much less bleeding for my clients that eat and drink greens. It's like I'm seeing what happens on the inside when we eat healthy.
So try my green drinks if you have a powerful blender. I have a vita mix. I love it. We make all sorts of healthy desserts with it, ice cream type things.

A very snowy Sunday

Deer sleeping in the yard. This time there were about 4 of them. This time of year though it's not uncommon to see whole groups, sometimes a dozen at a time.

James: notice the railing for our deck, it's disappearing .
Mark and James sitting in the fluffy snow. It's very dry , too dry to make a snow man.


Rick had to be in Kalispell for a work meeting by 9 am this morning. He knew the roads were going to be bad so at 6:30 he was ready to leave. Michael called and said they should just skip it, "there is too much snow". Well it's still dark at 6:30 so we couldn't really see how much there is.
But the snow was above the bottom of his car door. I didn't think he should try it. But he said it was an important meeting. So he made it to town, picked up Michael, but only made it barely out of town where the roads hadn't been plowed yet.
It's still coming down heavy. This winter is starting to remind me of 1996. It just keeps snowing, snowing, snowing.
So the children and I were planning to go to church this morning at the Church of God again. But I suppose we are "snowed in". So I didn't go back to sleep, but just read in bed, and I didn't get dressed till 11, made a nice egg omelet, with green chilies, onions, cheese and bacon. Sausage and Ezekiel bread toast.
After breakfast Rick finished reading the children the story he wrote. "the story of Reality" It's really a good story. About how when we live for our flesh we are causing problems for our children. Then the children are bitter against their parents at the same time as causing problems for their own children. The chain continues to go on down the generations until someone breaks the chain by giving their life to Christ.
Good story and makes me think when we are just wanting to relax and watch a movie are we just making a contract that our children won't like to read for instance? You would have to read the book I guess to understand.
So our house was a mess and I have this little homey dream. In my dream "It's snowing outside, the house is cozy, the children are playing nicely together, were eating cookies and hot chocolate etc." In my little day dream, the house is always spotlessly clean though. So I told everyone lets take 20 minutes to clean. No bathrooms or drinks, just everyone clean for 20 minutes and get the main floor clean as possible. After 20 min we will stop. It's amazing how clean everything got in 20 minutes. The kitchen was terrible, the living room a horrible mess, and in 20 minutes everything was vacuumed, dishes washed and floors swept. With my "new" kitchen and living room the house is much easier to clean. Still have a few clutter spots on this floor, but most of them are gone now. Upstairs and downstairs is another story. One step at a time.

Michael's present

Michael came over saying he had something for me, for no reason.
He said he was a Pamida and thought this was so cute, so he bought it for me.
Isn't it cute?
That was so nice of him.
It sure is nice to have some of my older children in Libby here
Michael lives in an apartment in town, and works at MT sky with his Dad. He works full time and is doing pretty well. He has his goals on paper and is slowly working towards them.

Mishael and Cody are living around here too right now, but we just found out they are moving to Kalispell.
They have been working at Pizza hut. Not enough to get by really. But Cody's old job in Kalispell called him and asked him if he would come back to work.
So they are going to quick finish their little house and rent it out, and hopefully they can find a place to live down there pretty quick.
I'm going to miss having them around. Mishael comes and visits while Cody works evenings 1-2 times a week. We get to see Gareth and see him take first steps and laugh etc. I really enjoy these times together and will really miss them.

Sunday afternoon

More snow pictures.
Our back yard
Jon at the piano. He found a site on You tube where someone teaches you to play popular songs, by ear and memory. He can sit at the piano for hours playing the piano. He just started lessons so he can learn to read music, but so far what he loves is just playing by ear. He's quite good too.
Our icicles get really long. We have one that is almost reaching the ground.

Monica on the phone.
It was a pretty lazy day, so I let her talk to her friend for a long time today.

James loves his little cars. He always has. Once in a while he has to stop playing to tell me what is going on in his make believe car world.

snow, snow, snow, snow!!!!!!!

I love the snow.
This year we have had a lot of snow.
It hasn't been very cold for the most part either.
This last week we finally had some below zero temps, but most of this winter it has hung right around 30 degrees. Which isn't too bad.

Our back yard
Gareth at the piano.

Our yard
The deer come very close to the house this time of year.
Jon and the boys decorated the house so nicely this year. Then with the snow to add the affects, it's quite nice.
This is our street just after leaving our driveway. Every time I drive out, I exclaim how what a beautiful place we live in.
James riding bike in the winter!

winter days in our house

Today it's very cold! The coldest it's been all winter. When we got up this morning it was 12 below zero.
Hard to keep the house warm. The pellet furnace which we got last yr. runs 24 hours a day when it's this cold. Plus we add some electric heaters. Also we found out our house is soooo leaky! Our front door never has been right. It's a cheap steel door, and it leaks so bad. We've been keeping a blanket on the floor in front of it. I would like to get a new door. One with a pretty window in it. I thought it would be nice if it was forest green like the new garage door.
Our garage door broke last spring. It was an old wooden door that came off the runners and fell apart. It was stuck half way on a tilt. The guy that fixes them, had fixed it so many times that he thought we should get a new door. But a new garage door cost $1300 for an insulated kind.
So we were still thinking about it when a friend was trying to help us make it safer and instead it fell down, almost on him and one of the children. Well we were all done with it now. So thankfully I had a birth that could pay for it and it's so nice we have it for this cold winter. The pipes already have trouble with freezing, but this yr it's so much easier to keep everything above freezing temperature.
So our front door needs replacing too. They costs about $400. Step by step though we will get this house fixed up.
We also noticed around the floor on the garage wall a terrible leak under the trim. It was like a fan of cold air coming through there. So we got out a caulking gun and sealed off the space. I suppose when we redo the living room floor we can cover the space better.

Miriam's birthday and memories

This is from Thanksgiving 2007
Miriam and Gina
These are picture from the last year of Miriam.




Martha, Maria, Moriah
Miriam and Gina
Eric and Miriam in the snow
Miriam
It was Miriam's birthday on the 10th. She was 19 years old. Birthdays of my children always make me go back and remember my life "back then".
I was 27 yrs old and Miriam was my 6th baby. We "planned" on this baby. If you could call it a plan. We wanted God to "plan" our family. But how that is put into practice is different for different families and even over the different times in our lives it meant many different things. Michael and Mishael were very close in age. I got pregnant with Mishael when Michael was only 8 mo. There were problems with the pregnancy, I ended up on bed rest and having to quit nursing Michael. Bed rest with 4 children under 7, and not lifting your 9 mo old baby that wants to nurse, but can't....... interesting to say the least!
So we felt very peaceful in using natural family "planning" after Mishael. After I was done nursing Mishael we both wanted another baby. So as I say Miriam was not an accident, she was "planned"!
We moved to Kalispell early in the pregnancy where we lived in a nice 3 bedroom mobile home. I had horrible morning sickness (morning, noon, and night) Rick was great at cooking hamburgers. He would sprinkle them with smoke flavoring. I can't stand the smell of that stuff to this day. Martha being 9 at this point began her adventures with cooking. No wonder Martha is such a great cook with all the morning sickness I had! This mobile home, would shake when the washer would spin. It's horrible being so nauseated and shook at the same time.
After 9 months in Kalispell living mostly on unemployment, the phone company decided to put on a class again, this time in Eugene OR. So we put all our stuff in storage. The company gave us a motel until we could find a home to rent. I was about 7 mo pregnent at the time. It's really fun to try to find a place to rent in a college town, (where they lack rentals) when you have 5 children and your expecting another in a few months. Plus we had our family dog. We wanted to just rent a small little place that would be really cheap, since we didn't have our furniture with us. The job was only going to last 6-9 mo. Well after lots of work we found a big house. It was a nice house for $400 a month, but without furniture it was sort of huge for us. It was easy to keep clean though, and so we all have good memories of our time there.
I found a nurse midwife. She only delivered in the hospital, but I did have the care of a midwife. I was late again, but maybe only 10 days late this time. I went into labor on Rick's 1st day of class! It started in the night with really light contractions. I went in to the midwife and she said just go home and see what happens. An old friend we knew that lived in the area took the children home, Rick went to work and I went to sleep. When I woke up a couple hours later I was in good labor. But I wanted to be sure, so I sat down and read a book. It wasn't very often that I got to be alone in a quiet house, so I was enjoying it. Finally I called our friend and asked her if she could take me to the midwives office. She did and they said, you better get your husband over here. We had a system on his beeper that if it's important we would type in the number and then add 911 to the end. So he was up teaching his 1st day of class, and he sees the 911 number. So they rush me to the hospital, where basically my contractions stopped. This has happened to be a few times, I suppose I don't like being a watched pot. Well the midwife suggested we break the water and I went ahead and agreed. In 5 min. we had a baby! It was a great birth and a beautiful little girl.
I wanted to name her Grace. But what if she was the last baby, and she was the only one without an M name. We couldn't do that. We both loved the name Miriam anyways.
So I was 27 yrs old with 6 children under 10. Homeschooling, Rick had odd hours of noon till 9. We got on an extremely healthy diet, no sugar, or white flour. Took walks every night. We both lost weight and felt really good.
It was a good year there in Eugene. Our paychecks were large, but we were not very wise. We should have invested the money. Instead we bought a computer (which were very expensive back then, like $3000), sewing machine, and a VW camper van. When the job was over we went on a 3 month trip from OR, to Southern Calif all the way to Maine. We camped and stopped all sorts of places. We made an extra bed above so all 8 of us could sleep in the van. 5 in the upper bed and 3 below But if we could we would set up the tent so the children wouldn't be so squished. We had a porta potty, a tiny sink, stove and fridge in the van too.
It was a great trip, but the van turned out to be a lemon, and we lost lots of money on it.
When we got back Rick had one more job with the phone company in Spokane for only 3 mo this time. I was tired of moving around and traveling. I wanted to settle down at all costs. We did. But it cost us too.
Mishael, Miriam, Gina, Jon, Monica, Mark and James don't ever remember living anywhere but Montana. It's a wonderful place to raise children, but you have to be content with a simple life.

New Computer

Well after a few weeks with no computer I realized how much I have come to depend on them.
I got a new Mac book. I was so excited to get it, but I am not a computer type person, unlike the rest of my family. I get really frustrated trying to learn new programs and trying to figure out how everything is supposed to work.
We have had lots of snow here. It's been such a beautiful winter. The temperature has been hanging right around the 30's. We have been enjoying our nice warm home with my new kitchen and living room. Not that either of them are done, but they are so nice compared to what we have had for so many years. Also notice I said "warm". This year we have a pellet furnace. No more getting up and starting fires! Trying to get fire wood, get it chopped, in the basement, and keep the fire going. We actually have a thermostat for the first time in at least 15 years. I feel so spoiled.
I started going to a financial class this last Thur. It's 13 weeks long. They advertise financial freedom in 91 days. I am an extremely frugal person, so many times these type of classes really don't apply a lot to us. But I tend to enjoy stuff like this anyways. I'm one of those weird people that when going through my mom's stuff, the jewelery didn't excite me, but when I saw a neat old ledger book I got quite excited. I actually look forward to doing my taxes every year, as if it's a holiday or something. I am hoping that with this class I can figure out how to get out of debt and stop living pay check to pay check type thing. Problem is that we have a budget and it's set. We don't have "latte factors" A latte factor is when you spend some sort of extra money on something that is not necessary. My Latte factor might be to cut down on meat or cheese, or don't fix up the house. I'm really thankful that we can pay our bills, keep our cars registered, insured and generally fixed with decent tires. I'm very thankful that when we have something break we don't have to just live without it, that usually we can get it fixed now. But I do get tired of stressing every time I want to spend $10 on something, or when we want to go on a little weekend trip being a major deal. I'm hoping if we could get out of debt and stay out of debt it wouldn't be so stressful all the time. I always feel bad that I spend so much money on food too. I usually spend $6-700 a month on food and household items. That includes toilet paper, batteries, soap etc too. But then I was thinking this morning that we easily go through a gallon of milk a day right now. With milk at $3.30 per gallon right now, it means I spend over $100 a month just on milk alone! Well I'm looking forward to the next 91 days, of financial freedom. I think with God's help and blessing we will have freedom!