Dakota house

Well this is my new little project.
The pictures are not in order
Here is the back of the house, with a nice storage building.
One of the bedrooms.
This room I will probably drywall,as the walls are made of this weird stuff, like a fiber board. Except for a couple beautiful pine walls.. I'm going to have to put new carpet into both bedrooms.

Gas heat, It's a pretty little fire place that heats the whole house.
Here is the front of the house.
It's a cute little house.
Kitchen,
Has no counters

This is the hole that goes down to a little basement thing. It's not as bad as it looks.


beautiful claw foot bath tub.


the back of the house.

Turn of events!

Well life has a way of throwing curve balls doesn't it.
We were having our nice time in Seattle. We planned on going somewhere on Sunday. But Rick wasn't feeling good. He had this strange low stomach pain. So we just hung out, relaxed at the motel. We were going to go out to eat, but he didn't even think he could eat. So we actually both walked to the store, hoping the walk would help his stomach. But it didn't.
The pain was gradually getting worse as the night wore on. All night long he was in horrible pain, getting worse not better. By about 4 am I said something about calling Maria. She said it sounds like his appendix. "You got to take him to the hospital mom" Oh dear! How do we get there, how do we pay for this.......His insurance was gone as of 12 days before! Is this a joke? Couldn't this have happened at home at least?
Well I got a taxi and off to the hospital we went. They had to do a Cat scan, and found it was his appendix and it had 4 blockages. He had to be scheduled for surgery right away. They gave him something for the pain and he was so relieved.
The Dr said when she got in their that it was in horrible shape. It already was perforated, and it fell apart when she went to remove it.
We left the hospital the next day, but he is not in any shape to head home yet. So we are in a motel.
It's a nice motel, with a kitchen. I walked to the store today and got about 4 bags of grocery’s. A little hard to carry home. But good exercise. :)
We found out that we can reinstate our insurance! The Lord is good! the bill will be somewhere around $15-20,000. a little scary.

Doesn't life get interesting at times! :)

Happy Anniversary!

It was our 32nd anniversary on Wed. I didn’t think we would be able to go somewhere, because I knew my mom with twins would be having those babies anytime. She wasn’t due till May 4th, but she was measuring 54 and so uncomfortable. Well she went into labor on Sunday night. Had beautiful baby girls, and I got home about 3 am. About 9 am I headed to Kalispell. I had an appointment to fix Rick’s car, and I already canceled it once. So I drove down and turned in his car. June picked me up and we met Martha, April and Mishael for lunch. Then we went on a house tour.
Martha moved into her new house, Mishael and Miriam also moved into new rentals. Philip bought a house. So we made the rounds and saw everyone’s houses. It was so much fun. Next time maybe we can have a progressive dinner.

Well Rick’s car didn’t get done, so I had to spend the night on Tue. Wed I had appointments, Thur. we had lessons, appointments and Miriam came up to visit. It was another crazy day.
So Fri I finally had time to think about planning a little trip since “my mom” had her twins.
I looked on line and saw last second deals. I found one going to Seattle for $312, included both our flights and motel too. So hear we are in Seattle. We have no car, but there is a kitchen in the motel room. So we walked to Wal-Mart, it was a good walk.
I thought I would look at the homes for sale in the newspaper. In 1986 we bought a brand new home in Bothell. (East side of Seattle) It was a very nice 3-bedroom home on a pretty piece of land with forest behind the house. We lived in it only a year when Rick’s job transferred to Portland, and we hated living in a neighborhood. This neighborhood was like a family. You had to let all your children play together; you had to have your beauty bark and your front yard exactly perfect. Every weekend you were expected to be out there fixing your yard. Well we just didn’t fit in. We couldn’t get our lawn mower to work half the time, we planted fruit trees and we wanted chickens. Once one of our chickens got out and “scared” our neighbor’s dog. The neighbor was so mad; he threw our chicken in the front door. We were zoned for chickens, but we had to give them away to keep peace with the neighborhood "family". I never wanted to live in a neighborhood again.
We bought this house for $80,000 and sold it a couple yr later for only $118,000. Well it can make a person a bit sick to think of what we should’ve, could’ve, would’ve done. Now these same houses are selling for about $500,000. Wow! Just think! Or maybe we shouldn’t think. It’s too sad. Well it’s best just to use our experiences and go on, not look back at what we could’ve, should’ve………

missing pictures

I was waiting to publish some posts to put the pictures in. Well my cord is missing. So I'll add my pictures later. Here are some misc. pictures I had on the computer already.

I noticed on some blogs they take beautiful pictures of food they fixed, or a flower or something very basic, but beautiful.
Well here was a beautiful breakfast. Scambled eggs and hash browns. Jon has been in the business of hash browns lately. He sure makes good ones.

Jon and James
Prissy and her new batch of kittens.
2 white ones and 2 gray. They are so cute.
This was the reunion picture. It was great to have everyone together with my mom still here. We were only missing John and his family.

Financial freedom course

I have been taking the Dave Ramsey Financial freedom course. It's a 13 week course. I didn't miss a class! I loved it. I really haven't been able to apply a whole lot yet so I can be financially free. But I have the vision, and even though it will be a slow process I'm working towards it. Freedom from financial worries! Can't wait!
Last night was the last class.
Each week they have been giving away $50 and one book.
This last week, if you made it to at least 11 classes you were put in the drawing for $1000.
I never did get my name picked, but last night I did win a book because they gave away about 10 of them.
Then the people that won the $1000 happened to be the one couple that I would visit with each week. She told me before they left home they had decided if they won the $1000 that they wanted to share it with me. So they gave me $200!
I came away feeling so blessed. Just that feeling that the Lord is with you and just wants to bless you for fun. That was a fun night.
I would highly recommend that class to anyone. I think it should be a requirement for the high school children to go through too. It would be so much easier to start out right, rather then having to fix all the problems afterwards.

Playing Monopoly

I got my 1st rental house. It finaally closed today.
Monday they fix the bump in the floor, and I'm thinking by next week I'm going to try to sell it. Or should I rent it out?
I woudl like to sell it right away, because I'm not really going to make money on renting it, and if I can make $25,000 on it right away, I could get out of debt and conintue to play monopoly. It woudl be much better then making $50 a month on rent. With the economy the way it is, I doubt it will go up in value much by next year anyways.

Chocolate and Gallbladders

Last Friday I woke in the night with a familar pain. a horrible dull ache. I used to battle with this pain about 15 years ago. Back then it would wipe out nights, or possibly days. It had increased from once in a while to 2-3 times a week. I went to Chriroprator that gave me some weird pills and the pains went away! It was amazing and so freeing. ONce in a while I would get a slight attack, but nothing like the real attacks.
Untill Friday night! Ugg. well by morning I was feeling fine again. So I went ahead and ate normal. We had tacos for lunch, with corn tortilla that you fry. Boy was that the wrong thing! I was moaning in pain the rest of the day.
Now I was a afraid to eat anything.
I read much about gall bladders and found if I stay off of eggs, keep diet very low in fat including, no meat, no beans, no eggs, no dariy I can keep the pain away. I've started to eat a bit of lean meat here and there and I'm hanging in there.
This brings me to chocolate. I heard chocolate is a no no. Rick was given this chocolate from a customer that bought a chocolate factory. It was incredible! It had a very different flavor. It might be worth some pain :)

It's supposed to be spring but it's still winter

Melting a little
Our porch, still has a ways to go!

Well at least it isn't snowing today. It was still snowing April 2nd!
We still have a lot of snow on the ground.
Our porch is till covered although we are seeing a little more every day.
With the melting of the snow, I also see a messy yard. That's one nice thing about the snow, "white as snow" Snow so easily covers up every yucky thing, or mess in the yard.
I will be glad for spring. It's time for picnics and BBQ's.

TV and ER

I'm afraid I'm addicted to ER.
I don't think I've ever wanted to watch this much TV in my life.
I was born in 1961, so TV was pretty simple back then. Growing up my family used to watch TV in the evening. I remember waiting for Thur night to watch Bewitched and That Girl. (Bewitched wasn't too Innocent) Brady bunch and Partridge family on Fri. My parents were pretty careful , I remember we watched "Laughin" once, they said never again.
When we got married we had a hard time gong without a TV. We watched it every evening. I planned my week around TV programs. I started my day with exercise show, then it went off during the day except sometimes for lunch I would watch Mash. When I really started serving the Lord, I began to pray he would take away my desire for TV. He did! We began having bible studies 2 times a week. college students at our house almost every other night. We were having fun with people and lost interest in TV. It was no big deal to just get rid of it. So we went about 20 years without TV. I am so glad we did that. It's a great way to raise children. We did a lot of reading, and writing letters. The girls had pen pals, I wrote journals. We did lots of stitching, sewing, cooking. I think TV takes away a lot of time spent on healthier things.
Over the years, at times we would watch videos now and then. But about 4 yrs ago Rick wanted to get cable TV. We tried it for 6 mo. Didn't like it at all and got rid of it. About 2 yrs ago we got Dish. We had a DVR this time. We really liked it. We would tape only the good shows, never watch commercials. It was good, and we found ourselves spending too much time on it. So after a year we got rid of it too. Just too much time in front of the thing watching good shows.
But we are getting older and began to enjoy the evening, relaxing in front of the TV. Well that brings me to the present. We borrowed ER from Mishael and I'm addicted!
I really like the medical stuff, plus it has it's love story and the getting to know the people and their lives.
Well I'm sure this phase will pass. When spring/ summer really comes no one wants to sit in front of a TV.