Joyce's Blog

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-19T23:55:00.003-07:00

Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass;

it's about learning to dance in the rain.

We have so much to be thankful for! God loves us so much that He has been so good to give us "the bread of adversity" Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

I was just reading Isaiah 30:19-21 And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction........

This part hit me, because again I see His goal is not to give us smooth lives, but lives that are being molded and shaped to be able to live in heaven for eternity. We can't enter heaven with pride, selfishness, hate, grudges, anger, lust. Even minor sins cannot enter into heaven. Jesus will clean us completely and prepare us, but sometimes that saving grace and preparation will come through adversity, affliction, prison, loneliness, health issues, losses, trials, family problems. He uses everything in our lives, bad and good to mold us, to clean us, to prepare us. He has plans for our good not for woe. Plans to give a future full of hope. Jer. 29:11.

We spend so much of our time trying to avoid the storms, trying to protect our children from problems in their lives, or trying to make our families or our life as smooth as possible. Then when the problems hit, we question why, we do everything we can to fix it, and we beg God to heal, provide or take away the problem. But can we learn to "dance in the rain"? Can we give thanks in everything?

It's an amazing transformation in our hearts when we can thank Him for everything. When we can thank Him for our pain, trials, and afflictions. Knowing, trusting He has a good purpose. Knowing He truly loves us and will only do what's best for all in the long run. For all eternity.

Thank you Jesus for your great love and compassion. We truly have so much to be thankful for.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Here is a song that goes along with my thoughts today:

We pray for blessings

We pray for peace

Comfort for family, protection while we sleep

We pray for healing, for prosperity

We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering

All the while, You hear each spoken need

Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear

And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near

We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love

As if every promise from Your Word is not enough

All the while, You hear each desperate plea

And long that we'd have faith to believe

Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You’re near

And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us, When darkness seems to win

We know the pain reminds this heart

That this is not, this is not our home,

It's not our home

Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

And what if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You‚re near

What if my greatest disappointments

Or the aching of this life

Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can‚t satisfy

And what if trials of this life

The rain, the storms, the hardest nights

Are your mercies in disguise

Welcome trials as friends.

I am sending them to you to grow you up in Me.

They are sent to show you the faith you already have and to strengthen that

faith.

My plan is working out perfectly!

Persevere, dear daughter.

Perseverance makes you more mature.

You will end up perfectly mature and complete in the end...lacking NOTHING!

Rest in Me, God your Father

Misc. pictures

2011-08-30T14:03:00.006-06:00

Lynette and Elina
Eliza

Moriah's tulips
Gareth
Elina

Lynette, James, Carson, Race: making funny faces

Kendra baking with Grandma
James

Mark
Paul
Misheal
Joyce dressed like a 50's house wife at Gina's shower
Eliza
Eliza hugging Grandma

Gina's wedding

2011-08-30T13:59:00.002-06:00

I don't have many wedding pictures because my battery went dead. But here are a couple.

All 11 kids

Splinter

2011-05-28T22:56:00.004-06:00

I was running down the stairs to bring the children to school one morning and the hand rail gave me a horrible splinter.
Since I was running down full speed, it went very deep. I couldn't see anything there to pull out, but my hand was extremly sore and unusable.
I was planning to go get some lidocaine from my birth kit and have a freind numb me up and dig around, but I ended up in the doctors office. Later i was glad it was the Dr, because it was really deep and took his skill to get to it.
Oh what a blessing lidocaine is!

Our vacation to Missoula

2011-03-24T00:09:00.006-06:00

Martha and I decided to take the kids on a trip to Missoula. Actually the kids had a week off school and I had a midwifery conference I needed to go to. So I used points and got a nice motel with an indoor swimming pool. With a little bit of convincing, Martha agreed to make the trip with us.
Lee at the historical museum.

This is at the smoke jumpers tour.Tony has a parachute on his back. A little heavy!
The Mexican restaurant lunch

Hans, James, Tony, Lee
There were two rooms at the motel and so the kids could watch kids movies , while Martha and Monica watched house shows.
Monica, James, Hans and Lee
Ice skating
James and Hans
Monica's first time ever!

James

Gina's wedding trip

2011-03-23T23:11:00.009-06:00

All of us girls went to Spokane to shop for the wedding. Gina is planning her wedding in Aug. We decided on a girls outing and planned ahead. We found a motel that was more like an apartment. 2 bedrooms, living room and kitchen. It was great! So fun to be together.

We spent hours watching Gina try on dresses. They were all so pretty.

Mishael
Miriam
Monica

Monica, Gina, Nettie, Moriah

Eliza and Elina

Kendra and Eliza
Miriam

Jon's birthday

2011-03-12T11:34:00.003-07:00

Paul, Mark and Jon
James taking a picture of himself.
Jon got a smart phone for his birthday from Maria. Pretty nice sister!

I made him a lemon cake. They all dug into it and enjoyed!
Mark eating cake too.

Kids pathfinders sabbath

2011-03-12T11:19:00.003-07:00

Mark playing the piano
James playing and singing
Moriah came up to see the kids
Shawn being held by Mark, Monica, Moriah, James

our forest

2010-10-17T13:26:00.006-06:00

We have 5 beautiful acres full of memories. We bought this property in Jan 1993, we moved on it in the summer of 93, moving our house (not just household, but the entire 2 story house) 70 miles.
We first moved the storage room which became our cabin while building, digging the well, putting in septic and plumbing, basement, etc. 10 of us in a 10x16 storage room! It was fun, because it was temporary.
So the memory's seem forever. Jon was born that year so Gina, Jon, Monica, Mark and James don't ever remember living anywhere else.
When we first bought the place, the trees, bushes and undergrowth were so thick, you couldn't walk through the forest. We horse logged one truck load of logs and Rick took a rototiller through to make a path while we all worked to smooth it out and clear a way to walk though to the back.
The service berry bushes were thick and had lots of berries. I canned some, but they really don't have much flavor.
Well over the years forests change, we had a cow that grazed our under brush, we took down the dead trees for fire wood. Children built one play/tree house after another. Dead branches now began to build up on the ground and we needed a major clean up for fire safety and looks.
But 5 acres is overwhelming.
Then I heard about a grant they put out for this area. They pay 90% of the cost to clean up and fire safe our property's out here.
So we did it. It was scary, because although each person in our area has 5 acres, we are in a neighborhood. I don't feel like we have neighbors since our trees give us privacy.
The guys doing the job were very kind as James told the story's of his "climbing tree" or the trees that Paul, Mark, Jon, James and Hans decided take down as lumberjacks.

After, front yard. You can see neighbors pond here.

Before
After

This is the machine, it would take down a tree and then mulch it into chips. Anything on the ground it ate and mulched.
Before
I'm getting used to it. At first I could see the neighbors, but now I don't even think about it. It just looks clean.

Carousel

2010-09-04T10:56:00.003-06:00

I got to go visit last Tue in Missoula. It's a long drive 3.5 hours each way.
I got to see and HOLD and cuddle little Ellina. She is still small, but seems so much bigger and more mature every time I see her. I've held her for seconds before, but this time I could actually hold her and cuddle for a few minutes. She reminds me of Mishael when she was a preemie.
I didn't take my camera in the NICU, so I don't have any pictures of her.

Mishael and I took the children to the carousel and park that afternoon. It was good for them all to get out. Gareth loved the horsey and the park was really fun too.
Eliza loved the horsey until the carousel began going. It goes really fast. Your hair is blowing and you want to hold on pretty tight. So the picture below is right after the ride ended. I couldn't capture her little worried face.

Carousel

Wedding dresses for Gina

2010-09-03T18:05:00.003-06:00

Martha, Moriah, Gina and I (Plus Shawn) did our first trip for wedding dress shopping. Gina is engaged, but not planning the wedding for a couple of years.
It was a fun day. Afterwords we went and had some tea.

Picnic at the Dam

2010-08-18T19:59:00.008-06:00

After I got out from swimming my outfit became very weird! Mark is roasting a marshmallow on a VERY small stick.
Paul and Hans

We all went swimming. A little cold at first, but such nice clean water!

James and Hans moved a tree so we had fire wood to roast marshmallows.
Such strong kids!
Hans getting the fire going. We ate hamburgers and hot dogs, and vegi hamburgers, smores, etc.

James and Hans

Beth and Monica
Paul, Beth, Mark, Laura, Elliot

Ellina's blog address

2010-07-21T10:14:00.001-06:00

http://mishaelsbabies.blogspot.com/
This is the address for the triplets, hope it works this time.

Frisky our faithful dog

2010-07-13T10:04:00.006-06:00

Our spoiled little puppy
She was always a puppy to us. Frisky, happy, jumping around.

Jon tried to carve the grave stone.
Jon spent hours making the beautiful casket

We buried her brush with her

Our little Ellina

2010-07-13T09:58:00.004-06:00

We have a blog for the triplets.
http://mishaelsbabies.blogspot.com/
Check it out for more details

Investments

2010-06-12T18:17:00.008-06:00

I thought I had posted this post a long time ago. These are houses I bought last spring and summer.
This house I bought for $14000. Put some money into it and rent it for $650 a month. It's a 4 bedroom house.

This is the 4 plex, it needed a lot of work.
Kitchen in the 4 plex

I didn't buy this one below! I stopped on the road and took it's picture, because it's so funny it's still standing.
Now at least when you see the ones we did buy you will think they are great! LOL!

This is our little house. I bought it for $8500!
above is the ceiling in the little house.
It has a basement and needs a lot of work. Hopefully it will be worth it someday.

4 plex again: it was in horrible shape. But We've owned it one yr now, and it's coming along pretty good.

Libby, old town

2010-04-22T14:56:00.001-06:00

When coming into Libby from over the bridge this is the sight we see.
I've never tired of seeing those beautiful mountains.
The pink building you see in the background is "Hotel Libby". Around 1900 this was a booming gold mining town. This hotel still stands, and we always wish someone would make it into a living history attraction.

This is the original Hospital. Now it's a falling apart building.

I don't know how many of my children made the mistake when reading this sign. They thought it said "blood drive through" VFW puts the sign up about every month. I always thought it was funny how they thought you gave blood at a drive through.

Walk in the park

2010-04-22T14:44:00.005-06:00

One Sat afternoon we took a hike with some friends.
Monica and her freind got behind and decided to leave us a message on the road for us. It worked we understood.

James and Jake

relaxing evening

2010-04-02T16:01:00.003-06:00

Lately we have been having some nice relaxing evenings. Drinking a lot of tea, reading books and lots of visiting. The other night Mishael and Martha were visiting and we must have gone through 5 pots of teas.

Last night James lit a candle and I made popcorn and tea. James made some funny faces for the camera.

baby's

2010-01-27T18:36:00.003-07:00

Shawn and Eliza
What a day we had.
Yesterday my assistant, Julia went into labor. It was a beautiful birth at about 7 pm. Then her client went into labor at 5. Another beautiful birth at 7 am. We had our monthly class schedule for 11:00 am. We had 2-3 hours sleep and made it through an incredible busy day.
There were a lot of newborns in our class today. The 4 month old babies looked huge compared to all the newborns.

Shawn and Eliza are the 4 mo old babies. The purple sleeper was only 4 hours old. The one with orange pants was born here about 2 weeks ago.

testimony

2010-01-13T19:21:00.002-07:00

I haven't posted for a long time. I need to get back in the groove I guess.
I wrote out this little part of my testimony and thought I would stick it in here. Just a little history.

I thought I would take a step and open myself up a bit to my journey on head coverings. I don't usually go around explaining where I am at on this, as it's sort of a personal thing. But I also would like to write down my thoughts for future reverence.
A bit of my testimony, is always a good thing to have in writing anyways.
I had accepted Christ when I was 10 yrs old. It was the Jesus movement, and it was the popular thing to do. Yet it was a decision I thought out, decided I wanted to accept Christ and never purposely turned back. But in all truth, I didn't know what I was doing. I was baptized in a bikini, in the ocean in 1972. As the yrs went on, summer camps, church about 6 times a week (my parents were very involved) later going to school at the church school, I was truly raised in the church. There was a time when I was 11 years old at camp, that the Holy Spirit was so strong on me, I could think of nothing more enjoyable then to pray and sing.
Ages 14-18 I had God as a part of my life, but I was basically doing my own thing. Getting married, having a baby, moving up north. After we were settled up north, we began to go to church again. The pastors wife and I really hit it off. There was something very different about her. She was living her life, for God and with God. He was why she was living. I had God as part of my life, but he wasn't everything. Being around her got me hungry for God. I began to pray more, read the bible with a new understanding. I never had stopped reading the bible, but I just did it out of duty. It's sort of a funny side note, how people say if you wear a head covering or dress a certain way that you are legal. But for me personally I was much more “legal” back then. I read the bible every day because I had to in order to stay a Christian. There was no heart in it, it was a law for me. Wearing dresses and a head covering has always been a joy to me. Being legal is something in ones heart, you cannot judge someone’s outward appearance or actions and decide if they are legal or not.
So I was 18 yrs old, and truly learning who God was. Even though by this time I knew the bible very well, it was like I was reading it for the first time. I ate it up everyday with a hunger of a newborn baby. One day I came across 1st Corinthians. 11. As I read it, I began wondering why we don't take these verses literally. Why don't we wear a head covering, at least to church? I went and asked my pastors wife and she quoted what she had been taught; That was for back then, because they needed to see the difference between a prostitute and a Christian. Because everyone dressed the same. Well even as she said it, I thought, I don't agree with that. We shouldn't throw something out of the bible because we think it's not for today. There is a lot of symbolism in the bible and these things are important. But who was I to say I disagreed. I'm the new Christian, and she is the pastors wife, who at that time, I thought knew everything. So I didn't pursue my first thoughts from the scriptures and left it be. Many yrs later, 1983 or so we began to use Mennonite curriculum to teach Martha homeschooling. Of course the subject of head coverings was brought to my attention since Mennonites wear them. We really liked a lot of the doctrines of the Mennonites. Except for a few things, one, being the head covering. By that time I was well immersed in the thinking of the Protestants on this. Long hair, husband etc is your covering. You don't need to actually wear an extra cloth on your head for the symbol. You just need to have the authority in order; it's what’s in your heart that matters. Of course there is some truth to that, but then if we take that thinking too far we could throw out baptism and communion too. Symbols, are they important in our day and age still?

We went into YWAM and had a burden for Russians. We were praying about somehow doing mission work to Russia, but at that time it was communist. We read a lot of Russian literature. I noticed many of the Russian Christians covered their heads and I began to think again about this, but quickly dismissed it being sure in my current doctrines.
We had to move to for Rick's job again and I wanted to meet some Mennonites. We went and visited a church in the Portland area. We were visiting after dinner and one of the ladies asked me what I thought about the head covering. Mennonites generally are very blunt about doctrinal subjects! Well I told her my view, and she asked me "would you mind just praying about it once?" I told her I would, and that's all she said.
So on our way home that evening, out of duty because I said I would, I began to pray about head coverings. Before I hardly had started the prayer God brought to mind the time when I was a new Christian. It was a revelation to me. I had totally forgotten about that time. Yet it was in my mind now, so real, like a vision almost. I knew God had spoken to me. Oh dear now what! Do you know how hard it is to put a piece of cloth on your head?
So I began to wear a head covering out of obedience, and it was hard for me. But as I obeyed, God began to bless me. I noticed people treating me different, I enjoyed a special thing between God and me with this symbol on my head. It meant more to me then a cloth, it became my special convenet with God, something that just says I love you and want your ways.
Over the years I have questioned when to where it. Is it just for church, or for all the time? At times I even wore it to bed, because I wanted to pray all the time, now I always wear it to church and sporadically otherwise. The only thing I'm sure about is that at least in church meetings, but it has become to me more of a covenant or a special symbol for me. Not so much for a sign to others any more, just a special thing between God and me. I love to pray, I love to be with God all the time. I love to have the symbol on my head that I am His and He is mine and I love to talk to Him. It is a symbol in my heart that I accept God's way. His authority structure. He's in charge of all, and so powerful, so Holy. When you go before a Holy God, it's easy to feel uncovered. Putting that little piece of cloth on my head is only a slight sign of telling God you are holy and I want to reverence you, respect you and your ways.
So for me, I don't necessarily feel like the head covering is for every Christian woman, I just know it's a special thing for me. I don't have to wear it; I love it because I love to be with God.

creek around the block

2009-07-09T15:35:00.004-06:00

We have this neat creek around the block. Sort of like a community swimming pool without chorine. It's really a safe creek. We call it a creek, but it's good size. Not too swift though. Although every year it changes completely. For many years there was a little dammed up part, so it made it pool more. It's always nice on a hot day to walk around the block and swim.

This is Lee standing in the middle

We had a boys day at the creek. (Monica was still gone to Calif.)
Mark and Gareth

Brother and Sisters visit

2009-06-26T23:39:00.008-06:00

We've had some very relaxing weeks around here. I don't have another birth scheduled till August. Jon is at a wilderness camp for 3 weeks, Monica was gone to Calif for 2 weeks.

My sister Jeannie and brother Jim came up from Colorado for a week. We had a great time hanging out, eating and talking.

Paul
Carson and Mark
Carson and Mark in front of the falls
James, Carson, Mark and Monica
James: x marks the spot!
Kootenai Falls
Joyce and June
Gina
Picnic lunch
The kids were hot from hiking around, so they all decided to put their heads in the water and cool off.
We got to the park and started the BBQ right away, starving kids!
Jeannie, Moriah and Miriam
Mishael holding April's baby, Gideon
Mishael, about 6 month pregnant now.
Moriah, Gina and Monica
Mark and Carson climbing up a wall for a short cut.
Lee (Martha's) We found a great place to swim, but it was so cold it hurt!
Jim, Grace, June and Issac
Carson is great with the boys. They were having a great time.
Monica, Gina, James and Mark

catch up

2009-06-14T11:08:00.004-06:00

My Computer had to be fixed. So I sent it off to Michael. It is finally back and working great!

I had a very busy April and May with births, so it's nice to have some time to catch my breath. Looks like a slow summer, hoping to do some camping and short trips, just having family fun.

This is Monica's cactus. It blooms so nice every year.
Our swimming pool, up and ready to use if it would just get warm enough.
This is Frisky is the grass. It's very nice and green around here right now.
My container garden. I have these on my back porch. So far nothing much is growing. I do not have a green thumb.

Our new shower. The tile came out beautiful.
Jon, who still loves taking pictures of himself. I thought this was a nice one.
Jon again who when he is home, can usually be found right here.

My new garden fence. This was part of trade for a birth. I actually had 2 trades going on at the same time. This one guy cleaned up down trees, moved the garden fence, fixed all sort of little things. It was wonderful. The other one was the labor on the bathroom. He's doing a beautiful job.

It's a boy!!!!

2009-05-15T06:32:00.003-06:00

Moriah's Ultra sound

No doubt this time!

My 3 due mama's!

Gina Choir

2009-05-14T23:46:00.004-06:00

Gina's sings in the Choir in her school plus she take voice lessons. She has an amazing teacher and it's so nice she has this opportunity. The Choir made a trip around to sing and came to Libby.

mothers day

2009-05-14T23:33:00.004-06:00

I had a great mothers day. Not everyone could be there, but everyone gave me a call and sent cards.

Martha, Moriah and Mishael plus their families were going to get together with us. Miriam had to work, so we ended up eating at Apple-bees and Miriam could be our server.

Afterwards we went to a park and just had a nice visit.

My girls gave me such nice presents:

Gina sent me a card that made me cry, Maria sent one that was thankful for the little things, like potty training! It was funny.

thats a tortellini salad in the front of my flowers. I thought it made a nice picture. I marinated the cheese. It's so good that way.

finally a day off from running

2009-05-02T10:38:00.004-06:00

For the last 2 weeks I've been running every day. 2 births, postpartum visits, a prenatal class, Kalsipell one day, children's science projects. My house is a mess, the sun is shining. Hopefully I can catch up around here today.

Gina is home for "Home leave" She is driving her own car now and having fun with the extra freedom.

So Monica used Gina and her friends for her scientific study.
Monica was seeing if different music will change your heart rate. So using my little pulse oximeter, she was able to find out that it really didn't change just from music alone.

Mark's study was "will garlic on your foot taste in your mouth?" Yes it does a little.

Tabasco sauce on your wrist taste in your mouth?

week end hike

2009-04-27T08:02:00.002-06:00

We had a nice weekend although still very busy. The pathfinders club had to do a 10 mile hike to get the badge this time. So off they went to the park down the road. They hiked all the way to the falls.

I had a CPR class to go to and a community "prenatal - 5 fair". After the hike I joined the pathfinders and we hung around a big camp fire eating hot dogs and smores. Most of these friends are vegetarian. So they eat the weirdest hot dogs out of a can. It must be something you grow up with because they look pretty weird to us.

Rick has been busy with the radio station, and Jon has been hanging out with a big youth group.

Jon had a track meet on Fri and won one 1st place, 2- 2nd and one 3rd. He's pretty fast!

pizza hut fund raiser

2009-04-22T20:07:00.002-06:00

Mark and Monica get to go on a trip with their teacher. It's called Ed Fest. This is the first yr they are old enough to go. First they go to Bozeman to the school that Gina is in for a couple of the days. They will have a science fair, sport competitions and eat vegetarian food. Then the teacher takes them on some special educational outings. A very exciting trip.

So to raise money for this trip Monica and Mark were part of a fund raising event. They were the servers at our local pizza hut. they had to take all the orders, serve all the food, just like the normal paid servers. Only the school got to keep all the tips for the trip.
Here is Mark with a tray of ice water. Scary!!

Monica taking orders!

The park down the street

2009-04-22T19:03:00.002-06:00

We have a park down the street. It's not the swing set kind of park, it's the beautiful kind. It starts about 3 miles down the road and then you can only walk or ride a bike into the park. It's along the Kootenai river and if you walk far enough in this park (about 7 miles) you reach Kootenai falls and the swinging bridge. Well I've never hiked that far, but we used to go to this park quite often. Sometimes I would go when I just needed a quite place to pray, or when we wanted to take a nice family bike ride, or just a good hike. There is good fishing on the river, a black berry patch and a grave stone, apple orchard, old- old cabins. So it's a fun place to explore.

Sunday it was a beautiful day so I took the children and we started to hike in. The children had their bikes. the boys were having a great time exploring. After exploring the cabin and watching Search and Rescue practice bringing a stretcher down a mountain side, we decided to sit and have a little picnic. I just started reading a book to the kids and I get a phone call.......A client that was early, surprised us all. So we quickly headed out to our car.

Got the children home, packed up my stuff, made a few phone calls to assistants and off we went. The family lived quite a ways out of town. Arrived at the house and 10 min. later they had a beautiful little girl. What an amazing day with God's timing perfect.

I'm so enjoying the warm weather. Hoping for lots of hiking, camping, picnics, BBQ's and swimming party's this summer. My midwifery schedule is really slow this summer, so it should give me lots of time for children. Well if life doesn't bring other stuff to make us busy.

the rest of our trip

2009-04-03T09:33:00.008-06:00

For the last part of our trip we decided to go to Cranbrook and then head home through Eureka.

More pretty views.

Almost the whole trip up was on a beautiful lake or Kootenai River, but it looks like a huge lake.

We thought this was interesting where it says "metric free"
Rick who I only rarly can catch smiling on a camera.
On the ferry boat.

We were planning to go out to eat after we got to Cranbrook, but we had snacked and we were not very hungry.

So we decided to go to A&W. It was so good and lots of fun. Huge root beer floats, and papa burgers. They were really good.

They serve vinigar in little packets for the french fries!
See how big they were!

These are the beautiful mountains we see on the way back from Cranbrook.

2nd entry for Ainsworth trip

2009-03-28T22:29:00.008-06:00

This is another beautiful view picture. What we can see from our motel room.

There are 3 pools at the hot springs. The Caves are 106 degrees, the main pool is 98 and then there is the cold pool. They say if you are in the hot pool and go in the cool pool, that it's cleansing. So we all tried it, but it actually hurts. As you stand in the pool all the blood rushes to your feet, they get really tingly and painful. They say this blood rush cleans your liver. This picture below is Mark in the cold pool

This is Rick visiting, notice his glasses on still.

This is an old building. Inside we could see through the windows it was all set up like an old store. Really neat, but closed.

These are are nice pudding desserts

Monica's coffee drink.

This is the large pool

This is Monica and Mark in the cold pool, saying: hurry take the picture fast!

The caves start out with tile, but as you go back it's a very dark cave with the mineral staglites and dripping ceiling. It's really hot in there, like a sauna.

Monica made the batter before we left home for this chocolate pudding cake. We baked it in the toaster oven. We bought spray whip cream which is a very special treat for us, and fun to decorate everything.

Ainsworth first part of the trip

2009-03-28T16:10:00.015-06:00

Our weekend trip to Ainsworth started actually on Wed evening.

I have had some really stressful weeks of late and a lot on my mind, so I'm was really looking forward to trying to really take some time off. After the 5 births in one week, 4 births being in 2 days, lots of prenatals, and this Wed. was a class day on going through labor.

So Tue I should have been getting ready for our trip and the class, but instead we were trying to help Gina buy a car and for some reason I got this notion that I needed to clean out a closet at the birth center !!

So Tue I cleaned out a closet all day, and found Gina a car. Wed I had a class with a good turn out. I always bring something for lunch, but didn't really have anything prepared. I brought a spinach , tomatos, feta cheese and an Asian dressing. Mishael was there and put it together while I was doing prenatals. :)

So Wed. after class we headed to Kalispell in the van and Gina's new car, we had a very nice evening at Martha's house. Maria, Moriah, Gina were there. Gina was so excited about her car. It's a Buick Century. It has 6 seat belts and it's not a real little car. It's a 1991, but only has 53,000 miles on it. Hopefully it will be a good safe car for her.

Thursday we had appointments and meetings all day in Kalispell. We slept at home Thur night and I woke at 5 am worrying about clients. I knew I needed to be able to make sure everyone was OK so I could relax for the weekend. A few more phone calls, pack the car with food and clothes and off we go.

We left about 11 am, finally free and easy about everything at home. Time to enjoy family and views and truly relax. As soon as we hit Canada no more phone calls!!!

Monica, Mark and James had never been to Canada, so everything was new for them. Strange because we used to go to Canada quite often with the older children.

The first thing we saw that I wish we could have gotten a picture of was a huge male elk. It had a big beautiful rack. I've seen lots of Elk, but never one with a huge rack. It was amazing.

The pictures are mixed up a bit, but I'll give you descriptions.

We got to go on a free ferry. It was 40 minutes long.
We picked up some skate boards for the boys in the first little town we were in. Some things are cheaper up here, but most things are more. We do get $1.25 for every $1 American, so that helps a little with the high prices. So in this picture the boys are fixing the new skate boards to make them better.
Monica is unloading the ice chest. It's a good thing we brought food. There is only one restaurant in this little place and a typical dinner is $24 a plate! The motel has a kitchenette and I brought a toaster oven. We picked up some really nice partly prepared food at Costco. Egg rolls, Mandarin orange chicken. Orange juice, bagels, cream cheese. We couldn't bring produce over the border, but I thought I would buy them up in Ainsworth. I didn't realize how small the "towns" were up there.

This picture is Rick very happy, because after months of looking for his meter, calling all his friends, buying a new meter, here he found it in his suit case. Why did he bring it with him last trip. Rick is famous for bringing too much stuff with on trips!

These pictures are on the ferry

This is a glass house made of embalming fluid bottles! Strange!

we live in an amazing area

2009-03-20T21:14:00.007-06:00

We have a moose hanging around the house. We used to have them around and hadn't seen them for years. Now it's around almost everyday. Not right in our yard, but across our street. It seems like a pretty mellow one, as he hardly pays attention to us.

Here is the moose with her baby.

James and his friend Jake. They were sledding down this neat hill.

We get these neat ice falls. Actually I don't know what they are called, just they are all over. Miniature waterfalls that freeze in the winter.

I had 2 postpartum visits on the W. Kootenai. Which is about 70 miles from Libby. It's always such a beautiful drive. I always think it looks like a postcard.

March weekend

2009-03-09T22:10:00.008-06:00

Moriah and James.
Eric 4 yrs old

Eric being silly
Mishael and Gareth
Rick, Miriam, Jon with a Heidi (Cody's sister) in the middle.

This is the coal car.
Grandpa gave Eric his own special cantainer of ice cream! :)
The engine
The amazing train cake.

We hated to eat it after it was all done.

Moriah and Joe decided to come up for the weekend. it was Jon's birthday on Sat. and Eric's on Monday. We all had a great time. Joe brought his snowmobiles up. I made a lasagna dinner and cheese cake for Jon's birthday.

Sunday Moriah and Mishael made this fantastic train cake. Train cakes are a tradition in our family. Just about everybody had a train cake at one birthday or another. Well this one was pretty fancy and it turned out really nice.

The whole weekend I didn't know if I would be able to be home. It's been a crazy couple of weeks because I ended up with 3 overdue mom's and 1 due today. That's 4 ladies that can and should be having their baby's any time.

Finally Wednesday one of them had their baby and the next 3 went in labor on Sunday! Yep! All 3 started labor the same day.

But God helped the timing. One of the labors quited down, the other one delivered Monday morning, the next one Monday afternoon. We have 2 birth rooms at the birth center and we juggled people and stuff around and had 2 babies born on the 9Th. Now it's Monday evening and the last mom is on her way in. The only problem is I've only slept maybe 4 hours. Hopefully I'll be alert enough to make wise decisions.

Fasting?!!

2009-02-18T09:32:00.011-07:00

We still have lots of snow. Can't wait to use that swimming pool again.

We lost a lot of trees with the heavy snow. We have a few just bent over like this. We can either use a come-along and try to pull it up, or just cut it down. We like our little forest.

So I was reading about people that have a hard time loosing weight and they said sometimes it's because you have toxins built up in your body. So I decided to do a "master cleanse" This is where you make this lemonade of fresh lemon juice and pure maple grade B syrup. You drink this lemonade all day and that's all. No food at all! You supposed to do this for 10 days. I did it for 8 days and now on day 9 I decided to add veggies to my "fast". It wasn't very hard to do as you feel pretty full from the lemonade.

This was my dinner on day 7 and oh it was sooo good. I couldn't believe how good broth could taste.
The strange thing is when your not eating you can get really into cooking food. I've been cooking up a storm. I made a pot of sauce and snuck in a huge bunch of spinach. You never even know it's in there.
It was Cody's birthday so we made him a couple cakes to celebrate.
James made the chiffon cake
Monica made the Carmel cake
Gareth in the bath.

Here James is separating the eggs for his Chiffon cake.
James making his famous chiffon cake. He can do it completely alone now.
I made donuts one day. I never fry anything, but I figured it's a good time since I won't be eating them. They were just a plain easy sour milk donuts and I added flax seed and wheat germ, so they weren't totally empty calories.

January pictures

2009-02-08T02:00:00.007-07:00

Mark, James and Monica went to a Derby race with their Pathfinders club.

Mark is holding up his little Derby car here.

James with his Derby car
Here is the race track
Cody and Jon
Miriam Loves A1 sauce. Not just a normal loves, like on steak and normal things. But she almost can eat it straight. I even saw her try it on dessert! So Dad likes to spoil her and he went and bought her 2 more big bottles.
For Joe's birthday he rented a room at a ski hill. It was lots of fun.

Hard to tell if this is James or Mark under all those ski clothes

On the way to Eureka for a postpartum visit, we saw some big horn sheep. I haven't seen then for years, and I happened to have my camera!

this is the hot tub at the ski resort.

Gareth such a happy little guy!
Eric
James going skiing

James had a fun day!

2009-02-08T00:28:00.002-07:00

The older children were gone this morning, so James decided to make us breakfast. He made french toast for me and an egg for his Dad. Later we decided to go out for an ice cream cone.

Here is James with his double scooper. It was huge!

Checking the receipt.. I trained him well :)

My new bedroom!

2009-01-30T21:55:00.007-07:00

Here you can see my beautiful new comforter. Also you get a little look at the nice rug Mishael crocheted me for Christmas.
It's such a comfortable room.
I noticed most quilt sets don't have ruffles any more. So this one with ruffles, flowers and lace was something I was looking for.

You can also see my new windows. You can't see the ceiling, but all the popcorn off the ceiling and freshly painted.
Mark built a snow man on the roof of the house. Here it was already melting a bit.
After so many house projects I was not looking forward to emptying my bedroom, painting, and going through stuff. There is actually a box in my closet that I packed up about 8 yrs ago and I've never opened it since. It's mostly sentimental stuff, but that is still ridiculous.

So this week I took the plunge! Miriam started painting for me, I hired someone to come in and take the popcorn off the ceiling. We already got the new windows in, but we had to replace the window sills. Everything still needed washing too. That soot is amazing stuff.

So the room was emptied, new carpet, new paint and I finally put my new comforter on my bed! I bought it with my birthday money (back in Sept) and didn't want to put it on till my room was done. It looks beautiful!

pictures

2009-01-18T00:30:00.010-07:00

Gareth is Mishael's little one. He's almost 2 now.
Eric being silly
Turkeys in our yard
Eric brought his Thomas train set up. We were all enjoying it.
Eric, Mark, Caleb (a school friend) and Gareth

Joyce and Jon

Mark, Monica, Mishael holding Gareth
James
Jon who took about 100 pictures of himself with my new camera.

We had a whole flock of Turkey's in our back yard. We often see them in the neighborhood, but this is the 1st time in our yard.

Happenings and pondering.

2009-01-11T21:13:00.004-07:00

I actually got a new camera. I was really missing it.

The only problem is I really dislike trying to figure out new technical things I liked how my old camera had a very clear spot that said "Auto" on it. I need things real simple.

Well I'm sure the children will show me how to use it! lol!

Our household hasn't had any big exciting things happen. Just back to normal life after the nice 2 week break from school, births, activity's. It was so nice to stay home and enjoy watching snow fall. It was terrible to notice all the leaking spots our roof is having problems with as the snow melts!

This last week I got some new windows in the bedrooms, got some painting done, Joe and Moriah came up for one day, I had a nice butter birth, ran children here and there, and just very normal life.

Eric is here for the weekend, and after church I'm hoping for a nice lazy Sunday before my busy week.

I'll have a postpartum visit in Eureka (75 miles away) on Monday, so that takes all day it seems, Wed. we have Dr appointments in Kalispell, plus all the normal piano lessons, basketball, youth groups, prenatals on Thurs this week. It will be a busy week. Which brings me to my deep thoughts of late:

We had a friend of ours die a couple of weeks ago. I just keep evaluating and reevaluating my life and what I do with my days. Life just seems to be whizzing by. Do I really do what I want to do? Children grow up so fast and I have so few years left with the ones at home. But life is busy. Running them here and there, paying bills, paperwork and phone calls, keeping a house clean and running smoothly takes a lot of effort. But then the things that are important like taking a child out for an ice cream cone, or reading bedtime story's, seem to get taken over by something "more important" at the moment too often. Always thinking we will do it tomorrow. I want to live life with the priority's that are truly important, but in the mean time you can't skip the cares of this life.

I heard someone say on the radio, "you can choose to spend you time how ever you want, but you only get to spend it once"

Well those are my deep ponderings lately.

The end of my week

2009-01-02T20:17:00.004-07:00

Well my relaxing week went on. The snow has been so heavy that no one could drive from Kalispell to Libby. So Kendra, Nettie and Hans have been with us all week. Besides Gareth, Mishael and Cody here much of the time. Someone should be coming to get the children tomorrow when there is supposed to be a break in the storm.

Well they have all been having a great time, staying up very late every night, getting up very late, running like wild Indians, shoveling snow, washing dishes and baking.

Yesterday we made the dough for gingerbread men. We never got a chance before Christmas. It was fun to watch them all cutting out cookies today. They are all pretty good cooks and they are old enough now to clean up too. For dinner we made baked fried chicken dinner, with mashed potato's, green beans, fruit cocktail. Boy did everyone like that.

Well when there are so many little children at the dinner table, conversations can get pretty silly. So I try to guide the conversation. We started with "what do you want to be when you grow up?" Then we went to"what is your favorite subject in school?" We also told a story one sentence at a time. One person says a sentence, and then the next person adds one more sentence to the story, etc. The story always gets really silly. We made some rules, "no dying, no sinful acts" otherwise the story's go really weird. In this story it started out with the nice kid that like baseball was sprayed by a pink elephant, and eventually had his leg bit off by a shark, which kept them all in laughter. They can't help be silly I suppose.

So I thought I would write down what they all said they want to be when they grow up, and 10 yrs from now we can look back and see if any of them stick out their childhood ideas.

Monica would like to be a pediatric surgeon, favorite subject is Math.

Nettie would like to be a Doctor and go to other country's helping people, telling them about Jesus. Favorite subject: Math

Hans, would like to be an electrician and a chef, favorite subject is Math.

Kendra would like to be a dancer, and an artist. Favorite subject is reading and then Math.

Mark would like to be a Doctor and favorite subject is for sure Math.

James would like to work at Disney land, designing new rides, and he would like to be a pilot also. James also loves Math.

So you can see we definitely have a thing about Math in our family. Rick, Maria, Moriah, Gina, Monica, Mark and James all love math. Not just do OK in it, but they actually love math. They think it's fun to figure out problems, just for fun. I like math with a calculator, but not so much all the higher math. I can't remember how much Michael and Martha like it. I think they like reading/writing more.

The week after Christmas

2009-01-01T08:45:00.003-07:00

It's been a wonderful week! The Lord has blessed us abundantly!

Kendra, Hans, and Lynette stayed with us after Christmas. Mishael and Cody have been staying here a lot too. All together we have had 11 of us most of the time. We are having so much fun!

Normally every morning I wake up with this huge list. I divide the list into 4 categories. Calls, computer, home, town. Usually all 4 categories are full! Usually my calender is full! Usually I have to make at least 2 trips into town a day, sometimes 4. Usually I'm running, running, running. Not this last week! :)

We have had a ton of snow, and the children are home from all their school and activities, so for 8 blessed days I haven't even started my car! I just am enjoying every minute of it.

Since we have been fixing up the house, it's so much easier to have company and to keep the house cleaner. With the snow outside, it gives that wonderful homey atmospher of a cozy house.

The only interesting thing going on this week has been our mysterious leaks. On Christmas morning right through my new ceiling/light fixture in the kitchen we had this strange drip. After ripping up my beautiful ceiling a bit, we finally found that ice is building up and getting under the splits in our medal roof. We cleared the roof of snow and ice and the drip stopped. (my kitchen ceiling will have to be patched :(. My bathroom ceiling has had this happening for a while, and each yr we try to fix it, and each yr I think we got it, and low and behold it starts again! One of the major problems on this side of the house, (the original house, before additions) is that the guy that built it didn't put the plywood on the roof rafters. So our bedroom ceiling is drywall, insulation, tar paper and tin roof! No plywood! I'm afraid we are heading for a big roof job!

Well then yesterday I went out to the garage and the ceiling out there is leaking! How can it leak, their is an office above it?! Sure enough, upstairs in the office there is a big closet and upon investigating I found a very wet closet. We obviously have another leak. :(

Well everyone has some sort of problems. I count my problems pretty minor right now. We are living in a beautiful warm house, have plenty to eat, have a wonderful family and everyone is pretty healthy!

Last night at midnight we were out in the beautiful snow banging pans and yelling happy new year. Out here in the country I think we were the only ones making noise. I wished I had my camera as it would have made a great picture. I truly miss my camera, and as soon as I can scrap some money together I'm going to get a new one.

We were watching "the Music man" before midnight, eating sugar popcorn and a fruit shake. I loved that movie when I was young and watching it again brought back a lot of warm, happy feelings. "76 trombones in the big parade" I'm so glad Monica likes old musicals, it's been fun watching old movies.

Sugar popcorn is just adding a couple Tbls. of sugar to the popcorn as it's cooking. It's not carmel corn, but just gives it a nice sweet/salty taste.

Well that's it for my new yrs up date.

Christmas pictures

2008-12-25T21:54:00.011-07:00

Mishael, Mom and Martha wearing our beautiful scarves from Peru.
Maria, Miriam and Moriah. Maria and Moriah accidentally wore the same shirt.
Just the girls, all 7 of them.

Joe and Miriam

Miriam is opening her George Foreman Grill. I had Miriam for my secret Santa. We just exchange names the last few years. So we have a price range for each person. It was fun to see what I could get for her for $50. I managed an electric broom (Miriam loves vacuums) a Pyrex set of baking dishes, a George Foreman, a very pretty box that I told her is to hold her receipts. I thought I did pretty good for my budget.

Monica and girls

Rick just likes to make serious or weird faces for pictures. In reality he was very happy. I gave him these chocolate covered almonds that I made with dark chocolate. Moriah got him a book on the Beatles, Martha gave us a picture of the boys all blown up.
Our silly family picture
I thought this picture turned out pretty good for no planning.

We are all there except Michael. He was missed this Christmas.

Miriam and Jon being silly
Maria, Mishael, Gareth on Grandma's lap, Martha

Tony, Eric, Lee, Hans, James, Paul

Jon pushing the couch

Lee, Kendra, Monica, and Nettie
Martha

Joe brought our new couch up from Kalispell for me. We had no couch in the living room and I finally found one at a store that was going out of business.

But Joe couldn't back the trailer in the drive way, so Jon pushed the couch all the way up the lane!

Martha showing James how to use his new marshmallow gun.
This one is the silly family picture

winter update

2008-12-22T07:54:00.003-07:00

The snow is coming down in nice powdery flurries. It's so pretty.

It's very dry snow that doesn't stick together very well.

Well today the children and I are heading to Kalispell in this winter wonderland. I'm wondering if this is wise! We are going to spend the night so we can drive during the day. Since these are the shortest days of the yr, it gets dark by 5 pm and doesn't get light till after 8 am.

The plan is today we do our shopping, Costco, Lowe's, Kmart, Glasses ( I need glasses). Tomorrow we go to June's to make ravioli's. The girls are coming over too and we will make as many as we can. If we don't make enough Tue then we will make more on Christmas Eve up here. It's the tradition.

We have a few more traditions too. Like Apple cake for dessert. I'm not sure why, we just started that years ago and we do it every year. An anti-pasta platter. This is usually beautiful. with olives, salami, peppers and cheese etc. We snack on this all day, and eat our raviolis later.

We also have a wonderful punch we make every year. We used to have a shwan's man come by. they gave us the basis for this recipe and we changed it around. It's got a little cinnamon in it, plus some cranberry sauce. You freeze it and it's a little slushy.

We have also decided that finger foods are for Christmas Eve. So I made some Calazone's last night.

We tried to make a gingerbread nativity scene, but my dough was not cooperating. So we just ended up with some yummy gingerbread cookies.

So it's true I lost my camera. :( I am so sad about it. I had been thinking it's probably getting to be time to get a new one anyways, as this one was getting pretty old, and I was having trouble with blurry pictures. But I don't have the money right now for one. It was a future thought. How am I going to make it without a camera through Christmas. Plus all our pictures from our trip are gone and Mark's singing in the choir. The blog and my camera have become my journal. I'm hoping someday to be able to print it all out and have a photo journey of our lives for our great, great grandchildren. I just think how I would love to read and see a journal like this of my great, great grandmother.

Well it's 8:17 am and I'm finally seeing some daylight. It's really snowy out there. Wonder if I should leave my cozy home to drive 100 miles, shop in crazy stores...... but then this evening we plan to watch an old movie at Martha's in her nice cozy house. Maybe I should buy a camera instead of my glasses! :) Priority's you know! lol.

Children's Christmas program

2008-12-19T07:41:00.003-07:00

The children had their Christmas program at their school. It was a really cute play and I was so proud of them.

James was an Inn Keeper, Mark was a main character, a newspaper reporter and Monica was a king. Monica sang/said a rap, and Mark sang a solo.

If I was up in front of all those people, I would have froze and gone off key or forgot my lines. But not one of them did that. They spoke clearly and seemed to enjoy acting.

The most amazing thing to me though was Mark's voice. He sang a solo. It was serious song, and his voice was really, really good. Everyone mentioned to me afterwards how amazing his voice is. I remember him being so little and just barely talking and he could sing entire songs on key. He defiantly has a talent. I just pray he will use his talent for good.

Today Monica, Mark and James have a piano recital. It's snowing and cold outside and I do wish I could stay home in our nice cozy house. We have a beautiful Christmas tree this year that Jon and the boys got from our forest and our house is really feeling like the homey picture in my imagination. Warm house, spotlessly clean, drinking hot chocolate and baking cookies with the children. Well it's sometimes sort of like that. Well it's never spotlessly clean, but we try.

We are planning on going to Kalispell on Tuesday to make our ravioli's for Christmas. Part of our tradition of eating ravioli's on Christmas has become to make them together. Now with my sister living close this has been fun to work together on this. So we will make a day of it.

Hopefully I can get some pictures. But this time I actually lost my camera ( not just the cord). I'm really grieving over it. I lost it on the trip. The last I remember taking pictures was a Gina's work. So she is going to look around and see if she can't find it. I don't know what I will do if she can't find it. I really love my camera, although I think it was starting to act up. It's already a few yrs old and was just a basic one to begin with.

We are home again

2008-12-14T09:57:00.006-07:00

Trips seems to be a bit harder as you get older, or maybe it's a trip in the dead of winter!!

It was still fun and still good, but we are so glad to be home safely. :)

Our trip started on time and most went as planned. All except the end.

We did our site seeing trip to Helena. The governors mansion, the capitol, etc. James and Monica got stuck in the elevator in the capitol, that made an exciting moment. Miriam met us up in Helena and we took her out to eat at a mexican restaurant. We didn't know where the restaurant was, and so we were going to follow Miriam. It's a busy city and we just were watching her car. It turns out we didn't notice and she led us onto a one way street going the wrong way! She quickly turned into a parking lot and we just thought she was taking us on a merry goose chase. lol

We spent the night at her house. She is renting from Maria.

Maria bought a big house for less then $40,000. It's really a nice house. Needs a new kitchen and lots of paint. But it has a great foundation and roof. No major problems. Miriam was very hospitable and got us all air mattress and beds for everyone.

We went to the Caverns next and the boys climbed way up in a huge cavern.

The cabin was really nice, but it was way to cold to have our BBQ outside. Inside was very cozy. For some reason when they told me there was a BBQ outside I thought they meant a gas BBQ. I don't know what I was thinking. It was a BBQ pit.

Next we picked up Gina from her work at Wendy's. She got us dinner for half price.

Watched her sing at her school and it was beautiful.

We were sleeping in our little cabin at the Lewis and Clark caverns when this horrible windstorm woke us up. Of course I'm thinking that a tree is going to come through the roof. After I woke up a bit more I realize there are very few trees in Eastern Montana. So on Friday the weather was dry and clear, on Sat we woke to a blizzard. Roads were icy and you could hardly see a road at all!

We finally got to the school through the snow storm and over lunch decided that it was best if we drove during the day or plan on getting stuck in Bozeman. Weighing our options we knew we better skip the evening concert and head towards home.

It was so cold outside and the wind was blowing so hard, I asked Gina if there was a way to pull the car up to the cafeteria. She said "yes, can I move it"? Gina still doesn't have her drivers license. I began explaining how she doesn't know how to drive on snow, etc. etc. Rick said, "let her do it, she will be OK." So off her and Jon run to get the van. A few minutes later, she runs in saying she wreaked my van. I thought they must be joking, but they wern't. She had slipped and ran into a parked junk car. My poor van got a broken front corner, and poor Gina, she felt so bad. We laughed as it was so ridiculous that I had just warned about this very thing!

We took Gina to a big dollar store and visited a bit more before we left at about 3:00. It was a slow drive home on icy roads, but the snow had slowed so at least we had good visibility. It was very cold. -1 F. and at some places -9. In the east it was horribly windy too. So with the wind chill it was probably -40 degrees Fahrenheit. We got home about 1 am. to a very cold house and a beautiful winter wonder land outside.

It's zero here this morning and the heaters been running steady all night. Frisky was in the garage and happy to see us home too. The trees are white and it's absolutely beautiful. It's supposed to be cold like this all week. Our furnace won't keep up, so we will have to add some electric heaters too. Also I have ordered a few new bedroom windows. Ours have lost the seal between the panes and one has a big crack, so they are not insulating well. Hope the pipes don't freeze.

run, run, run

2008-12-10T08:37:00.003-07:00

Another day of running around! We have so many things going this December. A play at church, a play at school, pathfinders, piano recitals and lessons, Mark's Choir, Jon's basket ball and Gina has a choir performance in Bozeman. So last night Rick and the children had play practice for church and Mark had a choir performance, Rick had a radio meeting, and 2 children had a pathfinders meeting. (pathfinders is like a boy/girl scout club) Plus we are trying to get ready to leave for our little family vacation. So I ran some kids to one place, picked up someone else, went back and dropped off one kid here and the other 2 somewhere else, then back to watch a performance!

We leave tonight right after Rick gets home from work.

Our plans are to drive to Moriah's tonight and watch old family movies with my sister and some of the girls. Today is one year since my mom moved on to heaven. So we thought we would all spend some time together eating Italian sandwiches, and watching home movies.

Thur morning we will leave for Helena, the state capital. Here we plan on taking a tour through the capitol, the "governors mansion", the catholic cathedral, and go ride a carousel.

Then we will spend the night with Miriam in Butte.

Fri we are off to a cabin we rented close to Bozeman, where we will have a winter BBQ. Then off to see Gina sing.

Sat our plan is to go see the Dinosaur museum. James is very, very excited about this. Sat evening we again hear Gina's choir and take off right away towards home. We hope to at least make it to Kalispell that night, as Sunday we have to be at the church here in Libby by 2:30 for the church play and another performance for Mark Sunday evening.

Isn't it a crazy life I lead! At least I have no babies due!

So I better get off to work, packing clothes, food, bedding.

Saturday

2008-12-07T22:29:00.003-07:00

Since the children go to a 7th day Adventist school they have church on Sat. The children will take part in the meeting about once a month or so. Every time they have this meeting it really throws me off. Going to church on Saturday.

So the children sang songs, and they play chimes. Over the few years they have been playing the chimes they have become pretty good.

Then Monica and I decided to go the ballet. I've never been to a ballet and I thought it might be a good experience for Monica. It costs $15 for both of us, and I let her invite a friend.

It was the Nutcracker done by a ballet company in Kalispell. Well it was an experience, but I don't think it was our thing.

Sunday morning, we went to our church, I had a prenatal appointment, and we came home and had to clean the house. Such a backwards weekend.

Small towns

2008-12-06T09:37:00.004-07:00

I love our little town. Every year our town starts out the Christmas season with a tree lighting ceremony.

It starts out with a parade. A parade in winter! It was probably about 30 degrees out last night, while lines of people were watching a short parade. Our town loves parades though. We have 2 big parades a yr. One in the spring and one in the fall. then we have a few more small parades throughout the yr. Nordic fest, Logger days, Opening day of baseball , Christmas, etc. They always throw candy for the children, wave and a clown comes through, lots of fire trucks and sirens going. Now when I was young a parade was exciting because of the marching bands. We might see a marching band once in a while here, but it's nothing like when I was young. I miss that. I grew up with orchestra music and marching bands and I feel like my children are missing out.

After the parade everyone gathers around this big tree at the end of the "gut". The gut is a culdesac at the end of main street. The select children's choir sang a couple of songs, Mark is in the choir. I forgot to bring my camera, but they were so cute. They wear little tuxedos, and the girls wear long black dresses. The whole thing started with a prayer for our town, and then the middle school principal read the Christmas story out of Luke 2. Then they lit up the Christmas tree and everyone claps. Santa came in on a fire truck because city ordinances say they can't bring reindeer in the city!

I was really blessed how our town is bold enough to honor God and declare that Christmas is about Jesus' birth.

"He who honors me I will honor", I pray God will keep our little town through this economic crisis. We already had an economic crisis before the national crisis!

After the town tree lighting Mark's Choir went over to the memorial center. Here they were having a Hospice tree lighting. It was a sober, fancy meeting with a huge tree. They lit one light at a time as they read off names of people who had died this last year one by one. It took about an hour for them to light the tree this way. I didn't know about this, or I could have had my mom listed. Hospice was so wonderful to us. Helping us through things we would have no idea how to handle.

The choir sang a couple of songs again at this ceremony and that was our interesting evening in our small town.

True we don't have a lot of things to do like the big city to does, but we do make fun out of anything we can. At least we never lack for things to do!

Thanksgiving 2008

2008-11-29T04:29:00.012-07:00

What a week!

Our huge pot of potato's cooking.
Maria fixing Monica's bangs
Fred who is our official potato person. Every yr he scrubs, peels and mashes all the potato's for us.
Jon and Maria
the children were all watching the me grind wheat for the rolls. In my new kitchen I have my flour grinder in a cabinet. It rolls out and I can grind my wheat right there by my baking counter.
Miriam and Jon
Martha and Tony
Cody and James

Kendra
Monica: who made most of the pies.

This one is an apple crumb. We made butter crusts this yr. We are trying to get away from all hydrogenated vegetable oils, so finding a way to make pies without shortening. They turned out really good.

Mishael and Gareth
Boys!

Tony, Paul, Jon, Hans, Mark

Martha and our friends from Minnesota
Well I knew I would be busy, but over all it was a good week.

Tue was the day to bake 60 pies. Thankfully there were 3 of us working on it, so it wasn't so bad.

I did a prenatal on my client that was a week overdue. She looked miserable. I didn't want her to have to go more days over, but I really wanted to have Wed and Thursday with my family. The plan was on Wed that Moriah, Martha, Miriam and our guests from Minnesota were all coming up to bake. Thur of course was Thanksgiving and we planned on 24 for dinner.

So Wed morning we got the house all clean and Moriah showed up bringing Fred, Paul and Hans. We got to show them all our new projects on the house. We visited a short while, until we got a text message from Martha that says "help, car broke down, M Lake"

Well to make a long story short, Martha, her 2 little boys and our guests, were stuck on the road for almost 5 hours and it was cold too. When it was all said and done, it took them 6 hours to get here! Moriah, Fred and I were on the phone and worrying the whole time.

Well Thanksgiving was great. We had a very full house, lots and lots of food. Everyone helped cook, everyone helped clean. And my client never called the whole holiday.

Friday morning at 6:30 am she calls. Wasn't that nice timing! She had a little boy, 9lbs 2 oz. We did have to transport this mom, so that was disappointing. So much of our schooling as midwives is learning when to transport. Everyone was happy and healthy and that's the biggest priority. We were with them at the hospital till 4 am. so as you can imagine I am very tired today and thankful for leftovers.

I'm so happy for the break in midwifery over the holidays. I'm hoping to get my bedroom finished before Christmas. I still have fire soot in the master bedroom and bathroom.

Maybe by next week I can have it ready to empty. Once I get it empty I get someone to come and take the popcorn off the ceilings and texture it. Then we paint which is easy when you don't have to worry about it getting on the floor or furniture.

Then I get the new carpet.

I have my beautiful new comforter still in the package that I bought with my birthday money. It will be fun to have a new bedroom!

I found my camera cord!

2008-11-24T22:54:00.011-07:00

So I'll give you a bunch of pictures .

This is Mark. We made a squash cupcakes.
In this picture we are in the middle of our project. Pulling out the old carpet. You can see our new front door. Doesn't it look nice?
You can also see in this painting in the background my mom had painted. Also my beautiful buffet that she left me. It was last Thanksgiving that my mom had gotten so sick. I've always heard first holidays after someones passing is the hardest.

Jon likes to make these huge sandwiches. He can eat A LOT! This was a loaf of french bread.

Jon standing next to our new front door.

Monica laying on the new carpet.As you can see here the floor in the dining room and the nice round curve between. It looks really nice.

This is Cody. Jon and Cody put up the new ceiling fan. This thing on his head is the shade for the light. Notice his hair sticking up in the middle. It looked really funny!

Our new ceiling fan. Our other one was about 18 yrs old and made a horrible squeaking noise.

Our sweet little deer in our yard. This one was so friendly and got really close. We had been feeding them apples from the trees at the birth center. I guess she remembered because she walked right up to us while we were working in the yard.

Isn't she cute!

Catching up

2008-11-19T08:56:00.005-07:00

I haven't written for a while, so it's time to catch up.
We had another birth last week. It was another butter birth! This baby would smile really big at only a few hours old. It wasn't your normal "gas" type smile, it was a real smile that went on for a little bit. His parents were able to get quite a few pictures of him smiling! He must have been happy to be out in the light!I have one more birth this Nov. and then we have a break till Jan. I was sure this one would go well before Thanksgiving. Well I'm just hoping it won't be Tue, Wed or Thur. Tue I promised to make 60 pies! Mark is in this special choir. It's a Fancy choir he had to try out for, they wear tuxedos and sing in the memorial center (a Fancy building) Well they are trying to raise some funds and decided to sell pumpkin pies. I don't have to make the crust, just make the filling and bake them. So 60 won't be that many, will it? Plus on Tue 3 of the children have piano lessons, and pathfinders is going to stack firewood for the pastor who broke his ankle. Plus I have a prenatal appointment. Wed. the girls are coming up and we are going to have a nice visit and start our baking and of course Thur. we will have at least 24 of us. Mishael putting our turkey in a brine (something she learned in her cooking classes) We will cook at least 2 turkeys or we never have leftovers. We decided to make the rolls on Thur morning so they will be fresh.
Well we will miss Gina (in Peru) Michael (across the US), and Moriah and Joe (going to Joe's parents) But it sounds like a few people are bringing some extra company so it will be a nice full house. Without a couch in the living room! I'll explain:
We have been going at house projects like crazy. I think Rick is getting overwhelmed at the change. There are people that like change, but others that it's really is hard for them.
I change my living room around probably every few months. I remember putting some children almost in tears from a simple change like that.
So my front door got put in yesterday. It's beautiful!
We moved the couch up to the family room and it's a little snug, but cozy. This is why we have no couch in the living room. We didn't know if it was too big. Jon was sure he could do it and so he took control and Mark and Jon lifted that heavy sofa sleeper up the stairs! Amazing what boys can do when they want to. It does come apart some, but the sleeper part is still VERY heavy.
The floor got put in the dining room/back entrance yesterday. I was a bit disappointed, because I thought it was going to look more like real wood. It's still nice, and extremely sturdy. It will last longer then the house if someone wants it that long. But it's just not as pretty as I thought it would be. But I still really like it. Today he's putting in the carpet. Our whole house is becoming a "fancy", finished house. We haven't lived in a finished house for about 20 yrs! Well since I like house projects, maybe it will never be finished. Or maybe if it really gets all nice and finished I'll have to start on the birth center. That would be good. I wonder if I put money into that, how much it could go up in value. ???
Cody has been up every weekend working on his house. I am very happy to report that he and Mishael decided to move back to Libby. Some people will probably think of them as flaky. They might be a bit, but as a Mom and Grandma I am very happy. I am very lonely for my children lately. My visits down there have been busy and short lately. Everyone is so busy with their own lives too. I know this is natural, healthy and normal, but none this less I missing everyone. Now with Michael moving too, we have none of the grown children close by. So Mishael and Cody are finally finishing their house and it's very cute, and brand new looking. Mishael can transfer her job and Cody can go to school up here and I can watch Gareth grow up and cook with Mishael and she can come to my childbirth classes. As you can see I'm glad they are a little flaky! lol.
Can't wait to show you some pictures, but you could probably guess, I lost my computer cord again. :) It's not really lost, it's around and I'm sure it will show up soon. I read once how much time the average person spends looking for misplaced items, it was an incredible amount of time! I'm guessing I'm above average!

Kitchen

2008-11-03T11:50:00.003-07:00

I don't mean to brag, but I had 3 people over yesterday that were saying how much they loved my kitchen. It was so funny, because all 3 of them (separate times of the day) said it more then once, how nice it is, and they all said it's like a dream kitchen.

It is my dream kitchen. Of course, that's why I planned it that way! Although I suppose if I had to do it over again, now with the experience I would change a couple of minor things. But over all it's really nice and so easy to work in.

The first people that came are clients that are going to work on making the edge for the counter tops. They will be trading. That will be exciting to get another step towards finishing the kitchen.

Top of stairs, all painted and clean!

So many deer this year in our yard. The other day we were working out there, and the one deer walked right up to us (about 10 feet away) I'm sure she was looking for apples.
This is the area that burned. Since this picture we have it all nicely drywalled in. Everything is coming along so nice.

Notice my butcher block baking counter. It's so nice to knead bread or roll out crust. I have my flour grinder in the cabinet underneath. There is now a plug in the cabinet for the grinder , so I just pour my wheat in a grind my fresh warm flour.

Michael's move

2008-11-02T17:14:00.007-07:00

Michael had told us of his plan to move in Aug. So now that the time came some of the family came up to help him pack up and clean up.

Moving is always so overwhelming. Especially at the very end!

Thankfully Martha can keep her head in these situation. Bringing order. Michael said we had to be done by midnight and we were all beginning to wonder if we could do it. But by 10 pm we were done and the apartment was sparkling!
Everyone came over and we stayed up till 1 am talking drinking tea and looking at photo albums. Michael promised to blog. It's hard to say goodbye when you don't know when you'll see each other again. He was leaving at 4 am. and came in and told me he loved me. As I sat around with my children helping sort through the piles, I was again reminded what a great family I have. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect family. They are all so wonderful and full of love.

What a day!

2008-10-25T20:14:00.011-06:00

Well I started my day hearing Eric coughing and crying a bit. It was actually the middle of the night. Later I hear Gareth down stairs crying too. Eric and Gareth are staying with us this weekend. Joe and Moriah, Cody and Mishael went to marriage encounter. I'm so excited for them and they must be having a good time, because they haven't even called once to see how the children are doing.

So even though I planned on leaving the house by 9 am, I did not want to get out of bed at 9. It was really nice to lay around and not have to get up.
We finally got up and I changed a diaper, which amazingly I haven't done in a long, long time. I suppose I was burned out, so when the grandchildren needed one changed I seemed to be able to let someone else. Well not this time! :)

I had ordered some Hutterite chickens. Hutterite chickens are like homegrown chickens. Really big and plump, juicy. They had carrots and eggs too. I bought 10 dozen eggs. I go through about 8-10 dozen a month usually.

So the baby delivery that I was trading the new front deck for was being built today, and Jim was coming by to finish the trim in the boys room. The Deck isn't quite done yet, but it is really nice. A great sturdy deck that should last through many a snow storms.

Yesterday while the boys were playing in the back yard they found a dead deer, all torn up like something was eating it. Jon thought it looked like a mountain lion. Jim while here took a look and said it's just like the lions to go for the liver first. He took the dead carcass away for us, as he said otherwise that Lion could hang out around the house, but with the carcass gone he will go hunting else where. I wondered when we had so many deer this yr, why all of a sudden we haven't seen any.

So I didn't really know what to make for supper. I decided to make some bread. Took the cookies out of the freezer, and ended up making some broccoli soup. Monica made the dough into loaves for me and they were beautiful.

I was glad I had a snack to feed all the hard workers. Elvie said Mark was an excellent carpenter.

Caught a picture of Rick. When I snapped the picture he was drinking out of that carton of orange juice. I tried to catch him in the act.
Jon in the midst of this busy day somehow got something in his eye. We couldn't find anything in there, but maybe he scratched it. Over the next 2-3 hours it got worse and worse. We tried different drops we had, having him close his eyes, etc. rick finally took him in to the prompt care and they numbed it up and looked around, and couldn't find anything. He is still in so much pain. Even though he now is numbed up and drugged up.

Not a very nice picture, but you get the idea. His eye was swollen the next day, but by the afternoon he was much better.

cookies revised again

2008-10-23T10:34:00.007-06:00

Well I revised my cookie recipe again. It's much softer now and healthier too.
Here it is:
2 cups oil changed to 1 cup oil and 1 cup applesauce
2-3 cups of peanut butter
4 cups of sugar changed to 3 and half cups
A glug of molasses
A glug of lecithin
6 c. of whole wheat flour, cut this down to 3 c. plus one cup of ground flax seed, meal
8 cups of oatmeal
4 tsp baking powder
4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
and I added chocolate chips this time, they are the good ones from Costco.
The cookies are really good still, and I feel like it's such a good snack compared with all the stuff kids seem to find to eat.

So people take pictures of food for their blogs and the pictures look amazing. I guess I'm not much of a photographer! Mine just looks like food. I've never been very good at making things look like the pictures in the cookbooks either. Our birthday cakes never look like the pictures. Well food that tastes good and is healthy is more my goal then looking perfect.

This is a big recipe. So after I'm tired of baking I make the rest into balls and freeze them. Then it's really easy to bake them next time the oven is on.

foot ball and pathfinders

2008-10-23T09:02:00.007-06:00

Jon's done with foot ball for the year. He sure enjoyed it. Running laps, doing push ups for talking back to the coach. :)

Not a very good picture. He didn't seem to want to pose though.

Pathfinders is like a Christian girl scouts/boy scouts. They earn badges, learn pledges, go on camp outs etc.Mark is in there somewhere too.

James
Monica

Boy's room

2008-10-22T09:00:00.005-06:00

My projects are going extremely slow. My life has been so busy, and I have so much to do that I have to be content with everything going very slow.
My weeks are busy even without births.
Monday is a normal day, Rick drives children to school in morning, then I drive Jon in at 11:00, do town errands, go home and do a few hours of homemaking, then pick up children at school at 3:15, then it was Jon at 5:30 after football. But Jon's done with sports for a month or so. That is a slow day.
Tue, we add Mark's Singing lesson, ( he was invited to be in a special choir) and pathfinders in the evening.
Wed is prenatal day and piano lessons, so we are gone all day till 5 at least.
Thur is another "slow" day like Monday, except now I'm adding a women's bible study to my list. and Fri children get out at 12 noon, so we usually can catch up with a bit of stuff.
When I have births it uses up the free days or other days, besides the births, there is a ton for paper work, birth certificates, newspapers announcements, waivers to fill out, newborn screen test, laundry, supplies to order, tools to sterilize, another kitchen to clean, etc.
So back to the boys room, (now you can see why it's so hard to get anything done).
I am determined to finish this room before I go on to another.
We moved the bed in last night, found some matching comforters at Kmart on sale. Still need to put trim around the floor. We need to change the light fixture and then just figure out how we are going to organize everything so the room can stay clean. That should be fun.

This is before painting

Here's our stripped walls!

Their new matching bed set

8 babies in 5 weeks

2008-10-18T21:50:00.005-06:00

Wow, no wonder I was so busy! Well I'm looking forward to a short break. I have 2 babies due the middle of November. Then I get a break for December. I would love to make good use of the time.
My niece April was the last birth. It was a true "Butter Birth" My 3rd water birth in a row. She had a nice big baby boy, 9lbs 7 oz!

Our precious new grand baby that was only 8 weeks from conception left us to live with Grandma. Grandma always loved babies. I could just see her up there in heaven rocking Moriah's little baby. Moriah miscarried and we were all so sad for her and Joe. May the Lord open her womb that she will have many little babies! :)

a bit of daily life

2008-10-11T21:13:00.003-06:00

We moved the boys bedroom temporarily into the family room while we work on their room.
The project is going great. Popcorn has been taken off the ceiling, room textured, primed and the ceiling painted. Now for the paint. I thought it would be good to give the boys a choice. Oops! Mark wanted orange, red, green and blue! Well it was a risky decision and we actually decided that 2 walls are a nice light blue and the other 2 walls are going to be stripped! Well my comfort is that paint is just paint. If it's awful we can always paint it again! So we picked up on green, light blue, bright blue, and red. Wow this should be interesting.

Have you ever made fried beets? They taste so different when they are fried. They're great. You take raw beets and grate them. Fry them in some butter or olive oil. Salt and pepper and your are set. Monica told me she didn't like beets. I told her you have to taste these. She was sure she was going to hate them. But she took a bite. The next time I made them she was snacking on them before dinner. She said, "you were right, fried beets are different."

Frisky 15 yrs old and still frisky.

Our burnt wall is making progress. Wiring is next.

My wainscoting had never been painted. Since we have to paint so much I just made this huge list of everything to be painted. So this is where we started. It looks so nice and clean.

I'm eating onion soup again!

2008-10-11T20:06:00.004-06:00

I don't know why just out of the blue my gallbladder will kick up. This was a horrible attack again. I just ate my wonderful soup. This time it tasted great. I made it with some leftover rice, beef bullion, and celery, onion and a clove of garlic. This time it tasted so good, very soothing.

Jon's teddy bear

2008-10-10T21:18:00.005-06:00

I've been washing all the stuffed animals lately. Jon came in the laundry room and saw his old teddy bears, Dock and Duke. He has fond memories of Dock and Duke. Next thing I know, I go to wake him up in the morning and there is Dock and Duke in bed with Jon.
15 yrs old, football player, all the girls after him, but he still likes his teddy bears!

What's Rick up to?

2008-10-10T08:18:00.002-06:00

Literally Rick has been up! He's been working on the radio almost non stop. Going up to King mountain has been a common trip.
The radio is a community radio station. All of this is volunteer. It's a legal, high power station, something he has dreamed of all his life. All community run. People in the community can have shows and then when there are no shows, Rick fills in with music. He does a lot of oldies, on Sundays he play Christian music. He has offered Church's to be able to play their Sunday sermons over the air.

Looks like it's almost up and running.
View of Libby from up there
You can see Rick under the tower
I think that's Jon at the bottom of the tower.
Rick usually takes one or two of the boys with him. Paul got to go once too. Some dads take their boys hiking, hunting etc. Rick takes them up mountain tops to climb radio towers!

I have been tagged

2008-10-09T19:54:00.003-06:00

Interesting things people come up with on the internet.
Well i was "tagged" by Martha, my oldest daughter. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Martha/
I guess I am supposed to list 6 trivia items about myself and then tag other people.
Well it sounds like fun.

#1 I don't like sports, I used to love to stitchery, I love fixing up my house, I love cooking, helping pregnant women, unschooling children, reading books, watching good movies.

#2 this one is sort of a riddle. I've lived in the same house for almost 20 yrs, but we lived in 2 different places, 70 miles apart. Well I don't know how to make it a riddle. But after living 4 yrs on the W. K. we moved our house 70 miles to away.

#3 4 of my children were born in my bedroom in this same house. 7 of my children don't remember living in any other house.

#4 I love changing the look of our bedroom. I use my birthday money every other yr to buy a new quilt or comforter. But I have had the same curtains for almost 20 yrs. Although Martha recently made me promise that I would get new one.

#5 I only weighed 106 lbs even after 3 children, I really didn't start having weight problems until I was in my 30's, and then mostly after I stopped having babies and nursing.

#6 We have so many deer this yr in our yard. It's like they are family pets. They come up right by our windows, and sleep right by the garage. One day I came home and there were 3 deer in the garage! They were eating my plums that I had in a bowl. They are like little puppy dogs.

So I am going to tag
Monica http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/monica101
Lori http://www.homesteadblogger.com/uronaRyde/107504/
Michael http://www.mylestaylor.com/blog.html
Debra http://www.deardiary.net/show/diaries/65561/welcome
Lois http://loish.blogspot.com/

2 more births

2008-10-09T19:33:00.004-06:00

I got a call last night from a friend who was going to another midwife. The midwife was out of town though. This person last time had a very traumatic emergency C section. But she thought she might be in labor now and I said "call if you need me" So 3:30 am I get a call. We meet at the birth center at 4 am and 5 am the baby is born. Little tiny girl.
Sweet birth.
About 2:30 in the afternoon, we had sent the family home in great shape and we were cleaning the birth center, when I get a call from Sherry, "the next client is in labor"
So much for my nap!
I get there, a home birth 1 hour from the hospital and the FHT are way too low. Do we transport and risk a birth in the car or do we just try to deliver fast. We prayed, the Lord gave us wisdom and helped that baby. Baby was born at home and everyone was doing great.
I'm home now at 8 pm and hoping to get at least a partial night sleep in case April starts in labor. I'm excited that I don't have anyone else that I'll be worrying about when April starts.
Praise the Lord, he is so good to us! I love being a midwife. How the Lord blessed me with such a wonderful job. Why does he bless me so much? I'm so thankful.

well the big projects have begun

2008-10-08T23:57:00.006-06:00

This is the stencil that we had in the boys bedroom. Miriam and Gina worked really hard to paint this on. We are going to have to cover it up, because we needed to re do all the walls with new texture.
So the picture is for our memory of the nice stencil . Each color was painted on separate. They did a great job.

This is a picture in the hall . I took a picture off the wall and you can see how black it is. We are slowly but surely getting all the walls washed. Some will have to be painted too.

The only way to get all this done is to dig right in there and start. So we started with the boys bedroom. We had to move everything out. They have lots of stuff! Lots! I'm so glad this has forced us to get the house clean. We boxed up all the stuff, washed what we could, moved all the furniture into the family room and threw away about 5 bags of garbage! Gave away all clothes that don't fit or had holes. Still we will have more sorting to do. I have 2 baskets of clothes in the laundry room to go through and wash. And when they bring those boxes back in I wonder if I can't thin them out a little more.
We came out black again. Soot is still everywhere, but we are beginning to get on top of it.

We were very tired and it was hard to keep going, but Jim was going to be here at 8 am and we needed to have the room empty for him to scrape the ceiling and tape and texture.

This is the family room with their furniture in it.
This is the cracks in the ceiling that have needed to be fixed for years.

Sunday

2008-10-06T00:10:00.005-06:00

We were having a very restful Sunday. We went to church in the morning and tried to have a little picnic afterwords. Only problem was there was a bit of rain and cold. Not too much, but it didn't make you feel like hanging out too long.
We live in such a beautiful area. Can you believe these are everyday sights!

Boys were skipping rocks

my house to do list

2008-10-05T23:34:00.002-06:00

So here is my list for getting the house fixed.
This is basically the list for the person I'm hiring. Hopefully we can help or do somethings ourselves. Especially the painting. It's a lot of painting! Rick is working on wiring too.
This doesn't include putting in the flooring. I am planning to hire someone to do that too. It's $5 a yard to install carpet. I used to think that was expensive, until I started pricing other installers. Then in the Dakota house I paid someone by the hour. I think I ended up paying more. So now I'm happy to pay $5 a yard.
I'm not sure if we can afford to put in the front porch. Possibly put a little one up to hold us over.
So I have one person that has been cleaning soot for me. She is very good. Jim who will do my drywall and handyman list, his wife is going to help me with painting and then the carpet installer.
Hopefully I can make the insurance money stretch. It's so exciting and this fire was a blessing in disguise! :)

Down stairs;
Replace Living room Window
Fix Roof
Dishwasher falling forward (it's not really attached)
Replace burnt wall
Fix dry wall in bathroom
Texture bathroom walls
Trim on bathroom floors
Replace front door
Trim kitchen around doors
Trim all around house, hall
Front porch?

Upstairs
Trim upstairs family room and guest room
Take off popcorn ceilings in:
hall, kids room and master bedroom and master bathroom
Tape and Fix drywall in ceilings,
finish taping boys bedroom
Trim boys bedroom door
Fix leak and ceiling in upstairs bathroom

Paint
Family Room ceiling
Wainscoting in kitchen and hall
Living room ceiling
Fix and touch up living room walls
Kitchen ceiling
touch up kitchen walls
Top of basement stairs
Basement stairwell
Stairwell and upstairs hall
Book case (white)
Upstairs bathroom
Upstairs master bedroom
Master bedroom ceiling
Boys bedroom
Boys bedroom ceiling
Downstairs bathroom
Touch up everywhere

Mark's birthday

2008-10-03T22:35:00.008-06:00

I can't believe he's already 11. I can't stand the thought of him growing up so much.
another couple of yrs and we move into a whole different life.
We had a pretty relaxing day.
School on Friday's is always only till 12 noon. I'm so glad, because it's the one day we can do something, like catch up on chores, bake with the children, look at their school papers etc.
So today we made lasagna together, made cookies, a recipe I created, taught James how to wash the toilet. It was nice to just be a mom.
The cookie recipe I created is quite good, but they get hard. I like soft cookies, so I'll need to perfect it somehow. I wanted to work on it though, because I don't like to use butter in cookies, it's expensive and I think oil is better for you (but who knows the truth about that)
Here it is:
2 cups oil
2-3 cups of peanut butter
4 cups of sugar
A glug of molasses
A glug of lecithin
6 cups of whole wheat flour
8 cups of oatmeal
4 tsp baking powder
4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt

I'm going to try cutting down on the oil, maybe replace with some applesauce.

Today went a bit better

2008-10-02T09:02:00.003-06:00

It was so nice to actually have time to cook a decent dinner, iron a pile of clothes, wash the soot covered teddy bears.
I made some stew for dinner and homemade bread that turned out really good. Monica formed them into loaves and Cinnamon rolls. She kept saying "I've never done this before" Something the older children grew up with was cooking and baking everything from scratch. These younger ones are missing too many of those types of things.

They came out really nice, clean and fluffy, ready to cuddle again.I'm so thankful I found someone to help me clean. She has been washing soot from every wall and every toy, picture etc. She was here yesterday for a few hours. She washed the whole living room down. We will have to repaint the ceiling, but the walls washed up real nice.

busy, busy, busy

2008-10-01T07:52:00.003-06:00

I think I've had other posts named "busy" I am again too busy. I have this habit in life of getting too busy, having to finish what I'm doing before I can slow down again. But this time I'm actually starting a new project at the same time! Yikes!

Well with the fire and some insurance money, it has created a lot of fun busyness. I am going to get to fix up quite a few things. It looks like I'm going to be able to get new carpet in most of the house! I'm so excited! Plus most of the house is going to be repainted and cleaned! It's actually really nice.

I'm still very busy with babies. We had another birth Monday morning. It was my mom that was "overdue" It looks like her dates were a whole month off! That baby didn't look over due at all. No dry skin, nice a hairy body etc. Just right. I'm so thankful that the Lord has provided me such good back up doctors that didn't push her into being induced. The birth went great, nice big healthy boy. He was born a bit blue and floppy, and I was amazed at how calm and together we were. We just went through a few quick steps and baby was crying loudly. I really like that the nervous part is diminishing in my midwifery practice. My hands don't sweat as much. I used to have a terrible time getting gloves on because of sweaty hands! Now I might seem a bit robotic, but to me it's more of a peace and calmness. I'm so thankful for that. In this case we were all so calm, I doubt the parents even realized anything was out of the normal.
Now we have 2 more due! I beginning to come to realize the number of births that are good for our family. Sept we had 4 births. That is a lot for us. I remember the midwives in Kalispell turning people away. They wouldn't take more then 4 births in a month. Now I can see why, 2-3 is plenty for us. It keeps us away from our families too much. Well it may even out later. We have 3 in Oct, 2 in Nov and none in Dec.
Right now my life is consumed with births, getting children here and there, trying to get this house free from soot, getting ready for winter, and normal life of cooking, cleaning etc.
My new project will start on the 14th of Oct. I bought another house to fix up and rent and it closes on the 14th. It's a great deal and this time Joe and Moriah are doing it with me! I'm so excited about that. Joe is really good at getting things done and motivating children to work.
The house is really 2 houses on 2 acres. The back acre is empty, plus there is another strip of land next to the house that is empty too. the main house right now is a 2 bedroom house. Nice wood floors, in decent shape, just needs lots of clean up. It will be easy to make a family room into another bedroom too. The other house is a tiny one bedroom cottage. It's really cute. But it will need new floors and some plumbing done. Renting out the 2 houses should more then cover our payment. then we have all that land with opportunity's just waiting. We could put on more rental cabins, or a set of storage rooms. It's right on the hwy so we could build a business office, or maybe we should try our drive through dairy up here! The place was being foreclosed on, so it was quite a deal. So I added to my busy life and Joe to his.

Birthday pictures

2008-09-27T06:36:00.004-06:00

Eric was playing with the camera. Taking pictures of Grandma washing dishes.

James

Every mothers day and birthday I get my favorite cake.
Chocolate chip chiffon cake
this time James and Kendra made the cake. How many 9 and 10 yr olds can make chiffon cake?

Paul and Eric

Eric

Our nice roast beef dinner. That's Kendra sitting in the front.

Maria and Michael

To make a heart cake you just take a square and circle.

47 yrs old! Couldn't ask for more in life. The Lord has truly blessed me.

baby pictures

2008-09-27T06:10:00.004-06:00

These are the two boys born on the same day. First time we had to use the 2nd birth room! I am so thankful that God provided me with a perfect house for a birth center. It's really hard to find a house in Libby with 2 bathrooms and all on one floor. We sure needed the room for these 2 guys.

This sling that the baby is laying on is for my scale. It's a hanging scale. You put the baby's in the sling and it hangs by hooks on the scale. This way I can weigh the baby right there on the mom's bed. Our goal is to keep baby with mom all the time. We never take the baby anywhere. Everything is done right there in the birth room.

Big sisters happy for the little brother.
Well those are the 3 latest babies. We have one more birth center birth this month, 3 due next month. It's been really fun, challenging births lately. Praise the Lord he brings life to this little ones.

birthday continued

2008-09-25T07:19:00.006-06:00

I just was thinking that I missed some things from my last post.
I feel sooooo blessed, I'm just overflowing! Maybe it's the economy crashing, the excitement for getting some things on the house, seeing how God can turn bad things like the fire, into good.
Sometimes I get so frustrated with keeping a house clean, money problems, teenagers giving us a hard time or watching them ruin their lives with dumb choices. It's so easy to get overwhelmed with life in America. We have so much, so many choices that it makes life complicated. We run around doing so many things thinking we are doing them for our family and in the end we seem to neglect our family.
So needless to say I often get overwhelmed and wonder if having so many children was a good idea.
But then there are times like my birthday. I enjoyed my day with my children so much. Our family is really close and we all really love each other alot. If there are arguments between family members it's because someone is really worried about someone else and they feel they need to control them. But it all stems from love.
I am so blessed! I live in my dream house (never finished, not fancy, but practical). A place that we are close to town, but out in the country. A place where children can be safe on our 5 acres. My very best friends are my daughters. I love being a grandma. I love being a midwife. My sister lives up close now, and I love having family close. Every month I go to Kalispell to visit and June, April, Martha, Moriah and sometimes others get together for lunch and try to catch up on our lives. It's a special time.
Here I am 47 yrs old and am overflowing with a wonderful life. God has been so good to me. I am thankful for everyone of my children, my grandchildren, my sister, my niece. Rick has a job, we have plenty of food, we don't even have to wear socks with holes in them anymore. We can pay all our bills, not always easy and it's stressful, but generally life is pretty good. The Lord is working in our lives. What more can I ask. Thank you Jesus!

birthday and baby

2008-09-24T21:51:00.004-06:00

I had a wonderful day!
I must have been missing family. About 2 or 3 weeks ago I emailed everyone and asked if they could come to my birthday. It was sort of weird to plan and invite people for my own party. But I really wanted to see family. So I had been planning this ahead for a long time. 9 of the 11 children came and all the grandchildren.
I still had 2 lady's over due and as much as I wanted them to have their babies, I was asking God for the one day for me to be able to be with everyone. Sat someone called and said they just feel awful, but they are not in labor. "feeling awful" is usually a pre-labor sign! sigh........Sure enough Sunday morning at 2:30 I get a call “she says, do you want to deliver this baby so you can still have your time with your family?” So I head to the birth center. She labored so nicely all night, and as time ticked away I’m thinking “ can I make it to my own birthday party?” Well she had the baby about 8:30 am. Sherry and Karen were there, and the mom was doing so well, she had already been up and showered and was waiting till she could leave for home.
So I left, went to church with the family (almost fell asleep), Went home and had a wonderful roast beef dinner. All 11 children were there except Gina and Miriam. All the grandchildren. It was so much fun. I gave a little presents to everyone, showed them our new investment house, did a personality test and normal for our family, everyone talked, interrupted, and talked some more. We always have so much to say and catch up on.
The personality test was fun, it was one that was related to how we work with people. Rick and I are total opposites. Maria and Mishael or more like Rick. Moriah and I are very close. I wondered how Maria would be seeing she is so logical yet emotional.
Michael gave me a funny card, about chocolate, and of course a box of chocolates. Moriah made me a framed picture with Eric, Joe and her. Maria gave me a gift card for TJ max, because she knows I like household items. Martha gave me a book on tape (another sister chick’s) chocolate, and more, plus Rick's parents gave me $100. I always enjoy that $100. I love to buy a new quilt for my bedroom every couple of yrs. That's what I will probably do this yr.
I got to hear every ones opinions on carpet color too. I love to have every ones opinions.
So even though the baby was born on my birthday, the Lord still provided me with a wonderful birthday.

Our house is falling apart!

2008-09-18T07:54:00.000-06:00

First the front porch, then this fire, now we had something leaking so bad in the basement and we couldn't tell where it was from.
I ended up calling a plumber, and he just had to tear the house apart. We put a couple holes in the bathroom, pulled out the fridge to see if the ice maker was leaking, put a hole in the laundry room and took the toilet off in my bathroom. The plumber left, with all my holes and the floor was still leaking!
After he left me with all my holes, it turned out to be the ice maker. I paid $50 to a plumber to tear up walls!
So now besides soot everywhere, and no microwave, toaster etc, now I have no toilet upstairs and we turn black still all the time.
I’m so discouraged. Probably still tired, with midwifery stuff too. Too much work right now.
Crazy life, everything happening at once.
Today I can hopefully get something done.

Radical but fun day with 2 births!

2008-09-12T21:22:00.000-06:00

We ended up having 4 lady's due all at the same time. Actually 3 were over due and one is never late. So we were expecting yet still hoping that they will give us a brake between births.
With my house still black from the fire, the garage cleaning still not done, a house in the works for an investment, Gina's home leave, Miriam needing to borrow Rick's car, my Toyota van broke (although Toyota gave me a rental van), to say the least we have tons going on right now, including all these births.
So the first laboring mom called 7 am Thursday. She's a first time mom, so we knew we had time. Her contractions didn't really kick in till after midnight. But we were pretty much up all night taking heart tones, and filling tubs, and giving instructions.
When we are tired we do the funniest things. I had fallen asleep for a little while and woke up to go get Heart tones on the baby. The mom was in the pool when I last was in the room. So I walk in the room sort of sleepy and no one is in the pool. I see her lying on the floor. I say out loud, "there you are, lying on the floor, on your back even"
I sit down next to her and I'm about to pull off her covers, but I think, it doesn't even look like she's pregnant, this is so weird. Suddenly I realize that she's in the bathroom and it's the husband laying on the floor! I almost took FHT on the husband!
So during her labor about 10 pm I get a call from another mom that says she is in labor. I told her to try to sleep and see if it's the real thing. She called me back and midnight and said it's the real thing. Ok, here goes, we need our 2nd room birth fro the 1st time ever. Her birth went great and she had a nice big baby boy!
Well then we went back to the other birth. I had some huge decisions to make and I was pleased I made good decisions in the end.
2 hours later this family also had a nice big healthy boy.

So something I was always worried about of 2 people in labor at once, turned out tot be great. We were all there, I had enough towels and supplies, we even had time to sterilize instruments in between.
It was fun! It reminded me of being at Casa.
These are the kinds of births you walk away from saying "I love being a midwife"
So we still have 2 more to go this month. Oct is another busy month too.

finnally one if labor

2008-09-11T08:49:00.000-06:00

We had the fire last weekend and all the millions of jobs that is creating, we hadn't quite finish cleaning the garage, we have some mystery leaking water in the basement, a house covered with soot, wiring that we are not sure is safe at the moment, an investment house I'm trying to buy, winter coming, which always brings lots of normal jobs, but this yr we have to build a front porch still. We still need to get our pellets. Rick loaned his car to Miriam for a week (because she hit a deer in her Jetta), then I brought my van in to get something fixed and they broke something else. So they gave me a rental van.
Now on top of all this..... I have 3 overdue women and one due this weekend that says she has never been late! That means we could have more then one mom in labor at the same time or no sleep for many days or.......
So one mom called this morning and says something is starting. :)
Well so much for my cleaning day, but baby's always come first.
I'm so thankful for God's all sufficient grace!

Fire!

2008-09-07T08:41:00.000-06:00

Well I decided this weekend was the week to clean the garage. Last yr when we did our kitchen we really messed it up. So last fall we straightened it up enough to fit both cars in, but it was tight,and not really clean and organized. So I knew we needed to have a real cleaning. Oh the dreaded thought!

It needed to be a family affair. So we all started at 11:30 and worked till we were too tired at about 5:30. Killed 100's of hobo spiders, and swept up huge piles of dirt. We still didn't get quite done. We have so much garbage and not enough trash can's. So we got stopped in our tracks and we were too tired to go on.
We decided to go to Pizza hut for dinner. Mishael is up here in Libby, and she can get us dinner for half price and we were way too tired to cook dinner. So we were off to dinner, dropping off stuff at the second hand store and paint cans at the birth center to store in the basement. then spent about 1 hour or so eating dinner. When we got home Rick opened the door and black smoke came billowing out. He said there is a fire somewhere, all the smoke alarms are going off. We have a big house and it took us a while to figure out where it was coming from.

The "top of our basement stairs" counter is a 5 foot counter top between the kitchen and living/dining room. On this counter is the toaster, microwave, a hot water tea thing, a one shot coffee maker, and toaster oven. It has a tile counter top.
This is where the fire was. It looks like one of the coffee pots started a fire. They are both totally gone. There were still smoldering embers, but the fire was miraculously out. I also had some of that syrup for making Lattes, sitting there. a couple of the bottles were broken and the syrup burned, the other 2 bottles were hot and black but still fine.

It’s so discouraging this morning. Everything we touch is black. The soot is lining everything all the way up to my bathroom, the toilet is black, and in my medicine cabinet even.
Soot is oily, and water wont wash it. You have to use soap or alcohol and water. My computer is now black and right after we wash our hands as soon as we touch something, we are black again. I’m not sure how we are going to get clean for church. Even our clean clothes are soot covered. I’ll have to wash everything in the house.
Yet I’m so so thankful that the house didn’t start on fire. Although there was a good spot of fire, it died out on it’s own. We are all safe and besides the soot there is very little real damage.

Every wall is covered with black soot. All my new paint, should wash. Except for ceilings because we painted those in flat paint.

This is at the top of the upstairs. You can see how the smoke was coming up the stairs too.

The toaster has been the best toaster we have ever had. I used to go through a toaster a yr. Then I found this old sunbeam at a garage sale. It's lasted me about 13 yrs now. I won't be able to replace it will I?

This light fixture is a copper/brown color around the edge, and the ceiling is normally white.

All the tile protected from quite a bit of damage. The back splash is cracked, but the granite is still fine.

This picture is the plug . It had one of those 6 plug outlets plugged in.
So the Lord in his great mercy saved our house. I'm overwhelmed now, but if the insurance comes through, in the end I should end up with a cleaner house.
Well we will see.

I was determined to finish a project

2008-09-02T07:28:00.000-06:00

Jon and I are really good about starting projects. We actually get a lot accomplished. But......we have a terrible time finishing projects. Of course Rick won't start a project till we have everything completely ready, enough money, enough time, all the tools, etc. Needless to say in our house that never happens. So he just ends up frustrated with all our unfinished projects!
He was not too happy when I started my upstairs family room project.
I wanted to rip out a wall and make a family room upstairs. It's a room that used to be a bedroom to the apartment. It was divided, and one section was a little sewing room, that was so small that it ended up a junk room that you couldn't even walk in. the other room was just a walk through to Rick's office, (the old apartment). It had exercise machines, junk, and was wasted space.
So one day we ripped down the wall, moved the sewing to the basement, got rid of junk, and then I had a project that needed to be finished.
We had to tape, texture, paint, rip out old carpet. we made a neat hole in the wall for a TV to sit. The idea up here is to have nice carpeted room for children to play when grand kids come over. A pull out couch for an extra bed, and the exercise machines so we can exercise this winter. It will be a great room if we can really fit all that in. It's really not big enough for all that.
Well I was determined to finish it, but we didn't. The room got painted. but we still need to touch up the ceiling. I have to somehow get the carpet home that I bought and somehow get it installed. Can you believe they want $7 a yard to install carpet? I don't think I paid that much for the carpet!
Well my whole house has unfinished projects. Of course the kitchen. But I feel helpless with that. I am dependant on others, and I can't afford to hire someone. I had a trade worked out with one of my clients, and I was so excited, but it didn't pan out after all.
So my on going projects will continue........

more california pictures

2008-08-31T21:24:00.001-06:00

Ronda, Tim, James and Rick at Disneyland.

I heard Tim made sure James got to ride all the best rides. Even when Rick was tired, he would say "we can't leave yet, James hasn't gone on such and such ride"

Grandma and Grandpa's Krissy.

Rick and James' trip to Califonia

2008-08-30T15:26:00.000-06:00

What a great trip they had. The special times visiting, the beach, Disneyland.
James was one excited boy!

Here is James holding his ticket, at the airport. Talk about an excited little boy!

Rick and James ready to say good -bye to me.

James wrote his name with pretzels on the airplane. the stewardess asked James for help gathering trash. James went around with a bag and helped her. Then she paid him $1.