Catch up time

This is our basement. It's not a nice basement, so I don't usually show it off. But I thought for memory sake we should have some pictures of it.
This is the Pellet furnace with James on top of bags of pellets. It's been great to have a furnace. A thermostat! Such a life of ease!!!! :)
We still have to get pellets (in my van) and keep the furnace loaded up (it holds about 5 bags and eats about 1-2 bags a day) But it's soooo easy compared to wood. We buy pellets for $160 a ton. It looks like we will have used 5 tons this winter. We still have to use some electric heat upstairs too. Our electric bill is about $170 a month. Outrageous isn't it! We only pay about .05 cents a kilowatt here too, so it shouldn't be so bad, but ....



This is Mark my very Italian looking son, eating a favorite Italian meal. My kitchen turned out pretty Italian looking too so it all fits well!I got ground beef on sale this last week. I actually bought 85 lbs of it. I fried up a bunch and put it in the freezer for tacos and such, and then I made 10 lbs into meat balls and meat loaf. We ate half the meat balls one night and I have 2 meals in the freezer. My children LOVE meatloaf. My older children didn't, but this bunch sure does. So I made 2 loafs for one dinner. It's pretty fatty ground beef too so I have to plan on shrinkage too. I put many 2.5 packages in the freezer and I hope this will last a little while!



It's been so long since I've had a chance to get on here so I have lots to catch up on.
I get so busy, stressed, and running around trying to get priority's straight. Do I really get much done? I hope so, but some days I just am recovering from the other days.
So whats going on?
Well just life and a little more.
I've been taking "financial freedom" classes every Thur night. I've really enjoyed them. I certainly don't have freedom from financial worries but at least I'm enjoying the class! I actually worry a lot about money. I do have to wonder if this is just my personality or if there is really need. We have a nice steady income for the last 3-4 years. Rick is a manager and tech support at an Internet company. We are thankful for a job, as in this small town it's really hard to have work. But I guess we are still on the poverty level according to the government. Maybe according to me too, unless I compare with other country's. Then I see how terribly rich we are. Well if I can ever get out of debt and stay out, maybe it will be easier to make it on our pay check.

I have been working on real life monopoly. I always loved monopoly was I was young. I was really good at it too. I wish I could be good at monopoly in real life. So I just bought a little house, it hasn't closed yet. But it's a little 2 bedroom house with a huge bump in the middle of the house. The house is so uneven that one end of the kitchen table is on the floor and the other end has about 2 inches of shims under the other side. Can you imagine eating dinner in a house like that! Well, I had to get an engineer, a house mover, and lots of estimates etc to find out if this house was going to be fixable and pay. We rephrased our deal many times. I ended up buying the house for $69,500. It's going to cost me about $3000 to fix it and that includes fixing drywall that gets messed up, plus insulating an area under the house that doesn't have any. The only other thing I will have to do to fix up the house is put a shower in it and add some kitchen cupboards. It has a beautiful claw tub bath tub in it. But it has no shower, so I will get one put in. I would like to add a dishwasher and some base cabinets too. After that I'm hoping the house will be worth at least $90,000 or maybe even $100,000. I will have to decide if I should turn around and sell it this summer and make a bit now (to help me get out of debt) or should I hold on to it for a yr or two and make more. Monopoly!

So I have also been working on Mishael and Cody's house. Not really working on it, but being the contractor. I enjoy that part too, but I have lots to learn and it's very time consuming. We had an electrician that was doing a bad job, plumbers that were fast and did a great job, drywall put up that had to be taken down 3 times! Well we are putting it up for sale this week without it being quite done. but the money I had to help them is gone, and they moved to Kalispell. Hopefully they will still make a good amount and I also will get a good return on the money I loaned.
So besides playing monopoly, I have midwifery, homeschooling, being a good mom and wife. Plus all my grown children . Grown children still take a lot of time, either on phone just keeping up, encouraging, advising, or asking advise, or if they need rides, or help with something plus there are birthdays. Lots of birthdays! We are all still involved a lot in each others lives. I love that our family is so close.
I got a home school CPR and 1st aid class together this week. Here they are practicing on their dummy's in this picture. I was happy they all picked it up really good.

Monica in her new glasses. Isn't she cute!
Midwifery has picked up business again. I have about 13-14 mom's now. My Wednesday appointments are getting to be a very full day!
Well a little catch up time.
I'll post pictures of houses as soon as i get some.

James

James is such a funny boy. He keeps us smiling. He's almost 9 now. He's growing up so fast.
In this picture he "died" because I cut his show lace. His shoe laces were so long he was tripping over them. But for some reason he liked his shoe laces long. Well I took out the scissors and took a good bit of shoe lace off. Poor James fainted immediately to the floor and was as if dead.
So dramatic!!!!

Visits

Paul and Hans got to come up for a visit last weekend. The Uncles and Nephews love being together. They are the closest friends.
Paul, Mark, Hans and James.


We also had Chris White visit. Chris is a friend of Ricks from Jr high and high school. The stories are great when Chris comes to visit. I made a pizza dinner, and this was one creation with a bit of spinach on it. It was surprisingly good. I am really surprised about how many places you can eat spinach.

Gareth

Well we are going to miss Shell's visits. Her and Cody moved to Kalispell, but lately they have been up every week to work on their house, so we have still been seeing them quite a bit. In fact Mishael and Gareth stayed all week. She accomplished quite a bit on their remodeling project. It's fun having Gareth around. He is a really good baby. Walking around now and as sweet as they come!

Jon and Monica

Monica and Jon passed hunters safety!!!!

Sherry gave me some great sausages. They are really good. Maybe we can have some extra meat next fall!
Jon is really into skiing this year.
He has the helmet and goggles to hopefully stay in one piece. Unlike last year with a broken nose.

Chiffon cake

James 8 yrs old made a chiffon cake

Mark 10 yrs old, made peanut butter bars

This morning I was working on the computer when James came in to ask me something. Most of the time kids ask " can I play on the computer" or "can I go outside and play" But James says, "can I please make a Chiffon cake" James is 8 yrs old! As you can see they turn out great. This is the 3rd time he has made one.
Mark made Peanut butter bars! yum.
I love Chiffon cakes. I feel like it's a pretty healthy dessert too. It has about 10 eggs in it. No butter, a little oil, but it's pretty low in fat, and it's got the protein from all the eggs. So for cake, it's a good one.
So James has learned to separate eggs, they have all learned what soft peaks, stiff peaks etc are.
This is one thing that I've noticed about homeschooling. When they were in school no one wanted to cook. There just isn't the time. They come home from school at 3:30, we clean house and everyone wants a bit of free time. I cooked dinner and they did very little cooking. With home schooling there just is more time to learn real life, cooking, projects. Jon learned drywall and taping this year. We've also been going though a scenario with Jon. 15 yr old will often say stuff like "I'm going to move out when I'm 18". so I said, lets go though the steps. How do you move out? How do you get a job? How do you get an apartment, pay bills, etc.
It's been an interesting school yr. Not very typical and not what I planned exactly. But everyone is defiantly learning and that's what is important. Anyways, any son that can make a chiffon cake will be very impressive to any wife.

Not too much going on

Jon and Monica are in hunters safety. I'm glad they are getting it over with now. Last year Jon missed it and it was sad he couldn't hunt. The meat would have been nice, but also the experience for him too.

I've placed an offer on a little investment house in town. It's a cute little house. 2 bedrooms 1 bath, laundry. It's in great shape with new wiring, new floors, new roof. Many upgrades. The problem is.......in the middle of the house is a huge bump. The foundation was just fixed up and redone by the EPA. But the foundation is lower then the beam in the middle of the house. So the whole house is drastically bumped up in the middle. I was told by one contractor that it would be a simple fix. But another contractor explained it differently. thought it would be quite complicated and would break drywall and such. Well I offered $71,000. I think if it's fixed and the market goes back up a bit, it could easily be sold for $100,000 this summer. But now I don't know if it's going to cost me $1000 to fix or $10,000.

I'm getting a bit more involved in Mishael and Cody's house flip. they moved to Kalispell and now I got quite a bit of money tied up in it.

I would like to buy a four plex, but that takes lots of money down. There are two for sale in Kalispell area for $300,000. The great thing about it is that it will actually bring in a monthly income in. The rents are about $800 above the payments. That would be really neat.
Lots of decisions.

So my day yesterday:
Jon had to be at the shooting range by 8 am. So we left the house at 7:30 am, I ran back home for a few minutes and to get Monica who had to be back there at 10, went to the Amish store, and back home. Left to get Monica and head to Kalispell. Mishael and I spent about 3-4 hours at Lowe's picking out cabinets, carpet, doors, light fixtures, etc. then we headed over to a party at the Gym. Martha and Moriah had a birthday party for Paul, Hans and Eric. Mishael and I missed most of it, but the children were there. We had a quick visit because everyone had to go home, and we went back to Lowe's to finish up paying. I took Paul and Hans home with me, and left Jon with Cody and Mishael. Got home about 11 pm. Long day. I was so tired. I just rushed all day. Even visiting at the party was rushed. I haven't seen every one for so long, it seemed I had so much to say and not enough time.

So today is a relaxing day, I think I'll go make some pizza and just keep doing nothing.

My busy week

I knew this week would be busy. Tue is our "town day". The children have piano lessons, so I try to do all my errands, spend time with them at the library, and all the regular errands: post office, pellets, bank, etc. I try to stay out of the stores which seems to save a lot of money. I do my monthly shopping in Kalispell at Costco, and try to go to other stores as little as possible, watching sale ads for meat. I hit the Amish store once in a while, and order for Azure about every 3 months. It still totals about $700 a month, but really we eat pretty good, I think. We have plenty of cheese, milk, and usually enough meat.
Jon and Monica are going to hunters safety next week, so next year maybe we can save a bunch on meat.
Well back to my week:
so Tuesday was a very busy day. I ended up with an appointment at the birth center, for a new mom. She was 12 weeks, but I couldn't get a heart beat. Well that does happen once in a while, but usually by 12 weeks you can find the little one. So I told her not to worry and plan on coming back next week when we will listen again.
Then I went over to MT sky net, where Michael helped me put the web site up. Monica and I have been working on getting a web site made. If you want to look it's familymidwives.com.
So we got this up, and I went next door to the real estate agent and made an offer on a house. I've been looking at this house. thinking about it, looking at other houses, thinking of duplexes, fourplexes, and coming back to this same house. It's a great house. Very clean, lots of new stuff. It had a major fire about a yr ago, so they replaced a bunch of plumbing, all the electric, a new roof, new floors, and it even has a new foundation. the list goes on for all they have done to it. So I offered really low at $71,000. I didn't expect him to take it, but he did! So in my regular busy day, I also bought a house! Wow, could that really be.
Well Wednesday I had my regular day of prenatals. It was another busy day with one mom emotionally struggling, and going to an ultra sound with my mom with twins. It was great to see the 2 separate bags. One baby is head down, and one breech. I'm really praying for baby A to turn around, or the doctor is going to want to do a C section.
I was home most of Thurs thankfully. When I called the bank about the home loan I was informed that interest that had been down to 5.5 just went up to 7.5! oh dear. If it stays that high I will have trouble renting the house for enough to cover the payments, which is a must. I think in a few years I'll be able to make a lot of money on this house, but it has to pay for it self in the mean time. So I hope it will go down. I was starting to think maybe I should chicken out, but as I think about it, I think I should take the plunge. Interest will probably go down, maybe I can get more rent or refinance it quickly as soon as interest goes down. I could put more down too, and then I wouldn't pay mortgage insurance. That can save $48 per month. I got to do the math on that one!

So Friday. Sherry has 4 clients in Bonners Ferry. So I thought I better make a trip there for prenatals. Before I left the mom I had seen Tue called and said she was spotting. I offered her a ultrasound and told her to call me later. So we left early, all the children too, and spent the day in Bonners doing prenatals. It was a busy day, and in the midst of prenatals the one mom called and said she got the ultra sound and there is no baby, it was a blighted ovum. This is one of those times in Midwifery that it would be nice to know how to be a counselor too. I just wish I knew how to help people more. I suppose God knows how to use us, and we can be his tools. Sherry has all sorts of things going on. It's so sad and it's so hard to know what to say.
So I got home about 7 and we made a quick hamburger dinner, fixed the heater and sat down to relax from the busy week.
And guess what! It's snowing again.......
Whew it's the weekend, and time to take it easy......

our poor porch

Well we woke up this morning, and went to dump the garbage when we noticed our porch was gone!

Well not gone, just collapsed. We were afraid of the weight of the snow, and it was true. It just couldn't hold all the snow that came off the roof.
Well we can see out our front window again.
I suppose we needed another project, right?

Mishael and Cody are moving back to Kalispell. He got a job offer down there. We're going to miss them hanging around. It's been fun having a grand baby around, and Mishael cooking dinner with me.

We've got a really busy week. Tomorrow we have the piano guy coming at 10 to hopefully fix our piano, then I have an appointment at the birth center, and the children have piano lessons, then we have to rush home because a guy is coming to fix the dishwasher. Wednesday I have a bunch of appointments, and Thursday I have to go to Bonners Ferry for appointments over there. Plus all the normal stuff, dinners, trying to keep the house clean, and school.
I usually only have appointments on Wednesdays, but we ended up with some special circumstances.

The snowy pictures

This is the porch after the snow fell off the roof. No more porch till spring!


James
This one is the birth center.
This one is our road when we turn out of our drive way.

Our exciting visit from our skunk. ):

We thought our skunk problems were gone. No way, in fact it's worse then before.
Last night I heard a strange noise in the living room. A few seconds later I smelled that horrible smell coming up the floor. Oh dear, we had to depart the living room fast.
We boiled vinigar, coffee, all sorts of stuff. The smell came all the way upstairs, but we burned some candles and we could handle the smell enough to sleep. This morning it was much better, but still bad in the garage, and Rick's office (above the garage) Yuck, yuck, yuck.!
So tonight I began to hear that little sound again. The skunk was trying to get into the garage from under the house. We had blocked it off, but we decided to try to get the skunk in the garage, let it out the front and block off all entrances back under the house. So we took off the board.
Then what!
It's a crazy problem. Well we left the garge door open and forgot about it for the moment.
Then I had to go pick up the children from Pathfinders, I open the door and a big, cute, wobbly skunk quickly went right back under the house! Ugg!
Well I carefully got in the car and brought the children home.
Later Jon opened the door to the garage and says he thinks he traped the skunk in the garage. Oh we are so excited. We make sure there are no more openning for it to get back in. (looks like the hole they were getting in is now iced over) We have everyone on the look out to make sure we see the skunk come out of the garage, and we open the main garage door.......... Camara's posed, everybody ready, only to see it was the cat! We hadn't seen her for a couple of days either! I bet as the snow fell off the roof it made them all stuck under the house. Hope neither the cat or the skunk have "kittens" under there!
Well the smell still isn't pretty.
Tommmarrow, our adventure will continue I'm sure.

4:44 am

Our front porch, we won't see it till spring I guess!

I woke with a loud boom! It has been dumping snow again the last few days. My bedrrom window was completely blocked. Mark decided to go out and shovel the roof yesterday. James decided to jump off the roof. He is having a great time, climbing out my bedrrom window, and then jumping into a huge snow pile. Mark barely made a dent in all the snow on the roof. But it must have been enough, because in the night the rest decided to slide.
It was a huge noise, and as you can see our porch is a little discouraging today. How are we ever going to move all that snow?!!!
We park in our nice garage, but any company or UPS man has to get through somehow to our front door. Maybe not till spring?!!!!!
Even though we have had to hire someone to clear the drive way 5 times already the snow is getting thicker and thicker. So when I pull out of the garage we are going up a big bump. I'm afraid this bump is going to get too high soon and my van won't fit in the garage anymore.
Can you imagine spring? When all this turns to slush and ice?!!

My Green drinks!

Mark and James enjoying their spinach!

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

A very snowy Sunday

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

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


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

Michael's present

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

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

Sunday afternoon

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

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

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

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

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

Our back yard
Gareth at the piano.

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

winter days in our house

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

Miriam's birthday and memories

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




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

New Computer

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