Keeping it Sunday

So I was sitting in sacrament meeting today and kept thinking about blogging. Don't get me wrong. The meeting was excellent. Great speakers,great music, I learned a lot, I was inspired, I was touched, I was reminded of a lot of things that of course I know but seem to forget sometimes even though I know better. I couldn't help it though. My mind kept wandering over to the blogsphere.(Sheesh,Do you think I am addicted??) So I decided that if I absolutely needed to blog today that it would be spiritually oriented.

One thing that has struck me like a bolt of lightning lately is food storage. For the last few months or so it seems to be mentioned in every meeting. And last week, stake conference seemed to somehow revolve around food storage and family preparedness. My husband and I have been talking alot about it lately too. We both feel a sense of urgency to get in the game and be more prepared. We have seriously slacked in the food storage area. So we have been making some changes around here. Some of which were not voluntary but seem to have happened for a reason. This reason. Getting prepared.

We got rid of our nice expensive wonderful to ride in the heated seats in the "winter"(because north carolina doesnt have real winter,it just gets a bit nippy. No snow where we are,just a little nip in the air. But to everyone here it is winter) truck and got a less expensive vehicle which is just as reliable but not as fancy. And its better on gas. And we are grateful that it has allowed us the extra money to get prepared.

At the time we thought it was going to be the end of the world without our beautiful truck (we really loved that truck) but have since realized that there are way more important things. We prayed alot about the truck and it took us awhile to accept what we had to do. We knew what we had to do from the beginning,but at the time we didn't know what we would do for transportation. We live out in the boonies so transportation is a must. So we were confused,scared,and I am ashamed to say even unwilling to give up the truck. But once we did, we felt the most relief we had ever felt, and right away we were presented with an opportunity at purchasing a less expensive car.

Divine inspiration,people.

So here we are with our less expensive car ,and Uncle Mark comes to Chris one day with an opportunity to make more money. We prayed about it and decided it would be a good idea even though we could get by on what chris was already making. We would at least try it.

I see him less, because of his work hours, but our time together is all the more better because we appreciate it more. We don't bicker as much about stupid things.

Yesterday Chris was told that he needed to go in to work first thing sunday morning. Right away chris said no, he needed to keep his sunday work as close to none as possible. At first he was told that wasn't possible and Chris just said,well, too bad then. Now this could have been the end of his job. But instead, he was then told,ok. And he didn't have to work today. It would have been more money, and a few months ago he probably would have gone into work even though he knows better. I am proud of him for taking that stand even though it could have left him jobless. Our faith seems to be growing more by the day...thats what happens when you have your priorities straight!!

I won't bore you with the other small changes we have made. I just wanted to mention the most significant ones to get my point accross. My point being, now we can afford food storage. And looking back, having that truck was silly. I can't believe that for awhile there that truck was on our top priority list. I know, selfish and foolish. We lost sight of the eternal perspective. Its easy to sometimes when you want something (like a pretty truck) so bad.But we have learned. We are grateful to be so blessed and we have grown as a couple because of it. Life really does go a lot smoother when you put the Lord,his teachings, and family first.


Now, I need to know a few things. I seem like a fool here, but I don't have a clue about food storage. A friend of mine said get stuff we actually eat, and slowly build it up.
ok, so we now have enough soup and string beans to feed the ward, now what? Where do I get wheat? How do I use it? How do I store water,rice,flour and all that stuff so that it doesn't go stale? DOES it go stale? How much of everything do I need?What about meat?...... The freezer? I don't have a big freezer. And I don't want to fill a freezer in the first place. How would I transport a freezer full of meat to the mountains for the great gathering without it thawing and rotting and being wasted??

Have you read The Great Gathering? Great book by Chad Daybell. Available at all LDS bookstores and online. I posted about it awhile back.

Now back to food storage. I should have been paying more attention on the matter. I need help. Advice. Suggestions. ...

...I'm waiting.

school bus fiasco-on the first day!!

Ok, so I am a very panicky mother. The panickiest. School gets out at 2:45. The drop off time for my kids is about 3:15-3:25. Today they got home after 5:00.

Oh, why???

Because the bus driver broke her leg. Therefore the kids were stranded on the bus for over an hour waiting. Its hot outside. and inside the bus where there is no air conditioning. Then the sub was lost and kept going around in circles. The sub told the kids to tell me she was sorry.

I went into panic mode at about 4:00. I do know that sometimes they are late leaving the school for whatever reason so I waited to panic. I was shaking,breathing heavy,stressed out.
The principle kept saying"call back if they are not home in 10 minutes". Finally, the last time I called the first thing he said was "mam,the kids are ok". I thought, OH NO. Then he told me the situation.

The kids are fine. In fact they were excited to have something "cool" happen on the first day of school.

First day of school.

First day of school today. The house is quiet. I'm not hearing "mommy" every 5 seconds. I can sit at my computer without interruption. I may take a nap later. Maybe watch a show the whole way through. Clean the bathroom. take a walk. Do some assignments and catch up on the school I was supposed to have done over the summer but didn't because i was too busy answering questions,taking kids swimming,mediating arguments, making cheese fries,looking for teeny tiny barbie shoes that probably fell down the vent,dishing out childrens tylenol and bug bite cream,going to Mcdonalds,listening to elias recite his favorite movies word for word,doing endless laundry because they dont hang up their swimming towels and the cat therefore pees on them, doing endless dishes because the words "use ONE cup and set it by the sink so you can use it again" means nothing to them and by the end of the day there are 50 cups waiting to be washed so we can do it all again the next day.

On the other hand, I am one of THOSE parents who calls the school at random times to check on the kids. I feel sad everyday when they leave me to go to school.I stand on the front porch and wave and blow kisses when the kids get on the school bus, calling out to them their "be safe " intructions. I'm there in the same spot on the porch when they get off the bus at 3:30. I worry all day about wether or not they are having a good day. I worry about all the "what-ifs". Like, what if their feelings get hurt. What if they bang their head too hard on the playground and go into a coma and the school doesn't call me. What if the school bus gets hijacked. What if the school bus gets into an accident. What if an older kid does something inappropriate to my kids. What if there is a fire and my kids are in the bathroom and no one waits for them or looks for them. What if one of the kids gets lost on the field trip. What if what if what if.

So, as great as it is for the kids to be out of my hair,I wish they were in my hair so I can keep them safe.

The batteries in my camera died and chris used my "Im saving these for the first day of school in case the batteries in my camera go dead" batteries for the new plug in paintball video game controller that requires a screwdriver and chisel to pry open the battery compartment. I did not have time for this five minutes before school bus time.

So I have no pics from this morning.

ok, here it is

Ok, so I know I was very hiped about this. Because I was totally freaked out and excited at the same time. But really. how many people can say they have a freaky picture of a war skeleton.

Chris has been to this place many times and knows it well. He has been on this river in this same spot many times and has never seen any skeletons.This is the only picture from the trip that the image is in. the pic was taken at the neuse river,about 10 minutes from our house. The woods you see was the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the civil war.

ok, now look at the first pic. You can see a shadow that looks like a rifle in the woods. See it??

now look at the zoom in I did.

Is your hair standing on end?? Mine did, Chris saw it. And I have very long hair.

And Like I said, all the other pics from the trip are only woods,no sleletons.

And I promise the picture has not been doctored.

And I own copyright.

Pray

Read this and think about it for awhile.

I have always relied very heavily on prayer. It has been a constant in my life since I was very young. It was how I survived.

But today after reading aprils post I really thought hard about how important prayer really is.

When we pray we don't only pray for ourselves but for others. We know that and have been taught it since sunbeams. But there are times when other people need our prayers more than we need them for ourselves.

I am guilty of being selfish in my praying.

I guess its a habit. Its hard sometimes to pray for others when we are hurting too. but just think, all those other people are in need of blessings too, sometimes even more.

I am not a great writer so I hope I at least got the message accross.

Pray for others even if you dont know who you are praying for. Even if it is for no one in particular.

Even if you are hurting, there is probably someone out there hurting just as much if not more.

Today I am going to make a point to be unselfish in my prayers from now on.

How bout you?

And thanks April for this post.

My Baby

My baby boy turned 8 on monday. yep, he's 8. ( His actual birthday post will come later...too lazy to upload pics right now). He went to cubscouts for the first time at church tonight... I felt a twinge of sadness when i left him with his group. Ya, I had choir practice to go to, but still, I was kind of sad because the baby in him was officially being left behind. He's hangin' with the big boys now. He has waited for this day all year. Ever since we had our "great to be eight" night in January for all the primary kids turning 8 this year. It's all he has talked about for 8 months. He was so proud of himself. When I met him in the hall afterwards his shirt was wet ( they had been playing a game with sponges or something). I asled him why he was wet. He said "this is what we do in cubscouts, MOM!" ok, then...

Its happening. My kids are practically grown. I have a teenager,a preteen and a cubscout. It goes by too too fast.....




Elias and one of his best friends,Cody, at church.

Hula hooping at a church activity.

At the beach.


He loves to cuddle. Even with me. but I know that won't last much longer...

weekend at the cabin-last day before going home

So we got up super early sunday morning so we could stop at Mount Mitchell on the way home. Not a big thrill for me but Megan loves it and so does chris. We were in our pj's (except for chris).I was sooo tired on the way home. I tried to stay awake but i kept falling asleep. We had fun. We love going to the cabin and will probably be back there in the fall.

weekend at the cabin -part 4

Chris getting the fire ready to cook hotdogs.

Kids piling up on Grandaddy in the hammok.

The cabin.

The treehouse. Chris and I and the kids slept in the treehouse.I should have taken pics of the inside but I forgot. Its cute and cozy and I wish we could live in it.

weekend at the cabin -part 3

Me and chris on the swinging bridge.

Chris and the kids on the swinging bridge.

Chris and the kids ( megan ,cousin calin and elias) on the swinging bridge.

Elias and calin at the Rock museum.

Music museum. Just one room but pretty cool very old pianos and organs and stuff.

weekend at the cabin-part two

The kids love to go gem mining whenever we go to the mountains..so we all went to Emerald Village and got some pretty cool rocks and gems. There is also a music museum there and it was pretty neat. I am not a fan of museums but it was cool to see all the old pianos and organs.

Weekend at the cabin -part one

The kids' favorite thing to do in the mountains is swimming in the water hole. Chris and his dad took the kids to the water hole and even let Megan swim the deep hole. Here are a few pics.

Megan and Chris looking for water creatures.

Elias standing on a rock.

Elias sitting on a rock.

Megan swimming the deep hole.

Megan after swimming accross the deep hole.

Lazy Day

It rained all day yesterday. So I gave myself permission to have a Lazy Day. My to do list is never ending anyways so why not put it off one more day, right? I layed on the couch all day and even fell asleep for 3 hours. The kids were good. Thank you dear Television for taking care of my kids while I slept...

I couldn't help it. I feel so tired and sluggish since our little weekend trip. I needed the sleep.

um....

I had a very clever title in mind for this post. I decided not to use it though in case some may be offended. It wasn't even really very offensive. Gross maybe...

Anyways...

first, let me describe my travelling laundry system. I pack everything as normal in the suitcases. But I bring an extra empty bag for dirty clothes. That way dirty clothes don't get mixed up with the clean and we know when we are running out of stuff to wear and need to do laundry. So, wear the clothes,and when you change, put them in the bag designated for dirty stuff. Very simple even a child can follow. I have used this system for years,as I am sure many parents have as well. I rely on this system to keep the mess contained. It works.

Now I will tell you about the gruesome discovery I made as I was happily unpacking what I thought was a suitcase of nice clean clothes. I reached in the little zip up pocket and pulled out my hubby's underwear. I was putting it in the put away pile when I realized that it was not clean .And I am pretty sure most of his stuff in the suitcase was dirty. Ugly words started swimming around in my head. Because all his nasty toilet germs were crammed into the underwear pocket where my CLEAN underwear also happened to be. He had actually gone to the trouble of folding all his dirty clothes and putting them back in the CLEAN suitcase. NOT in the designated dirty bag. So I ended up washing most of the stuff because I was really not sure what was clean and what was not. Some was obvious, Some was not so obvious and I couldn't quite tell when I sniffed.

Yes, I sniffed.

What!!??

HEY !! I really didn't want to do any laundry that was unecessary.

The kids followed my system and I am happy to report that I was able to unpack their suitcases without sniffing.

Back to the grind.....

I'm home,exhausted, and trying to catch up. I know I was only gone the weekend but a lot happens around here in a weekend. So, Once I catch up on things around here,I will post some pictures of our weekend. And get back to regular posting....if I can swing it I'll start tonight. We had fun.

She'll be.....

Comin' around the Mountain when she comes....


Don't cry over my absence.
I'll be back monday.
i'm going to the mountains where it is NOT 100 degrees.

Elias the clown

Elias is the class clown. He is very very funny. And spontaneous. Which is what makes him so funny. This is what he did today. he walked up behind me,started pushing on my butt and started singing..

"I like big butts and I cannot lie"...

yeah, I do need to lose some weight. Thanks for pointing it out to me though...

Baby Josh

Chillin'

Smiley face
Sittin'
I wish they would have come out with these Bumbo things when my kids were babies.

cousins