Thank you, dear friends!

I have to say that I am just humbled by the sweet comments, prayers, and well wishes from all you dear ladies who have visited my blog. How fun it would be if we could all get together and share a cup of coffee and time of prayer and conversation!

I think I will just post here now and again, and not worry if it isn't very frequently. Sometimes life is more quiet than others. I might find a recipe that is too good to keep to myself, or have a funny picture of one of the children. Or I might read a book that is actually worth blogging about!! So...I will seeing you around!

Blogging

Hey everyone! I so appreciate every comment that each of you has left on my blog. I have so enjoyed meeting each of you and getting glimpses into your lives.

I have been thinking about my blog, and realizing that I don't have anything to blog about. I rarely get out of my home, and don't know anyone outside of a few of my sisters and brothers. I have no way of getting out and meeting anyone. The only time I do get out and talk to humans is when either I or my children have to travel up to the Mayo clinic and see our doctors. I am not whining about that....I am not looking for sympathy....I am actually getting used to it. However, it makes for a rather boring person, blog wise. Moving around aggravates my nerve disease, so I can't blog about my spring cleaning, my decorating project, or gardening endeavors.

Like I said, this isn't a whining post. It is just the way it is. I have enjoyed meeting you sweet ladies so much and I get so much out of hearing what you guys do and where you go and what is going on in your life, so I knew that I couldn't just shut the door on that. So I have decided that I am going to use my profile just to visit other blogs and leave comments. I most likely won't be posting anything. The fun I get out of visiting your blogs is what I enjoyed about blogging. I found trying to come up with something to blog about was actually stressing me out a little! I would get frustrated that I didn't have something to write about. Then the depression would try to set in and dealing with my life with this disease would get harder and I would get really down. However, visiting your blogs was something that I found enjoyable and uplifting and would get my mind off of me and I could visit in your world for a little and get out of mine!

So.....I will be seeing you around blog land, but in comment form! Have a wonderful day, ladies, and God Bless!

Budgets

Hello everyone! I have been rather absent around here lately. I have to admit my ability to blog is somewhat limited, but I do enjoy getting on here when I can.

I was thinking in the wee hours (that is when I do most of my thinking!) about budgets. My husband is in the reserve component of the Army, so that means that when he is not doing his Army thing he is a civilian. He recently was deployed for 15 months overseas, and when he returned he was unemployed. At 40 plus years of age that wasn't any fun. He found shortly that in the area of the country we were in at the time, employers are not very open to hiring people who are in the Guard or Reserves, since at any time they most likely WILL be deployed again. It made for a very difficult time for our family. Thankfully, we knew that when he came back he would not have a job so we lived on a tight budget and put money into savings so we would have a little bit of cushion. We were glad we did as he was unemployed for three months! Then he found a wonderful job and the pay was good and he loved his work. However, just three months later the company found themselves in a bad way and laid off 1/3 of their employees, my husband being one of them. We found ourselves unemployed again! This time he was unemployed for only a month and a half, but the job he has now does not pay very well and we are doing the budget game again.

This isn't a whiney post, by the way. We feel grateful for the job he has and know alot of guys who were laid off when he was don't have anything yet. I just want to clarify that a tight budget is a way of life for us.

So what is the biggest help to staying on a budget? I just want to say that I would not have made it through the last few months without the help of a wonderful website put out by a lady who calls herself Miss Maggie. The website is www.hillbillyhousewife.com and if you have never gone there, I highly recommend it. Through her website, we were able to put as much money away as we could while my husband was overseas, and also survive for all those weeks of unemployment. Her emergency menus and her low cost food ideas were the most helpful to me of anything I tried. I also kept at arm's length the Tightwad Gazette books. There are some other websites out there that have ideas for reducing your expenses, such as Miserly Moms, but I have to admit that they were not quite as helpful for the situation I was in. Even if you are in pretty good financial shape and doing fine I would check out Miss Maggie's recipes and hints, especially if you as hungry of a brood as I do who are always foraging for something to eat! I have three boys who are always hungry.

Do any of you have any budget oriented books or websites that you read or visit? There is probably more information out there that I don't know about. Anything you ladies know of out there? Have a wonderful week and I will try to go out and visit all your blogs in a little while!

I feel a Blog coming on!!!

Hi! I am back from our doctor's appointments, and we were no sooner back when the throwing up flu hit our house. That kind of thing can happen when you spend a few days at a healthcare facility; you pick up things that you hadn't wanted! God is so good; my husband had to go out of town (Murphy's law when the kids start throwing up they wait till Dad is out of town!) for work and, true to form, the kids have all been sick but I have been spared. Now that they are better I can go ahead and get sick, and I will know that I will have two big helpers in my teenagers to help keep the house running. God always makes sure that I am never sick at the same time and that we are not all down together.

I was running some ideas around for something I was going to blog about, but it was kind of taken out of my hands. I was over at another blog of a dear brave sister, and she had linked to a blog of a woman from a movement called the Emerging Church. I know alot of people who have no idea what the "Emerging Church" is. So I am also going to link to this Emergent blog so that anyone out there reading this that doesn't know what I am talking about can go and see for themselves. Here is the link: http://emergingwomen.blogspot.com/ Please go check it out. Go ahead and scroll down and read several postings. Go to some of her links.

I am not a confrontational person, in fact, I am quiet and quite shy. However, I have seen this movement gain such momentum in the last couple of years, and I feel like I can't be silent. My daughter belongs to a message board of all home-schooled alumni, and there are a significant number of kids and young adults there that are falling for all of this in subtle ways, even if they were homeschooled and raised in a church setting. We have pastors and teachers like David Jeremiah, Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, Erwin Lutzer, etc., who may not be Emergent themselves, but are endorsing their books, quoting them in their sermons, and sharing a podium with them in Pastor's Conferences. There are CCM artists who are leading kids astray by having links to Emergent websites like the Ooze inside their CD jackets. There are kids in Youth Groups watching the "Nooma" videos by Rob Bell, who is an Emergent pastor. These people are no longer some "fringe" group out there. They are covered positively and graciously in Christianity Today. They are being promoted in a positive way in seminaries across the country.

Not all emergents are quite as open as the woman blogger in the link I have above. Not on the surface. They are a little more careful in their books and interviews that they know will hit the Christian "mainstream". But the theology underneath is the same. We can no longer just say "yuck" or "how could anyone who reads their Bible fall for that?", we need to do a little study on who these people are. I would highly recommend covering yourself in prayer and enlisting the support of your husband or doing the research as a couple. Listen to some Rob Bell or Doug Pagitt sermons. Check out their websites. Read some of their beliefs. Essentially, what the Emergent church is.....is just Catholicism re-packaged. Scripture is a mystery, we can't really KNOW what it says, they use candles, statues, art, incense, and prayer beads in their worship, etc. It is all about "experiencing God" and it sounds very devout, but when you begin to dig deeper into what these people actually teach about the atonement (one Emergent proponent calls the cross a vile doctrine), homosexuality, and how we can know God, you hit the rotten fruit under all the smoke and incense.

We must, as Chrisitans, be aware of this. It is no longer creeping into the church like it was two years ago, it IS in the church. Our Christian bookstores are full of their books. Our Christian radio is full of preachers who may not be Emergent themselves, but they are endorsing and supporting them. Our kids are being fed a constant diet of the Emergent "gospel" in their youth groups, concerts, music, etc. The Emergents have completely taken over Youth Specialties, the ministry that trains youth pastors and then sends them back to their churches. Even if you are in a church that is more careful, and isn't going to let this stuff come in, you should still know it is there. We can't be discerning if we don't know what is out there. Use caution, though. Best to get a little knowledge, just enough, then go back to the Word of God. Spend too much time looking into it and you will feel just like my kids did earlier this week!

Gone for a Couple of Days

Hello dear friends. I hope this weekend was good for you all. I just wanted to let you all know that I wouldn't be around for a couple of days. In the morning we have to travel up to Rochester, Minnesota, to see our doctors at the Mayo Clinic. I would appreciate prayer as it is difficult for us to travel. We have great accomodations while we are there; we stay at a hotel that is attached to the clinic, and we don't even have to go outdoors to get to our various appointments. You ladies will be in my prayers while I am away, and I look forward to "hitting" all your blogs when I get back and seeing what you have been doing. God Bless and I will be "talking" to you soon!

Two of My Best Friends

These are two of my very best friends. In fact, I don't know how my mother, who had ten children, did without them.

The "Fix It and Forget It" cookbook was a much appreciated gift from Jane and Morgan G. and it has been used over and over again in my kitchen. I then purchased the next in the series, "Fix It and Forget It Entertaining". I was afraid when I purchased that one that it would just be full of appetizers and buffet items for parties, but the title is a little misleading. It is still categorized into Breakfasts, Lunches, Suppers, etc. I use my crockpot in some fashion every day. I originally was going to post my favorite crockpot recipe on here this morning, but I couldn't decide. How do you choose a favorite recipe when you cook nearly everything in it? In fact, although I took a photo of my favorite crockpot, I have three of them. I have found them to be a lifesaver. I might have meat cooking in one, a side dish or vegetable in another, and beans soaking or cooking in a third for the next day's chili.

I have found that with the wonderful invention of the crockpot, that I can make sure that we have something for dinner that day, even on one of my "bad" days. If you struggle with either a very busy lifestyle, lots of little ones who need your attention, illness, pregnancy, a new baby, etc., and you haven't "discovered" crockpot cooking, you should give it a whirl. One crockpot and the "Fix It and Forget It" is an excellent place to begin.

I guess in retrospect I would say that my favorite thing to cook in the crockpot is either a whole chicken, or since my family doesn't care much for dark meat, sometimes I just cook several of the whole chicken breasts, with the bone in. When you cook a whole chicken it tastes like one of those chickens you can buy cooked at Walmart or the grocery store. I rinse and dry the chicken, then make a rub of salt, onion powder, garlic powder, lemon pepper, and a little Italian seasoning. I rub this all over the chicken. I sprinkle a little salt and onion and garlic inside the chicken cavity, too. Then I put the chicken in the crockpot, but do NOT add any liquid. The dry roasting of the crockpot creates a crispy on the outside, juicey on the inside chicken that my poultry-disliking husband will eat! We cook it on low most of the day, and by mid-afternoon the smell is heavenly. The leftover meat, if there is any, is great for soup the next day. So what about you out there in blog-land? What do you like to cook in the crockpot?