Goat Update...

Had the vet out today for our goat with the abscess. I had already talked to their office twice and they all there thought it sounded like a piece of straw or hay since the goat only had one abscess. If it was a bacteria that caused it more than likely there would be lumps all over the body. I talked to my brother and he says they are common in their cows too. Well, now I know not to panic so much next time. He was able to do a variety of things. Dapples needed a tooth cut, Midnight needed her West Nile and Rabies, and also the dog and cat needed rabies and distemper so we got it taken care of in one visit and I didn't have to drive anywhere!

Isaac is doing OK!?!?! Always something going on with him. Yesterday, at the park, he jumped down off the monkey bars and sprained his foot. It didn't bother him until about three this morning when he couldn't move it without pain. We have soaked it in Epsom salts, iced it and kept it elevated today. Please pray for healing of it as he isn't doing well with the pain of it when he walks on it. All my kids are so different on how they tolerate pain. His last week's lymph went well. He spent some more money which someday he won't be so happy to part with, I hope. We took them to buy fireworks but they were on their own. Again, all my kids are so different in how they spend money. Some are cautious and others just spend it all. I am not interested in fireworks but Kevin remembers how fun it was to do some so we let them now.

OK, not much to share right now. I've been working in the garden; weeding, planting carrots, beans, cabbage and spinach. I cut some lettuce and spinach and we had a big salad for lunch. I'm anxiously waiting for cucumbers and zucchini to be ready.

Please keep praying for healing in Isaac. He is doing so well but does have a ways to go. Please pray for his bowel movements to firm up more. We are so happy with his progress. Praise God for the healing that has gone on so far.

Prayer request...

OK, not your typical prayer request but please pray for our goats, in particular Georgiana. She has a lump on her face and someone saw her today and says, "Oh, it's a cyst. I can lance it for you." So the internet freak that I am looks up goat cysts and finds all these horrid, horrid things about cysts and isolating and wearing all latex (not really but burn everything, change and wash in some special soap) while you lance it and washing your shoes in bleach water after being in the pen and putting down some other thing to kill it in the barnyard and that it can take years to get rid of, etc. etc. etc. It doesn't affect the milk. We called the lady we got the goats from. She has never had an abscess and doesn't feel it is one. Once a year she has a goat get a hay sliver and it fills with pus, bursts and it's done.

My first response was, "Let's get rid of the creatures, we don't need this." I panicked a bit and now after talking to Linda we all feel a bit more relief. We are going to call the vet and see if he'll come check it out. Please pray for it to be simple! I pray it is not contagious and doesn't cost us a ton to check it out. We like our goats and having some good wholesome milk to use is so very nice.

Isaac has a lymph tomorrow and has his supplement checked again. Pray for change! Change is always good. Pray for Gid and Riah who are being tested too. They're done with their 4 months and we'll see what changed. Danke!

PRA

Had a good Father's Day visiting with family at a little reunion at the park. Today, my oldest started her new babysitting job and traveled to work with her dad so I am missing her, in a lot of ways. We talk a lot, she milks the goats, she lightens the load pretty joyfully. Milking the goats today was a challenge. I will get the hang of it but I came into a mess in the kitchen. Jordan and I work well together, when one is outside doing stuff, the other is inside. Emily does not want the job!

I was able to get a few more signatures for the Parental Rights Amendment. I got a call today from a coordinator for it and I am now going to work on getting our North Dakota Congressmen to the area for a meeting discussing this Amendment and showing them North Dakotans sponsor this amendment. I want to encourage anyone who signed the petition to contact them and let them know personally that you support the amendment. Representative Pomeroy has protected gun rights so far as outlined in our own second amendment. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child clearly opposes guns in homes and it outlines procedures on how to get people to give up their guns or face consequences. Join with me and let your Senators and Representative know you support this. http://www.congress.org/ enter your zip code, click on person you are contacting, click on contact, click on blue words Web form. It will let you create your own message. It is very easy, just takes a little time. No one from North Dakota has shown support for this amendment yet. I am going to work on getting a meeting with our Senators this August and anyone willing to come can show their support. Please be thinking of becoming a 10-2 partner who will go out and get 10 signatures and 2 more to do the same.

Side note: click on here to see some really great looking kids, mine of course! :) Laura is a great photographer! LauraLuPhotography

Again...

Again I urge you to sign the petition on www.parentalrights.org. They are in need of over 4 million signatures to make this thing happen. We can make history. I started going around getting signatures on the paper petition form. Every single person I spoke to is interested in preserving parental rights here in the United States according to our Constitution. Every person I spoke to signed the petition. Go to www.parentalrights.org and become a volunteer. It is so easy. Contact your senators and representatives and tell them you support the parental rights amendment. It was presented to the House of Representatives March 31st. They are also in need of volunteers to receive the email updates. You can sign up for these at www.parentalrights.org. Thank you!!!

Parental Rights...

I am calling all people who read this blog to go to www.parentalrights.org and sign the petition today or tomorrow or sometime. Please encourage your friends and family to go to this website and sign the petition. Please also become a 10-2 volunteer if you can. Donate money. Whatever it takes. Our free sovereign country called the United States where we have certain unalienable rights needs this amendment to be passed. It will protect us from international law. Right now the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child is being considered for ratification and it is bad news for us. On the surface if sounds like they are for children but it will tear families apart letting the government be a sounding board for children, not abused children but any child who is upset with being grounded because of misbehavior, any child who doesn't like their parents choices can be represented under this treaty. It is dangerous. Please read on www.parentalrights.org more about what we can expect if we don't pass a parental rights amendment soon. It is not good! The Amendment is straightforward and to the point giving parents the right to parent their own children unless the government has reasonable proof they are not doing it correctly. It makes it impossible for international law to supersede the law of the United States. The amendment needs momentum. Spread the news! God was able to defeat an army of thousands with only 300 men in Gideon's army. He can defeat this but He needs us to put actions to our words. God Bless!

One down...

too many left to go!!! Anyone want to organize a weed your friend's gardens day? We could all travel each day to help out someone else. Many hands make light work?!? Right?!? Our backs would be "killing"us but oh, how nice to have a clean garden for awhile! Plus, the fellowship would be welcome. This time of the year can be so wonderful and horrid at the same time. The beauty of new life and then the hard, hard work it takes to keep it up.

Yesterday, my goal was to make this garden "weed-free". I was able to accomplish it but I have to say it wasn't too much effort on my part. This area has been a garden since before we moved here and it doesn't get too bad if you can stay on top of it. I think it took less than 2 hours to work it until clean. I attempted to work up the back garden and 2 feet into the beet row I look down and think 48 feet to go and I'm already tired of this. I did give up, partly it was 9:30 p.m. and I thought the kids should be getting to bed. Today, it is raining and I thought oh, great, I'll really get moving on the basement and clear out some things. Same story as the 48 feet to go, I can do about 10 minutes and then it is too much and I gladly find other things to do like watch a Little House on the Prairie with the kids! :) That makes me happy.

I've been thinking that my prayer life and Bible time can take a back seat to regular life. After all I am just so busy and I have to do laundry and dishes, right? I have to feed my kids and spend time with them, right? I have to weed the garden because I'm providing for my family, right? When I don't find time for the Lord I find my day can go pretty good but as the days pass and I haven't found time for Him, my week can go downhill. I get impatient and things "bug" me that didn't before. How many of us are willing to turn on our favorite show or do a chore we don't really care for instead of reading the Bible or talking to the Lord? I am a work in progress just like that back garden. I may never get that one weed-free but thankfully the Lord understands that I'll never be "weed-free" either and he takes me just as I am, one day at a time. I don't have to feel guilty and dwell on my past mistakes because there He is forgiving me and giving me another day. I did say I don't have to dwell on past mistakes but let me tell you I surely do. I have to continually give them back to the Lord. Happy gardening!

Update

Hi, Isaac had a lymph treatment yesterday and is a bit tired today. Please pray he can get enough fluids and exercise to keep his lymph drained. Dr. S. says we can go every two weeks instead of every week!!!! I am so happy to save the money and the gas and have one less place to go each week. Please pray for Isaac's continued improvement with only 2 lymph treatments a month. I ask that you continue praying for his body to get rid of toxins and to keep absorbing his nutrients so that we can see him gaining weight. His color has improved greatly. Now he needs to gain some weight. Thanks for checking and praying!

My life is not my own...

It now belongs to the great outdoors. I don't have a lot of time for anything but watering, weeding, planting, mowing, picking up stuff so that I can mow. Picking up stuff to mow can be quite a task. There are bikes, shoes, the dog's bones, rakes and other garden tools kids just dropped where they were done using them, hoses (about 400 feet of them in all places), buckets, the string from the hay bales, rope for tying out goats or horses, sticks, all the downspouts, strollers (there are currently two out there for Lena). It can take almost as long to pick this all up as to mow! :) Can anyone relate? or do I just have too much stuff? I am pretty good at putting everything I use in one particular place but it is challenging to teach that to 8 other people.

We have a few more things to plant. I am hoping to make today a fun day; kickball, badminton, Uno, reading books. I tend to have tunnel vision right now so I want to spend some time with the kids doing things that don't get anything done. It actually gets things done just not anything you can visibly see. It gets you talking to your kids and laughing and not making all of life about work. I've been praying about this lately. What is most important to me? What do I spend most of my time on? How do I behave when I don't accomplish all I want to in a day? I don't like myself much of the time when you look at it this way. I have to work on priorities; time with the Lord, time with the kids and balancing the things that need to be done.

Praise that Isaac is doing excellently! He is growing and improving so much. His color is great. The doctor on Wednesday was happy as can be about Isaac's progress. He wanted Isaac to thank the Lord, his parents and his family for all they did for getting him to this point. I said for him to thank Dr. S. Dr. S. said he didn't need thanks, Isaac's getting well was all the thanks he needed.

18...

We have been married 18 years today! June 1st, 1991. It was a much warmer day than today was but otherwise was very similar. The sun was out and it was windy I remember. When isn't it around here. I was 22 and Kev was 24. I had just finished finals the week before and had finished my degree in Elementary Education. Kevin was working in Rapid City, SD in refrigeration. We had followed a cousin's idea and turned and faced the guests during the ceremony. I thought the caterer knew the head table was not going through the line. It caused a bit of a ruckus and Kevin's sister and brother-in-law were rushing to get us food so we could all stay sitting. The band was late and then when they did play it was not as I expected. The first song was "The Wanderer". Any remember this song? First line was "I'm the type of guy who likes to roam around..." Not a good beginning song in my opinion. Having a dance was tradition. If we did it over today I know we would have music playing but very different from that day. They put cheese all over the windshield and on the way to the hotel that night we tried to get it off but it smeared. We stopped along side the road and found a mud puddle and used tissues to try to get it off. One other interesting thing was when we got in Kev's car at the church it wouldn't start. How cliche! It was a beginning of a friendship that is still going on today. I shared with one of the children today that we got married today 18 years ago and how most mommies and daddies don't stay together that long and that we plan on being together forever. I am as in love with Kevin today as I was back then. I don't feel like it's been that long. When I look at him I see that 19 year old he was when we first started seeing each other. Funny how the pictures back then look so strange!:)

The kids helped make it extra special and we ate just the two of us by candlelight and just when we sat down to eat someone brought all the cards they made for us. They did a great job. It's great to have them all and to have a great husband like I do.