Happy Birthday....

Happy Birthday to Isaac! Isaac turned 12 yesterday! He had been counting down the days for some time. He is nearly a teenager! Today, Isaac spent the day with his dad and a friend and his son at his Lego league competition. They had to leave at 6:30 a.m. so it was nice to see them off and go back to bed. Jana and I did the leg work getting them to all the meetings so the dads got to have some of the fun seeing the finished work. You can go on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7RfGYArgks to watch their skit they performed for the judges today.

Isaac looks so good compared to his last birthday. He had a really good day. I took him to the library which was his only real request. We went to Scheels where he played one shooting game and rode the Ferris Wheel with Emily and Caleb. I splurged and bought 2 roasts for supper with carrots, celery and cabbage cooked several hours, mmm! We made an apple dessert that he enjoyed made very much, like apple crisp with no sugar. The topping was honey, peanut butter, butter, baking soda, egg and vanilla mixed well and poured on top of the apples and baked. You can eat simply and have it still taste good.

Funny coincidence...

We were in the library again this week and a woman asked us if we home schooled. It seems us home schoolers can spot each other so easily and I wasn't even wearing a jean skirt. I guess it's the 7 kids (Jordan was in symphony) that were so very quietly going about their business. One other thing about home schoolers is the comments we get on how polite our children are and well-behaved. I just smile and think, "Have you got that wrong!" They haven't followed me all over Wal-Mart with six kids before. I am worn out by the end of it. I realize how little control I have over them in that situation. Or bedtime, or getting up time, etc. Anyway, we talked some and she home schools her one child, Frank. When we were getting ready to leave I went to say good-bye and she wanted to exchange information like email and phone (this is typical home school fashion also). She would like to get together sometime. At that moment I really looked at her and said, "Have you been to our house before?" We met a family with a little boy named Frank 3 or 4 years ago at the Jamestown Buffalo and the mom and boy ended up coming over for the day to see the animals and play. Can you believe it was the very same person? What a small world! We had gotten together the one time and didn't keep in touch since.

Praise God for no blood again today for Isaac! Praise that I'm feeling more myself. The hormone thing had me up and down emotionally for about 2 1/2 weeks, my poor family. I really changed my diet and exercise every day. I have a follow-up appointment tomorrow morning, which also happens to be Isaac's birthday. He is coming along with Caleb so we can go to the library afterwards. I hope to find some other fun thing to do for him on his 12th birthday as a celebration of how well he is doing.

Forgotten blessing...

I forgot to say what a blessing Friday and Saturday were when my husband ended up home most of the day Friday and all day Saturday. He also ended up home all day today due to a blizzard out there. I forgot about it on Saturday when I wrote probably because I don't think I saw him much all day. He worked out in the garage most of the time. Another blessing, he cleaned out a good deal of the garage! For some reason we can never get that place clean. It piles up with all manner of things that I can't figure from where they came. It still looks like a huge pit but one you can walk through. He also fixed several drawers in the kitchen that were dragging and had missing hardware. You have to be careful when you pull out a drawer, they slide so easily! A curtain rod that came apart is now together and we played a marvelously fun game tonight as a family.

OK, I have to tell you this game. It would be a great party game. Emily got it from a birthday party. Everyone playing has a piece of paper. You have one die and one pen. You pick a goal number, we picked 100 the first time. Pass the die around with each person shaking it once. If a five is rolled that person picks up the pen and starts writing numbers to 100 on their paper. Keep shaking the die around the table trying hard to get a five so you can take the pen from that person before they get to 100. If another person gets a five they take the pen and start writing and so it goes until someone does get to 100. Lots of laughs and fun and dad won!

Itsy Bitsy Spider...

Lena does the Itsy bitsy spider and actually says the word spider!!! It is incredibly cute! She does this cute dance while she sings the whole song in her baby talk. I wish I could You Tube it for everyone to watch.

Whew! What a day! 10:30 and I'm finally done with dishes and cooking. It was possibly going to be ice storms and blizzard conditions and always the worry of power outages so last night as I lay in bed I thought I'll make up as much food stuff as I can before it happens. Well, it was real icy this morning but we never did lose power thankfully. It snowed a bit and quit. I got 44 blueberry muffins, 44 zucchini-oatmeal muffins, 1 loaf blueberry muffin bread, 4 loaves bread, 38 pancakes, a big pot of stir fry rice with all kinds of veggies for the church dinner tomorrow if we can get out the driveway, 2 chickens all cooked up and deboned, and a gallon and 1/2 of chicken broth made up for soups this week. I made up rice and taco fixings for lunch and made a batch of yogurt, juiced for myself once plus made up some food for Isaac tomorrow too. I haven't done that kind of food preparation for a very long time. I'm so glad for the quick meals. Our mornings start way too late because of breakfast taking so long to make and as I won't buy ready made food it has to be done the long way. My hands can't take anymore dish washing! Does anyone else hate washing muffin pans as much as I do? Of course again, I don't buy the paper insert things to make clean up a little easier. Well, blessed Sunday to all and have a good Monday.

Hi...

Please pray for Isaac's ankle. He twisted it last night in AWANA and it's paining him. Our chiropractor is gone too so I can't take him in for an adjustment, maybe good since I have had it with driving places. It's been two weeks now since I lost all that blood and although I'm doing all my normal activities it's not without some exhaustion. Thankfully my dad drove Jordan to her "30" minute practice the other night. I was too beat to do it. We have lego's again tonight! I'm taking some kids to the library so it will be nice because I have not been to the big library in town since they remodeled it. We were reminiscing all the hours we used to spend there just last night. I had all the good books in the children's section memorized for location. I am going to the adults section to look up....cookbooks for Isaac's diet which I am going to follow too. Again I feel my life is consumed with research.

I know many of you pray continually for Isaac. Some specifics are:
Praise the Lord we aren't seeing blood.
Pray for the bm's to firm up, still pretty loose.
Pray for wisdom in finding what may be the reason they are still loose.
Praise he is filling out nicely with weight gain.
Pray for his ankle to heal.

Lemon juice anyone?

I've been drinking lemon juice for 2 days and it's so hard! Whenever I have done one of these cleanses I am so cold. Not having any substantial calories just freezes you to the bone. I'm trying to clear up some digestive pains I've been having. I am praying for wisdom and of course, God's healing. I just want for my whole family to be healthy forever! I know that we will achieve that when we get to heaven but in the meantime I wish our human bodies could have a little glimpse of that heavenly health. It seems to take so much work to do. We started buying Kefir for Lena to drink. She loves it and it seems to help aid her digestion. Our goats only give enough milk right now to make yogurt for Isaac so the rest of the kids haven't been having yogurt regularly. Hopefully, they are pregnant and due in April and we will once again have more milk than we know what to do with.

We are busy with lego robotics twice a week now. Thankfully, we carpool and drive only once but it will be all over Jan. 30th! Isaac has enjoyed it so much. Jordan has a lot of symphony events this week and in February so that challenges our already busy schedule. It would be so much more helpful if we had a car or van that got better gas mileage and she had her license. I sure miss having the two vans, one big for when we all go together which wasn't all that often and then the small one for the kind of trips we've been taking. Once Jordan gets her license we will look into that.

Kevin is extremely busy at work with a church that's being built. It doesn't help that it is 2 1/2 hours away. One night he planned to just sleep in the church since he's be going back the next day. A guy on the project said no-way, come stay at my house. This guy's son is 38 and has Ulcerative Colitis since he was 19 and when he eats the diet Isaac is on he does well. As soon as he eats off of it he has a flare and is actually in a bad flare right now. It was an encouragement of sorts. It is disconcerting that so many people are suffering these kinds of problems.

This really got long and seems too boring to write but I'll leave it for those who like the little things in our lives. Have a great rest of the week. Jordan has a concert Friday night and her symphony is playing with the adult symphony, thus the extra practice tonight is with the adult symphony. She really enjoys it and hopes to do it again next year, Lord-willing.