Updates

Wow, it has been a while since I last posted! I guess that that isn't new though. As most of you know, we didn't end up selling our business but I did still have to give up Celene. Here are some of the things that have happened lately:

Rebekah turned 16 and received her purity ring:


Out of the scraps from making myself a skirt I made Elizabeth an apron:

Rebekah's Cat Sweet Tea had a litter of four kittens on June 8th:
The Tabby Male (going to my Aunt):

The Lighter Tabby and White Female (available): The Darker Tabby and White Female (going to my Brother):

And the Black and White Male (Available):

My two older brothers Jeremy and Jason have moved into an apartment in Bellingham and Jeremy got a job at Logos (a bible software company) doing exactly what he wants to do!

I have begun to visit a rest home in Blaine with my dog Sebastian visiting anyone who wants to see him and spending time with one lady who doesn't have any family nearby. He is doing really well and loves all of the attention.

Our church Silver Beach Community Church (SBCC) has just this week purchase another facility! We are hoping to have our first service there the third week in August and our new name will be Spring Creek Bible Church (SCBC). We are all super excited and God has worked a miracle to fund the purchase!

That's all for now on the random stuff!

A Very Sad Decision

I must give up my horse!

My parents decided to sell their business about a month or so ago and since then I have been trying to come up with ways to still be able to support Celene but haven't found anything. :(

At first I was going to try to get a job, but as a family we have always said that us girls would not work outside of the home and so to get a job would be going backwards. We have always wanted the girls in our family to stay at home and work at home until we are married then we stay at home as a wife and hopefully a mother. I wholeheartedly want this, it is just hard when I want to keep Celene! I will be able to work doing small things like babysitting, dog grooming and dog training etc, but not enough to support a horse.

The friend introduced me to her will be the one who will keep her after me and hopefully find her a new home. She will be ready to take another horse in two to three weeks so I have that much time to get ready for her to leave.

I know that this is the right decision, it has given me the peace I didn't have when I pushed my way into getting her. During the time when I was getting her I had many late nights with my head filled with doubts and worries to the point of crying, every time wanting to back out because I had gone over my head but not doing it because I had spent so much money and time already.
This has been a huge learning experience and I hope that I will be smarter the next time something like this comes around and make sure that it is what God wants me to do.

Some things I have learned:

1. NEVER go into debt.
2. Wait for God to tell me yes, no, or wait, and be patient
3. Trust that God will lead me
4. Make sure that I am doing it because it is right, not just because I want it so bad
5. Make sure that it is the right timing
6. In reference to a horse, get it because I connect with it, not because it is costs less than the rest and is pretty.

Please pray for me as I say good bye to her, pray that I will continue to grow in my trust in the Lord and learning to wait for His answer and lean on Him.

A couple of events at home....

I went skiing on Saturday! I would have liked to have gotten some pictures but we forgot :(. I really enjoyed it and got fairly good at it by the end (on the easy spots anyways :). It was interesting figuring out how to turn (I didn't have anyone to teach me), but I had watched an online video and that helped a bit. To turn you have to push on the ski that is on the outside of the turn so as I turned I was saying in my head "right, right, right" and "left, left, left" telling myself which foot to push on :). The first time going down on an easy trail I fell about 7 or 8 times but on the second it was only 3 or 4 and got better. We went further up the mountain and the easy one up there was better (not so icy) and I could go the whole way without falling. When I got home I discovered more than 15 bruises on the inside of my calves from crashing and landing on the other ski :).

This week we have started decorating for Christmas and got our tree up, it is huge, has huge bare spots and is FREE! We were able to get it out of our own forest and therefore it fit our budget :)

The reason for the season! I love these ornaments.

Jeremy put ONE ornament on the tree, he is looking down because he kind of just threw it on and it dropped but hung itself on the way :)

Isn't she just the cutest thing on earth! She even has food all over her and she is still cute!

Here is our "Charley Brown Tree on Steroids"

It fell over halfway through decorating it! It had water in it already so we had to mop it up with towels.

Tomorrow Celene (my horse) is getting her hooves trimmed for the first time, we will see how that goes. I haven't ever watched it being done so I am not sure of how to prepare her either, she is okay most of the time on picking up her feet but I don't know how she does with a stranger. Please pray that it will go well! I so need her to have a good first experience!

Brothers

Well, I had a request for a post about brothers and I had been thinking about doing it since I did my "sisters" one so here it is!

I have 6 brothers ranging from 24 to almost 7 and I really enjoy having them around. My older brothers hang out with me at movies or whatever is new, just enjoying time together and I get to work with my younger brothers teaching them how to be gentlemen and I love to do find things that they love to do and do it with them (Dayton loves to try to play Ping Pong and thinks he is great at it!).

Jeremy is my oldest brother and is 24 years old and is 5 ft 11 in, he just got out of the Marines after a 5 year commitment. He is currently living at home with us and is looking for a job but he might go back to school in the spring. He loves to play volleyball, computer games, card games (especially Canasta), go to movies and do just about anything having to do with computers.

This was some time near 2006:

about a year ago, he took this for his Facebook photo:Jason is 22 years old and 6 ft 1 in, he is still living at home but works full time (and a lot over time) where my dad works (Gray Mold in Bellingham). He loves to play games (computer, Xbox, and card/board games) and is very social. He plays Volleyball at least once a week, is on two bowling leagues, coaches a Bible Quizzing team and always seems to be going to this or that Xbox game party :). On Wednesday at bowling he got a 275 (or something close to that) and his all time record is 285 I believe. He is a great big brother and goes to movies with me all the time, inviting me even when he is going with some of his friends. Esther likes him a lot, she almost always waves at him when he comes home.

Jonathan is 17 years old and 6 ft 0 in tall. He is now working full time at Perry Pallets in Custer and is very responsible about getting a decent amount of sleep (a certain other brother who does a million things doesn't care what time he goes to bed!) which I am proud of him for. He loves to play Volleyball (actually everyone in our family does, the first words out of my dad's mouth after Rachel's birth (we then had 3 boys and 2 girls) were "A co-ed volleyball team!"), ride bike, play Ping Pong, and now that he has a job he loves to come to movies too. He wants to one day drive Semis for a job and maybe get a motorcycle someday.
Reuben is 11 years old and started doing Bible Quizzing for the first time this year! He has an amazing mind and is doing really well in that. He is really good at math (the opposite of me!) and is our sweet, deep thinker. He will hopefully be getting braces within a year.

Rachel had bought a ball that got popped and this is what happened to it:
(Reuben left, Daniel right)

I planted potatoes this year and everyone helped dig them up:
(Daniel left, Reuben right)

Daniel is 9 years old and is our avid reader, reading and spelling words that even Rebekah sometimes has trouble with! He, Reuben, and Dayton are almost always together (mom started calling them "the Three Little Pigs when they were really little and we still do every now and then!) playing with something, making something or just goofing off.In the pictures below, Daniel is on the left and Dayton is on the right, their hair had gotten a little long so while they were getting their hair cut (we do it at home) we stopped when they had mohawks to take a picture then finished the hair cut. Dayton thought it was fun and that it was awsome!

Dayton is soon to be 7 (in December) and is finally getting is two front teeth! He had had those pulled a couple of years ago (I think) and had to have the gums cut and burned to let the teeth come through because the gums had gotten too hard for the teeth to come through. He is a gentleman (like in the picture below with Elizabeth) most of the time but is now really having to learn to control is temper (like the rest of us). To all the rest of us it still seems like he is 5 but we are now having to get used to the idea of the number 7!Here are some partial family pictures:

this was taken a few months ago at a Homeschool Heritage Picnic:
(Daniel had a compression fracture in his wrist)
I saw the next one and had to put it here, it is sooooo cute!
It was probably taken in 2006 or 2007:

Back row left to right: Rebekah, Jonathan, Reuben, Rachel

Middle row left to right: Jason, me, Jeremy
bottom row left to right: Dayton, Daniel


We are by far, not a perfect family and I do not wish for it to seem that way. We are like everyone else, learning to live as God would have us live and working through our struggles and sins same as you, but I want to use this blog to bring glory to God. He is shaping us and molding us everyday, using each other and the things around us to make us who He wants us to be, and by His grace we are learning, little tiny step by little tiny step. For those of you reading this blog who are fellow Christians, please keep us in mind when praying. Pray for us to grow in Christ and in love for one another, everyone needs prayer and we are no different!

Thank you for reading my blog!

My Animals

This is Rebekah's Cat (okay, so not all my animals, some hers), Sweet Tea, she is most likely pregnant and was being playful on the grape trellis:

That is the sky in the background, I was looking up at her

Yes, I realize that this isn't an animal, but I thought that it was a cool shot of our skeleton trees :)

This is my 3 year old Miniature Schnauzer, Sebastian

The rest are pictures of me working with Celene today (except the last one):

My dad loved the picture above , notice how we are barely touching the ground?

She would buck almost every time I had her go into a trot, she was excited to be running :)

This is my beautiful and old (11 years old) cat, Abby. We got her the year Reuben was born and that is how we remember how old she is :) She used to be a wanderer but for the last couple years has stayed near home, always out there waiting for attention when we come out.

We have 4 more cats than shown here, an 11 year old Siamese (maybe Abby's sister), Snowball, a 4 year old Siamese, Miss T, her son a 2 year old gray striped cat, Tiger and our latest kitten a black and brown 3 month old, Kimi.

My next post should be about my brothers, so keep an eye out!

Sisters

Don't you love them? (not sarcastic) I mean, sometimes it isn't so fun, like if they take your stuff or something but isn't it fun most of the time? Esther (2yo) is just the sweetest thing (she is learning what a temper is for though, yelling MOMMM! when she is mad) and gives the absolute best hugs. I think that everyone would have a better day if the got a few of her hugs each day. This is Esther and Elizabeth (4yo) in matching outfits, these outfits were bought at different times at Wee Ones and it wasn't planned that way :)look at that hair on Esther! No one else has had that much hair at that age!Isn't she precious?

She loves to read!She is getting more and more confident in her walking everyday and is even trying to carry things while walking!

I wasn't sure what to think when she was born and I found out that she had Down Syndrome, but I didn't think that she would be so fun and precious to have around :)

Elizabeth is an artist, pianist, animal person, baker, singer and many other things and is mostly sweet with a little sour added here and there. :)

Rebekah (15) is a leader and an artist, she is really talented and just loves to do anything with art; painting, drawing; charcoal, pencil, pen, anything. Here are some samples:A sketch done at the court when I was contesting my ticket

This verse was found while playing Swords (one person calls out a random verse and you see who can find it first)

This is the latest picture that I found of her

Rachel (13) is a baker, pianist and a follower. She has always tended to follow Rebekah (even when she shouldn't have :) but is more independent now. She has a sweet and willing spirit and is a big help.This was taken at the Amy Vest Pure of Heart Conference.She had won the longest toss on her team at the church campout.

I love having sisters! I will admit that that hasn't always been the case but now that Rebekah and Rachel are a little older it is more fun. God has blessed me greatly with this family! I have the best mom and dad and I have siblings that test me, try me and love me everyday and a God that loves me no matter what! Give praise to God for what you have, even if it doesn't seem like you have much, He is always there for you and there is always something to praise Him for no matter how small.