Accepted Offer

Will God ever cease to amaze me?  I think not. 

This past week we found out that we have an accepted offer on our house.  We've been praying for months for it to sell, and have talked and dreamed about the day when it finally does sell.  And now it's coming together.  It's one of those awesome, amazing, joy-filling, put a smile on your face feelings that I can't say I've had in awhile. 

I just love to trust God with areas of my life and see how he answers my prayers - often in ways I'd never thought or dreamed.  I serve an awesome God! 

"Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation."  Psalm 68:19

Curly Girl: The Handbook (2/44)

Curly Girl: The Handbook by Lorraine Massey is a must read for anyone with any type of curly hair.  It goes through how to determine your type of curl, what kinds of products to use on your hair, cutting curly hair, caring for children's curls, and some ideas to style curly hair.

I guess I've always liked having curly hair.  Growing up, people would always ask me if I liked having curly hair as if I was supposed to hate it or something.  I never really understood it, but after reading the book and hearing about how a lot of people grew up not knowing what to do with their curls that just ended up looking frizzy and poofy I can see how some people would not like having curly hair.  Sure there were times that I wished I had straight hair, and I straightened my hair a handful of times growing up, but all in all I enjoyed my curls.  I came up with my own system of taking care of my hair that very closely resembles the curly girl method outlined in the book.

One of the sections that I enjoyed the most was the one about caring for children who have curly hair.  My daughter Evelyn has soft pretty curls and I want to help her keep them looking nice as she grows up.  The ideas in the book were very helpful.

This book is going back on the shelf to stay there as a reference if I need to look back at something.

Entreleadership (1/44)

Well, my list of books to read has kept growing and growing.  Along with the 44 books on my shelf, I now have at least 10 more that we've acquired that I want to read as well.  The one I just finished is Entreleadership by Dave Ramsey.

This book is written for the business man who wants to know how to better run his business.  I started reading it mostly because I was curious what it was about.  Kevin was further ahead in the book than I was and he kept telling me different concepts he was learning and different ideas he was seeing from t he book.  I wanted to better understand the context of these ideas, so I kept reading.  Then it turned into me just wanting to read the book because I was enjoying it that much.

I can't say this about a lot of books, but this book was one where when I got to the last chapter and finally finished the book, I didn't want it to be over.  I wanted to keep reading stories about Dave's business and hearing about how he chooses to run it.  And that's what is totally awesome about this book.  Dave didn't want to book to be over either.  His publishers told him to cut it off.  So... he put 5 bonus chapters online!  I've printed 3 of them off, because that's all he has on there right now.  I'm looking forward to reading those as well.

This book is a must read for anyone running their own business.  It lays out practical commonsense ways to hire employees, how to compensate them, advertising, staying out of debt in business, and many more topics.  I know Kevin and I will be able to implement many of his ideas into our business.

This book is definitely a keeper.  It will  probably never collect dust on the shelf as I have a feeling we'll be referencing it often.

Trust in Jesus

Finally.  A contemporary Christian music song that has a good clear gospel message and Biblical perspective.  I have to say that this is one of my favorite songs out there lately.

One of these days we all will stand in judgment for
Every single word that we have spoken
One of these days we all will stand before the Lord
Give a reason for everything we’ve done
And what I’ve done is

Trust in Jesus
My great Deliverer
My strong Defender
The Son of God
I trust in Jesus
Blessed Redeemer
My Lord forever
The Holy One, the Holy One

What are you going to do when your time has come
And your life is done and there’s nothing you can stand on
What will you have to say at the judgment throne
I already know the only thing that I can say I

There’s nothing I can do on my own to find forgiveness
It’s by His grace alone I trust in Jesus
Trust in Jesus

Pet Peeve

A pet peeve is a minor annoyance that an individual identifies as particularly annoying to him or her, to a greater degree than others may find it.  [Wikipedia]

I never thought that I really had a pet peeve.  Sure, there have  been little things that bother me, but none that I could classify as a pet peeve.  Well, now I have one. I think I've had it for a while, but I just recently realized it.

My pet peeve is when people leave the windshield wipers going too fast for the amount of precipitation that is falling.

Strange, I know.  I guess that's the thing about pet peeves - I find it annoying to a greater degree than other people do.  I know all of the settings for the windshield wipers in our car.  The fast ones, the slowest ones, and all the ones in between.  If it's just barely raining I'll even go through the extra effort to simply hit the wipers once as needed to keep it clear in order to avoid over wiping. 

I think what made me notice it is that whenever I'm riding in the car with Kevin (who could care less how fast the wipers are moving as long as the window is clear)  I find myself at times asking him to turn the wipers down, or even just reaching over and turning them down myself.  The only way I can not be annoyed by excess windshield wiping is to try to not pay attention to them.  It's hard, and takes self control, but I can sometimes do it.

Cheese in the Living Room

I think Evelyn likes to do all of her naughty things right away in the morning - she must dream about it all night and then try to do as much as she can right away. 

This morning while I was washing dishes I started to wonder why Evelyn was being so quiet in the living room.  I walked into the room to find a bag of shredded cheese dumped all over the coffee table, couch, and floor.  Evelyn was holding the salt grinder - which had signs of being licked and also had cheese on it.  There was also cheese stuck to her face all around her mouth.  Oh how I wish I could find the charger for our camera battery so I could have taken a picture of it all. 

After a little thought, I realized what had happened.  Last night I had to feed Elsie right after supper and so I didn't put the food away right away.  Evelyn must have grabbed the cheese and brought it into the living room while I was busy with Elsie.  We left right away after dinner to visit a friend in the hospital and didn't get back until late.  The cheese sat in the living room all night.  Then in the morning, Evelyn found the cheese again after breakfast when Mommy wasn't around.  Since cheese is one of her favorite foods, what else was she to do but eat it?

Needless to say, it gave me an immediate reason to vacuum our living room which was in dire need of being vacuumed anyway. 

Random Thoughts

Sharp Photo sells life-sized cardboard cutouts.  I'm thinking I should have one made of myself so that I can stand it up in the hallway outside the door to the girls' room during nap time.  That way Evelyn will think I'm standing there and won't get out of her bed.

I ran the dishwasher at our new house today, and it. was. AWESOME.  There was an entire counter full of dishes that disappeared in a matter of minutes.  And I didn't have to wash any silverware. 

Have I mentioned that I hate washing silverware?  I think it's because you wash and wash and wash and your pile of dishes doesn't get any smaller.  You have to wash every nook and cranny of each piece and it just takes a long time. 

We made home made apple cider two days ago.  Man is that stuff good.  Warm it up on a cool fall day and sip away.  I also have 5 more gallons of it in our freezer for the winter. 

I washed 5 loads of laundry today.  What did people do before they had washing machines?  I guess they had a lot less clothes.  I am thankful for my washing machine.  I put in a bunch of dirty clothes, turn a couple of nobs, walk away and a little while later they're all clean.

I've been really emotional lately for no apparent reason.  Yesterday Evelyn pinched her fingers in a closet door and I started crying because she was crying.  Last night my brothers ate some of the pizza I had gotten for our dinner so I didn't get to eat as much as I had wanted to and when I got home that night I cried about that too.  Really?  I cried over pizza?  What's wrong with me?

I ate a salad for lunch today. 

I emptied 3 containers of moldy food out of the refrigerator. 

I like baskets.

Evelyn did a dance while she was eating her lunch meat today.  Kevin and I both laughed at her, but she just kept on boogieing. 

I had to use my spell checker to figure out how to spell that last word.  I don't think I've ever written it before: boogieing.

It's a rainy day here in Eau Claire.  I think I'm going to take a nap while the girls are sleeping and then drink some cider and fold clothes.