God's everlasting love.

If anyone had told me when I was younger that parenting or being a parent got easier as your children grew, I would have embraced them with a big YES!. As I have learned, and many others have also, being a parent doesn't get easier. In some ways it gets harder. Oh, you're not always tagging around with little ones, or sometimes you are. Working with low income families as I do, I encounter many grandparents taking care of or raising the little ones for a variety of reasons. That crosses all income levels.

When our children are small we always strive to do the best we can and give them the best of what we have (that doesn't mean material things). Somewhere along the way we are going to make mistakes, it happens. Hopefully they are obvious mistakes that we can correct. But often there are mistakes we will never be able to put our fingers on, we will only have hindsight to know that something didn't work the way it was suppose to. There comes a point in our child's life as they graduate from high school that we are no longer parenting them. We stand back and bite our tongues and see if we have done enough so they can fly from the nest. It is hard to know when to not give advice, etc. and that we learn also through trial and error. {{Of course still living at home certain behavior is expected ~ but not always received.}} I always strived for what I believed was best for my child (and I have 4) but have found out that was not always the case, according to things said to me. I have, and always will believe in the power of prayer and God's loving and forgiving capabilities. I know as I have prayed for His forgiveness that it comes, I only hope my kids are as forgiving as our heavenly father is.

As my youngest approaches her wedding day (less then 2 weeks), she is looking at life differently. I pray (as I did with my 1st) that she will embrace her new life and her priorities with God's love and blessings. She (they both do) has our blessings.


Matthew 19:4-6

4"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' 5and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh' 6So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

This verse is reflective for both husband and wife.

God is good

"In quietness and confidence shall be your strength" (Isaiah 30:15, KJV).

Psalm 46:10 (NIV)
"Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."

Heavy heart

I went to bed last night with a heavy heart. I feel our country will be in dark times with this new president. I have never felt the burden I do for our country. I cannot rejoice in the policies of this person of his beliefs and his disregard for human life. If you have done your research you know what I mean. I pray for him and his family that they will see the light.

Soon our country will have elected a new president. I am not sure which way it will go, but will be glad when all the political ads are done and no more wasted pieces of paper in the form of political junk mail. I hope that before people voted they did their homework and researched for themselves what the candidates believe, not what the (one sided) media wants you to hear, not what is just being said but really looked at the candidates. With computers is isn't so hard to look up a candidates past in their political career. I hope people really paid attention to what and how things have been presented instead of just joining in and becoming followers.Many things were said months ago that have been denied or I have heard "That's not what I meant" or "That's not what I said." Lots of bull going around. I am what some would call a "conservative Christian". I believe in the word of God, and have hopefully passed this on to my family, (they all believe in God and are Christians) because this is how they were raised. What society dictates is not necessarily or morally what is right or what is in the Bible or how we should believe. It is easy to join the popular crowd and become a follower. An alcoholic or drug addict prefers to hang out with like, so they can justify and feel OK about what they do.. So it is the same in politics. I cannot be politically correct because then I cannot be morally correct and I choose morals over popularity. I choose the side of God. I am tolerant and love a great many people who are living a life away from God. I believe that we are in the world but not of the world, I believe that as Christians we should love the unsaved and we should be tolerant. I hope people choose wisely as they voted.

As a bonus to get people out Starbucks gave a free cup of coffee if you showed you "I voted" sticker. Chick fila (spelling ???) which is new here I heard would give you a free sandwich. We went for the coffee as the other was about 8 miles out of our way.

Busy weekend.

Thursday Oct. 30, I took my class to the pumpkin patch, and I let those who wanted to wear their costumes. We had a lot of fun, the children really enjoyed themselves. I can't post all the pictures but I did put a few in a slide show. We had many parents and some grandparents that went also. They heard the pumpkin story, went through a walk in the woods through spooky buildings a sway bridge, little castles, had breakfast/snack went on a hay ride, through the corn maze and finally got to chose a pumpkin to take home. They were just as excited to ride a "big yellow school bus". What a day. Elizabeth went with me, which was good because one of the little girls in my class is really scared of unfamiliar situations and she held Elizabeth's hand the entire time and I really believe she was able to enjoy herself.

Friday there was no school as it was parent conference day. I did 16 families on Friday and will finish up this coming week. Doing 2 a day after school. After I got home Elizabeth and I packed the car and headed to Eric's for the weekend.

Saturday, Elizabeth and I headed to the Gilroy Outlet stores to do some trusso shopping. I can honestly say that we walked the entire outlet. We got there around 10:00 in the morning and were there until around 4:00. We did manage to find most everything we were looking for, without going into every store there. We signed up and picked up a coupon book before starting our rounds, so there were some good bargains out there. After we were done we headed back to Eric's where we spent the night again. This morning while I was getting ready brother and sister did a little sight seeing around his place. It is a drive off of 101 to get there, but when you are there it is as if you are sitting on top of the world.
The view is magnigicant and breathtaking. Of course Friday we got there after sundown and then it rained quit a bit. Sat. night it was extremely windy and rainy so I didn't get much sleep. But This morning, even with the clouds and fog the view was fantastic. I do think that after I finish getting ready for tomorrow I will hit the sack earlier then usual.

Living Well Wednesdays

I finally lost the 2 pounds I found 3 weeks ago. I find that it takes longer to lose the 2nd time then to refind the lose, once gone ............ (sigh) Still keeping the head up, still trying to focus...On top of wedding plans, I am in the middle of assessments and have parent conferences on the 31st. Also, I have a scheduled field trip to the pumpkin patch next week also and getting those permission slips back is like pulling teeth with some parents. Only once have I had to deny a field trip to a child because I didn't have a permission slip and that truly was a sad experience for me as well as for him. I did get him a pumpkin though. ..The bracket that holds the bar on my husbands side of the closet broke. I have a new bracket, but alas, part of the old one is stuck in the wall. Dan won't be home until tomorrow so he can fix it then, in the meantime half my bed has his shirts laying on it, neatly but still a rather big pile.Life goes on. I start my day with a devotional, it is as if I don't I really can't function as well~ I feel something is missing. I have read some good ones by Elisabeth Elliot, besides what I read on CWO...I am not looking forward to the weather this coming weekend, they are saying 90's. It is October already not July! I enjoy the cooler mornings, I like fall. I miss the colors we saw in the mountains, the foggy mornings when we lived on the coast. Such is life, God had other plans for us so I move on.God Bless

To Cute ♥

more animals

It's not even close to Valentine's day, but this was just to cute to pass on.

Living Well Wednesdays

Refocusing, and I see results

♥ God is good! ♥

Living Well Wednesdays

Time to refocus.

Family Reunion

Some notes of interest as we headed north, Sat., on 152~ how incredibly low San Luis Reservoir is. I don't ever remember seeing it that low, even as a young child.

The overpass and interchange on 152 is almost complete, which will greatly reduce the bottleneck and traffic hang ups when heading towards Monterey or Gilroy ~ or the reverse.

Shortly after arriving at Vasona it poured for several minutes. After that (and more family arrived) the rest of the day was fairly nice and a great time was had by all visiting and catching up on 'family.' This is an annual event that has been going on all my life and this is a first, rain.
Of course I had to take pictures of the little ones climbing trees, and remembering when mine (their mom & siblings) were little ones climbing the trees.

All my kids! To make a long story short it was a lot of fun and so what if we got a little wet, it was well worth it.

I pray for small miracles as loose ends need to be tied up for the wedding. I ran into a friend of mine, whom I hadn't seen for quite sometime, yesterday at the teacher center. Just talking about things (you know) and the wedding. She asked if we had outdoor heaters, so I did mention that Elizabeth had been looking at some. She offered to let us borrow their 2 for the wedding. We went over today for some other business and while there we looked at them. They will be great for the reception. I will call tomorrow and firm the deal, we'll pick them up a few days before, when we set up the tents outside. I told her I had been praying for small miracles and she was an answer to prayer.

My cake

I finished the fondant and gum paste class. This is the first flower, right after I put shimmer dust on it. In total, I made 7 of the carnations.
The cake we chose to decorate has 7 carnations on it, but it was OK to just put on 4 and save the rest (for the bridal shower cake). Here are the 4 on top of the cake, 3 with the pink shimmer dust and 1 with the gold. I will make more for the other cake for a total of 4 pink and 3 gold.

A long shot of the cake, not to bad for a novice. However, it is a little lopsided. The little blue box is a favor box made out of fondant. I may glue one of the daisies I made on top of it and use it as added decor for the shower.
The cake I decorated is going with us on Saturday to a family reunion. The cake is a cinnamon vanilla wedding cake recipe with butter cream frosting (under the fondant). I did enjoy the class and learned how to use fondant and made some flowers and other decorations, not shown. I got a certificate of completion also.

When it is time to eat I will peel the fondant off, it really isn't very tasty mainly just sugar. It makes for great decorations and great looks on cakes. The gum paste is used for the flowers and finer decorations. It doesn't stretch as much and dries hard.

It is suppose to rain this weekend, and we really need the rain. I am hoping is will just be a few showers here and where we are going Sat. as to not spoil the family reunion to much. I am hoping that the rain will stay towards the mountains/sierras and that it will put out the fire in Kings Canyon, which is not aggressively being fought at this time as no people, dwellings, etc. are being threatened. It is being treated as a control burn, I think that is what I heard. However the smoke does blow this way into the valley, and for those with asthma it is bad. For those who don't know the San Joaquin valley is one of the top 3 areas in the U.S. for bad air quality and has an extremely high populous with asthma and other respiratory problems, nothing to brag about. The rain does clear the air and makes life a little easier when you can breath better.

Living Well Wednesdays

I totally forgot to check in last week. I was busy doing something everyday and it didn't hit me until late in the afternoon that it was LWW . That was probably the day I was at the resource center doing stuff for my class. I will say that my weight loss is ok. I haven't focused to much on it as a whole, but do think about it as I eat and I haven't lost or gained for 2 weeks. I have found that thing's I have craved just aren't as appealing lately. I think part of that is how I fix food, and I find as I change that so does my taste (somewhat).

So much to do, so little time.