A Lesson in Math

Where He Leads

Shelbie has started a blog so she will be able to put to words this journey the Lord is taking her on. Please go and check it out and above all please continue to keep her in your prayers!

http://shelbiesstory.blogspot.com/

Multitude Monday

771. A play day at the park

772. A stroll thru the garden department

773. The smell of fresh cut wood 774. Partners in crying

775. My wonderful amazing awesome incredible husband

776. Boxes to organize

777. This speaks for itself

778. Late nights making cake pops

779. Watching God move

780. Strange boys

May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works.
Psalm 104:31

Zambia or Bust

Shelbie has been accepted as an intern for Every Orphans Hope and will be going to Zambia this summer. She will be doing a series of fundraisers for this trip.

Shelbie has been making cake pops, cake balls, and cake in a jar. Give into your sweet tooth! The cake balls and pops are sooooo yummy! If your interested please leave a comment and we'll hook you up! :o)

Starting today Shelbie is starting the next of her fund raisers. Today is day 1 of her AVON fund raiser. Go to www.youravon.com/kfreed and order your Avon online. Go click on the online events tab and enter the promo code SHELBIE2012 so she will get credit for your orders. This fundraiser only goes for two weeks so please pass this link on to anyone you think may be interested!

I’ll be updating as she moves on to different fund raisers. Please keep Shelbie in your prayers. She has a long way to go in a short amount of time.

Water Crystals and Words

A friend sent me a really cool link about water crystals. A Japanese researcher, Masaru Emoto, studied frozen water crystals. He realized that it was in the frozen crystal form that water showed us its true nature.

Mr Emoto took water samples from around the world, slowly froze them, then photographed them with a dark field microscope with photographic capability. As each water crystal is unique, around 90 photos would be taken of the same water source, and the water crystal photo that represented the majority would be chosen.

Generally, clean healthy water creates beautifully formed geometrical crystals, while polluted water is too sick to form any crystals at all. Here are some of his pictures.

        

Yusui Moutain Spring, Japan              Fountain in Lourdes, France     

           

Mt Cook Glacier, New Zealand        Polluted water - Yodo River, Japan

Isn’t this amazing? It gets even more amazing though!

The next few photos are of water exposed to different types of music. Distilled water would be placed in a bottle between two speakers and specific music would be played for one hour. The water was then frozen and photos taken.

           

Bach's Air for the G String                         Kawachi Folk Dance    

              

             Music for Healing                                Heavy Metal Music                    

Mr Emoto decided to see how thoughts and words affected the formation of untreated distilled water crystals.
This was done by typing words onto paper, then taping the paper onto glass bottles overnight.

          

               'Thank you'                                          'Love and appreciation'

'You make me sick, I will kill you'

Isn’t this incredible?  The negative words look very similar to the polluted water above. The bible tells us that the tongue has the power of life and death and it appears that science is backing the bible up! So how can this possibly effect us? Since the human body is made up of 70% water what we say and what is spoken to us can effect us not just mentally and emotionally but physically. Have you ever met someone who is a negative Nellie? How many times are these people riddled with health problems? Have you spent time with someone who is like this and you walk away feeling mentally and physically drained? I have! There are certain people who just drain me when I’m with them for a length of time. This study has me doing all sorts of thinking on what I say to my family and others. I don’t want my words to be poison to someone else but rather build them up and encourage them mentally and emotionally and if this study holds even an ounce of truth then I want my words to be healing to the body.

Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

Proverbs 12:18

Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s day is a big day around here. Shadd was awake at 3:30 in the morning working on decorating the dining room light and distributing his Valentine cards to everyone’s bed. He wanted to make sure that he was the first one to pass his out. (Isn’t this so sweet? Shadd's sweet decorations... see picture to the left!)

My little girls could hardly contain their excitement as they waited and asked every two minutes, “is it time to go to the party yet??” They had been invited to a Valentine Party at a sweet friends house and were beyond excited. (Thank you Rose Ann!! You’re wonderful!) They ate lots of yummy treats and did an adorable project. My friend Rose Ann is so crafty and clever!

When we came home my honey had donned an apron and was in the kitchen whipping up an amazing cake and working on his annual Valentine dinner for us. Many years ago he claimed this as his night to fix us dinner. Every year he asks me what I would like, this year I chose fajitas. (I try to make it something not to hard for him. lol I guess I should get him a more manly apron for his annual cooking night so he won’t have to wear the girl’s apron. )

My sweet inlaws came over for a while and brought the kids cards and chocolate. I should mention that by this time my girls were on a pretty good sugar high. These are the same little girls who don’t eat all to much sugar…This is going somewhere so stay posted.

Dinner was amazing and the cake was incredible. Layers of chocolate with cherry filling and homemade frosting…I had no idea my man could cook like this, of course it has taken 21 years to perfect this!

During dinner we listened to a playlist Shaylah created of love songs. After dinner we talked Shaylah into playing her guitar for us. Put an apron on Shannen and help out! Notice his awesome shirt?

Our table all prettied up!

So remember when I said stay posted? On the way home from the Valentine party a certain little girl was pounding away all her candy when I warned her she may want to go easy or she would end up feeling icky later……

This same little girl ended up with a terrible tummy ache and felt like she was going to throw up. After hanging her head over the toilet for a while she finally fell asleep…………………………………………………………

Like this!

A good day was had by all…I think!

Happy Valentine’s Day!!

Multitude Monday

761. Little chore helpers

762. Pink and blue hair color

763. History movies with Daddy

764. Serious Monopoly games

765. Little girls and pearl necklaces

766. Plastic letters

767. Arms flapping on the way to wash his hands (boys are so strange. lol)

768.  New tongue tricks

769. Cake pops

770. Canning jars

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
1 Corinthians 13:4

Your Past

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
2 Corinthians 5:17

Things that make me smile

Shylie girl, still in jammies, out helping in the chicken coop.

The Question

To poop or not to poop…that is the question! 

Did I actually just say that?? Why, yes I did! C’mon people, we’re not in high school anymore! People get all weirded out when we start talking about something that should be part of a normal functioning body. Anyone who knows me well knows that this is one of my favorite subjects to talk about, much to the horror of my children!

The standard American diet, also known as the S.A.D. diet, is so devoid of fiber and good nutrition that many American’s don’t have a bowel movement everyday and for some they may skip a day or even days! Yikes!

Let me give you some basic anatomy about your body. From the point food enters your body to when it exits your body is about a 30 foot journey. During this journey your food goes thru your esophagus,which is the first stage of digestion where your saliva enzymes start breaking down your food. It then goes on to your stomach where it is further digested and then released to your small intestine. Here hormones are released to stimulate your liver and gallbladder to release bile and these hormones also stimulate your pancreas to produce pancreatic juices to further digest our food. At the end of the small intestine there is a small valve which opens to allow the food to pass to the large intestine which is also known as our colon. The colon is about 5 feet long. If memory serves me well I think there may be a Magic School Bus episode on the body. Maybe I’ll have to check this out again for my kiddos.

Another interesting piece of info is that 80% of your immune system in your g.i. tract. With this being the case it is no wonder why more disease starts in this one area of our bodies more than any other. Did you know that colon cancer kills 400% more people than aids or breast cancer? Wowsers! This is why we have to put on our big boy/girl pants and not be shy talking about POOP! Shall we practice saying this together so we can grow comfortable with this word? Poop, bowel movement, bm, down loading a mega byte, taking the brown’s to the superbowl, laying a cable…oh, I think a few of those lovely terms came from my brother who loves to get a reaction from my boys! Since I have a little 3 year old who calls it poop I’ll just stick with that.

Medical statistics tell us the EVERY human will develop some kind of colon disease, polyp, tumor or colon cancer in their lifetime.  Does that scare you?  It certainly causes me to take notice of this.  If you don’t go poop 2 – 3 times a day then you are just another typical American suffering from chronic constipation. There should be 3 trains “in” and 3 trains “out” a day.

A couple of weeks ago on a popular Dr show on t.v. they were discussing this subject and the so called “expert” said that once every other day was “normal”. Really??? O.K. I know I didn’t go to school for half my lifetime but if this is normal then where is everything going that we are putting into our bodies? We eat 3 meals a day, right? Shouldn’t we also be evacuating 3 times a day?

Obviously the idea of colon cancer is frightening enough to make us want to do something but there is a whole list of other not so fun symptoms from being constipated (and yes, that is what you are if you are not going 2 – 3 times a day!):

• Frequent headaches
• Skin problems (ie. eczema, acne, hives, psoriasis, etc...)
• Bloating, Gas, Excessive Belching
• Bad Breath
• Weak or brittle hair and nails
• Breathing difficulties (ie. asthma) or sinusitis
• Fatigue and lethargy
• Sugar cravings
• Candida overgrowth
• Yeast infections
• Food or Environmental Allergies
• Anxiety or depression
• Memory loss or learning disabilities
• Mood swings
• Frequent colds or infections
• PMS or bad menstrual cramps
• Arthritis
• Prostate problems
• Back pain
• Parasites (can we say eeww!)

The colon is a hotspot for triggering illnesses and there are many illnesses and prescriptions that interfere with the colon doing the job its designed to do. So what are we to do…poop of course! How do we actually do this though when we are having issues in this area to begin with. This really depends on how serious a person is about being healthy! Don’t forget that 80% of your immune system is in your digestive system!

Some simple things to do are drink more water, lots of water! Most Americans pass up water for tea, soda, coffee’s, and many other drinks. A good rule of thumb is to divide your body weight by 2 and that is how many ounces of water we should drink daily.

Fiber…duh, I know, this is obvious. Again, how many Americans pass up fruits and vegetables for chips and cookies. We need fiber to help keep that train a movin.  Smoothies are simple way to sneak this in. Shyloh say’s my smoothies scare her.  Besides the fruit I put in I’ll add leafy greens (it looks scary but you can’t taste it) and I also ad flax seed.  You can sneak flax seed in almost anything! Trust me, I’ve done it!  I can’t say more than that since my children may at some point read this…I’d be busted.

There are also some great supplements you can take such as psyllium seed (not husk but the seed) This lovely little seed acts as a scrub brush and gets into your colon and helps scrub all that old yucky stuff off your colon walls. When that is left to build up over time you can end up with a not so fun little problem called diverticulitis. Just saying the word hurts.

Exercise is another relatively easy way to get things moving. Even just adding walking or some simple stretching to our day helps get things going and its also great to keep our lymphatic systems moving as well. We just have to do it, not keep talking about it!

If a change in water and eating habits, exercise and extra flax or psyllium seeds don’t get things going then you may need to pull out the big guns: a colon cleanse. I know that the thought of this is enough to make a grown man cry but let’s weigh our options….colon disease or health. Hmmm…seems simple enough to me. I’ve done a colon cleanse a few times. It’s AMAZING!! Really it is! You feel lighter, healthier, have more energy, and it’s pretty neat to look at that scale when your done.  Constipated Americans can easily carry around an extra 10 – 15 pounds in old fecal matter. GROSS!!

There are some amazing products out there. Watch out for the flashy ones that promise you the world for only 3 small payments of…(fill in the blank) I’ve used Dr. Shultz products in the past and they are wonderful and actually give all the results they promise and then some. Western Botanicals also has some great colon cleaning products that I think work wonderful too. For those who are brave or just a bit crunchy you can even put your own product together for good results.  I like to buy my own herbs and capsule them myself to save money. Mountain Rose Herbs and More Than Alive are great resources for this. Hopefully you are encouraged to get your train moving if they are having some delays or are at a stand still at the moment.

Do we need more practice getting comfortable with this word? Once more, all together now…poop, poop, poop! Good job! Now go do it!

Baked Oatmeal

We eat lots of oatmeal around here and it’s fun to shake it up a bit and serve it different ways.  This is one of our favorite oatmeal recipes.  We make two large pans and never have leftovers! This is Shannen’s famous recipe that he so graciously let me share!

Baked Oatmeal

• 3 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 3/4 cup dried cranberries (you can also use regular or yellow raisins…if you’re really feeling spicy you can do a combination of these!)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. In a large bowl, mix together oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Beat in milk, eggs, melted butter, and vanilla extract. Stir in dried cranberries. Spread into a 9x13 inch baking dish.

3. Bake in preheated oven for 40 minutes.

Serve warm!

Multitude Monday

751. New boots to stomp around in the garden

752. Pink watches

753. Cotton headed ninny muggins
(a “naughty” word used by a lady at the retirement home )

754. Ice-cream before dinner

755. Remembering a summer of sweet babies

756. Dirty Converse

757. Hot baths

758. Tiny girl playing the piano...it’s beautiful music to the ear!

759. My wishing well…made years ago by my sweet father in law.
I felt so loved.

760. Football season being OVER!

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
Psalm 139:9-10