Newsy items

So, the last few weeks I have been somewhat tired, nauseous at night, having Sarah nurse in the wee hours is annoying, and sometimes a bit painful, my menstrual cycle is wonky a bit anyway, but I missed November. So last week, my best friend gave me some pregnancy tests and I did the pee on the stick thing. Only, these ones were pee in a cup then dip the stick. Well, it was very positive.

I told my dad, and he said, "Oh, oh."  I told Victor's grandmother and she said "You need a bigger house." I told my sister and she said, "Don't you know what birth control is? And what are you going to do about space?"

Anyway, the boys all want twin girls to make it even, boys to girls. Sarah doesn't even know what's happening. And I'm thinking, I don't care, except it's healthy, and I want my appetite back. Every time I get pregnant, it flies out the window for a few months. Not throwing up or anything, just no desire to eat and yet I feel better when I do.

So, there you go, I'm about 10 weeks give or take, my clothes already were tight and getting  more so everyday. I'm trying to up my intake of water, since I tend to not drink enough anyway, as well as wean Sarah off her night sleepy time feeding.

Also, I'm very addicted to Facebook, so tonight I decided, if at all possible , I am not going to read my timeline or my notifications. I will however keep posting things I read in my daily devotions and other readings. And maybe blog more about the things we do. More like journal them. I do have Facebook messenger, if anyone messages me on facebook, I will receive those and respond.

We are planning a Christmas program for next Sabbath at church. The kids will be reading Bible verses from the story of Jesus birth, interspersed with congregational and special songs.

So, this next week, I need to find my sewing boxes, and figure out an angel costume for Sarah, and some shepherd or wisemen costumes for the boys. I have some ideas, just need to see what material I have and get cracking on it!
I am also, with the help of the boys, making some tin can luminaries with tea lights for decorations. I hope they don't look too tacky.

Anyway, I'm meeting with the midwife this weekend for my first prenatal and based on my calculations, we are due around the first or second week of July 2015.

I think that's all, for now. I'm sleepy and it's getting late. I should head off for bed.

Night all!

November doings.

So, we pretty much have been doing the same old doings. Last week, I did a week long walking water drinking challenge with one of my friends. So, I am more motivated now to get out there and do it some more. I am also trying to drink more water.

I want to start a FB group of my own for a challenge. Maybe more of a support group. Where we can tell each other what we did that day for walking and how much we drank. 

I would also like to limit the time I am on FB again, since it is an addiction for me. 

This week, we are starting to get ready for a Christmas program at church. The kids will be singing and reading Bible verses. We are making luminaries out of tin cans and I am going to see if I can make some wings and an angel costume for Sarah. 

We shall see how that goes.

Cooking

Yesterday, I made cookies and turnovers with pumpkin in them. yummy! We ate all of them for breakfast. They were very healthy, as they only had 1/2 cup of sugar in the whole bunch which after we finished the pumpkin filling today was 24 turnovers, and probably 24 cookies. I forgot to count.

Today, we made vegan potato gnocchi which could have been better, but turned out better than last time. It was so good we ate all of it and I made more for Victor since he was late for dinner. 

Lastly, I made homemade bread so Victor won't have to buy food while he is at work the next couple of days. 

Here are the recipes.

Gnocchi

http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/node/3896

INGREDIENTS:

Left-over mashed potato (the drier the better) or the flesh of two or three baked potatoes, mashed without milk or butter

Plain white flour

A little salt and pepper

Serve with a little tomato sauce or vegan pesto, or simply sauté a clove or two of crushed garlic in some good olive oil or vegan margarine and garnish the dish with some chopped fresh herbs. 

METHOD:

Make sure the mashed potato isn’t lumpy and season it with salt and pepper. Put the mash into a large mixing bowl and add several tablespoons of flour. 

Use your hands to mix the potato and flour together and keep adding flour until the mixture comes together as a dough.  Turn the dough onto a floured board and knead it gently, adding more flour as necessary – you will find that the more you squeeze the potato, the more moisture will appear! Once the dough is dry enough to stop sticking to the board, cut it into four portions and gently roll each one into a long ‘snake’. 

Use a sharp knife to chop the snake into short pieces and put these on a floured plate. If they touch each other, they are likely to stick together. 

Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Drop a few gnocchi pieces into the water – not too many, otherwise they may clump. They will sink, and then rise to the surface when they are cooked – this only takes a minute or two. Scoop them out when they are floating. If you need to keep them warm while you finish the cooking, toss them with a little oil to stop them from sticking together. 

Serve with a little tomato sauce or vegan pesto, or simply sauté a clove or two of crushed garlic in some good olive oil or vegan margarine and garnish the dish with some chopped fresh herbs. 

Turnovers 

Kyong Weathersby 

SWEET POTATO TURN-OVER

Filling:

2 - 15 oz can sweet potatoes or 4 cups cooked sweet potatoes

1/2 c turbinado sugar

1/4 tsp sea salt

1 tsp coriander

2 tsp vanilla

Dough:

2 c unbleached white flour

1/4 c wheat germ

1 tsp sea salt

1/2 c vegetable oil

1/2 c hot water

FILLING: If you using canned sweet potatoes, rinse and drain completely. Mix all ingredients and mash until smooth. Set it aside.

DOUGH: Mix all ingredients except canola oil and hot water. Add canola oil and hot water. Mix well with a flour blender or fork. Divide into 12 balls. Flatten and shape into 5" size circles.

TURN-OVER: In the middle of the dough, put a 1 1/2 tablespoonful of the sweet potato filling. Close in half and seal it tight. Lay on an oil sprayed cookie sheet. Prick pastry with fork. Bake at 420 degrees for 12-15 minutes. Delicious!

Original recipe by Kyong C. Weathersby, Author of A Taste of Heaven Cookbooks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6, Delicious Vegan Vegetarian Cookbooks, www.kyongcw.com

Note: I used pumpkin and flax meal instead of sweet potatos and wheat germ. Yummy! 

Cookies

Couponing4you Facebook page

RECIPE OF THE DAY: Healthy cookies!

Ingredients

3 mashed bananas (ripe)

1/3 cup apple sauce

2 cups oats

1/4 cup almond milk

1/4 cup raisins or nuts

1 cup good chocolate chunks

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

Directions

preheat oven to 350 degrees

bake for 15-20 minutes

Cool and Enjoy!

Note: made using oat flour and a little of leftover pumpkin turnover filling instead of applesauce. Used cranberries and a few raisins and sesame seeds. No cinnamon or chocolate chips. Ate the whole batch for breakfast.

The Emerging Church

I thought I would share a few links about the Emerging Church that I found.

It is a very dangerous movement which degrades the gospel message at its core, introducing mysticism and eastern religious theologies. It is basically spiritualism.

This website is one that tries to be unbiased in either direction and just tell what a religion believes, which is why I include it here.

http://carm.org/emerging-church

Then from an Adventist perspective I am including the video series that was done a couple of weeks ago talking about the emerging church and spiritual formation in our churches and schools. 

http://new.livestream.com/saccentral/events/3378356/videos/65251973

This is the first of the series which is all about the emerging church and what it's doing in the Adventist church in particular. The series is called Omega Emerging. There are about 6 or 7 videos. 

I hope others will be able to see how dangerous this movement is and warn others to anchor themselves in Jesus and His Word, because Satan is coming in like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Spiritualism is filling our whole world in television and books, and now even in church. Do not accept it, speak out against it. 

If you want more proof just google Emergent Church, or Spiritual formation and you will find out a lot about it from many different perspectives. Of course we must base our perspective on the Biblical truth perspective.

Isa 8:20    To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Things of October

Wow, it's been over a month since I posted last. Well, I'll try to bring out some of the more interesting things for this month.

Victor spent some time in Kanab this month, so one day we drove over there and visited my friend Amy for a couple of hours.

Sarah is picking up a lot of words and starting to speak in short 2-3 word sentences. She like to talk and sometimes will talk about things for several minutes, some of which is understandable, much of it, not. 

The kids are enjoying the cooler fall weather, spending hours outdoors, creating things, building forts and playing with the neighbor kids in the sand. 

Allergies have been really bad lately. I feel like I have a cold, complete with runny, stuffy nose and sneezing. My eyes get itchy and sometimes watery as well. I finally started taking some herbal allergy supplements that contain stinging nettle which seems to help some, and am going to try to leave out sugar and wheat more. I've kind of gotten back to eating more of those things as they are so yummy! This website gave me some great ideas and maybe some motivation. http://avivaromm.com/3-steps-to-make-your-allergies-go-away-forever

Speaking of motivation, I've found setting the timer for a few minutes helpful to get some cleaning done. Another thing I do to motivate myself off the couch is to take the kids for a walk or go to the park when they start acting hyper or fussy. It's a distraction for both of us. 

Today we went to the park. The kids and I played tag with the dog and much to my surprise, he chased John on command after I tagged him. For a few minutes anyway. Then when he was tired out he came and 'asked' to go home. So, we came home. Poor dog. We don't pay enough attention to him.

Last week, I had the sermon for church. I was supposed to do it earlier in the summer, but things got switched around, and then our pastor left to go to seminary, so for the summer we did a DVD series. So, I was pushed out til October. But it was actually better that way, because as the summer progressed and I had more time to study and pray on it, the Lord impressed me in a more focused and slightly different direction than I originally planned to go. I will share some of what I talked about maybe in a later post.

Also, this week I got to see an awesome weekend series that was speaking out against spiritual formation and the Emergent Church movement. Basically, this movement is dealing in spiritualism, mysticism, and eastern religious practices, but they are renaming and repackaging them  and bringing them into many Christian churches and schools. It degrades the work of the Holy Spirit and the Bible doctrines, particularly justification by faith and is very dangerous. 

We started a Sabbath afternoon study group at our house and so far have two people attending. One is a Lutheran who left his church a few months ago, because they weren't teaching Bible prophecy. The other guy loves Bible prophecy and end times, and wants to study more . So we have been having some good discussions, so far.

Jesus is coming soon. I hope people realize that, and that their only hope of Heaven is the faith of Jesus and His righteousness. Things are moving very quickly now, as Satan knows his time is short and is working very hard to deceive the world into following him. But we know that God's Word is true and that He is in control and will bring His people through to the end. 

Life

I haven't posted much except my challenge for the last month or so, but here I am. It's half way through September  and I'm just now getting back to this.  

The kids and I have been keeping up with school and Victor is in Moab til next week, working his tail off to pay the bills. It's been nice and cool with some rain which is good for the garden. 

We had some crazy rain this month. Washing out roads and stranding people for hours until other routes could be opened. The interstate was shut down for a couples days and then partially reopened. It's still not completely fixed but at least people can get through without having to travel around extra miles. 

At church, I've had to run the sound system for the most part with Victor gone. So I did double duty playing the piano and also going back to run power points and videos for people. Yesterday, the sermon was all on PowerPoint but we have a remote, so I just sat in the back to make sure it ran smoothly. 

In the afternoon, after lunch, my friend Amy stayed awhile and we visited a little bit. She was just getting ready to go, as the boys were making some tea. Josh handed me a hot cup to taste to see if it had enough sweetener in it, which I then set on the kitchen counter. I turned to say goodbye to Amy and all of a sudden there was a blood-curdling scream. Sarah had climbed up in the stool to taste the tea, too, and poured some down her front. It was scalding hot.

Now, that it's over, I almost could cry thinking about it. I pulled her shirt off really fast and took a wash cloth with cool water and put it on her chest. It was very red. 

I grabbed the Lavender essential oil, (thank God for Oils!) and poured a bunch all over. Then we put the cool cloth back on. Amy had brought some frozen juice and flax milk for us, so she grabbed the milk out of the fridge and we put it on Sarah's chest to keep the cloth cool. 

Long story short, Amy suggested we should go to the Insta-care and have it looked at because it was starting to blister. The doctor said it was about 15-20% of her body, so he said to give her lots of fluids, and put silvadine cream mixed with numbing cream all over with a bandage and keep an eye on it so it doesn't get infected.

So we stopped by the pharmacy and got what we needed and I added lavender oil to the mix as well. The doctor said to give her some ibuprofen for the pain as well, but I only gave her a little last night as she didn't seem to be in a lot of pain by then. 

Gods remedies really do help. I am amazed at the way it works. Today, I have had to rebandage her twice because she gets excited and runs around and it comes off, but she hasn't had any pain medicine except what is in the cream. 

I will try to remember to add a picture later tomorrow when I changed her bandage. It is a lot less red then it was yesterday and most of it didn't blister at all, for which I am thankful.

I am very impressed with the effectiveness of the lavender and also very thankful for my great friend Amy, who was there to help and watched the boys for me while I was in with Sarah at the Insta-care.

Anyway, I can't say enough about how wonderful the essential oils are and how many uses they have. We have used them for so many things, improving our health in different ways. If you want to check out essential oils, you can visit my website at www.youngliving.com/sasekvj . There are many places to get essential oils, but Youngliving is where I get mine from and I've been really impressed with the quality as well as the pricing.

Anyway, that's our adventure for the weekend. Time to head for bed!

Challenges report end of August

Well, I managed to curb my sugar intake for a couple of weeks and then kind of fell off the wagon. But it's ok, because i noticed that I don't crave it so much now. 

I didn't get as much walking in as I hoped I would, but I did do more swimming. We've gone swimming almost everyday that it wasn't raining, except for a few days. 

I stayed off Facebook until Sabbath the 30th. Having spent so much time off, I went into it expecting to binge on it. However, I found that it wasn't as appealing to me. I can get sucked into reading comments and debates about stuff, but is realized that there was so much junk and negativity and drama, that I am not so likely to jump on there. I'm hoping that I can now keep it to a minimum. Just a quick peek for messages and maybe a status update or two, rather than every time that I am bored. 

Today, we jumped into more schoolwork and pulled some weeds in the garden. I pulled some ragweed and now am paying for it with itchy eyes, sneezing and sinus drainage. We went swimming and had some fun. Now the kids are all in bed and Victor is out of town working, so I am sitting here watching a movie. By myself. With the cat, in the living room.

Maybe I'll get to bed early tonight. Or at least on time. I managed to get more water in today. Having a chart helps since I like more checkmarks.

Well, that's my update. Later.