Jack Frost

Jack Frost has decided to visit Colorado!  It is 8 degrees!  This is colder that normal!  The squeak of the snow under my feet and the bite on my nose from the cold, cold air reminds me of growing up in Minnesota!  I am a wimp when it is this cold...unless of course, I was ice fishing or 4-wheeling or something fun like that.   This week we had the carbon monoxide detector go off......furnace is dead!   Our pickup truck is broke....needs a new rear end, and is too old to put a lot of money in.   "when it rains in pours"   So today I will look at the positive..... The new heater is in and working great!  We had enough money to get one.  Even if Christmas will be slim this year, we are all warm and full and have warm running water!  Even though we are down to one car for a bit,  I am glad I can still walk the dog and get on the floor to play with the little kids!  So whether I like Jack Frost or not he sure is very pretty!

My kids

There was no such thing as a blog when my kids were little.  So here are some "Then & Now" pictures of them.  They are too old for me to write about them all the time!  LOL!

Kids!

Here are my daycare kids....helping their parents raise the next generation!

Understanding Women!

A man was walking along a beach and stumbled across an old lamp. He picked it up, rubbed it and out popped a genie. The genie said "You released me from the lamp, blah blah blah. This is the fourth time this month and I'm getting a little sick of these wishes so you can forget about three. You only get one wish!" The man sat and thought about it for a while and said, "I've always wanted to go to Hawaii but I'm scared to fly and I get very seasick. "Could you build me a bridge to Hawaii so I can drive over there to visit?" The genie laughed and said, "That's impossible! Think of the logistics of that! How would the supports ever reach the bottom of the Pacific? Think of how much concrete! How much steel! You're going to have to think of another wish." The man agreed, and tried to think of a really good wish. Finally, he said, "Any girfriend that I have ever had always say that I don't care and that I'm insensitive. So, I wish that I could understand women. I want to know how they feel inside and what they're thinking when they give me the silent treatment. I want to figure out why they're crying, know what they really want when they say 'nothing', and know how to make them truly happy." The genie paused for a while and said, "How many lanes do you want on that bridge?"

Life.

How can I put this into words?  I have had my share of struggles along the way of life, struggles caused by my own mistakes or bad decisions.  Or struggles that just happened.

  Oh---- on the outside everything looks great and perfect I suppose.  But on the inside I have found myself, angry, bitter and extremely hard hearted. My way of building walls to protect myself.   Over the last few years or so I have really been working on this.  Taking a real good look at myself.  I am thankful, for I can now feel my heart softening, the bitterness going away, the anger not as profound!!  This is a GOOD thing!  Under pressure, your faith-life is forced to show its true colors...and mine was not very pretty.   But you know what? The color is becoming prettier every day!   For I know,  that God is in complete control of this world and He loves me!   My life is not by random chance, fate or luck.....it is fully planned,,, planned out by God.  All my mistakes, hurts, struggles, illness, pain, divorce, debt, death of  loved ones, addictions of any kind,  what ever it is, for you or me....good can come out of it.  If  I become a better person or a more sympathetic person or if I can help someone else because of my life story.....than that is Good coming out of something bad.  So I can actually say as hard as life can be sometimes...I am thankful because through the toughest stuff....(once I got rid of my stubbornness) I am like a jewel...shaped with a hammer and chisel.  The hammer wasn't strong enough to chip off the rough edges, out came the sledgehammer,  if that wasn't strong enough...out came the jackhammer!  okay, okay,  I got it! Easy does it.  God is refining me into what he wants me to be and that makes me thankful.  

Can't eat enough.....Drink'em!

Drink up your fruit and veggies!  I do pretty good job drinking enough water....but fruit and veggies?  I eat salads and steamed veggies....but a lot of the fruit just doesn't tasted that great to me so several weeks ago I invested in a really good blender....so now to be disciplined to drink them....this morning I ate

1 small apple, core and all

1 small pear, core and all

1 small orange everything but the peel!

a few blueberries and raspberries

1/2 a banana

and some spinach

pretty good but would be better with Half and Half poured in with some sugar!  Ha-ha-ha!

Oh well.......trying to feed my body healthy!

Me....clip coupons!??????

So, I am the worst shopper when it comes to groceries.  I do make a list, but only of the things I don't want to forget.  Then I just go about getting everything else I need as I walk down the isles. The only good thing I do is, keep with in a certain amount! Recently I have been trying to clip coupons to save money and spend less than what I budget for!

This does NOT come natural for me. In fact I think it is a pain!  So this morning I went through all the adds in the paper,  planned my meals according to what is on sale, ( this is a real pain to me too!) and now I am ready to head to the store.  Grocery shopping is one of my least favorite things to do.  So I am going to see how much I save.  Maybe that will make it more fun.......If anyone has any tips on saving $$$$ at the grocery store......HELP!!!!!