HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Hoping everyone has a great Thanksgiving Day with family, friends, and all of thier wonderful blessings to remember! I have so many things to be thankful for - I don't even know where to start!! God is good!

Here's a fun little Thanksgiving questionairre:

1) What are your plans for Thanksgiving Day

• Fun cooking with Mom (We always save some things to do together for old times sake)
• Enjoy time with family (My grandpa moved here from North Carolina in Sept, this will be our first Thanksgiving with him EVER! God is good!)
• Yummy Thanksgiving Food!
• Look through all of the fun sale ads and dream! :)

2) Does your family have any Thanksgiving traditions?

• Um, not anything substantial! We do always find some reason to go to Kmart that day, though! LOL! It's the only store open that day, and we always find a reason to go... I think after all of the eating, we get stir crazy! :) So I'm sure we'll end up there. But no sentimental traditions to speak of!

3) Of all the things that you are most thankful for in your life, what are the most important?

• God's hand in our lives, every minute of every day. I am finding myself more and more aware of it - and I'm so thankful for that! (Jeremiah 29:11)
• I am so thankful for my husband. I always worried how my independent life would "mesh" with someone elses, but man, I can't imagine my life without this man! So God knew the exact match for me! I'm so thankful for that!
• I'm thankful for my son, Nathan! I love him so much! I can't believe how much he's growing up, and I'm enjoying every stage and watching him loving life! :) Oh what fun it is to be a kid!! :)
• I'm so thankful for my parents and my grandpa! We're so blessed to have them!! I'm so glad to have my Grandpa here in California, too!
• I'm so grateful for our Pastor and Pastor's wife, we are truly blessed to have them in our lives. I've never learned so much and been empowered to go so deep in God before and WOW!! - We are blessed!
• I'm thankful for great friends! We are truly BLESSED! We thank God for you!
• I'm so thankful for our home...when I see what's happening with the market and all of the people losing thier homes, it just makes me so much more grateful for our home! I love my home and I never want to take it for granted!
• I'm so very thankful for the peace of God that passes all understanding. I haven't always had that and boy what a change it has made in my life to CLAIM that peace in all circumstances!
• Lastly, but not leastly, I thank God for my precious little dog! Those of you that spend any time with me know how much this baby girl means to me.. but she sure deserved to be mentioned on my "Thankful list"!

I could clearly go on and on.. but I'll stop here!

Love to all!

What economy problems??

With all of the recent focus on our economy, before and after the recent election, it's been easy to get a little anxious about what the future holds financially. I couldn't help but share this scripture passage, because it's had me so excited today! :) It's so exciting to know that if we are living for God, we don't have to worry about any of that!!! I love how we can stand on God's promises, because the things of this world don't have to affect us negatively!!

Deut 28:1-14

28:1 If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.

2 All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God:

3 You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.

4 The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock--the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

5 Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.

6 You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.

7 The LORD will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven.

8 The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.

9 The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways.

10 Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you.

11 The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity--in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground--in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you.

12 The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none.

13 The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom.

14 Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them. NIV

Man, I sure do love the WORD! :)

A fun weekend!!

Last Friday Night our church youth group had the opportunity to go and minister at Boomers. For those of you that aren't from here, it's a little fun park (bumper cars, miniature golf, laser tag, arcades, etc). Wow what a fun time we had in worship, right out there in a public venue! It was so empowering to see what God can do, anywhere & anyplace. I've attached some pictures... because I just had to share!

Here's the group on stage!

That's my man on guitar!! & My dear friend Heather on keyboard! :)

Amazing Worship!

Youth Pastor, Dave!!

The kiddos had a blast! :)

Be careful what you ask for....

WOW... I really didn't expect the election to go the way it did tonight. I guess I was naive. I fear the CHANGES coming to our country.

Though there are alot of changes politically, it's not those that I worry about. It's the spiritual implication of what's coming. Tonight the only way I can find peace is to remember what it says in Romans 13 about "all governments being placed in power by God". I know in the rest of my life, I completely trust that God has a plan, that even I may not understand... so why not now.

I know that we shouldn't be afraid.. Luke 21:28 "When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."NIV I believe God want's us to have peace in HIM as we see the end drawing near. We can delight in his protection!

So since it's late, and I need my sleep.. my current plan of action is, increase my prayer time, take a deep breath and say, Greater is HE......

Just checking in...

God is GOOD! I haven't had time to write, because life has been busy this week, but I had to take a quick moment and give GOD the praise for what he is doing in our lives this week!

The Big Fresno Fair

Yesterday, My friend Heather (Who also homeschools her son) and I decided to take a haitus from school and do a field trip to the Fresno Fair. Wow.. it was fun, we got to see everything and the crowds didn't seem to be too bad since we went during the day. We enjoyed going through all of the awesome commerce building exibits and SHOPPING.... they have so much fun stuff in there. We fell in love with these chinese head massagers, which I can imagine would lessen a headache anyday... of course we both needed one. Ha ha

The boys and Trinity loved the play area so much, wow, they have really expanded that. It was alot of fun for them. Then we went to the animal section. We saw some of the most interesting chickens... some of thier feather paterns are down right stylish! WOW.. I couldn't believe how cool some of them looked! (See pictures).. They needed accessories! We also had the opportunity to see 3 little JUST born lambs... awwww.. I could have stayed in that area all day.

All in all, it was a great day and a very successful fieldtrip. It was educational for the boys, they got to pan for gold... they loved that. They had alot of amazing tidbits about the different plants or animals to share from thier studies. So it was a good day and I am so thankful that we have the opportunity to do things like this. We are blessed and God is good!

God answers prayer - But why not the way I want Him to?

I was looking through some old things, and ran onto this article that I had saved.... it spoke to me all over again. I thought I'd share.

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God answers prayer! The beauty of God answering prayer is just that; He answers us! God, in His ultimate and unfailing love desires nothing less than our absolute best. Sometimes, what we think is best is definitely not beneficial for us. Often, we aren't able to see that until time passes and we can look back and see how the situation played out. God knew what was best for us all along!

If a father takes his daughter into a candy store and tells her she can have anything she wants, the little girl would walk wide-eyed into the store eyeing all the sweet treats. The father, knowing his daughter is allergic to chocolate, wouldn't offer her a chocolate bar even if she asked for it. Does the father not care about his daughter's desire? No, the father is bearing the responsibility of parenting and doing what is best for the child.

In this same way, God always answers our prayers with our best interest at heart. God stands to gain nothing from us, but we stand to gain everything from Him!

So, next time you fail to get the answer you want or the next time you feel like God is simply being quiet, set your concerns aside and trust Him. With time, you'll see His protection and divine hand in your situation.

1 John 5:14-15 says, "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him."

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“Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.” - Oswald Chambers

Trying this out.. :)

This is my official first attempt at blogging, a friend suggested that I wasn't keeping her informed enough! LOL! :) It's hard with busy lives these days, but that's no excuse!

Let's see... my days are taken up with homeschooling mostly, but there is alot of great stuff going on. The biggest new thing is Nathan and I just returned from North Carolina to pick up my grandpa and move him to California! That was great fun, and I am so happy to have him here! :)We had a fun trip, made alot of good memories, and saw some pretty crazy bugs.. (definitely worth mentioning)

I'll try to start posting regularly, but here's a start..

I'll also post some pictures from our trip to NC.