Well...I've been pretty inconsistent with my blogging, but today I harvested some of my beeswax. What a job! I filled a quart and 1/2 pot and produced about 1/4 cup of usable wax. Next, I have to find something to store my unrefined wax in. I have about 5 plastic grocery sacks full of wax/comb. Then I have to decide which recipe I want to try first. I probably need to melt more wax for a couple of my recipes, but from what I understand, it doesn't take much to harden an oil based mixture.
First on my list is deodorant and something called "love butter". The love butter is supposed to be a great moisturizer and non-toxic 
.
I'm so busy working on the forum these days, I barely have time to be a wife and mommy much less get on here and say something inspirational or wise and I've never been much at writing memoirs. I tried keeping a diary when I was younger. The best I could do was to list all the guys that I had kissed (or wanted to) 
. Not much for keeping track of daily events. HAHAHA. Anyway, I really would love any of you who like to visit my blog, to come and see the forum. It's a great forum. I was member 34 back in April '06 and now we have over 1000 members. It's growing by leaps and bounds not only in persons, but in health info and wisdom and I've even made a handful of friends that I can chat with on the phone and who knows, maybe even visit someday. I've also made a couple of friends who actually live within a few miles of my house. It's a lot of fun, and tons of helpful info for raising a happy and healthy family. Come see us when you can. Visit or join, it's up to you and for now it's free and except for a couple of ads for their sister sight "Beeyoutiful.com" and another site owned by a sibling "bulkherbstore.com" it's ad free - no yucky pop-ups or advertisements.
http://welltellme.com/discuss/index.php.
Be blessed.
DOING YOUR JOB
I have this crazy habit of speaking in metaphors. Some tell me it's a real talent and others think it's kind of weird. Nonetheless, I use metaphors to teach my children about things that I think are important. Today I was talking to my teenage daughter about marriage and being grown up and I shared something with her that I discovered a couple of days ago. She was very impressed and thought that I should share it with you, so...here goes.
I love my life as a wife and a mother, but sometimes doubts creep in and make me wonder, "am I doing enough?". I mean, we are supposed to be leading people to Christ. This is our "purpose" in life, but as a wife and a mother, my main “job“ is taking care of my husband and raising my babies. Shouldn't I be more involved in this activity or that ministry? Some actually are and find that they don't have enough time after ministry to do the mundane of taking care of their family, but they reason that their "purpose" is more important than their "job".
Yesterday I was watching "Reading Rainbow" with my 4 year old and they were telling the kids about bees. They told about how some bees do nothing but repeatedly flap their wings in order to regulate the temperature in the hive. Talk about mundane. Other bees, gather food. Some build cones and attend to the baby bees as they hatch while others hover around and protect the hive from predators and other "robber" bees.
Then the announcer said something that really caught my attention. He said the main "purpose" of the bees was to pollinate flowers so that they would reproduce and grow more flowers. Whoa! Think about that. Their main "purpose" is to pollinate flowers, but their "job" has nothing to do with flowers whatsoever. Their main "job" is to make baby bees. Everything they do, regulating temp, gathering food, building cones, protecting the hive, etc is all about making baby bees, but when the bees do their "job", their "purpose" fulfills itself quite naturally and easily.
Wow! That was quite a picture for me. My main "job" in life is to care for my family, but when I love my family, and teach my children and let others see me doing this, my "purpose" (to win others to Christ) comes naturally and easily for two main reasons. The first reason and most obvious, would be that I will win my children to Christ. The second and somewhat less obvious reason would be that extended family and friends, neighbors, etc, will see my functioning happy family and want what I have. Then they will see Christ and want Him too.
Now if you back up to the bees a second. Stop and think, if the bees decided that they should take their focus away from their "job" -- away from making baby bees -- and place it on their designated "purpose" –- pollinating flowers -- because it's more important, what would happen? This generation of bees would pollinate many flowers and when they were gone?
Everyone have a blessed day!
Praise the Lord for my not-so-perfect-husband. If he were perfect, what would he want with a fool like me?
Still fighting fleas, but my ankles are clearing up. Now they are mostly concentrated in the bedroom, since the cats like to sleep in our bed. So now, they are biting me in places I'd rather not mention - HAHA!
A hint to those who ever experience fleas, the biggest factor in fighting them is to vacuum frequently and to discard all vacuum contents immediately, either in a sealed plastic bag or in the burn pile. The salt helps keep the population down in the carpet. My biggest challenge has been getting them to stay off the cats, but I'm still working on it.
The bee population is dwindling, but not gone. We forgot to turn the bug zapper on Saturday during the garage sale, and the bees were swarming my customers - yippee! I almost knocked an old lady down, trying to swat a bee off her. She didn't even speak English, and probably thought I was trying to take her money or something - Oh my!
My kids are healthy, smart and well behaved. I keep noticing how well behaved and have to thank the Lord for His divine hand in it! I try to be a good mom, but no matter how hard I try, I always come up short, but........
"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."
~Phillipians 4:13
Everyone have a blessed day!
The streaking (of the hair) was put off indefinitely. According to hair consultants, my hair would turn pink if I tried to streak it burgundy, so I just settled for touching up my roots as light as I could get them. Good enough!
My computer took a full dive a couple of weeks ago. Did alot of research and made alot of phone calls and did everything I could think of to fix it - to no avail. We finally went to Best Buy and bought a new hard drive and installed it. After this little fiasco, I could now open a shop and build and fix computers for a living. Geeeez. The good news is no files lost. I still have everything and an extra 120 GIG to boot!
Even so, I'm so busy these days with babysitting and fixing up the new house, I don't spend alot of time on the computer and I've gotten back into a spurt of reading fiction. I read my "Help Meet" book twice already and decided to rest my brain for awhile.
Still babysitting my sister-in-law's 3 kids and I guess will continue to do so into the school year. Feed the kids, put her's to bed at 8pm, put mine to bed at 10. It's going to be crazy, but at least my winter shut in won't be boring :)
I'm not sure if I mentioned the beehive earlier, but we have one in the siding of our new house. I found an idea on the internet and we implemented it this weekend. We hung a bug zapper out the window (the hive is right between the first and second story windows) while they were less active (about 12am). Then taped the windows shut and plugged it in. It's been zapping like crazy for 2 days. Only 3 bees got into the house during this process and no stings! I'll let you know how it turns out. According to the info I found, we leave the zapper up for a while and when the workers are gone, we treat the hive. Once the queen and drones have vacated or died, we'll have to dig the hive out. I believe they are honey bees. I didn't know this before, but evidently, honey rots and will draw more bugs, or next spring it could draw a new swarm of bees. Ugh. There are people who will do this for you, but they charge and they keep the bees. Such a deal, where do I sign up?
Still have to get ready for a garage sale before summer is over. (Next weekend or never). Not sure I'm going to be able to pull it off. I guess we'll see.
Gotta get back to some noisy kids.
Everyone have a blessed day!
I'm so behind. I'm not sure I'll ever catch up. Pipe exploded in the basement last night and our kitchen was overrun with ants - all while I was taking a nap - oh wait, don't forget the honey beehive that we discovered inside the siding of our new home. I had to laugh - when I woke up from my nap yesterday, my husband hit me with all of this and our baby was already sick - fever 103. I asked him if the roof was going to fall in too and he said "yeah, probably". Of course you must know, last week, I was watching my extra kids and all 3 of them were sick - of course not all at the same time. One each day.
Thank the Lord it isn't any worse. The kids were only feverish and the virus passed quickly. The ants are dead, thanx to my efficient bug killing hubby. We're still working on the beehive - who knows, maybe we'll find some honey. hahaha. And the neighbor allowed us to fill a large bucket with water so we could at least flush the toilet and wet cloths for washing up the kids.
I'm just thankful the Lord has been with me to keep the stress levels at a minimum. Now, if I can just get my tail to the doctor and get an adjustment so that my arm will quit going numb, I'll be good as new.
I just started reading the children's series by CS Lewis "The Chronicles of Narnia". My husband recommended them as did my father's pastor and now with the movie coming out, I decided to give it a go.
I was particularly intrigued by a passage the pastor quoted and I'll share it with you. This was a passage he used to relate to the husband's and the wive's individually when he was doing his marriage series that I advertised in an earlier post.
"...Finally he whispers, “Who are you?”
And he hears, “One who has waited long for you to speak.”
Shasta is terrorized and says, “Oh, I am the most unlucky person in all the whole world.”
And the Voice says, “Tell me your sorrows.” And Shasta does. He unloads all of his sorrows, his litany of woes. “I do not call you unfortunate,” said the Large Voice.
“Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?” said Shasta.
“There was only one lion,” said the Voice. . . . “I was the lion.” And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”
“Then it was you who wounded Aravis?”
“It was I.”
“But what for?”
“Child,” said the Voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”
“Who are you?” asked Shasta.
“Myself,” said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again “Myself,” loud and clear and gay: and then the third time “Myself,” whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it. Shasta was no longer afraid that the Voice belonged to something that would eat him, nor that it was the voice of a ghost. But a new and different sort of trembling came over him..."
~~C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
Everyone have a blessed day!
