Be Strong and Courageous

The prompt this week is LOSS   from the Gypsymama , what an amazing topic to consider and ponder, and like her I will need more than 5 minutes today. Loss - where does one start, do we list it all; Boompa (grandpa) 2/02 years of smoking - COPD and enphasima, Grandma 10/02 -culmination of Lung cancer that spread through body, dementia and the loss of her mate 6 months prior, Father 5/04 (Mother's day) - a life long battle with his weight, unchecked diabetes that ended with a rapid destruction of his liver and stage 4 Non-Alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver almost over night,  and the latest loss - my brother - took his own life, the loss of him in such a way is a struggle for me. The loss of my brother who had served over seas in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as multiple civilian jobs there, had received orders once again to go in late October 2008.  On Veteran's day 2008 he took his own life in my childhood home. He left no note, no why or how come. Th...

Stepping in the Five Minute Friday - today's topic is WELCOME. So pull up a chair this should not take long then head over to the Gypsy Mama  and join in the fun. WELCOME ~   When I here wecome, I think about a feeling, a feeling of getting know some one - a 'welcoming in' of a new aquaintace and the new of it all. So to I welcome you to sit for just another minute while I tell you about myself. I am a follower of my LORD and Savior Jesus Christ, the wife to the hardest working, kindness man I know ~ who loves me with an encompassing love like none other, mom to 3 kids ~ who keep me on my toes. I grew up minutes from Portland, Oregon and loved it there. After finishing college, I moved to NY to be a nanny met, said man of my dreams and moved back to Oregon a few years later. Where he joined the Army and we moved again to Germany (Loved it) and then back stateside, landing here in central WA pretty near where I started. I love to welcome people with coffee, a...

  It's Friday again and this weeks prompt from Gypsy Mama, is BACKWARDS. So here goes: How perfect that this would be this weeks prompt, as we are getting ready to head and go BACKWARDS in time to 1861. We have been Civil War reenacting this year as a family and it has been a great time. Back in April we attended an event at Ft. Steilacoom (near Tacoma, WA) and our oldest daughter, age 13, said the best part was just being together. This weekend we are able to stay pretty close to home at Ft. Simcoe and I am glad to say the weather is gorgeous for camping out. The reason we like going BACKWARDS in time varies from each one of us, I am sure if you asked a group of reenactors why, you would get a dozen reasons. I love doing it because it seems to bring joy to everyone in the family. My history buff husband likes the meaning and remembering of it all, it took our nation much loss to have great gain and understanding of true freedoms. My son, age 15, love the action ...

Five minute Friday (written on Sunday) Every day --- So every day, for the past few weeks, my alarm goes off at 530 and I turn it off, sometimes I roll out of bed and get to my quiet time, but more often not, especially this last week. I have been linking up with Hello Mornings over at Inspired to Action and trying to get my morning moving in a productive manner. I was doing really well for the first 2 weeks and then the WALL of Doom came in, or at least I let it in, in the form of the OFF button on the alarm. My every day consists of getting 2 teenagers out the door by 7 and the little one to school by 855 and sometimes I am rushed to get her the 6 blocks away. I do not know what has happened to me this year, but we are late or almost EVERY DAY. I have never been a tardy person, always the 5 minutes early, but this year has been different for me; and I am not sure that is a good thing. My every day consists of dishes and laundry, and cleaning of course, I am a stay ...

It has been a few weeks since I posted a 5 Minute Friday blog post so here goes. If you and I were to meet for the first time I would hope I wasn't too busy to connect with you. I have the tendency to be of a single track mind sometimes. If you met me I would hope that you would discover how blessed I consider myself to be a follower of Christ. I also hope that we would have time to swap information about where we are from and what we love most about where we are currently. If you and I were to meet I hope that we would have something oddly in common, like your favorite color being the same as mine - cerulean blue - not sure why but it is. I know for sure if you met me a cup of coffee would not be that far away, whether in my home or out and about. If you and I met I also hope we could talk about what God is doing in our lives to take us just through today. One final thing as time runs short I hope I had time to show you pics of my most wonderful husband and 3 great kiddos, as...

So the / five-minute-friday-prompt-   for this week is 5 years ago. Where to start, 5 years ago, my baby turned 1, my oldest now 15 was on the brink of tween hood. My husband was freshly out of the military and we were settling into the mode of being civilian and having our hands full with 3 children.  We had just started attending a new to us church in town and were attending a small group. We are still at Trinity and have watched it go through some major changes these past 5 years. Just this last Monday our youth pastor ans his wife moved back to Texas to be closer to home and move on in their journey of ministry. I turned 34 that year and have yet to comes to grips with passing 30? Now on the brink of 39 in 2 days not much has changed, but yet nothing is really the same. 5 years ago we had been married for just over a decade and were still figuring life out together. God has taken gracious road with us and brought us to a most enjoyable time in our live now. 5 years...

  Five Minute Friday  hosts a challenge that looked like fun and since I don't post much on the weekends I thought i would give it a try. So take the challenge and write for 5 minutes on any given topic would normally stretch my limits but ask about friendship , I have so much to say. Not sure if 5 minutes will suffice. But here goes, I have had very few true, good, long time friends . I have had a handful of them through childhood, and into adulthood, as my life and my goals and purposes have changed friends have fallen wayside to my Husband and my Lord, and my family. But I have been blessd by the Lord with a handful of friend who hold the same ideals and truths that I do and these few women I a grateful to call friend . I have been richly blessed by a group of women that over the past decade have kept their lives real for me and shared their love for the Lord in such a way that I want to glean from them all that they might share, the good, the bad, and the not so bea...