Neck warmers, cool packs available now! Support a great cause!

We selling rice neck warmers/heat/cold packs. There are two scents available. Lavender and Lemon Eucalyptus. We also have smaller boo boo bags for kids or smaller areas, they are 2 for $10. These rice bags are great for the freezer for a cold pack when you have a sore spot or for a forehead when you have a fever. They are also microwavable for heatpacks. We are asking for a suggested donation amount of $10 each and they are handmade by our friends and family. If you are local you can pick them up or we are happy to ship them. Shipping is $6 for each one. If you would like to order one or 10 and have them shipped you can just go through the donate button and make a note there how many you would like. There are a variety of prints available you can choose from if you pick up locally. If shipping them we will choose a variety for you. These make great Christmas gifts and Christmas will be here before you know it. If you are local and would like to just pay us directly instead of through paypal please just call me to set up a time to come by. (530)921-8855 Here are some examples of some of the available fabrics:)

A few more details now...

I have, for a very long time wanted to adopt. I remember as a child hearing stories of orphans who needed a family and feeling like someday I should adopt. Then fast forward quite a few years... Get married to a wonderful husband, have 5 amazing kids... still in the back of my mind was this thought of adoption. About a year ago we had a family photo session done for our Christmas cards. We had a bunch of cute pictures of the kids so I bought a couple collage frames to display them all in the living room. Turned out that when I ordered prints and filled the frame I ended up with one empty frame. Months passed and I never remembered to order an extra copy of one. So every day I pass these pictures of our family with one picture missing.... One day I jokingly said to Troy, maybe that empty picture frame is for our adopted child.... Fast forward another year and a half or so after much prayer and conversation to today. We are just about done with our homestudy towards Domestic Minority Adoption (In the US, not a Caucasian baby).We had our final homestudy interview today and Troy and I went over individually pretty much our life story. In thinking about it afterwards, I noticed how many times I had said "faithful" during the conversation. At our wedding we sang the hymn "Great is they Faithfulness" and God has shown over and over again to us just how faithful He is. This interview today was seperate from the kids so they didn't hear what we were saying. A bit later the Social worker was asking the kids about how they felt about adopting. She asked if they had any thoughts on what we should name the new child. Anna said "we should name her Anna:)" and John said we should name him John:). Then Lydia spoke up and said we should name her "Faithful". I said that was sweet, but then it didn't really hit me until a bit later the connection to everything I had been thinking during my previous conversation. I really feel that that will be part of our new child's name in some way "Faith" to honor a God who has time and time again been so faithful. We LOVE kids and feel they are a blessing and are so excited about the possibility of adding another life to our family. The craziest thing about this whole adoption process at this point is the financial aspect. It still seems outrageous to charge so much money, when there are so many children needing homes. But that is the way it is, but we know God will be faithful to provide. So we are starting fundraising at this point in a few ways. If you feel led there is a donate button to the side where you can directly donate any amount towards our adoption fund. If you or anyone you know needs a great baby carrier, all profits from our business www.frogmama.com are going directly to the adoption fund. We also are going to be selling rice neck warmers/heat/cold packs. There are two scents available. Lavender and Lemon Eucalyptus. We also are making smaller boo boo bags for kids or smaller areas. they are 2 for $10. These rice bags are great for the freezer for a cold pack when you have a sore spot or for a forehead when you have a fever. They are also microwavable for heatpacks. We are asking for a suggested donation amount of $10 each and they are handmade by our friends and family. If you are local you can pick them up or we are happy to ship them. Shipping is $6 for each one. If you would like to order one or 10 and have them shipped you can just go through the donate button and make a note there how many you would like. There are a variety of prints available you can choose from if you pick up locally. If shipping them we will choose a variety for you. These make great Christmas gifts and Christmas will be here before you know it. If you are local and would like to just pay us directly instead of through paypal please just call me to set up a time to come by. (530)921-8855 Here are the kids hard at work cutting out the fabric to make them:) Thank you all for your support. We also really appreciate all your prayers during this time. If you have any other ideas or suggestions for fundraisers please let us know.

We are adopting!!

In case you haven't heard yet WE ARE ADOPTING!! well kind of... well not today... But we have started the process. we are in the midst of our homestudy and the bills are piling in already. regardless of my feelings on all the bills... (that could ba a long lengthy post in itself) they are here and they will be increasing. This is a huge step of faith for us as there is no way on our own I can imagine paying for all of this in our own strength, our own doings.... So we will be doing various fundraisers and will post details here and on facebook, but for now just know how much we appreciate your prayers for this journey. I will be sharing more details as time goes on. If you have ideas for fundraising we would love to hear them. All profits from our Frogmama.com business will be going to the fund as well. Thanks everyone!

Life continued...

23. Fresh local eggs for breakfast 24 My wonderful husband faithfully cooking them for me every morning. 25 healthy kids 26 joyful, lively kids early in the morning 27 New life in baby chicks 28 a few minutes of quiet 29 a good steady job for Troy 30 family close by to help and bless the kids 31 much needed rain 32 good friends 33 the encouragement of other moms 34 the amazing ability of the human body to heal- miracle of God So since my last post much has happened Zach broke his arm falling off the playground in the yard. The full arm cast didn;t slow him down at all:) He just got the cast off last week and is pretty much back to normal. John is now, thanks to his JaJa, a metal detecting pro. He has been borrowing the Metal detector and has found lots of fun things, pennies, foil, nails...etc:) Anna is so cheerful and singing all the time. She makes up songs about God or about her siblings. Lydia is pink and sparkely as ever she says Anna is the singer and she is the Dancer so together they make quite a pair. I am excited about the once a month moms encouragement group we are having meet at our house. This week is the 2nd meeting. hoping it goes well and moms leave encouraged and blessed. We have baby chicks that hopefully will all turn out to be hens and give us lots of eggs later this year.

So after reading One Thousand Gifts I really wanted to start keeping track myself and I figure this is as good of a way as any t o keep track of them. so here goes... Oh and the kids are helping too:) 1. Healthyness 2.Good living 3. Mommy and Daddy 4. Not sick 5. Clothes and Food 6 Blue Blanket 7 Blue Jacket 8 sweet sticky kid hugs 9 Trains 10 "Sing, Sing. Sing" 11 Blue Bean Bag 12 God coins 13 A singing "Great is thy Faithfulness" while folding clothes 14 Z singing "keen up, Keen up" 15 laughing blue eyes 16 a's mothers heart 17 L concerned about people "glittering" (littering) on the street 18 Johns curiosity and strong will 19 a dedicated providing Husband 20a God who is Everything 21 some time of quiet 22 new friends and old friends This has been a busy day. kids still getting over the reminents of coughs. It really affects their attitudes when they are fighting off something... but we have started bible time in school again too coinsidence? hmmmm.... Samuel was up a bunch last night- at least every hour. Not sure if it is just congestion or just the teeth still working through. None through yet.... His latest accomplishment is climbing the stairs... at 7 months... a sign of another curious boy I think:)

Hello again...is anyone here...?:)

So I decided to come back..... I made a new friend who has inspired me to start blogging again, if only to record these moments of life that are speeding so quickly...too quickly by... I am hoping it will help me to slow down the time just a little bit to be able to breathe and enjoy it a whole lot more. And maybe years from now when my kids are older and they wonder what life was like just a blink ago, I can look back at this with them and have something to say... I have been following a couple wonderful blogs lately, inparticular A Holy Experience which is all about recognizing and being thankful for the many many gifts from God in our everyday lives. One of my goals in Blogging will be to have a place to record just some of these blessings. The kids have been doing this with me as well. If I post some with a letter after it, it is something one of the kids has written.... So what happened today....

Samuel was up most of the night with croup coughing and has had a fever all day. I was sitting holding him for his nap, watching as he slept. I was thinking how extremely exausting having a sick child is, but then I was also thinking how thanksful I was to be able to hold him and comfort him in this time. There is almost a sweetness in those still quiet hours holding a sleeping baby....

Zachariah is potty training... He is doing great if he has no pants on. Which makes it interesting if anyone unexpected comes to the door.... A couple tricks with potty training I have found. Zach first choice for potty training treats was nori-(seaweed) sheets. He was doing ok. Then I bumped it up to seaweed + chocolate chips ( known as chocolate swirls in our house) plus if any of the other kids on their own take him to go to the bathroom and he goes, they both get a treat. One other helpful tip I just realized... I was running low on chocolate swirls so I picked up some Trader Joes Dark chocolate sea salt almonds. Then when I take him and he goes I get one too:) This has been much more motivating for me:)

Lydia is doing her own hair now She is fixing it in 2 pony tails with a little hanging down in the back that she can't reach I think:) Then she completes the look with clip on bows. She LOVES brushing and doing her hair fancy...

Anna is quite a big sister. She loves to play with Samuel and make him laugh. She loves singing to him and Jesus. She is writing her own musicals and her own praise songs.

John is still a Train expert. His latest is HO model trans and has a few different ones. He is continually working on rearranging his layout. He has Tons of energy and I am continually looking for ways to creatively channel that for good.... Life is busy...Life is Good....

Biblical Parenting

So I am NOT a blogger- as you can see the last post was in 2008:) But I just felt the need to post about this...
So just when I think I have found "THE" method of parenting that is the right one, or "THE" Christian organization that I should completly support, then I read some things that don't sound right to me....I think more and more I am having to just learn to be prayerful and discerning- It seems like so many parents out there just want an easy 123 method of parenting, if I follow this book it will make sure everything goes right. There are a lot of good tips out there and a lot of bad ones, I learned early on in parenting to take what I can use and let the rest go. But it seems like so many parents are taking what certain teachers are saying to be the same as Gods word. Even Christian leaders are people, they sin and make misteaks just like us. They may have some good ideas and some not so good, if something seems wrong pray- read your bible first before deciding whether to act on it.
There are a few Christian parenting classes/teachers/books that have outright dangerous aspects to them, but they do have some good points too. I think the danger is when parents throw their brains out the window. God gave us brains to use for a reason. The only true 100% accurate source is God. Everything and everyone else is not perfect. Everything. So if your parenting method claims that it will "guarantee" (as one popular method does) that your kids will turn out to be good christians. Or If the books you are reading says that not following "it's" methods are sinful. Or if what you are trying is causing frustration, anxiety, or a feeling of failure. PLEASE THINK. Parenting is work and requires lots of prayer and lots of thinking.