Another Giveaway

Check out my friend Sassyfrazz! She is has a lot of great giveaways. Right now she is having a giveaway for a company called Innovative Kids. This would be great for anyone but I think homeschoolers would love it. She is giving away some of their books. Check it out here.

Monster Jam WINNER

Congratulations to JENI for winning the Monster Jam tickets. Thanks for signing up and I hope you have a great time!! :)

GIVEAWAY - 4 MONSTER JAM TICKETS (MN)

Monster Jam is coming to the HHH Metrodome again this next weekend! I am happy to host a giveaway for my readers! If you are in MN, Wisconsin, North or South Dakota, Iowa, or from somewhere else & are willing to drive.....you can enter to win 4 tickets for the show next weekend on November 13th!

This Contest starts TONIGHT and will end Monday evening at 8pm central time. (Nov. 8th) I will contact the winner via email and will announce the winner on my blog on Tuesday! Stay tuned. :)

Monster Jam returns on Saturday, November 13 with the show starting at 7:30 PM. The Pit Party takes place from 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM. Pit Passes are available for free at participating Subway locations from 10/4/10 through 11/13/10 while supply lasts. Tickets are on sale online at www.ticketmaster.com or by calling 651-989-5151. $5 Adult Discount Coupons are available at participating Advance Auto Parts locations from 10/25/10 through 11/12/10 while supplies last. Tickets will be on sale at the Metrodome Box Office outside Gate B starting Monday, November 8th. All tickets $2 more if purchased the day of the show. There is a $1 Handling Fee for tickets purchased at the Metrodome Box Office. The box office will be open from 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM. Additional information is available at www.monsterjamonline.com.

There are shows all over the United States! You can go see Monster Jam in your state. Go to www.ticketmaster.com to find out when they are coming in your area.

The tickets for Monster Jam were provided to me from FeldEntertainment for purposes for a giveaway for my readers. I was not paid for my review and the review is based on my own opinions.

Time is short on this contest, so enter to win! Leave a comment below. Please include your email address. One comment for each entry. You can get extra chances to win by helping me promote this contest! Here is what you can do to promote: blog about the contest and link back to this post, twitter, or share the link on facebook. If you do this come back and leave another comment stating where you shared the contest. You just have the weekend so get out there and spread the news!! :) Thanks and good luck.

ramblings

One intention for my blog was to write about my thoughts, what I am learning and how I am growing. I started to use my blog this way in the beginning but I think I just forgot. I think out loud. Processing takes place for me in conversation. :) Anyone who knows me knows this. I want to get back to one of the reasons that I started my blog which is to write my thoughts and feelings down. I just want to say that this is my place. I want to share my family, my thoughts and feelings. I understand that everyone has the right to their opinion and I will certainly be expressing mine, so please feel free to express yours. The only thing I ask is that you be respectful. Remember I think out loud so I may not have fully processed what I am writing and who knows maybe I will come back and express something after changing my mind. I won't be surprised if it happens. :) I love to write and somewhere along the way in life I have lost site of that a bit. Who knows what it is being the mother of two amazing boys, running a house, a business, a husband... (hehehe..) or just living life. I probably won't have anything real profound to say, it's mainly for me to document but who knows maybe something that I have to share will move or encourage you.

So I am going to share publicly something that everyone close to me knows. I am terrified of being home alone. I find myself embarrassed and ashamed to put that down for everyone to see. I have ideas of where it stems but nothing real concrete. The reason it feels embarrassing is because I am a Christian. I shouldn't be afraid of anything... :) right? Fear makes me sad. I have allowed it to steal so much from me. Logically I know that God is my protector, my fortress, my Savior!! I have such an amazing God, I know that I have nothing to fear. Yet somehow my brain has not communicated that to my feelings. :) Every year Don goes hunting. Unfortunately this fear has not just stolen joy from me, it has stolen joy from Don. The reason is because we almost always end up fighting every year about him going away. I can't really explain how gripping it is. However I know that he needs to get away and I am starting to understand more and more what it means to him. I love him and I want him to be happy and to be filled. This year he wanted an extra day. He left on a Thursday night and didn't come home until Sunday. This is like my worst nightmare. :) I know, right? I am incredibly blessed to have people around me who love me and support me. I went and spent a couple of days with my friend Melissa. Which was SO SO fun. She is so in love with Christ. She is one of those people who you can't help but feel rejuvenated when you are with her. Her love for God overflows to everyone around her. We had a great time. Even if I wasn't afraid of being alone spending that time with people is such a great way for me to pass the time when Don is gone. The kids get to have someone to play with, they are busy and distracted and I get to have some awesome girl time. Anyway, I could have stayed the whole weekend but decided to come home Saturday night. I finally decided that I needed to face this fear head on. I have conquered much in my life with the verse from 2 Cor. 10:5 that tells us to take our thoughts captive to Christ. Our minds are so powerful. I have spent much of my life thinking and not always being aware of what I was telling myself. I am pretty certain I started telling myself that week that I had nothing to be afraid of. God is my protector. He is my fortress in times of trouble. He will never leave me nor forsake me. In order to face this fear I had to make it work for me. I slept on the couch, with A LOT of lights on. However, the boys and I made it through our first night alone. This is a HUGE victory for me and one that many people probably would not ever understand. I do think that it can translate to other things. I believe that many of us have something that binds us, that keeps us from having as a fulfilling relationship with Christ as we can. Satan LOVES to lie to us. I am tired, tired of letting him win. God has started to teach me that by changing my thoughts it changes my actions. When I am able to be aware of the thoughts that creep into my head that fuel the fear, if I give them to Christ then God has the power not Satan. I believe that this is going to be a lifetime process for me but I KNOW that I can do it. If I need to stay home alone again I will be ok. That's huge. Whatever struggles you might be facing God wants to bring you healing and peace. Practice listening to your thoughts. Do you struggle with loving yourself, wanting something that isn't yours, over eating? Listen to the messages that are going through your head and start changing them today!! Take your thoughts captive to Christ and allow him to transform your mind. It will transform your life.

Did you know....

It's FUN TO BE ONE! This is what Weston's shirt

say in this picture which I feel perfectly matches his facial

expression!! I can't believe a year has gone by. Weston turned

a year old on September 19th. :) He is such a delight

Weston walks along furniture

but climbs on everything. :)

He has take a step or two here

or there but doesn't seem to interested

in walking yet.

He says momma, daddy, all done, and go go go. :)

He signs milk, more, and all done.

He is very interested in life and people. He is very smiley and happy. He loves his brother. They love to pick on each other, crawl over each other, and make each other laugh all the time.

We had a great time celebrating Weston's birthday and I will have to post some pictures soon of his party. :)

UPDATES

So I wrote about Don but it was never really conclusive. He saw an infectious disease specialist and it was determined that he had a virus called CMV. CMV is similar to mono. The tests that they did can be inconclusive and it took a lot of time, testing, and retesting to get a final answer. After months they determined it was CMV and he was getting better at that point. CMV is a virus that most of us get as children and don't even realize we have had it. You get it once in your life and you don't get it again. The thing with CMV is that if you don't get it when you are young it is worse the older you are when you get it. For kids it is as simple as a runny nose, fever, and maybe an ear infection and it goes away. For an adult it's long term fever, night sweats, exhaustion, and in Don's case it lasted months. He still isn't at 100% but he is probably at 85-90%. He has more energy then he has had in a long time but still gets worn out easily. It's crazy to me because he first got sick at the beginning of April. 4 months late and he still isn't completely well. However life is starting to feel normal again and that is a good thing. He is working almost full time and is enjoying his job. His next goal is to get licensed. We are still in limbo as we try to determine if he stays at the job he is at or if we see if God has another job for him. Right now we have no solid direction so we are still waiting. We don't really want to move until we know that we will be somewhere long term. So we will see.

I didn't blog about this but some of you may know that a couple of weeks ago my computer decided to die. Poor Don thought he broke it but it would have died no matter what. The logic board went out. It was scary because I didn't really know what was wrong, how much it was going to cost and if I lost my hard drive. My hard drive holds everything for my business including current photo sessions that I am working on and editing. It was a little stressful. A day or two after the computer died Don and I were processing how old my computer was because I was surprised that it would die, it didn't seem like we had it that long. So we realized that we haven't had the computer more then three years. I have a mac powerbook and we purchased an apple care plan for it. So we took the computer in, it was still under warranty and they fixed it for free. My hard drive is still intact and life is good. I am going to try to work on blogging a little more. So hang in there with me. I have pictures that I can post and just living life stuff to share.

Like sand through the hour glass, these are the days of my life! :)

I think I need to keep of a journal to document how I spend my time. I have two friends, one with five kids and one with four. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!! They are amazing women and I love them dearly. They both blog. I can't even get one post up a month! I can't figure out how they do it. Lately I feel like life is flying by at lightning speed and I am standing still watching it, too exhausted most of the time to even think about trying to keep up. So much has been happening since the last time that I blogged. First of all my husband and I celebrated 8 years of marriage. My dad and his wife took Brody for a weekend and we had just Weston for a few days. Don's sister to Weston for an evening so we got to have a date. It was fun but that is also at the beginning of when Don was sick. We were on a date and yet too tired to really enjoy it. I will get back to the whole sick thing. Like I said around that time Don started to get sick. For 3 weeks he had a HIGH fever off and on. He also was having night sweats. Every night was sweating through his shirt, sometimes he would change his shirt twice a night. He has had a cough for a LONG time but his cough got significantly worse. We went to the minute clinic which was a mistake. If you ask me wait until you can go see your Dr. They can't do anything for you at the minute clinic. IMO!! So anyway finally a trip to urgent care one night. A LOT of tests later.. blood tests, TB, etc etc. We were told he MIGHT have lymphoma or luekemia! WHAT?? It was crazy. OR it could be a virus. That was just the beginning. We had to just go about our lives as we made arrangements to get Don seeing a primary care Dr. and get more tests. In the meantime Mother's Day happened. It was a good day. I was a little lonely. Don was VERY sick on Mother's Day. Literally didn't leave the house. Slept on the couch in a hooded sweatshirt, lots of blankets, the curtains were closed and the lights were off. I took Brody out for a little date in the morning to the park and coffee (for me.) We brought daddy homemade soup. Then in the afternoon I took the boys to the Y and daddy slept more. Then that night the boys and I went to his moms for dinner. Daddy slept more. After Mother's day we celebrated Don's birthday. He turned 36 this year. That seems crazy to me. I forget we are in our thirties. I feel like I am still in my twenties. I need to move from that dilusion. :) Haha. Don loves bow hunting, fishing, playing with his boys. Here are a couple of pictures of him. :) They make me smile. He can be a little silly as you can see.

May 18th was Brody's 3rd birthday. That just sort of takes my breath away. I can't believe he is 3.

He talks all the time. LITERALLY! He sings and talks himself to sleep. He just recently learned to peddle his bike. He is going to swim lessons at the Y and does a great job swimming. He puts his face in the water, blows bubbles and is starting to relax when the teacher does the back float with him. I did a little interview with him

when he turned 3. I have a birthday book and that is where the interview comes from. I asked him what he wants to be when he grows up and he told me a dinosaur!! I asked him what he thought of when I said love and he said Weston. (melts me to the core.) and what was his favorite color, orange. That was just a couple of the questions.
So back to Don. In April Don got sick. He got sick with exhaustion and lost his voice. He started to feel a little better but energy level never really came back. A couple of weeks later he spiked a fever. He was so so cold. I remember I tried to cover him with a blanket and he didn't know what I was doing, totally flipped out because he didn't want me to take the covers off. He was shivering. Little did we know that the fever that spiked that night would last three weeks. That was just the tip of the ice berg. Included with the fever was night sweats. He would sweat through one or two shirts a night. After a few run around Dr. appts. we finally went to urgent care. They did quite a bit of testing and got him assigned to a primary Dr. It's kind of a long story.Bottom line we honestly still don't know what's wrong. He is still sick. He has days where he feels better then others. The fever and night sweats are gone but occasionally one strikes. They thought he had mono and another virus but now they aren't sure. In the very beginning they thought it could be lymphoma or luekemia. I am grateful that they have ruled that out. During this time he was going through his last few months of school. He GRADUATED June 5th! That has felt amazing. I can't quite put into words everything that the last five years has done to each of us. I just mean what we have learned, how we have grown. Going through school with Don while he got a double masters has been challenging but I am amazed at how God has worked, what we have learned and I would walk through it again. I am so proud of my husband for how hard he has worked and how he had every challenged that he was faced, including getting sick at the very end of his journey. Before his schooling even ended we already started the next challenge that we were going to face. My prayer is that God will bring answers quickly and that Don's body will be healthy and strong soon. I have so much more that I could write about as far as what we have been up to but this is pretty long. So for now I will leave you with a couple of more pictures. Thanks for being patient with my lack of writing. I will try to do better.