Finished!!!

We are really happy with how the stove turned out, using 'stuff' we had around, except for the tile.  We also need to paint the bottom the dark green.  There are always touch ups that need doing, especially in older houses!  It's a good thing we know how to do fix ups, it gives a sense of accomplishment.

Not finished, but had to share!

We hadn't finished the wood stove area, because we didn't have the tile.  We went into Lowe's today for a stool, and I saw this tile on sale for .37/6" square!!  That is almost half of what we had priced out some other tile, so we got it, got busy, and got it installed.  Tomorrow we will grout, Monday we will seal!  I will post a finished picture, but I was so excited, I had to post pictures!

This is a picture of some of the Cardinals who come and visit us everyday.  I wish I could get a picture of the 'layers' of birds starting at the tree the feeder is in, going back to these bushes, which are on the other side of the driveway.  All of the red spots you see are the males, there are that many or more females in the bush, but they kind of blend in.  Click and make it larger.  

You have no idea how much I miss my Nikon D70!  I want a big nice camera again so badly, but it will just have to wait.  The little ones take too long to snap a shot.  Oh well.  I'm so grateful I have a camera!  How else would I be able to chronicle my life:)

The Breakfast of Champions......well, of Stan and Deidra......

Last year, as I was searching for what was making me feel....well really bad all the time, I finally found a doctor who would listen to me.  The result was that I had Epstein Barr and a high probability of Lupus.  I moved before the last test could be finalized.  I've never allowed my self to do 'nothing', but most of my life, I've known there were things that had to be done, and I've just done them...one foot in front of the other, until they were done, totally exhausted all the time.  I've also dealt with chronic depression for years.  Therefore, the news that, in fact, I didn't have vitamin D deficiency, or something else that was treatable, didn't help the depression at all!  In fact medically, there is nothing you can do for Epstein Barr and Lupus!  Devastated doesn't even begin to explain how I felt at that point!

Before the diagnosis, I had been to my dad's in New Mexico and had asked him to give me a blessing.  In the blessing, I was told that I would know what was wrong with me and know what to do to make myself better.  When the diagnosis came, I thought, right, how am I going to make myself feel better?

In July I had an epiphany!  Now I have to tell you, it was not the epiphany I wanted to have, at all.  I felt that I would feel better if I started eating sprouts and drinking some wheat grass juice.

I will inject here that I was raised by a health fanatic!  I think many times it was more of a question of "How can I make my children more miserable?"  Growing up on raw potatoes and lettuce and cabbage, wheat sprouts for breakfast, an apple (many times with rotten spots cut out) with a handful of nuts and raisins for lunch, the wheat grass juice that would sometimes be thrown up shortly thereafter, etc., thinking about going to a diet full of sprouts and wheat grass juice brought back some pretty bad memories! 

I have tried to have a good diet throughout my life, but have not taken anything to extreme.  However, sprouts, and especially wheat grass juice, please, just hand me a twinkie!

I had to get my head, and heart, around it.  Since I was given a blessing that told me I would know what to do, I figured that I needed to be obedient to the answer I was given....and it works!!!!!  I have a pretty balanced diet, but am adding a lot more really fresh things!  The only thing I still have a hard time with is the wheat grass juice!  But, we bought some really nice sprouters and I need to get going on it.  Instead of lettuce, which has almost no nutritional value, on my sandwich, I have sprouts, which is really good!  They also make a regular salad better.  I sprout a mix of alfalfa, broccoli, and a few other seeds.

I've heard a lot about green drinks, but they have just sounded nasty to me, I'm sure a product of my youth. I was watching Dr. Oz and one of his segments was on green drinks.  I decided I needed to try it.  Since both Stan and I are unemployed right now, I needed it to be as inexpensive as possible.  Sam's Club has 3 lb. tubs of baby spinach for $4, 5 lb. bags of carrots $3, and 3 celery hearts for $2.50, gala apples 5 lbs. for $5.50.  So, that became my green drink!  And it wasn't bad!  Within a few days, I even liked it, wonder of wonders!  After a week of  drinking it for breakfast, I decided Stan needed a more healthy diet and told him it wouldn't kill him to drink it.  He asked if I would change out the cup of water I used for juice.  I had just found some grape juice for $2.50 for 64 oz., which is a really good price.  So, I put a cup of that in along with the ice cubes.  That made it taste really good!  I've been on the drink for breakfast for 3 weeks, Stan for two, and we are really feeling a lot better.  There is a lot of truth to the value of  live foods!   

I actually wake up feeling refreshed, like I really did get some rest!!  Stan is sleeping a lot better at night.  I can get so much more accomplished when I actually feel better.  I've always gotten a lot done, but now it isn't taking everything I have to do it.

One interesting thing happened to me two weeks in.  It didn't matter what I ate, I still had a little bit of an upset stomach after I ate.  One day, I really, really craved a steak.  We have a little in our freezer, so I took it out, thawed it, marinated it (I make a mean marinade), lit the charcoal, and had a wonderful medium rare steak for lunch!  I have not had a stomach ache since!

The Word of Wisdom in the Doctrine and Covenants is an amazing source for nutrition!  Who would have thought Heavenly Father could know that much?  Really, why don't we just listen?  I've never been a big meat eater, but there is definitely a place for meat in our diets.  Rachel sent me a link for a book I want to buy.  It's called W. O. W.  It's a diet book written by an LDS lady who never felt good, really studied the Word of Wisdom and the health codes of other major religions, and made a diet book about the research.  She has never felt better.  With the inspiration I received in July, I am feeling better than I can remember ever feeling!  I know this will continue as I continue.

Wood, wood, wood.....

With the wood stove installed and working, wonderfully, we needed more wood for the winter.  There is a little lumber place about 35 miles away.  It takes the bark off the logs, squares the logs, and sells the curved outside edges, for $15!  We actually paid $30 for this pickup load, they cut the pieces into 18-20" pieces.  Which is quite a deal, that would be a lot of chain sawing!  As we were leaving, he told us they also sold the odd ends that are left over after the squaring process...for $15 a truck load.  We really wish he would have told us that before we loaded this.  So, the bottom pictures are of the pieces we went back and loaded.  The only bad thing about all of this....the wood is green, which means, we need seasoned wood in order to get coals hot enough to burn the green wood.  So, we went and picked up a load of seasoned, split wood to ensure we would be able to burn the wood.  All of this wood cost us a little over $100, which includes the fuel costs of picking it up!  The last load was by far the most cost effective!  We will remember this for future purchases!  Did I mention that all of this is OAK and other hardwoods; but mostly oak!!  We are quite excited about our day's work.  By next fall, we will have our own seasoned wood, harvested at Christmastime to use, with the green $15 a truckload end pieces!  Happy dance, happy dance....

Yes, we do have a furnace, but....

We are heating our home with the wood stove we purchased in Flagstaff, Arizona in 2002.  Let's see, that means we have moved it four times!!  Do you have any idea how much these things weigh?  A lot...  Stan did a great job pulling out the gas fireplace that was here and installing the wood stove.  He's not quite done, but look at that fire going!  Love it!!!!  Nothing warms quite like wood.  After buying a high efficiency stove like this, they are pricey, we were not going to leave it behind when we left.  We still have a few things to go.  We are going to tile in front of it.  Then Stan will use expandable metal to cover the front and top of the stove so the insulation won't show in the back.   But it is work great, heating the whole house.  We are using the wood Isaac and Stan harvested at Christmastime. 

Stan has also installed our pellet stove.  It also works well.  We don't have any pellets left, we burned them to make sure everything was working great.  Since pellets cost more than the free wood in our yard, we will not be buying pellets this year.  During really cold weather, we will probably use both stoves, but mostly the wood stove.

I have a lot of applications out there, but no bidders yet.  I don't care what they say, people are prejudiced against older workers, which is amazing, since I can outwork the young ones, hands down!  But with Stan getting some unemployment, we are getting by.  It will be nice to have a job again.  People in the ward are really trying to help us find a job.  We really appreciate their help.

I'll post pictures when the area is finished.

Life's simple pleasures....

Open our front door and there is a delicious smell of smoke wafting through the chimney of our wood burning stove.  On a frosty winter morning, it fills my senses and makes winter worthwhile.  It's not that I don't like winter, I loathe winter.  Sledding, snowmen, skating, even Christmas tree hunting, have been an insidious form of torture, which I have endured on occasion for the benefit of children and grandchildren.  It's kind of like giving natural birth...the pain eases as you hold your incredible miracle in your arms.  The laughter and sparkle in the little ones eyes, their enjoyment, take away, for a moment, the cold that finds it's way, creeping into my very core.  But...then there is the steamy, fragrant, frothy bubble bath that reaches into my core and pulls out the last bit of cold.  Added to that, a hot cup of chocolate, and a roaring fire....winter is good....how else would I be able to feel and smell these other wonderful, intoxicating senses.  The Book of Mormon puts it wonderfully, "there must be opposition in all things."

Throughout my life, I've taken great joy in moments.  They are fleeting, they don't stay a long time, but how I have loved them!  Lilacs in the spring with butterflies darting in and out around the blossoms, all I can say is wow!

  A sunrise with a full moon in the first light of the morning, that is a sight!  Coming home from an ugly, at best, graveyard shift, watching the moon getting larger as it goes down over the western skyline, at the same time the sun rises in the eastern sky...that is amazing.  I recommend it for anyone who hasn't seen it!

At one of my church meetings, Zan Bowles asked a poignant question, "When was the last time you saw a sunrise?"  At that time, we had the dairy, which was the most enduring, and brutal time of torture I've ever had.  I was waking up hours before dawn every morning to milk the cows.  The thought went through my mind, "when was the last time I didn't see a sunrise?"  But the sunrise was always one of Heavenly Father's tender mercies for me.  No artist can truly catch the Majesty of nature's pallet.

Believe it or not, it wasn't all that long ago we didn't carry phones with us!  We actually had to have a land line in our home, or workplace, and there were these things called 'telephone booths' that we put loose change in to make a call when we were on the road.  I was not one who was easily enamored with the advent of cell phones.  I truly thought they were an invasion of privacy, and still do at times.  But, for business purposes, we broke down and got one, and from that time to this, it has been one more thing to misplace, but the value exceeds the personal bubble it popped.  One of the things I loved about it, was when I saw a beautiful full moon, I would call home and ask the children to run outside and see it.  There is a time in the early evening when the moon rises and it is HUGE!  I wanted my children to share that moment with me.  Some of my children thought that was great, others thought and probably still think, at times, that I have a few loose screws.  But when we get Moon pictures from Afghanistan and other places, I know it is an infection that was transferred...and it makes me happy! 

Then there were the very, very fleeting sightings of the aurora borealis in the Northern skies when we were living in Idaho!  Yes, they did come down that far on occasion.  That was something everyone in the family rushed in to tell the others to run and see when it was sighted.  Most of the time, it was SO fleeting, in that small space of time, the lights were gone, and we had to wait for another time and opportunity to see them.  We never got the brilliant hews of the more Northern regions, but what we got, we treasured.  

Smells, songs, can bring so many memories and feelings of deja vu.  Special times, okay, I admit it, it can also bring back horrific, terrible memories, but I'm just focusing on the special ones; come back as if they were yesterday.  The other day we looked up the songs that were #1 the week we were born.  That was fun...and a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away!  There is a song Simon and Garfunkel sang that brings me back to a moment in time when I was going to college, walking down a dreary, drizzly sidewalk on my way to work...wait, that was one of the not special memories....but it was there, and part of my life.  Kenny Chesney has a song "I Go Back".  It's true, there are experiences we have had, just waiting to jump out at us through a song, a smell, a memory.

This is SO not original, but life is hard!  But life also has some of the most amazing, incredible, unbelievable moments that make everything else worth whatever it is we are going through. I love the quote, "Life isn't measured by the number of breathes we take, but the moments that take our breath away."  I believe that is one reason the scriptures tell us so often to remember.  

There were so many times, especially when we had the dairy that I couldn't see the tree for the bark, an out take on, you can't see for the forest for the trees.  Life was so in my face, at times it was hard to breathe!  But there were the sunrises, the aurora borealis', watching the children grow, learn to work, do back flips off the hay stacks into the grain, ride the four wheeler, go to the top of  7 mile canyon and look over the valley, the beautiful full moons, the baby killdeers in the spring, the smell of fresh mown hay, the beauty of ripe grain fields, the taste of fresh peas in the garden ( we all loved to pea in the garden), watching the calves frolic and play in the evenings, watching the calves get born, finding the nests when the cats had their kittens, the big water guns on the pasture with their swish, swish sound, and so much more!

Today, in Missouri, I'm finding more things to savor, the moments, the smells that make life wonderful in all it's complexity and variety.  I feed birds.  I love to watch them come to the banquet!  At times I look out and there are at least 15 Cardinals.  They never fight, they never chase away the small birds, they grab their sunflower seed and fly away to crack the shell and savor the morsel that is inside.  I never tire of watching them, I never will.

I love to watch the chicks that we hatched out grow.  They are little for such a short time.  But they know my voice, and if I don't frighten them, when I talk they arch their necks and look to see where my voice is coming from.  Soon they will be laying eggs, which we will enjoy eating and hatching, a new generation will emerge.

I love the smell...and taste...of bread fresh from the oven!

Life's simple pleasures...it's worth it!