We started out on Friday after my orthodontist appointment in Montrose and my periodontist check-up in Grand Junction. We were hoping to at least get out of Colorado the first day, but only made it as far as Limon. We ate dinner at the Casa Bonita restaurant in Denver and the boys were totally overwhelmed with all the cliff divers, mariachis, and gunfighting cowboys. It is quite a wild place and reminds me more of an amusement park with its videos playing while you wait in the long lines to pick up your food.

The second day we headed out of Colorado to the plains of Kansas. We stopped at one of the nicest rest stops/visitor’s centers just across the border. Then it was corn field after corn field. We visited the Railroad Museum in Ellis, Kansas. The model railroad setup was very cool. We stopped at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, but it was closing by the time we got there.

We arrived in Kansas City around dinner time but first made a stop at the Cabela’s store which was definitely a highlight of our trip. This was another amusement park type experience, but in a good way! The boys enjoyed the shooting gallery and the huge display of animals from all over the world. It was better than a zoo since these animals were nice enough to stand still for pictures .

It was another late night arrival to our motel in Columbia, Missouri (at least I think that is where we ended up stopping that night.) The next day we had breakfast at Bob Evans in Missouri, lunch in Illinois, a snack in Indiana, and a late dinner at Bob Evans in Kentucky. And we had arrived at our current location of Florence, Kentucky where we are staying during the North American Christian Convention which is taking place just a few miles away across the Ohio River in Cincinnati, Ohio.

On Monday Ken went to NACC and set up our booth first thing in the morning. Then we all went to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky which is just a few miles from the motel. The museum was definitely another highlight of our trip so far. It is a truly wonderful place and we spent the whole day there taking it all in.

I have definitely enjoyed the scenery of each state we’ve traveled through. It gets greener and greener the further east we travel and thick with trees. We are also enjoying the convention and reconnecting with some familiar faces, plus meeting new folks who will hopefully visit us one day in Colorado at Norwood Christian Ranch in the coming years.

Well, I need to head out to pick up Ken and bring him back to the motel. We will be packing up again tomorrow night and heading out for Cleveland to see some of Ken’s relatives on Friday. I will try to update as soon as I can.

SLOW DANCE
Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round
Or listened to the rain slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day on the fly?
When you ask, “How are you?”
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?
You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Ever told your child, we’ll do it tomorrow
And in your haste, not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say,”Hi!”
You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift….
Thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower.

Hear the music.

Before the song is over.

The DVD itself came out great and has a couple of projects that can be made by dads and their children together. They’re not complicated and the final products are things the whole family can enjoy for years to come. The neat thing is there is even a bible lesson that is tied into the main project.

Check out www.PastorsHouse.com/DVDPreview.htm for all the details about the new DVD designed to help father’s build strong relationships with their children. You will also find a list of the bonuses worth more than $30 we are giving to the first 100 people who order.

There’s even a way for you to give this DVD and all the bonuses as a Father’s Day gift. So please check out our website right now, take a look at the DVD preview. Again, the website is: www.PastorsHouse.com/DVDPreview.htm

Thanks for taking the time to check it out!

I had just been thinking the day before how my patience would payoff and I was looking forward to a dozen eggs a day from this flock in just a few months. Sometimes it seems like that is such a long ways off, but then I realize it is June already – where did May go?

Patience is one of those things I deal with daily, if not constantly. Patience for my order to arrive with my bulk supply of almonds, cashews, sunflower seeds and coconut oil; patience for the weather to warm up enough to plant our garden; patience for my mouth to heal so I can eat solid food again, like the yummy fresh wild asparagus we just picked today; patience for a web page to load so I can figure out how to put the line on my new fishing pole; patience for our house in California to sell after being on the market for almost two years.

Am I really that impatient a person, or is God just continually teaching me about perseverance? I have to remember to stay in His presence which is where my strength comes from to persevere and be patient until the answer comes. That’s where I find my joy and pleasure even when having to wait for things.

As the Paul Overstreet song says, “Till the answer comes you gotta keep praying!”

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing…” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17

I think some of the best meals are those prepared with natural, homegrown ingredients, and even better when shared with friends. I’m looking forward to more homegrown meals this summer and fall especially if we are blessed with a harvest from our soon-to-be planted garden.

We are finally experiencing warmer days and the evening temps are staying above freezing now, so we should be able to get some root crops going at least. We started some lettuce indoors and it has sprouted and looks ready to get in the ground.

Let the field be joyful, and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the woods will rejoice before the LORD. Psalm 96:12

I still have six to nine months of wearing braces ahead of me, which is considerably less than the 24 months if I hadn’t had the procedure. I am on a soft food/liquid diet for the next couple of weeks, which might get a little old after awhile, but I’m not complaining yet.

I’m also supposed to restrict my talking for a bit, so maybe that will mean more time to blog – we’ll see!

Praising God for directing me to a wonderful periodontist and a Christian orthodontist.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

I think my husband had the worst part of the job, but all in all, we’re looking forward to trying this again – and we haven’t even tasted the meat yet. Neither of us were up to chicken on the menu for dinner. I think we’ll give one a try for a Sunday afternoon dinner though.

In twelve short weeks we raised six Red Cornish chickens. Of course, this is twice the time it takes them to grow the ones you buy at the grocery store. The two roosters dressed out at five pounds each and the hens were in the 3 to 3 1/2 pound range. They might have been able to go another week or so, so now we know that for next time and will let the hens go a little longer if need be.

My friend and I got the plucking/gutting job down pretty good by the time we were done. It sure was a lot easier than doing a turkey. Plus we were blessed with a nice cool day with just a little wind so we didn’t have any flies or heat to deal with.

My six year old son was fascinated by the entire process. He knew all along why we were raising this particular batch of birds. He watched dad chop off the first one’s head and then darted over to see the rest of the process take place. He wanted to save all the feet, but we talked him into just a pair for him and his younger brother. They enjoyed pulling the tendons in the feet to make the feet move.

He helped me identify all the innards for a mini-biology lesson. He even asked to take the guts out of the last bird which was great since his hand is a lot smaller than mine. He will be a great help in the future and will probably be able to do the job himself in a few years.

After figuring out our cost per bird and per pound, it definitely works out to be more expensive than just buying any old chicken at the market, but less expensive than purchasing an organically raised chicken. So guess I’ll need to look into getting some more chicks in the next couple of months so we can have another batch ready to go in the fall.

I’ll let you know how they taste…and I know exactly what went into these birds.

Chickens In Your Backyard: A Beginner’s Guide

Kefir is good for you and has many health benefits. It is easily digested, it cleanses the intestines, provides beneficial bacteria and yeast (even more than yogurt), vitamins and minerals, and complete proteins.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to get some kefir grains from the dairy where we get our real milk from. He wouldn’t let me pay for them and said they usually just feed their extras to the chickens. These grains have already doubled – twice. So far no one in our house has developed a taste for drinking it straight as kefir is quite a bit tarter than yogurt. I have a friend who just loves drinking it straight – I don’t know how she does it.

Anyway, we prefer to use it in our smoothies. We still make our homemade yogurt, too, but I don’t need to add any sweetener to that anymore. Compared to making yogurt, kefir is actually a lot easier. First you just put a few tablespoons of the grains in a couple cups of milk. Let it sit on the counter for 24 to 36 hours. The longer it sits, the tarter it gets. Then strain the grains and put them in another jar with some fresh milk. The kefir goes in the fridge or right in a smoothie. That’s it. Who knew healthy could be so simple?

But now I’m trying to figure out who I’m going to get to take care of my babies when we go on vacation this summer…

Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats

So far we’ve only sprouted alfalfa, rye, and wheat. We’ve used the rye and wheat for making bread which is so delicious. Heather added some soaked sunflower seeds to this last batch and that was very good. I am trying a ‘salad mix’ right now, so we’ll see how that turns out.

There are so many different things to sprout and we are looking forward to trying out different seeds and nuts. The process is fairly easy, but it does require some time and effort a few times a day a rinse and drain the seeds.

If you haven’t given sprouting a try yet and are interested, a wonderful resource is SproutPeople. They have free step by step instructions and also sell sprouting seeds and helpful tools. We’ve been getting most of our seed from AzureStandard. Be sure to check descriptions to make sure it is sproutable. Seeds for gardening are generally not sproutable because they have been treated with chemicals that can be toxic.

If you have been sprouting, please post any helpful tips or comments. Thanks!

The question I seem to get most often these days is, “How’s the new diet going?” Since Ken discovered he has heart issues several months back, our whole family has changed the way we eat. Our doctor recommended a book called “The Schwarzbein Principle: The Truth About Losing Weight, Being Healthy, and Feeling Younger” and that has been our main guide for planning our menus.

The main changes we’ve made have been to eliminate sugar and processed foods which is pretty common sense and something many others are trying to do these days. But some of the foods we are now eating are not so commonly thought of as healthy choices. I will share some of that in a future blog.

To answer the question of how the diet is going, it is going extremely well. Ken has lost 20 pounds in a six month period and I have shed almost ten. We are both exercising as well and walking a mile or two several times a week, which I’m sure has contributed to the weight loss. Our goal is to get Ken off the cholesterol medication with this diet, but we still have a long way to go there.

Hopefully I can let you know some of the foods we have found to be helpful and tasty, as well as some of the other resources we’ve found in our research. Meals might take a little longer to prepare these days, but we are feeling so much better than we did just a few months ago.