Faithful Fridays - Answered Prayers

How can it possibly be Friday already?

Today for Joy's Faithful Friday, I have a couple of things to share.



First of all, if you read my homeschooling post this past Tuesday, and a post a couple of weeks ago, you'll remember when we had the snow over the weekend. Well one thing I didn't tell you was that our son, Colt, as a manager of a local steakhouse, has to close often. Well that particular Saturday night he was coming home in the snow, very late....almost midnight, and his car started spinning around. He thought he was going to hit a bridge, but his car spun around and stopped in the median facing the direction he had been going in the first place. He didn't hit the bridge or anyone else. He just couldn't move...stuck. He was fine. His car only had a bit of bumper damage. Remember, we're not accustomed to driving in snow around here! We usually try to stay home or stay put as much as we can! There's no doubt in my mind that the Lord was watching over him. This is something I pray over my family everyday, His protection throughout our day. I'm so thankful for this. It could have turned out so differently. I know God sent his angels to guide that car safely until it was at a standstill. Of course, Colt called us, shaken up, but he was fine.



Secondly, there has been a House Bill in our State that has been in committee. This bill was not good for homeschoolers. We had emailed and called our Representatives about this. I believe we must act, and put legs on our prayers, and stand up and speak out if we want to make and see a difference. Well it came down to needing to go to our State Capitol to be outside the committee meeting room to talk with our Representatives as they came in to that meeting. My friends, and fellow homeschooling moms, Lori and Jayne (and I), got up early this morning and drove to our State Capitol (about a 2 hr. drive one way). Believe me when I say, this was WAY OUT of my comfort zone as well as their's! But we firmly believed we must go and take a stand if we cared about preserving this freedom, and making sure our voice was heard. Well we all prayed about this as well, mostly prayed, actually. Long story shorter, while we were there, we learned that the sponsor of this bill put it into interim study (today), which basically means that it's dead, for at least two years (or possibly longer). This is a great win....and an answer to prayer. And in the midst of all this today, we had a great time of fellowship (no kids...just us three ladies). That's a rare thing when you're a homeschooling mom!

If you have something to share for Faithful Friday, post it on your blog, then click over to Joy's blog (Doodlebug) and let her know in a comment that you participated, so we can all go over and take a look!

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On my last post, in the comments, I had a couple of people ask about the method I used to antique the bowl and wooden box. Within the next few days, I will post how I did it and the supplies used. Believe me, it is simple. I only do simple stuff! So be sure and stop by!

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And look what I have to look forward to this weekend! I love to sit down and savor it! Actually, we'll be going out of town, and I have all that time in the car to pour over the pages.



And see this? This is Karen's home! I took a picture of this page, because I have always loved her bedroom especially! It's simply prim! Actually I love it all! I can't wait to look through all the pages featuring her home and more!




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Blessings to you all! Have a great weekend!

~ Tammy ~

A Rose and a Clarification

Last night at church, my 10 year old prayer daughter, Kim, gave me a rose for Valentines Day. Wasn't that sweet? It's nice to feel loved, especially by a child! :)


This picture was taken at Joy's birthday party. Kim is the one with the short hair in the front on the right side.



About the clarification part of my post, I'm afraid that I didn't make myself clear and my cabinet pictures were a little misleading. As a matter of fact, when I look back at the pictures, I can see where it was hard to see the difference. But if you look closely at my walls above the cabinets, you will see that this is a space that I can't SIT anything on at all. Everything there would have to be hung and that is one reason why I want to be sure before I put anything up there. The wall actually comes out to the front portion of the cabinet and goes up to the ceiling (I think it's called a furdown)? I'm not sure that's how you spell it. In other words, I wouldn't be sitting anything ON TOP of the cabinets because there is no top of the cabinets....it is met with wall.



It is a narrow strip of about 14" of wall space all the way around my cabinets (3 walls worth). So now, do any of you have this kind of space above your cabinets or have any ideas knowing this? I loved the ideas you named and had it been a place to sit things, I think those would be great and I actually wouldn't have as much trouble finding things to put there.

I did notice in the current CS magazine, (Earlene's home on page 23), she has muffin tins hanging.



She has the type of space that I have above my cabinets. If you want to look there, you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. Again, any ideas?

And I would like to say Tonya, if you're reading this post today, I love ya! Thank you for your friendship! :)



Have a great Thursday, everyone!

~ Tammy ~

Surprises!

Okay. I really had no intentions of buying a laptop for about a month or so. Really...I didn't! Jason and I had discussed it and that's what I thought. What I didn't know is that he's been looking and asking around (while I was doing my own research), with the hopes of surprising both Colt and me with new laptops.

Colt has been great to let me use his laptop. He doesn't take it to school with him anymore, and he works so much that we were able to share it. When he was home, I would just move to the desktop, and give him back his computer. His computer really needed more hard drive and remember how I told you in Friday's post that it had been doing strange things lately? Well, we took it in to the "Geek Squad" at Best Buy. They ran a diagnostic test on it and he said it's not the most infected computer he'd seen, but was pretty close. They were surprised we were still able to use it. A few months ago, Colt had clicked on something that said we needed to update virus protection or something like that. Well it turned out to be a virus itself. It became progressively worse by just shutting down, pop-ups, and really annoying things besides it was running slowly. Hopefully, they're going to be able to take care of that. If they do, Joy will have her a laptop! She's VERY excited about that. Colt told her he'd pass his down to her.

BECAUSE....he got this one! It's a Dell studio 15 with a 15.4" screen. That's the size he wanted.



And I got this one! It's a Dell Studio 17. It has the 17" screen I wanted and it's RED! I can't even tell you how much I'm enjoying this big screen and with 4 GB of memory, 320 GB of hard drive, it should last me awhile! I love my computer! (And Colt's has all the same features).



We decided on Dell for a few reasons. Asking sales reps in many stores, we were ALWAYS told that Dell and HP were at the top of the list for PCs. I read many reviews online, read all your comments (of course), and called friends that own The Computer Factory. The name Dell was always thrown out there. Jason had researched on his own and came to that conclusion for us, but wouldn't say so, until he saw what I wanted! I know there are many opinions, and sometimes in a particular brand, you just get a lemon sometimes too. But we also considered that we had two Dells already, a laptop and desktop, and never had any problems with them, other than this virus, and obviously that wasn't by fault of the computer. So we figure, if it has worked this long for us, why change? (Kind of like the cars we buy too)!

Jason took us out last night leading us to believe we were "looking" at computers. Little did I know, once we had made the decision of the brand, he had every intention of buying them then. So, I'm a happy girl today! (And Colt was very excited over his too)! Joy is very tickled that she will have her own too! He sure is good to us! :)

Thank you for passing along your advice, opinions, reviews, and comments on the laptops! I appreciate every one! And so, Kath, does that mean we have twin computers now? :)

And here's my other very pleasant surprise that came in yesterday's mail:




This afternoon I will sit back in my recliner with a cup of hot chocolate, and savour each page! But of course, I had to thumb through and find Linda's beautiful home! It is so exciting for me to see her home featured, as I love her decor, so I can only imagine how exciting it must be for her! Congratulations, Linda! I'm so proud for you! :)

Have a great Sunday everyone! Does anyone still take Sunday afternoon naps? :)