Overlooked Orchid

My friend Amanda is having an awesome giveaway over at her blog, The Daily Planet.

Her giveaway is for something from the Homeschool Boutique. I just love this site, even though I haven’t been able to order from there yet, they are just full of great things for homeschoolers. T-shirts and tote bags, baby to adult, you can find something for you! It was and is very hard to say what is my favorite thing from them! I especially like their Scripture Tote Bags though, and would like to get one for myself, and one for each of the girls!

Amanda has several ways to enter her giveaway, so pop on over to her blog, by clicking the above link to her blog, or hop on over to the Homeschool Boutique by clicking the link above to see what awesome things they have!

In my years of living in Las Vegas, I can’t say that I ever had any interest in las vegas suites. Oh I wouldn’t mind seeing inside those fancy rooms, I guess more to laugh at how ridiculasly fancy they are, but fancy stuff really doesn’t interest me. I’m more of a simple kind of a girl! I laugh when I see pictures of those rooms that have white carpet, or white furniture, because to me, that just isn’t practical. I see white carpet or furniture I thiink of drink spills, someone puking on it, or muddy footprints running across it as the girls race to the bathroom, or forget to take their shoes off before getting on the couch.

Even though I haven’t been making regular entries, nothing is wrong, it’s just that life has been moving along. The weather is turning colder here. Won’t be long before it is too cold to take walks, and that saddens me, as taking walks with the girls is one of my most favorite times. Recently our walks have not only been filled with heart to heart talking, our walks have also been filled with joyful praise and singing.

Schoolwork is progressing magnificently! I am so pleased with how things are going with them! They are learning with joy, and we are all having a great time doing so. Learning about God, asking questions, and praying, it’s wonderful. The girls help me every night with dinner, which is something new, before I only had them helping every once in a while. Chores are getting done, maybe not completely joyfully, but we’re working on that! *LOL* Oh yeah, I suppose I ought to mention how the “real” school is going…The girls are whizzing right through their reading books, both the girls love science especially! Writing skills are getting better and better…It must be the Bible verses they are writing, instead of plain old writing books…*S*..Math is good as well….

Well, I guess that’s about all for now!

Once upon a time I really wanted a credit card, not so much for the card itself, but for the fact that it would build up my credit. Credit seems to be everything in this day and age. But since I never had a way to build credit, no one would give me a decent credit card. I never got an add for 0% APR credit cards, but instead got those ones that have annual fees, and processing fees, and all those other terribly expensive fees that are just silly!

When I was growing up, all I wanted was a family, a husband, children…that was what I wanted. When I got older, I still wanted those things, but I also wanted to be sucessful, I wanted a career at something….I felt as if I wasn’t “somebody” unless I had a sucessful career. I don’t think I really had anything concrete as a career in mind. I always thought to be a nurse, or own a store like a dollar store franchise, or maybe a librarian, but nothing ever “fit” me. Now I see that being the best mother possible, and training my girls up in the Lord is being the best kind of sucessful!

To buy Phentermine is about the last thing on my mind. As each day goes by it seems less and less important to be up on the latest music and movies, the latest rage on tv just doesn’t matter anymore. My relationship with God, and my girls are most important. I can’t say I’ve ever been that involved with the latest fads and rages, but it’s easy to get caught up in them.

This was a wonderfully engaging book! I was so caught up in the story that I couldn’t put the book down!! I will be on the lookout for the rest of this series, to be sure! It had an excellent story plot that was intriguing, captivating, and a real page turner! I can’t say enough about this book, other than to tell you that you ought to try reading it!!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

There’s never a dull moment in the Y’Barbo household! From hockey and cheer mom to publicist to bestselling author, Kathleen Y’Barbo somehow manages to do it all – and well. While wearing her publicist’s hat, Kathleen has secured interviews with radio, television, and print media for clients at NavPress, Hatchette, Integrity, Barbour Publishing, and Broadman & Holman, to name a few. She also brings her own unique blend of Southern charm and witty prose to the more than 350,000 award-winning novels and novellas currently in print. Her novels have been nominated for American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2006; and 2007 will see the release of her 25th book.

Kathleen is a tenth-generation Texan and a mother of three grown sons and a teenage daughter. She is a graduate of Texas A&M University. Kathleen is a former treasurer for the American Christian Fiction Writers, and is a member of the Author’s Guild, Inspirational Writers Alive, Words for the Journey Christian Writers Guild, and the Fellowship of Christian Authors. In addition, she is a sought-after speaker, and her kids think she’s a pretty cool mom, too…most of the time, anyway.

The first book in this series is Beloved Castaway.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In this sequel to Beloved Castaway, Emilie Gayarre is learning to accept her mixed race heritage while finding fulfillment in teaching children of the key. There is no denying the attraction between Emilie and the handsome young naval commander, Caleb Spencer, who is shadowed by his own flock of secrets. But if her heritage is found out, even greater things than his career are at risk. Enjoy this historical romance full of risk and redemption.

If you would like to read the first chapter of Beloved Captive, go HERE.

This book was awesome!! Not only was it about Amish/plain people which is a favorite subject of mine, but it was well written, with believable charactors, and had an excellent plot! This was the first book that I have read that was written by Mrs. Brunstetter, but after this delightful experience I will be looking for more of her books!!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Fascinated by the Amish people during the years of visiting her husband’s family in Pennsylvania, WANDA E. BRUNSTETTER combined her interest with her writing and now has eleven novels about the Amish in print, along with numerous other stories and ministry booklets. She lives in Washington State, where her husband is a pastor, but takes every opportunity to visit Amish settlements throughout the states.

This year Wanda also publishedA Sister’s Hope

ABOUT THE BOOK

Step into Amish country for this bittersweet holiday romance. Here you’ll meet Will Henderson, a young man tortured by his past, and Karen Yoder, a young woman looking for answers. Add a desperate father searching for his son, and you have all the ingredients for a first-class romance that will inspire and enthrall.

Abandoned by his father, Will Henderson was raised by an Amish couple. Now he’s about to marry Karen Yoder but is having second thoughts. Can Will overcome the bitterness of his past in order to secure his future? Karen cannot break through the barrier her fiance has suddenly constructed around his heart. When she seeks the advice of an old boyfriend, Will begins to see green. Has he already lost his chance for happiness?

When an accident threatens Will’s life, the strength of blood ties is tested. Will a recipe for White Christmas pie contain the ingredients for a happily-ever-after?

If you would like to read the first chapter of White Christmas Pie, go HERE

Watch the book trailer:

Have you ever heard the term “stranger things have happened”, well this is definitely true. I tend to be at the forefront of those stranger things sometimes. *LOL* Take my pets for example. In my lifetime I have had a pet chicken, who lived in the house for almost a whole year, because of an injury, and than after resuming her life outside as a regular chicken, would often come to the door, jump up against the door until she was allowed inside. She would only lay her eggs in the house, and no I don’t mean the chicken house either! *LOL* For those of you interested, she was housebroken too.

Here just a year or so ago, we had a pet duck named Lucky. He was in the house quite a few weeks due to an injury. We called him Lucky because he tangled with something and came out on the losing side, but still survived. Our guess was that it was a raccoon, but we are not sure. When my sister and I went out and found him he was bloody, and about half of his beak was no longer attached. After he healed up, he still had a hole between his beak and where his beak was supposed to attach. Tragically Lucky did not survive the following encounter with the raccoon.

I had a pet rat once. That’s not all that strange, but what is strange about my darling Mickey was that he developed pneumonia and I spent 5 or 6 days nursing him back to health. He wouldn’t eat or drink, wouldn’t hardly move, etc. So I had him with me constantly for something like 3 days. As I said, he wouldn’t drink, so I made sugar water for him, but he still wouldn’t drink it out of a bottle, but he would lick it off my finger, one drop at a time to start, and than later I would put several drops in my palm and he would drink it. After the first 3 days I deemed him well enough to sleep in his cage at night, instead of on the couch with me. A few months after his bout with pneumonia, he had a stroke, or what I’m assuming to be a stroke, because he always held his head at an odd angle for the rest of his life, and lost his sense of balance. He however lived to a ripe old age for a rat. I miss him though, he was such a sweetheart!

Well those are a few of my strange pets, and their strange lives. Hope you enjoyed this post, and PLEASE feel free to leave a comment with your strange pet or pet story!

As nice as it is to have family health insurance, unfortunetely for many it’s not possible. I have never been able to afford family health insurance. On my last job, it would have cost me $400 a month to have health insurance on the girls and myself. I’m not the only one in this situation, and I think it’s sad that so many families have to go without health insurance because they can’t afford it. People often don’t go to the Dr. when they need to, if they don’t have insurance, because they can’t afford to pay the bill, or can’t afford to make another monthly payment. Sometimes this has disasterous results!