Goat Girl's Baby and Gracie's New Job

Goat Girls Baby now - Baby Billy Goat with Miss Moonbeam:-)

Goat Girl's Miracle

I got to lend a helping hand

As you can see, she is soooo happy!!

Gracie Taking on the job!!

Taken through the window, we will have devotions here sometime this spring :-)

Where Gracie's Family will stay as Care Takers

The Spectacular and Legendary Estate

Here are some fun new pictures from when our beloved Goat Girl had her baby.  I got to be there with her most of the day.  It was a really special experience. 

Also our Gracie moved into a very legendary Estate in The Yaak.  She and her family will now be care takers for it.  Their boys are so excited to be there!!  Just walking through the old lodge, helping her clean was a really inspiring experience.  It spoke of many years gone by, rich in history and tales forgotton.  Super Catman helped the boys find a hidden room while Mist, Gracie and I cleaned cobwebs and gained tidbits of the mysteries the old place whispers.

 

Elasta Woman's girls are away with grandparents this week.  She and Matthew had a fun get away snowmobiling into hot springs in Canada. 

Goat Girl is getting her husband's grandbaby back this coming month.  He is a precious 2 year old who needs lots of love and stability.  We are all so excited to see him returning to her, as we know she's an awesome mama :-)

Mist just got back from a trip to California to see her little niece for the very first time!!

I've been extra blonde this week.  I started with a calamity of errors on Monday that seemed to never end.  I took Art Dog in to get his GED testing started.  The front desk girls looked at me like I was smoking wackie tabacci.  We finally figured out that they scheduled him in another city.  It was a crazy turn of events, but eventually they figured out a way to start his pre-testing for GED, which took the better part of the day.  Meanwhile I chased around Dr appts for Super Catman, and after hours upon hours discovered I could have treated him the same at home and with less headache.  I marched the kids into home school co-op to spend time with some friends only to realize that co-op was not till the next day.  Art Dog was loopy after hours of testing and he scared the crap out of me driving us home.  On and on I seemed to be blonder and blonder until I ended the day frying egg rolls at 8:00 that night for a very late dinner.

Last night, Miss Moonbeam and I had a serious talk.  We talked about how some kids do not live with both parents and how its very important for married people to spend special time together.  This talk was inspired by our pictures that were up on the bedroom wall from Hawaii.  As she snuggled with me in my tall log bed, she began silently crying.  I asked her why she was crying.  She told me she missed her husband Dr. Poopoo very much.  I was puzzled.  Since Dr. Poopoo is imaginary, I couldn't figure out why he was missing.  On and on she sobbed.  I began to wonder if there was some kind of imaginary separation or divorce going on, perhaps imaginary infidelity.  In the end, it turned out she was just missing the cardboard box that Art Dog had drawn for her.  I figure that's an easy fix ;-)

Springs of Living Water

The Following Photos are from our Hot Springs Trip

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This photo is the Spring run off I'm writing about





It was a quiet morning in the Yaak and all the turmoils of the past year seemed to be buried in the muddy new yard that we'd carved onto the properties bench. This February was unusually warm, and mud seemed to be everywhere. I wasn't sure where all the mud was coming from, but it was the least of my concerns. I was busy doing school with the kids, prepping meals, cleaning the house and getting ready for a night shift. Kevin called me over to the door and said "look". Out I looked and was amazed to see a spring that had appeared out of the side of the hill flowing down into the yard and down the drive. I got so excited. Instantly I remember the words of Mist last summer trying to convince me that the property wasn't so bad. She knew I wanted to be by water desperately and said "well maybe God will make Springs come out of the ground for you". I believed her and it helped me with the whole closing process that was so traumatic. So, seeing that spring come out of the ground was kind of like a Gift from God saying "see I really can do anything for somebody who tries to keep their heart right". I was giddy to the point of laughing. My husband later discovered another one on the other side of the house. I kept laughing saying "God is doing this for me!!" He got mad and said it wasn't God and that it was a bad thing. I couldn't believe that for a minute. After all, Mist had said God could do that for me clear back last summer. I laughed and laughed all the way to work.

When I got home, things were a different story though. The boys greeted me saying "see Dad was right the springs are bad!!" One concern in the back of my mind turned out to be true. The crawl space underneath the house, where I'd stored containers of food, clothes, and all kinds of random things was flooded. Soon my happy springs turned into nightmare springs and I was climbing down into deep sucking mud to try and get some of the stuff out of there. Right away I realized that there was no way I was getting it out. I sunk down into mud so deep that I couldn't even take a step. Finally I made my way across in high places and to my relief, most of the stuff was on high ground. I knew I couldn't move it through to the access hole, so I just moved what I could higher and hoped for the best. Then I picked up a little bit of floating trash, cardboard boxes and random house building pieces and maneuvered them up through the hole. It was unnerving and I was feeling overwhelmed, but it felt good to start with something.

Then I decided to tackle the problem from the outside. The boys had already diverted most of the water away from the house, but as they diverted, they discovered that more springs were popping up. Soon not one but two, then 3, then more were coming out of the porous mountain rock.

Soon I was digging trenches to divert water and back in my childhood yard remembering that I'd done the same thing every spring. I had forgotten how much fun it could be watching water flow through the little ditches and controlling their direction. The same giddy feeling returned and I decided that my husband could figure out how to get the water out of the crawl space, that it was temporary and that God, indeed sent the springs. I dug in the mud, lost for what seemed like an eternity until Gracies engine brought me back from the age of 10

Rootbeer on our Hot Springs Trip

Roasting Marshmallows on vacation at Lochsaw Lodge Cabins

to 40 something and I was racing around to get ready for our cross country ski outing.

We'd had a good devotion earlier that week, reading Heidi Baker's "Birthing The Miraculous". In it, she reminded the readers that water always flows into the lowest places and she compared it to Gods Spirit flowing over humble hearts. The lower you go, the more immersed in water you allow yourself to be. Every time the water went the wrong direction, the insight seemed to remind me that my heart has to keep low for the water to go in the right direction.

Elasta Woman, Gracie and I had been talking about all the miracles we'd seen God do. Now Goat girl had her baby, the one she'd always dreamed of - another miracle that we all got to be a part of. Elasta Woman's mom was miraculously alive after being given a 5% chance to live. Mist has 2 miracle babies after many many miscarriages. Elasta Woman's sister in law got a baby even though the Dr's thought it was impossible and could possibly take her life. On and on we recited miracles until it seemed like miracles were normal every day occurrences.

One last miracle was our last devotional group. A new woman came and shared that she had recently detoxed off of recreational drugs. She is a mom and wife and just wants to get back on track. She was excited to be learning and having us all as new friends. What a miracle it was to see her there, telling her story of how God did the impossible and got her clean so she could be a better mama to her 2 year old.

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I'm afraid I've neglected this blog and I'm sorry about that, not so much because I like making people laugh at my crazy antics, or because there are more pictures than I'll ever catch up with, but because a lot of Gods miracles have passed through and they didn't get recorded like they should have. I promise I'll try harder to make time for blogging.